Occupy Wall Street, DC Actions Grow
2011-10-11 18:02:00
As summer turned into fall large numbers of people took to the streets and public places to protest economic conditions and policies. Click here for video coverage.

Chinese Residents Stand up for Urban Trees
2011-06-05 16:08:36
Nanjing residents protest of the destruction of London Plane trees, known as wutong in Chinese, is yielding results, the New York Times reports. The trees are favored in urban areas for their hardiness.

Wealth is Cleaner, Dirty Commutes Persist
2010-08-08 13:52:23
The wealthy are getting more money from businesses without smokestacks, but most commuters still drive by themselves to work despite a rise in telecommuting, the Washington Post publishes in two stories.

In an Outlook piece, David Callahan notes that in 1982 38% of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans represented oil and manufacturing interests and only 12% were from finance and technology. "By 2006, those ratios had flipped," wrote Callahan, "36% ...made their wealth from finance and tech, while 17% earned it from manufacturing and oil."

Callahan, a senior fellow at the think tank Demos, gave evidence that the political clout of the new, clean rich is growing. But, dirty-industry lobbying is still a factor in politics, he notes. Climate legislation is dead for this Congress and energy bills have been watered down.

Shifting the view from Wall Street to Main Street helps show why the legacy of old, dirty money keeps getting its way. Patterns established by smokestack and oil well industries in the 20th century have maintained their momentum in the 21st. Commuting to work is a prime example.

WaPo local transportation columnist Robert Thomson describes a study of DC-area commuting showing that petroleum-fueled, road-congesting automobiles still deliver most workers to their jobs. The story cited Commuter Connection's State of the Commute Survey.

Telecommuting occasionally is up significantly, from 13% for private workers and 7% for Federal employees in 2001 to 28% and 27% respectively in 2010.

But on a regular basis, 64% of DC's workers still drive alone to and from work. (Regular telecommuters account for less than 10% of workers, as do bikers and walkers.)

Although Commuter Connections shows that driving alone has fallen from 70% in 2001, the supermajority of workers still financially and culturally support the dirty industries that Callahan says is waning.

Admittedly, a lot of the commuters are driving imported cars, hacking away at the automotive sector of the Forbes 400 list and sending big chunks of their paychecks abroad. US-owned auto companies sold 44.9% of cars in 2009, with foreign firms selling the other 55.1%. Main Street may keep on spending billions to motor to work, but US beneficiaries on Wall Street are getting a smaller part of the pie.

What this pair of stories suggests to NewsPrism is a green divide. Collectively, US rich folks are shifting their assets away from highly polluting industries to less polluting ones while their employees are still stuck in traffic commuting to work. Perhaps in time a telecommuting tycoon will get millions of frustrated drivers off the road and, in doing so profitably, add a new name to the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans list.

Oil Stays Above $80 Despite Jobs Report
2010-08-07 16:14:22
The US economy lost 131,000 jobs in July as Census temp work came to an end. This pushed oil lower, but not below $80 a bbl. Is this a sign that oil has broken out of the $70's range?

There was talk that the dollar is a factor in the price of crude. But this ignores the fact of the inevitable rise in the price of oil, a depletable commodity that is becoming harder and harder to extract from its caverns miles beneath the ground,