Increasing the EU's 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target from 20% to 30% could help boosting European investments from 18% to 22% of GDP, leading to a GDP increase of up to €620bn ($840bn) and the creation of up to 6 millions additional jobs. These are the key findings of a report launched today.The report, A New Growth Path for Europe - Generating Growth and Jobs in the Low-Carbon Economy, was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and conducted by an international consortium of researchers led by Professor Carlo C. Jaeger from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
Traditional models assume a 'single stable equilibrium', where investments are determined by an assumption of business-as-usual economic trends. The financial crisis however has exposed the fact that different expectations can lead to different investment behaviors, turning those expectations into self-fulfilling prophecies. The new model highlights the importance of policy in shaping investors' expectations, leading to a virtuous circle of increased investments, faster 'learning by doing' in technology and manufacturing and enhanced expectations by investors in the market.
Oh wait, no they didn't.
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Just because the South Dakota legislature has shelved the bill to legalize murdering abortion doctors doesn't mean the forced birthers haven't stopped dreaming up ever more draconian ways to deprive women of their already nearly non-existent access to reproductive health care.
On Tuesday, the legislature passed HB 1217:
The warriors in the war on women insist they are acting out of concern for women. They say they just want to ensure women can make an informed choice. But the truth is, they don't want women to have a choice at all.
Over the last seven days...
Virginia: Pastor Jason Bolton charged with stalking an underage girl. He has a previous arrest for statutory rape.
New York: Rabbi Nechemya Weberman arrested for molestation of 12 year-old girl.
Georgia: Pastor Albert Turnell charged with possession and distribution of child porn.
Alabama: Pastor Michael Wilkerson charged with writing a bad check to purchase $111K Mercedes. He previously served time in prison for defrauding the builders of his mansion.
Scotland: Sihk priest Surinder Singh convicted of child molestation.
Wisconsin: Father Thomas Marr sentenced to only nine months in jail for stealing over $600K from parishioners.
California: Christian college sued for knowingly placing a convicted child molester ministry student with a family whose children he then molested.
North Carolina: Pastor Greg Metcalf charged with assaulting his daughter and then denying her medical care.
Massachusetts: Father Franklin E. Huntress resigns in face of numerous molestation accusations.
Britain: Pastor Albert Odulele charged with indecent sexual assault on a child.
Arkansas: Pastor Shane Montgomery sentenced to one year in prison for sexual assault on a teenager.
Tennessee: Father William Casey to stand trial for child molestation.
California: Pastor Alonzo McGowan pleads guilty to stealing over $400K from an 87 year-old parishioner.
Ohio: Pastor Daniel Monk sentenced to six years in prison for sexual battery on an underage girl. Monk says he was out of his mind because he'd been fasting.
New York: Father Richard Nachajski charged with stealing $476K from his parish to finance luxury vacations to the Caribbean and Thailand.
This Week's Winner
Illinois: The Belleville Diocese of Southern Illinois is appealing a $5M molestation judgment, saying that they have zero responsibility to warn parishioners about known pedophile priests. In response, a local group of Catholic priests took the unprecedented step of denouncing the appeal as a "disastrous policy" that makes "no common moral sense." The judgment was ordered in the case of Father Raymond Kownacki, who has been sued numerous times for molestation, but has never been arrested due to the statute of limitations.
While I was waiting in vain for a story about the rallies in Madison and across the country yesterday on CNN, I did happen to catch this important story, as Heather at C&L did.
Fox, however, is following the Madison story closely and is working hard to set the narrative:
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From 2000: (CBS) This is the story of a blood feud, a battle between brothers. As we told you when we first reported this story last November, the Koch family of Wichita, Kansas is among the richest in the United States, worth billions of dollars. Their oil company, Koch Industries, is bigger than Intel, Dupont or Prudential Insurance, and they own it lock stock and barrel. The trouble is a former employee says the brother who controls the company grew rich through fraud and theft, stealing from the taxpayers of the United States.
Unfortunately, for Koch Industries, that disgruntled former employee was Bill Koch, one of the Koch brothers. Blood and oil has destroyed more than one American family. The question is: Was Bill Koch a renegade out to ruin his brother, or did Koch industries really operate the way he says? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/27/60II/main252545.shtml
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Skippy's environmental health news Sunday.
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Big Oil complains to Oscar.
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Frank Rich does what he's doing a lot of lately; he weaves two columns into one.
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Even worse, either could be punishable by death in the proposed bill. The GOP Rep. who has proposed the bill has been in the news earlier with his proposed Uterus Police. MotherJones:
It's only February, but this year has been a tough one for women's health and reproductive rights. There's a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence "victims" into "accusers"—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any "prenatal murder" in the words of the bill, including "human involvement" in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it's everything an "pro-life" activist could want aside from making all women who've had abortions wear big red "A"s on their chests.
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You can't fight something with nothing. But as long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top – and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation's bills – Republicans will convince people it's all about government and unions.
The final truth is as income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. The reason all of this is proving so difficult to get across is the super-rich, such as the Koch brothers, have been using their billions to corrupt politics, hoodwink the public, and enlarge and entrench their outsized fortunes. They're bankrolling Republicans who are mounting showdowns and threatening shutdowns, and who want the public to believe government spending is the problem.
They are behind the Republican shakedown.
These are the truths that Democrats must start telling, and soon. Otherwise the Republican shakedown may well succeed.
They're workin' their class war on us like it's a red-headed stepchild.
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Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers
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Not a flipping word about the world's biggest rectal orifice also being found in the governor's mansion in that state.
