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	<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Politics &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Politics &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com</link>
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		<title>Frank Lautenberg: The Senate Loses an Environmental Champion</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/06/04/frank-lautenberg-the-senate-loses-an-environmental-champion/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/06/04/frank-lautenberg-the-senate-loses-an-environmental-champion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:45:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical safety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[frank lautenberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pollution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TCSA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15700</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As a fifth-term senator, New Jersey&#8216;s Frank Lautenberg—who died June 3 at the age of 89—had more than enough time in office to put his stamp on a wide variety of legislation. You can read the full New York Times obituary to get a sense of the scope of the career of the last World War II veteran to serve in the Senate. As a reliably liberal senator, he will probably be best remembered for his successful fights against the alcohol and tobacco industries—including leading the effort in 1989 to ban smoking on commercial flights. (Yes, less than 25 years ago people could actually smoke on airplanes, something that now seems practically prehistoric.) Environmentalists have special reason to mourn Lautenberg&#8217;s loss. He was a steadfast champion of public transportation, including Amtrak. But his real achievements were at the intersection of public health and the environment—especially on toxic industrial chemicals. He authored the &#8220;Toxic Right to Know&#8221; act,which gave the public the ability to find out what toxic chemicals were being released into their neighborhood—a key piece of legislation in New Jersey, which might be called the Garden State but which long been home to a polluting chemical industry. (MORE: The Perils of Plastic) Andy Igrejas, the executive director of the nonprofit Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families group and a New Jersey native, put Lautenberg&#8217;s accomplishments into perspective: We are all deeply saddened to learn of Senator Frank Lautenberg’s passing this morning. He was a genuine public health hero, and the leading champion for protecting the public from toxic chemicals. The Senator never forgot where he came from, and who he was serving. He approached health and environmental issues as a bread-and-butter concern for working families, and he was working hard on their behalf up until the end. He will be missed. Lautenberg was still working on toxic chemical reform when he died in office. For years he was the driving force in the efforts to update the nearly 40-year-old Toxic Substance Control Act (TCSA), the outdated law that deals with nearly<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15700&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/130941931.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Obama Nominates a Fighter and an Engineer at the EPA and the Energy Department</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/03/04/obama-nominates-a-fighter-and-an-engineer-at-the-epa-and-the-energy-department/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/03/04/obama-nominates-a-fighter-and-an-engineer-at-the-epa-and-the-energy-department/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:03:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy Department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ernest Monitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gina McCarthy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white house]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Perhaps nowhere is President Obama&#8217;s temperamental tendency towards compromise clearer than in his environmental and energy policy. Obama has overseen the largest government investment ever in renewable energy, laid out aggressive standards on auto efficiency and supported some air pollution regulations that have restricted coal power. But he&#8217;s also ruled over a boom in domestic oil and gas production—including exploration that uses the process of hydrofracking, which remains incredibly unpopular among many environmentalists. So perhaps it&#8217;s fitting that Obama&#8217;s second-term nominees to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) would symbolize that difference. To replace the popular—at least among environmentalists—EPA head Lisa Jackson, the White House announced today that Obama will nominate Gina McCarthy, a tough-talking, veteran EPA regulator who has been at the forefront of the agency&#8217;s effort to enact tough greenhouse gas standards. That&#8217;s a nomination that will undoubtedly cheer greens who are still smarting from a State Department report issued last week that seemed to set the stage for the approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. To replace the Nobel-winning physicist Steven Chu at DOE, Obama will nominate Ernest J. Moniz, a nuclear physicist and the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology&#8217;s (MIT) Energy Institute. Moniz is an energy wonk&#8217;s wonk—his institute has produced a series of five major interdisciplinary studies on various energy sources, and he chaired or co-chaired four of them. That includes one study on natural gas that came under criticism from some environmentalists for being too soft on fracking, and he&#8217;s also been a supporter of nuclear power. In a statement, Environment America federal clean energy advocate Courtney Abrams noted: President Obama’s expected nominee for Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, has a history of supporting dirty and dangerous energy sources like gas and nuclear power with polluting partners including BP, Shell, Chevron and Saudi Aramco.  We are concerned about the Department of Energy’s priorities given this track record and hope Moniz will focus on clean, renewable ways to get our energy that don’t put our<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13844&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/163082236.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">163082236</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Why the Debt Crisis Has Trumped the Climate Crisis—at Least in D.C.</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/02/26/why-the-debt-crisis-has-trumped-the-climate-crisis-at-least-in-d-c/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/02/26/why-the-debt-crisis-has-trumped-the-climate-crisis-at-least-in-d-c/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deficit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13691</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To a certain group of Americans, the United States—neigh, the world—faces an existential crisis, one that threatens the prosperity and even stability of the future. This problem is so big and so frightening that solving it must be the government’s singular priority. It doesn’t matter that the very drastic steps needed to address the issue are likely to cause palpable economic pain in the short term—pain likely to be borne by the poorest and most vulnerable among us. It doesn’t matter that many experts doubt how serious this subject is, and worry that the solution could cause more trouble than the problem itself. Simply by expressing doubt, those dissenters prove themselves to be fundamentally unserious extremists—and they must be shouted down. There’s no time to waste with debate. Something must be done! If you read the newspaper or watch the cable shows, you know the problem I’m talking about. It’s the metastasizing federal debt, and to a significant slice of elite Washington—and most of the Republican party—reducing that debt chiefly through drastic spending cuts trumps every other problem facing the country today. That fear is the reason why the political parties find themselves unable to head off the looming budget sequestration, that series of automatic hatchet cuts to government spending amounting to $1.2 trillion over 10 years. It’s the reason why our government seems to be lurching from one fiscal crisis to another. But to debt hardliners, there can be no negotiation—and dissenters like the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must be defeated. It’s telling that deficit scolds have throwing around the term “debt deniers” to describe their apostate opponents—there’s even an @debtdeniers Twitter account—as if debt skeptics are trying to deny a scientific reality when they question the need for deep and immediate austerity. The term “denier” should sound familiar to those who follow the climate wars. It’s a cudgel used against those who question the vast—it must be said—scientific consensus that man-made climate change is real and dangerous. But it’s not only similarity with the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13691&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Going Green</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/going-green/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/131110231-e1361836384960.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Joint Deficit Reduction Committee Holds Overview Hearing Of Previous Debt Proposals</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Can An Outdoorsy CEO Manage the Interior Department&#8217;s Split Personality?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/02/07/can-an-outdoorsy-ceo-manage-the-interior-departments-split-personality/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/02/07/can-an-outdoorsy-ceo-manage-the-interior-departments-split-personality/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:00:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interior Department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ken Salazar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sally Jewell]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13257</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Interior Department has always been a split agency. On one hand, it&#8217;s the home of the National Parks Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, its officials stewards to hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, including some of the most beautiful and pristine territory in the United States. On the other hand, it&#8217;s also home to the Office of Surface Mining and the Bureau of Land Management, responsible for overseeing the multi-billion dollar oil, gas and mining practices that take place—and sometimes pollute—public land. To both protect the land and profit from it is an impossible, contradictory charge, and the Interior Department usually leans one way or the other, depending on the person in charge. Under former President George W. Bush, Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and then Dick Kempthorne oversaw a department that almost always privileged the exploitation of resources over conservation. During President Obama&#8217;s first term, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar brought more balance to the department, though some environmentalists criticized him for being too eager to open new land or water to drilling—including in the vulnerable Arctic. At the same time, Republicans complained that Salazar imposed overly restrictive regulations on fracking and on drilling on public lands. It&#8217;s hard to win at Interior. That&#8217;s the challenge that faces Obama&#8217;s new nominee to lead the Interior Department: Sally Jewell, who was announced on Feb. 6. Jewell was a dark horse pick for the job. Unlike Salazar—who was a Democratic senator from Colorado when he was tabbed for the Cabinet—Jewell isn&#8217;t a Western politician, the sort usually reserved for Interior. Instead, she&#8217;s the president and CEO of the venerable outdoor sports company Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), as well as a board member on the National Parks Conservation Association. But she also has experience in the fossil fuels sector, as a young petroleum engineer with Mobil before it merged with Exxon. And that unique mix of experience might just make her the right person to take on a very difficult job. (MORE: Under Pressure from High Gas Prices, Obama<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13257&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Ecocentric</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/ecocentric/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/160814453.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu&#8217;s Parting Warning on Warming</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/02/01/outgoing-energy-secretary-steven-chus-parting-warning-on-warming/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/02/01/outgoing-energy-secretary-steven-chus-parting-warning-on-warming/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:57:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steven Chu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13210</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that he would be stepping down. Chu&#8217;s departure is not unexpected, and it&#8217;s not rare—most second Presidential administrations feature a lot of Cabinet turnover, and a number of Chu&#8217;s colleagues had already announced plans to leave. He&#8217;s said he&#8217;ll stick around until President Obama can find a successor, which might be several weeks. Chu will be missed, as much—if not more—for who he was, as what he did. Chu&#8217;s record as Energy Secretary is mostly positive—as a Washington outsider, he was handed tends of billions of dollars in stimulus funding, and channeled it towards promising investments in clean tech that should continue to pay off in the years to come. He wasn&#8217;t perfect—some of those bets, like Solyndra, failed to pay off, and that Washington inexperience could hamper him. (Brad Plumer at the Washington Post has a good scorecard on Chu&#8217;s four years.) But Chu was the first person to ever join a Presidential Cabinet as a Nobel prize winner—and for physics, not one of those liberal arts Nobel prizes like peace. He was the embodiment of an ideal: that the truly best and the brightest could come to Washington to serve the public at our moment of need. Chu actually lived up to that Superscientist ideal during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, when he helped lead the team that figured out a way to plug the blown out well. But Washington is Washington, and given the political microscope he&#8217;s been under for the past couple of years, I imagine Chu can&#8217;t be too sad to leave D.C. behind. At least he&#8217;ll having an easier time biking to work from now on. Chu always knew that climate change was one of the biggest threats the U.S. and the world faced—see his pre-Secretary warnings on the danger of coal. He&#8217;ll leave office with U.S. carbon emissions at their lowest level since 1994, thanks to increased energy efficiency, more renewable energy and the switch from coal to natural gas. But he&#8217;ll also leave<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13210&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/12308200-jpeg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Obama Talks Climate Change. California Is Acting on It</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/01/29/obama-talks-climate-change-california-is-acting-on-it/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/01/29/obama-talks-climate-change-california-is-acting-on-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cap and trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13070</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s not the happiest time to be an environmentalist. Climate change hit home last year with brutal force: 2012’s historic drought singed much of the Midwest, turning farms to dust and withering the corn crop. Other parts of the U.S. suffered through storms like Sandy and massive wildfires. Average annual temperatures in the continental U.S. beat the previous recorded high by a full 1°F (1.8°C). And the future is uglier still: over the weekend, British economist Nicholas Stern warned that climate change could be even worse than he predicted in his sobering 2006 report on the financial impact of warming, while on Jan. 28 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a draft report outlining the serious threat sea-level rise poses to the coastal U.S. So, logically, 2013 should be the year the U.S. finally gets serious about dealing with the man-made greenhouse-gas emissions that drive warming. And greens could take some hope in President Obama&#8217;s Inaugural Address on Jan. 21. &#8220;We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,&#8221; Obama told his audience. But whatever the President&#8217;s intentions, political realities — including a House led by Republicans who want nothing to do with climate-change legislation — will limit his scope of action. At most, the White House may be able to tweak the tax code or spend more on research for clean energy. Useful policies, but nothing as comprehensive as the climate legislation that was introduced, and ultimately defeated, during Obama&#8217;s first term. But if environmentalists look west from Washington — about 2,728 miles west — they’ll see reason for hope. On Jan. 1, after years of preparation and legal battles, California launched a carbon cap-and-trade system, establishing a declining limit on the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions. That means that the most populous state in the U.S. and the ninth biggest economy in the world has legally committed itself to reducing its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. While cutting California’s carbon emissions alone might not make a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13070&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/h_14081664.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Death of the Colorado River</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Obama Talked Climate Change in His Inaugural Address. Now Can He Do Something About It?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/01/22/obama-talked-climate-change-in-his-inaugural-address-now-can-he-do-something-about-it/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/01/22/obama-talked-climate-change-in-his-inaugural-address-now-can-he-do-something-about-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:00:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cap and trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inauguration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[legislation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil sands]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=12997</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise appearance on Jan. 20 at the Green Ball, an inaugural event for environmental groups—and his message to the crowd couldn&#8217;t have been more welcome: I&#8217;ll tell you what my green dream is: that we finally face up to climate change&#8230;I don&#8217;t intend on ending this four years without getting an awful lot more done. Keep the faith. Environmentalists—who&#8217;d grumbled during the campaign about the absence of climate change from President Obama&#8217;s rhetoric—didn&#8217;t have to wait long to see their faith rewarded. During his inaugural address on Jan. 21, Obama spoke with surprising clarity and urgency about the need to fight global warming: We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it. Those were bold words—and words that lifted the hearts of the environmentalists in the audience on the National Mall in Washington and watching the speech around the country. But climate change—especially so far for President Obama—has always been a subject that&#8217;s easier to talk about than do anything about. As he begins his second term faced with a financial crisis and an intransigent Republican opposition, can Obama actually do something about global warming? First a quick retrospective. That uneasiness that many environmentalists felt towards the President as he campaigned for reelection this past summer wasn&#8217;t just about the disappearance of climate change as an issue. It was also due to the sense that Obama had largely failed to do much of anything on global warming during his first four years in office. That&#8217;s not an entirely fair charge. The massive stimulus<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=12997&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/01/22/obama-talked-climate-change-in-his-inaugural-address-now-can-he-do-something-about-it/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/159834969.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">159834969</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Why Obama&#8217;s &#8216;All of the Above&#8217; Energy Policy Won&#8217;t Ease Pain at the Pump</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/02/24/price-of-gas-obamas-energy-policy-really-is-all-of-the-above-but-it-wont-ease-the-pain-at-the-pump/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/02/24/price-of-gas-obamas-energy-policy-really-is-all-of-the-above-but-it-wont-ease-the-pain-at-the-pump/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:00:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gasoline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7939</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have a brilliant idea that will solve the nation&#8217;s energy problem. We need to invest in a massive research program—I mean Apollo Project-sized—to invent a silver bullet. Because all I keep hearing is that we&#8217;re all waiting for a silver bullet to solve our energy woes, if only we could find one. Take President Obama during his speech at the University of Miami on Thursday: We’re not going to, overnight, solve the problem of world oil markets.  There is no silver bullet.  There never has been. That sounds like defeatist talk to me. I say take all the money we currently give in subsidies to the oil industry—that&#8217;s about $4 billion a year—and use it on a crash program to develop a silver bullet by the end of this decade. If that&#8217;s not enough money, we can borrow a little from defense—they already get nearly $700 billion a year, so they probably won&#8217;t notice a missing billion dollars here or there. (They certainly didn&#8217;t keep a terribly close eye on the bank account in Iraq.) They probably even have some spare bullets they could contribute to the cause. So there&#8217;s the Bryan Walsh Silver Bullet Energy Program (trademark pending). Although I suppose there&#8217;s another option: actually taking energy policy seriously, which means understanding what the government can and can&#8217;t do on the price of gas. And that, judging from his Miami speech, is the direction President Obama wants to go. Which is fine, if a little inside the box. The question is whether the American public will go with him. MORE: Gasbag: Why No President Can Bring $2 a Gallon Gas Anyone who listened to the State of the Union speech last month would have been familiar with the themes: when it comes to energy options, Obama is in favor of all of the above and then some. Say you like drilling for domestic oil and natural gas, which has been booming (more or less accidentally) during his time in office? So does the President: We’re not going to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7939&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/1396072981.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Obama</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Climate Expert Peter Gleick Admits Deception in Obtaining Heartland Institute Papers</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/02/20/climate-expert-peter-gleick-admits-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-institute-papers/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/02/20/climate-expert-peter-gleick-admits-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-institute-papers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:20:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climategate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Heartland Institute]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PEter Gleick]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7904</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week the climate world was rocked — or at least, strongly buffeted — by the publication of memos that were allegedly from the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research group that takes a strongly skeptical attitude toward climate science. The memos detailed budget information — including news that groups like the archconservative Koch Foundation and corporations like Microsoft had donated money to Heartland — and detailed strategies that included fighting the teaching of climate science in U.S. schools. To advocates of climate action, the memos were proof that the Heartland Institute and its allies were playing unfair, seeking to spread doubt about climate science as a way to delay action that could harm corporate interests. A group of climate scientists — many of whom had been victimized by the Climategate e-mail hacks of 2009 and &#8217;11 — even wrote a letter to the Heartland Institute criticizing the group. For its part the Heartland Institute implicitly acknowledged that at least some of the memos were real — apologizing to donors who had been promised anonymity. But the group claimed that the memo detailing its supposed climate strategy was false and announced that it would prosecute the person who had obtained the documents. The question was who. And now we know: Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute and a veteran climate and water expert. Gleick admitted his actions in a blog post put up Monday evening on the Huffington Post: At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute&#8217;s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute&#8217;s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it. Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7904&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>State of the Union: From Climate to Clean Energy to&#8230;Fracking?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/01/25/state-of-the-union-from-climate-to-clean-energy-to-fracking/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/01/25/state-of-the-union-from-climate-to-clean-energy-to-fracking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:17:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7761</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, he mentioned the &#8216;c&#8217; word this year. Last year President Obama raised more than a few eyebrows when he failed to talk about climate change during his State of the Union—something even his Republican predecessor George W. Bush, no friend of the environment, usually managed to work in. But last night Obama did cite climate change, albeit in a rather roundabout way, criticizing Congress for being too deeply divided to pass comprehensive climate legislation—or for that matter, the clean energy standard that was a central piece of his 2011 State of the Union speech. So the President does remember how to say the word &#8220;climate.&#8221; But global warming was barely a passing reference in the speech—quite unlike something that surely has many greens worried: a call to increase domestic oil and gas production. In Obama&#8217;s words: Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years. It&#8217;s true that the President went onto admit that the U.S. has only 2% of proven global oil reserves, and that there&#8217;s no way to drill ourselves out of the economic doldrums. But still, coming less than a week after the Administration blocked the oil sands Keystone XL pipeline, it was striking to see a President who had come to office promising to make clean energy and climate change a top priority. Certainly that&#8217;s how Greenpeace saw it in their reaction to the speech: President Obama announced a potential environmental nightmare when he called tonight for more than 75% of offshore oil and gas resources to be exploited. The President claimed he would not compromise on oil<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7761&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/137675991.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Obama</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Pipeline Politics: How an Oil Sands Project Has Become Key to Environmentalism</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/12/19/pipeline-politics-how-an-oil-sands-project-has-become-key-to-environmentalism/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/12/19/pipeline-politics-how-an-oil-sands-project-has-become-key-to-environmentalism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2012]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone XL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil sands]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shale gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shale oil]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7552</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Given that there are already more than 2.3 million miles of pipelines in the U.S.—carrying petroleum products, chemicals and natural gas—it might seem odd that so much political energy has been expended on a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline. Yet the controversial Keystone XL pipeline—which would cross the upper Midwest to carry crude from Canadian oil sands down to refiners in the U.S.—has become the single biggest environmental issue facing America. Green groups—pushed hard by activists like 350.org&#8217;s Bill McKibben—are using the proposed pipeline as a litmus test for President Obama&#8217;s often-questioned commitment to the environment. They argue that Keystone XL would pose a threat to valuable aquifers in Nebraska, but more than that, they believe that allowing the pipeline to go forward would open the path to the increased development of carbon-intensive oil sands, and keep the U.S. committed to fossil fuels, with disastrous consequences for climate change. President Obama seemed to defuse the Keystone question back in November, when he decided to delay a decision on the proposed pipeline until 2013—conveniently after next year&#8217;s elections. But Keystone XL isn&#8217;t just an environmental issue—it&#8217;s now a central political one as well, with ramifications for the U.S. economy and for President Obama&#8217;s reelection hopes. MORE: Bienenvenue au Canada: Welcome to Your Friendly Neighborhood Petrostate That&#8217;s because Congressional Republicans—nearly all of whom support the pipeline, citing the potential for new jobs and more oil from a friendly North American ally (and petrostate)—have moved to tie approval for a continued payroll tax cut to an expedited decision on Keystone XL. The House passed a measure last week that keeps payroll tax cut through next year, and the Senate passed a bill that would continue the payroll tax for the next two months—important to keep a faltering recovery going. It&#8217;s not clear how the bills will be reconciled, but both would require President Obama to make a final decision on the pipeline within 60 days, as House Speaker John Boehner put it on Meet the Press on Sunday: This is the right thing to do, the American<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7552&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/pipeline_congress.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Plan B: When Politics Beat Science</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/12/09/plan-b-when-politics-beat-science/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/12/09/plan-b-when-politics-beat-science/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Plan B]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white house]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7395</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama—surrounded by lawmakers and scientific luminaries in the White House&#8217;s East Room—made a promise: his Administration, unlike his predecessor, would &#8220;guarantee scientific integrity&#8221; in federal policymaking. As Obama said in a Presidential memorandum released that day: The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.  Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions.  If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public.  To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking.  The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity. For those who&#8217;d sat by frustrated while the George W. Bush Administration muzzled its own scientists on issues like climate change and reproductive health, Obama&#8217;s announcement was cause for celebration—and a reminder of why he&#8217;d won their support. One of the issues that supporters hoped Obama would show more respect for science than his predecessor was on the Plan B  or &#8220;morning after&#8221; pill, a drug that can help prevent pregnancies if taken shortly after unprotected sex. Under Bush, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists had ruled that Plan B was safe and effective, and that it could be given to women below age 18 without a prescription. Yet the Bush White House reportedly put political pressure on FDA officials to reject their own scientists&#8217; recommendations—interference severe enough that the then-director of the FDA&#8217;s Office of Women&#8217;s Health, Dr. Susan Wood, resigned in protest. Surely Obama&#8217;s White House would listen to their scientists and move ahead on allowing greater access to Plan B, which could help prevent some of the 3 million unplanned pregnancies that occur each year in the U.S. Or possibly not. On December 7—after FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg came out in support of allowing all<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7395&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/56949089.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Plan B</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>Flip-Flop: Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich Go Skeptical on Climate Change</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/12/07/flip-flop-jon-huntsman-and-newt-gingrich-go-skeptical-on-climate-change/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/12/07/flip-flop-jon-huntsman-and-newt-gingrich-go-skeptical-on-climate-change/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:00:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campaign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate skeptics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conservatives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jon Huntsman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newt Gingrich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7338</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There was a time—not that long ago—when climate change was almost a bipartisan issue. Both Barack Obama and John McCain said on the 2008 campaign trail that they were worried about the threat of climate change, and they both had relatively similar carbon cap-and-trade proposals. Seriously, this happened—I&#8217;m almost positive that I didn&#8217;t hallucinate the whole thing. But 2012 will obviously be a very different campaign, and today to be considered a Republican Presidential candidate in good standing, you need to repudiate the informed opinion of nearly all climate scientists and pronounce yourself a skeptic. Rick Perry has done it, Mitt Romney has done it, Herman Cain has done it, Michele Bachmann has done it and I&#8217;m pretty sure Rick Santorum would do it if anyone cared enough to ask him. This has virtually nothing to do with a changing understanding of climate science and everything to do with politics and culture—one way to signal that you&#8217;re  conservative is to say that you don&#8217;t believe in climate change. But Jon Huntsman was supposed to be different. The former Utah governor, China ambassador and every Democrat&#8217;s favorite Republican made it clear that he—unlike his opponents—believe in things like evolution and science, including the science behind global warming. And while Newt Gingrich&#8217;s opinions tend to&#8230;evolve over time, he has a history of accepting the basics of climate science, even appearing in an unforgettable Al Gore-sponsored ad on the issue with Nancy Pelosi. (I say unforgettable in the sense that Gingrich would probably like us all to forget it, even though there&#8217;s  chance of that happening.) So Jon and Newt are on the right side of this issue? Not so fast. (MORE: State of the Climate: You&#8217;re Getting Warmer) In a talk on December 6 at the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank—Huntsman got all squishy on the issue: I don&#8217;t know &#8212; I&#8217;m not a scientist, nor am I a physicist. But I would defer to science in that discussion. And I would say that the scientific community owes us more in terms<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7338&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/132802517.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/132802517.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/132802517.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Hunstman</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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		<title>The E-Waste Blight Grows More Dangerous Than Ever</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/11/01/the-e-waste-blight-grows-more-dangerous-than-ever/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/11/01/the-e-waste-blight-grows-more-dangerous-than-ever/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:02:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green Products]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Regulation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Waste]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ghana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recycling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[toxic metals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.N.]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=7062</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s nothing that thrills tech-lovers more than the latest Shiny New Thing. In the first three quarters of 2011 alone, 55 million iPhones were sold—and that was before the release of the 4s this month. That&#8217;s a lot of Shiny New Things. The problem is, Shiny New Things quickly become Familiar Old Things, and nothing seems so discardable as a poky device that no longer runs the latest apps or includes the coolest features. In the U.S. alone, hundreds of millions of old phones, computers and other hardware are junked each year — and that&#8217;s a real problem. It&#8217;s hardly news by now that electronic devices contain all manner of toxic metals including lead, cadmium and mercury. Nor is it a surprise that mountains of this high-tech junk wind up in developing countries, where they are scrounged for raw materials for resale. International accords forbid unregulated shipments of First World e-waste to Third World destinations, but the rules are routinely flouted and a thriving gray market has sprouted up, allowing the junk to travel freely around the globe. Now, a study in Ghana — ground zero in the e-waste mess — reveals how toxic the problem can be. Soil, air and other environmental tests conducted by Ghanaian researcher Atiemo Sampson at a school, church, soccer field and produce market near an open-air e-waste scavenging site found that levels of eight metals — iron, magnesium, copper, zinc, cadmium, chromium, nickel and lead — were up to 50 times higher than in uncontaminated areas. Some of the toxins seep through the soil; more still pour into the air when waste is burned. &#8220;Until now, Ghana has not regulated the importation of e-waste,&#8221; Sampson said in a recent presentation to a U.N.-run multi-disciplinary group called Stop the E-Waste Problem (StEP). &#8220;Rules are only now being incorporated into our national legal framework.&#8221; Ghana is not only an example of how severe the e-waste pile-up is becoming everywhere in the developing world — all the moreso as the commercial arms race among electronic giants escalates,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=7062&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Waste</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/waste/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/empa_ewaste_ghana_052.jpg" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">empa_ewaste_ghana_052</media:title>
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		<title>Is Ecocide a Crime?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/10/24/is-ecocide-a-crime/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/10/24/is-ecocide-a-crime/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:53:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil spill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6995</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From TIME contributor Joe Jackson: As oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in May 2010, and then CEO Tony Hayward made his infamous statement that he wanted his life back, he likely had little fear of it being taken in a court of law. But that reality could be changing as a movement to make business executives and political leaders legally accountable for environmental destruction gains global momentum. Campaigners are calling for the introduction of a new internationalized law of ecocide &#8211; the mass destruction of ecosystems – that would be on a par with genocide and similar crimes against humanity. In late September the Hamilton Group – an NGO promoting sustainable development &#8211; staged a mock trial at the U.K.’s Supreme Court. The day-long proceedings saw two fictional oil company execs &#8211; played by actors – face three counts of ecocide. Their multinationals stood accused of killing migratory birds and degrading the environment in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and in the tar sands in Canada, with the pair facing a volunteer jury, one supposedly screened to be free of activists. “We took it very seriously,” says jury foreman Huw Spanner, a 51-year-old writer and editor. “It seemed a mixed group – there were some green skeptics,” he adds of the jury. Their unanimous convictions on two of the three charges were perhaps a meaningless victory for Greens given that the proceedings – despite being based on real events and featuring genuine barristers, expert witnesses and a judge &#8211; were entirely devoid of legal status. More from TIME: How to Clean Up the Mess But those involved insist it provides a telling example of how an ecocide law could operate in practice. “It wasn’t clear exactly where the borderlines of ecocide were,” explains Spanner. “[But] that kind of lack of clarity didn’t affect us because these actual charges were so well within any definition…the toxic lakes [in the Tar Sands] are just so monstrous.” There is little doubt that most companies are not currently held<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6995&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/73509556.jpg?w=300" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Oil Spill</media:title>
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		<title>The Dark Side of Steve Jobs&#8217;s Dream</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/10/06/the-dark-side-of-steve-jobss-dream/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/10/06/the-dark-side-of-steve-jobss-dream/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:06:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[globalization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[labor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steve Jobs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6907</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I missed the all-night, stop-the-presses TIME session last week that put together an amazing and entirely new issue to commemorate the death of Apple&#8217;s Steve Jobs. I don&#8217;t have much more to add, other than the fact that like so many other people, I found out the news on an Apple product and am writing this on another one. Outside TIME&#8217;s work, I suggest you check out Alexis Madrigal&#8217;s take at the Atlantic on why Jobs&#8217;s death has caused the kind of global grief you&#8217;d usually see from the passing of a religious figure: Steve Jobs believed in more for everyone: more money for him and his shareholders, more power through personal technology for the people. He was the white wizard in the black turtleneck holding the forces of decline at bay. Apple enjoyed one of the greatest runs in the history of industry right into and through the teeth of the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Steve Jobs was hope backed by manufacturing and an empowering outlook on life, a child of the grooviness and bigthink of the 1970s married to the drive of the 1980s. I&#8217;m an Apple addict, too. But I&#8217;d be remiss if I failed to note that the bright white facade of Jobs&#8217;s dream had a dark side as well, that in between his faultless designs and his legions of dedicated fans was the often harsh reality of globalized manufacturing, one that can be tainted in blood. Many Apple products are manufactured by Foxconn, a Taiwan-based electronics company that maintains most of its factories in China. Many of their workers are Chinese migrants who&#8217;ve come to the city to take advantage of the country&#8217;s economic boom. But it&#8217;s not a pretty life—there have been frequent allegations of mistreatment at Foxconn over the past several years, and even the average life of a worker at such a high-pressure environment would be unimaginable to most of the people who actually buy and enjoy Apple products. They work for 10 hours or more a day, with a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6907&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/128292993.jpg?w=199" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Steve Jobs</media:title>
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		<title>Talking the New Energy Economy at SXSW Eco</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/10/04/talking-the-new-energy-economy-at-sxsw-eco/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/10/04/talking-the-new-energy-economy-at-sxsw-eco/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:18:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bill ritter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[polarization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sxsw eco]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6902</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m in Austin, Texas this week, attending the first-ever SXSW Eco conference—a green offshoot of the annual SXSW interactive, film and music festival held in the spring. You can follow along with the live stream here. It runs through Thursday—personally, I recommend Philippe Cousteau Jr.&#8217;s presentation at 2 PM Central on Thursday. I&#8217;ve already had my say here, interviewing former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter on stage about clean energy policies and politics. Ritter is an interesting figure—he came to office in the Western state in 2006 focusing on what he likes to call the &#8220;new energy economy.&#8221; He had success at the statehouse, increasing Colorado&#8217;s renewable energy standard to 30%—one of the highest in the nation—and signed dozens of clean energy laws. He also had to deal with one of the most challenging energy issues of our time—natural gas fracking—and managed to nudge the gas industry towards greater transparency, however slowly. Ritter declined to run for re-election in 2010, and he&#8217;s now the first director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University. I hope to be able to post video of our conversation soon, but what really struck me were the political changes that Ritter experienced over the course of his one term. Don&#8217;t forget—back in 2008, climate action and clean energy was considered a pretty bipartisan issue. Ritter was one of a group of centrist Democratic governors in &#8220;purple&#8221; Western states—people like Brian Schweitzer of Montana—who saw clean energy as a way to unite Republicans and Democrats. In a post-Solyndra, 2011-era—not so much. As long as that polarization exists, we can pretty much forget about meaningful action at the federal level. Instead we may have to depend on state action—like that in Colorado, where the new Governor John Hickenlooper has continued much of Ritter&#8217;s clean energy work—and even cities like Austin. More to come from the SXSW Eco conference soon.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6902&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/111671436.jpg?w=300" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Ritter</media:title>
		</media:content>
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		<title>Climate Change Caused Crises Half A Millennium Ago, Too</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/10/03/climate-change-caused-crises-half-a-millenium-ago-too/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/10/03/climate-change-caused-crises-half-a-millenium-ago-too/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:20:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tara Thean</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Climate Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Weather]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al Gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Reality Project]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Zhang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eurpoe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[famine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food shortage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grain price]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Little Ice Age]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Northern Hemisphere]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nutrition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plague]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social unrest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Temperature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weather]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6883</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Al Gore’s televised, 24-hour PowerPoint extravaganza last month predictably sparked some hot debate – much of it not about the science itself, but about Gore as its mouthpiece (common themes: he’s a hero, he’s become irrelevant, he’s a hypocritical capitalist). But a key message within Gore’s Climate Reality Project was that our recent strange weather and accompanying social problemsare inextricably linked to the climate crisis. And say what you will about Gore, that part seems increasingly true. What&#8217;s more, there&#8217;s nothing new about such cause-and-effect. According to a new study, climate change has played a significant role in several of the  crises of pre-industrial Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere over the course of the 300 years. A team led by David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong collected as much data as they could find about climate, demography, agro-ecology, and the economy from the years 1500 to 1800 in Europe and found that these variables yo-yoed up and down along with the weather. The investigators used a number of criteria to confirm that the relationship was causative and not merely associative:  there had to be a strong and, importantly, consistent relationship between variable and effect; the cause had to precede the outcome; and the researchers had to be able to  predict the effect based on the cause. To make all these connections, Zhang’s team used robust correlation and regression models as well as simulations of alternating periods of harmony and crisis in the areas for the earlier periods in which data wasn’t as easily available. More from TIME: Are We Ready for Al Gore&#8217;s Climate Reality? While  numerous civilizations did experience the same ups and downs as  global temperature over the centuries, the immediacy of the cause and effect varied. Sometimes the response to temperature change was almost instantaneous, while others time it took five to 30 years before the impact was fully felt. And as is the case with everything in the environment, a change in one area often triggered  a cascade of changes in<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6883&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Weather</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/weather/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3d1c99e83bc392616d1f4ab203866f89?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">tarathean</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">pollute</media:title>
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		<title>The Legacy of Wangari Maathai, Nobel Environmentalist</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/09/26/the-legacy-of-wangari-maathai-the-nobel-environmentalist/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/09/26/the-legacy-of-wangari-maathai-the-nobel-environmentalist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:26:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kenya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nobel prize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spirituality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wangari maathai]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6834</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When Wangari Maathai, who died of cancer on Sept. 25 in a Nairobi hospital, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, not everyone was happy. Maathai was the first African woman to win a Nobel, chiefly for her work creating the Green Belt Movement — a (literally) grassroots effort to empower rural women in Kenya to plant trees and reverse a catastrophic trend of deforestation. Critics wondered why — at a moment when war raged in the Middle East and terrorism loomed across much of the world — the Nobel Committee should choose to bestow the prize on a mere environmentalist. Didn&#8217;t the world have bigger problems than the loss of a few trees? (PHOTOS: Wangari Maathai, African Environmentalist and Nobel Laureate) Those critics were wrong because they misunderstood what Maathai was doing — and what environmental values mean to the fate of the world. Maathai didn&#8217;t stop with tree planting. The Green Belt Movement inspired women to stand up for themselves against a corrupt and patriarchal government and see the forests — the natural wealth of Africa — as something they had a civic right to preserve, as Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé of the Small Planet Institute wrote in the International Herald Tribune after Maathai won her Nobel: Maathai&#8217;s genius is in recognizing the interrelation of local and global problems, and the fact that they can only be addressed when citizens find the voice and courage to act. Maathai saw in the Green Belt Movement both a good in itself, and a way in which women could discover they were not powerless in the face of autocratic husbands, village chiefs and a ruthless president. Through creating their own tree nurseries — at least 6,000 throughout Kenya — and planting trees, women began to control the supply of their own firewood, an enormous power shift that also freed up time for other pursuits. (MORE: Has Environmentalism Lost Its Spiritual Core?) Maathai bore a terrible price for her environmental and political activism. She was jailed and beaten — as were her followers<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6834&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Wangari Maathai</media:title>
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		<title>Solyndra &#8220;Scandal&#8221; Is Washington Business as Usual</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2011/09/15/solyndra-scandal-is-washington-business-as-usual/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2011/09/15/solyndra-scandal-is-washington-business-as-usual/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:00:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solar Power]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[government subsidies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[solyndra]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=6784</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I haven&#8217;t written much about the California solar company Solyndra, which recently went bankrupt after receiving over $500 million in taxpayer money as part of the Department of Energy&#8217;s program of loan guarantees for renewable energy companies. Short story: the sudden demise of the California-based company—which went out of business on Aug. 31, costing more than 1,000 employees their jobs—raised speculation that the Obama Administration may have channeled money toward Solyndra for political reasons. Republicans in the House launched an investigation, and turned up emails that seemed to show White House staffers pushing officials at the Office of Management and Budget to sign off on the loans in time for a major public appearance by Vice-President Joe Biden at Solyndra&#8217;s headquarters. On Sept. 14 , a House subcommittee held hearings on the Solyndra affair, and Republican representatives tried to portray the Solyndra loans, and the White House&#8217;s renewable energy support policy, as an expensive, politically motivated failure. My response: meh. TIME&#8217;s Michael Grunwald has covered this from the start, and while he&#8217;s unhappy—to say the least—with executives at Solyndra for misleading the government on its financial health, the solar industry more broadly is doing well, thanks in part to the money the Obama Administration has channeled towards more successful companies. And it&#8217;s worth noting that in addition to government loan guarantees, Solyndra also scored over $1 billion in private capital—including from GOP-friendly investors like the Walton family of Wal-Mart. Solyndra turned out to be a bad investment—the company failed in part because it made the wrong bet on solar technology, failing to foresee that silicon prices would drop drastically. Bad investments are a part of business, especially a cutting-edge industry like renewable energy, and failure is a necessary ingredient for innovation. (Just ask the famously fired Steve Jobs.) The idea that the collapse of one solar company discredits the entire solar industry is absurd. Still, many Republicans would argue that the real question here is whether government policies like loan guarantees and subsidies can actually help support companies and create new<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=6784&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Solar Power</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/solar-power/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Solyndra</media:title>
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