The Chinese Yuan
Few events will be as significant for the world in the next 15 years as China opening its capital borders, a shift that economists and regulators across the world are now starting to grapple with.
With China’s leadership aiming to scale back the role of investment in the domestic economy, the nation’s surfeit of savings — deposits currently stand at $21 trillion — will increasingly need to be deployed overseas. That’s also becoming easier, as Premier Li Keqiang relaxes capital-flow regulations.
The consequences ultimately could rival the transformation wrought by the Communist nation’s fusion with the global trading system, capped by its 2001 World Trade Organization entry. That stage saw goods made cheaper across the world, boosting the purchasing power of low-income families at the cost of hollowed-out industries.
The House of Representatives in Session
Credit: www.house.gov
The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would delay and weaken the federal government’s proposed regulations on power plant emissions. (emphasis added)
The bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act and sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), would allow governors to refuse to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. Governors who claim that the regulations would have a “significant adverse effect” on electric bills or grid reliability in their states could opt out of making plans to cut power plant emissions.
“This is a worldwide problem and there’s no reason for the president of the United States to unilaterally punish America for what we’ve already accomplished,” Whitfield said of the carbon rule. “It’s such a power grab, unprecedented, that we are going to take it up on the floor today to delay this radical regulation.”
The bill, which passed 247-180, would also delay […]
This map from the “South San Francisco Bay Shoreline Study” shows areas of flooding during a 100-year flood, which would be compounded by a rising sea level. Black icons with pennants denote schools.
Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury has a message for city and county officials who are dragging their feet regarding sea-level rise: Get with the program.
Mired in complacency toward what they see as a slow-moving emergency, public agencies are not adequately preparing for future flooding from climate change, the grand jury found after investigating a complaint questioning countywide planning and preparedness related to rising seas.
Grand jurors made three determinations in their report, titled, “A Slow Rising Emergency — Sea Level Rise”: current flood-control measures won’t prevent flooding from higher water levels; cities abutting […]
Unlined pit of unidentified fluid leading up to a fracking well. Shafter, CA
Credit: 350.org
A new study has linked fracking to a higher incidence in infant mortality, perinatal mortality, low-weight births, premature births and cancer in infants and children.
Funded by the Pittsburgh Foundation and written by Joe Mangano, co-founder and president of the Radiation and Public Health Project, a nonprofit educational and scientific organization that studies the relationship between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health, the study used data from state agencies to examine eight heavily fracked counties in Pennsylvania — four in the northeast and four in the southwest region of the state, counties that account for the majority of the state’s natural gas drill wells and gas production. In all categories but child cancer, increases were greater in the northeast counties than they were in the four southwest counties.
“The information presented in this report supports the hypothesis of a link between exposure to toxic chemicals released in fracking and increased risk of disease and […]
Dr. Mark Cook, an animal science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has discovered an antibiotic alternative for certain infections common in livestock.
Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Many scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, have occurred by happenstance. This is also true of a new technology that could one day replace the use of antibiotics in livestock, and perhaps even humans, for a variety of pathogenic digestive tract infections.
“We were trying to make animals more sensitive to disease so that we could find a replacement for antibiotics,” says Dr. Mark Cook, a professor of animal science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We had [the answer] in our hands the whole time.”
The answer turns out to be Interleukin 10 (IL-10), a protein that is a kind of “off switch” for the immune system that can […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
