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While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

The head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported that 40 positions may be cut as the denomination struggles financially. "These have been very painful days in this organization," ELCA Presiding Bishop the Rev. Mark S. Hanson told the Church Council Friday, according to the ELCA News Service. Lutherans are looking to reduce their 2010 budget by 10 percent due to decreased giving over the past 30 years, the economic downturn, and the decision by some congregations to withhold funding. Several congregations have decided to cut all funding to the ELCA following the controversial vote in August by the...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world's economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. We were...

Tektronix said this afternoon that it plans to export unspecified Oregon production work to Shanghai, China by the end of next year, the latest in a series of upheavals as Tek adapts to a new owner and the withering economic downturn. It's another blow for Oregon's faltering high-tech sector, which employs fewer people today than at any point in the past 13 years. Though Tektronix did not specify how many Oregon jobs it will eliminate, employees said that more than 400 currently work in Building 19, the main manufacturing facility at Tek's headquarters campus near Beaverton. Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading voice on climate change, urged lawmakers Friday to overcome partisan differences and pass legislation to curb greenhouse gases. [snip] Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the committee's ranking Republican, argued that the proposed "cap-and-trade" system to cut greenhouse gases would cost tens of billions of dollars a year. "How in the world can we have a (pollution) trade system that doesn't cost jobs and doesn't cost the economy?" he said. "I think the cost of energy will come down when we make this transition to renewable energy," countered Gore. He predicted...

GOVERNMENT'S unceasing recourse to one economic destruction measure after another belatedly forces an inevitable conclusion that, albeit for some inexplicable motive, it is resolutely determined to destroy the Zimbabwean economy in its entirety. No one can be that stupid as to resort to one catastrophic economic policy after another to the extent that the Zimbabwean Government has done over the last 11 years, unless it is with the deliberate intent to achieve a total implosion of the entirety of the economy. With actions ranging from extreme profligacy, governmental spending being continuously at astronomic levels beyond the nation's means, to the...

The folly of Kyoto National Post: Editorial Published: Saturday, February 10, 2007 Pablo Rodriguez, a Liberal MP from Quebec, has a private member's bill proceeding through the House of Commons that has the backing of all three opposition parties. If it passes, as appears likely, the resultant Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act would require Ottawa to honour Canada's Kyoto commitments and reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by more than a third over just the next five years. Note: this illustration ran on the front page of today's paper,with an accompanying article, effectively heralding this editorial. Working Canadians and taxpayers...

(AP) AKRON, Ohio -- Workers at 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plants in 10 states and Canada went on strike Thursday after the world's third largest tire maker and the steelworkers union failed to agree on a new labor contract. The union said the company's latest proposal would have included two plant closings. "The company left us with no option," said Ron Hoover, executive vice president of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents the Goodyear workers. "We cannot allow additional plant closures after the sacrifices we made three years ago to help this company survive." The old contract...