Some critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new requirements for power plants argue that forcing emissions reduction will curtail economic growth. But the recent experience of states that already cap carbon emissions reveals that emissions and economic growth are no longer tightly tied together.
The nine states that joined the Northeastern cap-and-trade program and instituted a carbon cap in 2009 — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — have substantially reduced their carbon emissions in recent years. At the same time, those states have had stronger economic growth than the rest of the country.
The E.P.A.’s requirement will likely spur other states to think about joining such a cap-and-trade program, which allows companies to buy and sell emissions permits from each other.
Tripp, 11, backs himself into his scooter after his march to the mound – by Allison Profeta
Recently, at her son’s Little League game, Allison Profeta was lucky enough to witness an extraordinary moment. She documented the event in Staunton, Virginia with photos and wrote about it on her blog. Here is an edited excerpt:
My son plays on a team with a 10-year-old boy named Baxter. Baxter’s brother, Tripp, was born with a form of dwarfism known as SED. He is still recovering from a series of major surgeries — one to stabilize his neck, and two for reconstructing each hip. The 11-year-old was in a full body cast for months but now used an electric scooter to move.
To mark the last baseball game of his brother’s season, Tripp was asked to throw out the first pitch. This would require him to get out of the scooter and walk more than 35 feet (10m) to the pitcher’s mound using a walker.
The coach talked to the tiny boy, letting him know what was required. He was to walk from the sideline to the pitcher’s mound, then throw out the first pitch, and walk all the way back.
Tripp’s mom was hesitant. She was unsure that he would have the strength after that long walk to take one hand off of his walker long enough to throw the pitch. Tripp piped up with a confident “I’ll do it!” so his mom stepped back.
This short walk that most of us do without thinking twice, was visibly arduous for Tripp. His walker got stuck in the dirt more than once. He never asked for help. He never faltered.
Photo by Allison Profeta
On the pitcher’s mound, the coach patiently and confidently treated Tripp as equal to all the other ballplayers who’d ever needed encouragement before throwing. His brother handed him the ball, and then ran to home plate as the team’s catcher. The boys on the team all stood in a line with their hats in their hands and the crowd held their breath. They all watched as Tripp became the hero of Staunton in one pitch.
The frail but determined boy returned across the infield with his walker and backed himself into his scooter.
A biker foundation in Huron, Ohio is bringing some hope and a smile to children who are having a rough time.
The Bikers Against Abused and Neglected Children Foundation is dedicated to helping stop the abuse of children in the Lake Erie region, and to enrich the lives of those who have been a victim of neglect.
B.A.A.N.C. organizes charity events to help provide for children in need with clothing, school supplies, and Christmas gifts. Fundraising events include poker runs, parties, pot luck dinners, and selling candy or ornaments, providing gifts under their holiday Angel Tree.
The nonprofit organization was the idea of local businessman, Joseph Jenkins, the owner of Huron’s Knucklehead Saloon and Gus’s Cafe and Pizzeria.
“We wanted to help the less fortunate, and that led us to notice the rise of abused and neglected in the area,” said Jenkins, who is known as Mojo. “99% of us are bikers.”
The group’s ultimate goal is to build a memorial site in memory of those children who have lost their lives due to abuse and neglect.
A teenager can’t put into words how much his little brother means to him. Instead, the high school wrestler walked 40 miles with his sibling strapped to his back to show his admiration and help raise awareness for the 7-year-old boy’s cerebral palsy.
Hunter Gandee, 14, met with more difficulties than he had imagined during, what was dubbed, the CP Swagger. Heat, rain, fatigue and sores unnerved the brothers over the two days.
The pair, followed by friends, family and even other wrestlers who’d been inspired to join him, were met at the finish line on the University of Michigan campus by thunderous applause and cheers from those who had gathered to see the boys finish the 40-mile trek.
Jaime Thurston aims to be the catalyst for change in one person’s life every week this year. She achieved that BIG TIME last week when a gift was delivered to a family half way around the world, because they were struggling through two cancer diagnoses at the same time.
In Mid-May Jaime’s website, 52-lives.org, was focused on helping a mother and son in Queensland Australia, who both have cancer. With their 30 year-old car badly in need of repair, Kerry Lumsden had relied on friends to bring her little boy, Kybie, to his hospital appointments.
The website was both asking if anyone knew an auto mechanic who would do it for free, and contemplating whether to raise money for the repair. Suddenly, on a Sunday evening, an email arrived from Scotland from a couple who had read the story on Jaime’s website.
“Since reading this story, (Kybie and Kerry) have been on my mind,” wrote the couple, who remain anonymous. “I would like to buy Kerry and Kybie a car.”
They sent $7000 (AU), and when Jaime called her with the news, Kerry was “overwhelmed that someone she had never even met would be willing to give so much.”
Since the gift was anonymous, Kerry wanted to express her gratitude for all to see on 52-lives.org.
“To the couple in Scotland, I don’t know how to say thank you enough. I was in shock when I received the call, I just could not believe it. From our hearts to yours, thank you so much. And I can only begin to say thank you to Jaime and 52 Lives for the unbelievable support and kindness they have given us. We are not alone on this monster of a journey.”
The family chose a truck to carry his wheelchair and later, his four-wheeler, when he’s healed. A Kind-hearted business, Cricks Auto Group, offered to supply a much more expensive car for the money, as well as a 6-year warranty. Cash donations totaling $190 meant they could also insure the vehicle.
A lab experiment concluded that the two tiles on the left, coated with a titanium dioxide mixture, removed up to 97% of nitrogen dioxide pollution from the air. (UC Riverside)
University of California students at Riverside say they have discovered an inexpensive roof coating that can eat smog-forming particles in the air and, if applied to the thousands of tiled rooftops in Southern California, could clean tons of pollution from the atmosphere every day.
The coating is made up of titanium dioxide, a common inexpensive compound found in everything from food to cosmetics. For just $5.00 in materials an average-sized residential roof could be coated, the students calculated, and for one year it would break down the same amount of smog particles as what is generated by a car driven 11,000 miles.
The researchers studying at Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering earned honors and prize money with their research in an Environmental Protection Agency student design competition.
Nitrogen oxide gas emitted by vehicles and power plants, react every day in sunlight to form smog. In the experiment, coated clay tiles removed 88% to 97% of nitrogen oxide pollution from the air, breaking it down into less harmful compounds.
The students calculated that 21 tons of nitrogen oxides would be eliminated daily if tiles on one million roofs were coated with their titanium dioxide mixture. 500 tons of nitrogen oxides are emitted daily in Orange County and the urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The current team of students, Carlos Espinoza, Louis Lancaster, Chun-Yu “Jimmy” Liang, Kelly McCoy, Jessica Moncayo, and Edwin Rodriguez, are all set to graduate this month, but are hopeful a new team of students will continue with this project and test other variables.
For example, they want to see what happens when they add their titanium dioxide to exterior paint. They are also considering looking at applying the coating to concrete, walls or dividers along freeways. Other questions include how long the coating will last when applied and what impact changing the color of coating, which is currently white, would have.
An elderly man who vanished nearly a month ago was found dead, with his beloved pet Maltese dog watching over him, 23 days after the two went for their final afternoon drive.
“I love that dog,” said the daughter of Jimmy Wilkerson, an 80 year-old resident of Georgia.
“We’re going to take care of BeBe, like he took care of my father, up to the last minute.”
The small dog had scratches and bite marks, probably from fending off an attack by a wild animal.
Rick Gruber said he would do the same for anybody.
In this case, the drowning victim last month was a tiny prairie dog (or a squirrel, if CNN is correct).
He did what most people would not. He spent 30 minutes trying to resuscitate the animal, performing chest compressions as best he could.
The Phoenix, Ariz. man, whose nickname is now “Squirrel Whisperer,” shot a video of the entire operation hoping that he would catch the moment the juvenile would spit up and come back to life.
“C’mon little guy. You can’t die,” said Gruber, as he tried to revive it.
The treatment worked and the squirrel, or prairie dog, went scampering off into the desert.
Kaieteur Falls in Guyana, South America is 4x higher than Niagara Falls and twice the height of Victoria Falls – by Allan Hopkins (Flickr-CC)
An agreement signed May 22 will commit $215 million for expanded protection of the Amazon rainforest.
The move will guarantee funds for the next 25 years to ensure long-term protection of the world’s largest network of protected areas over more than a quarter million square miles (60 million hectares) of the Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon Region Protected Areas program (ARPA), which aims to permanently protect 15 percent of the Amazon, an area equivalent to the size of Spain, will receive money from the Brazilian government, WWF and other partners.
“We convened leading financial thinkers and philanthropic partners to create a plan for a first-of-its-kind bridge fund to ensure ARPA’s inspiring success continues,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-US.
ARPA is considered the single largest tropical forest conservation program in history. Created in 2002, and coordinated by Brazilian Ministry of Environment it is a joint effort by Brazil’s federal government, regional state agencies, private institutions and civil society.
Washington state residents were relieved that a 22-year-old college student at Seattle Pacific University tackled a gunman and thus prevented any more killings at the school Thursday.
The young man, jumped up from his desk and pepper-sprayed the shooter when he paused to reload, and quickly subdued him with the help of another man. A police source who saw the security camera video called Jon Meis’s response an “amazing act of heroism.”
News reports revealed that Meis and his fiancé are planning to be married later this month.
Realizing that these should have been happier days for the couple, strangers began buying all the wedding gifts on the couple’s online Target registry, according to a collection of tweets posted by Buzzfeed. When there were no more left to purchase, people began contributing money to pay for a honeymoon — all to say “Thank you”.
The campaign quickly spread online and in local media, after an online fundraising page was set up by a stranger, Jessamyn McIntyre. She set a goal of $5,000 and within hours on Friday the total shot to $6,000.
By Sunday, more than 1300 people had donated $41,400.
McIntyre said, “People asked why I started the fund page for Jon Meis. I don’t know him, and nobody asked me to do it. People found his registry online for his wedding and bought all the presents they could. Then started to wonder what else they could do. The community support for Jon has been so strong, and I wanted to give it a place to continue.”
Jon and his fiancé Kaylie are scheduled to be married on June 21.
Milwaukee River at night by CJ Schmit Photography (CC license via Flickr)
30 native fish species, including sturgeon, are now living and swimming in the lower Milwaukee River, another milestone in the rehabilitation of this waterway, an urban center of life.
Buoyed by tougher environmental regulations and $5 billion in improvements, from the building of the deep tunnel system to the removal of dams and reduction in phosphorus, the Milwaukee River is cleaner and more valuable economically and ecologically than at any point in the past 100 years.
Donors from China, India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States provided $80 million as cornerstone funding to save wild cats.
Panthera, a leading organization dedicated to ensuring the future of wild cats, announced on June 1 the 10-year commitment from several environmental philanthropists and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
Unprecedented in its scale and scope, Panthera said the money will immediately fund the most effective solutions for conserving big cats: poaching for local and international trade; retaliatory and punitive killing from conflict with humans; unsustainable hunting of prey; and the loss and fragmentation of habitat.
As the animals at the top of the food chain, these cats help maintain the delicate balance of the ecosystems in which they live and upon which humans depend, and serve as the flagship species for conserving large, wild landscapes.
The founding members of the global alliance are H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the Jynwel Charitable Foundation in Hong Kong, the Wildlife Conservation Trust in India, and Panthera’s Founders, Dr. and Mrs. Kaplan.
“Today marks a turning point for global cat conservation, and we at Panthera are deeply moved by His Highness’ leadership in this noble cause,” said Panthera Founder and Chairman of the Board, Dr. Thomas Kaplan. “His support is a game changer, opening a path for us to create what has become an unprecedented alliance of philanthropists from Arabia, China, India and America, now united in a common cause.”
The Sheikh’s support builds upon his late father’s legacy, the founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was a passionate advocate for wildlife conservation many decades before the cause became mainstream.”
The multi-year pledges catalyze Panthera’s inclusive plan to help conserve all 38 species of wild cats, with a core focus on tigers, lions, jaguars, snow leopards, cheetahs, clouded leopards, cougars and leopards. Solutions that will be funded as a result of this commitment include:
Protecting and stabilizing more than half of the world’s most important Asian tiger and African lion populations
Securing the largest carnivore corridor in the world for jaguars across 18 countries in Latin America
Creating community-based conservation projects in nearly all countries with snow leopard populations
Reducing killing and poaching in more than half of cheetah and leopard range countries
Designing and implementing a range-wide conservation strategy for cougars, inclusive of creating corridors and recovery landscapes across North America.
For more information on how to join Panthera in their efforts, visit www.panthera.org.
Thanks to our Facebook Fans, who have shared these stories since 2008, we are closing in on the quarter million mark for followers of our page. To celebrate, I posted a montage at Facebook.com showing some of our most popular stories.
Check out our favorites, with thousands of uplifting comments posted from around the world:
A pet owner owes her life to her dog after the much-loved mutt saved her from choking on a piece of toast in April – by performing a Heimlich-style maneuver on her.
The clever labrador-springer-spaniel-cross named Judy, raced across the kitchen and jumped on her owner’s back, forcing her to cough up the toast on which she was choking.
As a newly-appointed Global Youth Ambassador for A World at School, I want to bring attention to the 57 million children around the world currently being denied their human right to an education. I am joined in this call to action by over 500 other young advocates for global education. Together, we make up the Global Youth Ambassadors group – recently launched by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown.
Shazia and Kainat are two of my fellow Ambassadors. Along with Malala Yousafzai, they were shot by the Taliban for going to school in Pakistan just over a year ago. Their story, and that of so many other of the youth advocates I have joined forces with, inspires me to stand up for the millions of children that are kept out of school because of poverty, early marriage, child labour and different forms of discrimination.
As firm believers that education is the answer to the greatest challenges we face as a society, we ask for your help in urging leaders to raise budgets, build schools, train teachers and improve learning for all children.
It has been shown that we could lift more than 170 million people out of poverty simply by teaching every child in low-income countries basic reading skills. So why are we not making this a reality?
I believe education is the key to building a better future for us all. I hope that together we promote this message and show that we cares about every child’s human right to go to school and learn.
I came across this really nice story about a dog. It was out of the National Geographic magazine I was reading while on an airplane. This is quoted from the article:
“Layka, the dog pictured on our magazine cover, was two when she was sent to help clear an enemy compound in Afghanistan. During her search she was shot by enemy forces and took four rounds from an AK-47 at point – blank range. Despite her injuries, she attacked and subdued the shooter, protecting her handler, Staff Sgt. Julian Mcdonald, and other members of the team. It took seven hours of surgery, including the amputation of a limb, to save her. In 2012 Layka was presented with a medal of heroism and adopted by Sgt. McDonald, who now trains dogs and their handlers at Fort Benning, Georgia.”
“When Layka bounded out of the van that delivered her to Sergeant McDonalds’s home–a special brace allows her to run as if she’d never lost a leg–she instantly recognized him, even though they’d been together only a month before she was shot. “Her excitement brought me to years,” McDonald says. “She was the sole reason why I was living and breathing and able to come home to my son and wife.”
“Our cover story, “The Dogs of War,” is about a special bond. Dogs have been our best friends for at least 14,000 years. The relationship is in our genes and theirs.”
Growing up, Michael King said, his dad always dreamed of owning a 57 Chevy Bel-air.
“He grew up poor, in a family of 7 children. He never thought he would be able to own his dream vehicle, but would talk about it all the time,” says his son on YouTube.
“When I was 8 years old I promised him that on his 57th birthday I would buy him a 57 bel-air. I never forgot, and was able to fulfill my promise.”
Michael had been showing his father pictures of the Bel-air in recent years to gauge how much he would enjoy it. He would get very excited but admit he knew he never would be able to own one like it.
The aqua-blue vintage car had been in King’s possession for two years waiting until the 57th birthday.
In the video above, watch his father break down in tears…
Wednesday marked the last day of school for students in Anderson County, Kentucky and they celebrated by surprising the janitor with a special gift– enough money to see his family stationed overseas.
The students and faculty had secretly donated cash to the fund, collecting $1900 for Ricky Spaulding who had never met his new granddaughter.
“My son is stationed in Italy and we are going to see him,” Spaulding said. “Words can’t describe the joy that I feel right now,” Spaulding told a Lexington TV reporter.
