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This image seemed quite timely in the wake of Charley. Despite the magnitude of the disaster and the hardship currently being endured by Florida citizens that are affected, it could have been much, much worse if Charley had gone up through Tampa Bay the way that it went up through Charlotte Harbor. The largest city near Charlotte Harbor, Ft. Myers, isn't on Charlotte Harbor, whereas St. Petersburg and Tampa both sit right on the bay shore. I've got some local knowledge of the area, by virtue of a friend that has a house on the Intercoastal Waterway on the western...

Life before I have to admit that it's a struggle to think of things to recount about life inside my kitchen's store cupboards before the ethical auditors arrived. Suffice to say that the ordering and stacking within each cupboard tends to be a little slapdash. Logic determines that tins sit beside tins and spices next to, say, herbs, my preferred cupboard layout tending to be a reverse mirroring of the sequence of supermarket aisles we have just visited: basically, things are placed into cupboards in the opposite order into which they were placed into the trolley. The ethical audit The...

‘Sustainable Development’ is the Evil You Face More Articles On July 23, 2004, Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, addressed the fifth annual Freedom 21 Conference in Reno, Nevada. The following is his address on the agenda, the threat, and the defeat of "Sustainable Development." By Tom DeWeese My friends, we come here today from many walks of life. A wide variety of reasons got each of us started on the road to activism. Some of us started simply because we noticed something funny about our child’s curriculum in school. Some of us were outraged by government trying...

Officials mull ways to stem the tide of Catoosa County’s rampant residential growth. The Catoosa County Board of Commissioners and Catoosa Planning and Zoning Department held a joint meeting at the Courthouse Annex with representatives from several county agencies and businesses for a three-hour brainstorming session. The meeting, attended by about 40, yielded few specific solutions but plenty of dialogue from a number of perspectives. J. Olney Meadows, Catoosa Development Authority director, said that a migration study was conducted last year using Internal Revenue Service data from residence location and family size, concluding that during the 1990s, 1,337 households moved...

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The technology gap between poor and rich countries remains a major barrier to easing world poverty, delegates said Thursday as a weeklong U.N. trade and development forum wound toward its end."Even the academic literature on information technology suggests that it is only applicable to industrially developed countries," said President-elect Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic, who takes office Aug. 16. "We have to change that.""The name of the game is access, access, access," Juan Carlos Solines, director of Ecuador's digital government project, told delegates at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.Funding is the biggest...

The policies of Sustainable Development are changing the very fabric of America. Sustainable Development entered the world officially in 1987 in a report of the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development entitled, "Our Common Future". This commission was chaired by Gro Harlem Bruntland, Prime minister of Norway and Vice-President of the World Socialist Party. A well known mantra that originated from that report is "meeting today's need's without compromising future generations to meet their own needs". If one is to look, this mission statement has been incorporated into many government and non-government organizations. Is it a surprise that it...

Contribution of UN's Outer Space Activities to Sustainable Development and Importance of Space-based Solutions for Disaster Management Emphasized VIENNA, 2 June (UN Information Service) -- Julian Robert Hunte, President of the fifty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly, addressed the opening meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in Vienna today. The key item on the agenda of the COPUOS meeting will be finalizing the preparations for the General Assembly's review of the implementation of the recommendations of the Third United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space...

NEW JERSEY GENERAL ASSEMBLY JOE PENNACCHIO ASSEMBLYMAN, 26TH DISTRICT MORRIS AND PASSAIC COUNTIES 101 GIBRALTAR DRIVE, SUITE 1-A MORRIS PLAINS, NJ 07950 (978) 984-0922 Fax(978)984.8094 COMMITTEE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE For Immediate Release: May 20, 2004 Contact: Amie Forgatch 973-984-0922 until 4:30 P.M. 973-769-1374 after 4:30 P.M. Assemblyman to Governor: Where is the Money? Jefferson, NJ -- Assemblyman Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris, Passaic) today, at a press conference regarding the Highlands, made the following statement: On July 4th, we will be celebrating our Nation's 228th birthday. As we reflect on that day, we also remember the sacrifices that our fledgling nation made...

AGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip. Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm. Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the...

FAIRFAX, VA -- After unanimous support in the Arizona Legislature, HB 2158 "the Ben Avery Shooting Facility (BASF) Preservation Billö was signed into law by Governor Janet Napolitano. This law is essential to protect the BASF, the largest public operated shooting facility in the nation, from possible closure. HB 2158 establishes a ½ mile development buffer around the BASF, creating important zoning protection. It also requires written reports, public hearings, a presentation to the legislature, and unanimous Commission consent before Arizona Game and Fish can close the facility. "The Ben Avery Shooting Facility has a long tradition hosting a variety...

WASHINGTON — Inefficient farming practices are helping to drive deforestation, pollution, ocean degradation, and species loss and constitute the most serious environmental threat in the world today, according to a new book. According to World Agriculture and the Environment, a global survey by Dr. Jason Clay, head of the Center for Conservation Innovation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), agriculture contributes to serious environmental, social, and economic problems, particularly in developing countries. Clay offers detailed analysis of the issues and practices of some of the world's biggest crops, from coffee and orange juice to cocoa and tobacco. He concludes that agriculture...

GENEVA — Brazil's emphatic win over the United States in a key trade ruling over cotton will send shock waves through world trade talks and embolden those demanding all farm subsidies be slashed, analysts said on Tuesday. The Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), in a confidential decision, told Washington to halt much of the lavish aid it gives the country's some 25,000 cotton farmers, ruling it illegal, sources close to the ruling said. The decision goes to the heart of the debate at troubled WTO negotiations to reform world farm trade, where angry poorer countries argue the massive subsidy schemes...

<p>SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, Calif. - Aaron and Sara Flanagan knew that a house in the San Francisco Bay Area, the nation's priciest real-estate market, was out of the question. But a sprawling new development just over the coastal mountains seemed like a perfect fit. Suburbia without cookie-cutter monotony. Lots of parks and open space. A school two blocks away. The promise of old-fashioned neighborhoods. And at $414,000 for four bedrooms, they could just squeeze in.</p>

Thirty-four years ago, the first Earth Day heralded a new era of ecological awareness -- when, as Earth Day founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D- Wis., put it, "the environmental issue came of age in American political life" by showing "the political leadership of the nation that there was broad and deep support for the environmental movement." Enough time has passed to take stock of the impact that the movement has had on nature and mankind. The record is decidedly mixed. There is no doubt that the environments of wealthy, developed countries are considerably healthier today than on the first Earth...

Just as certain as death and taxes is the knowledge that we shall one day be forced to learn to live without oil. Exactly when that day will dawn nobody knows, but people in middle age today can probably expect to be here for it. Long before it arrives we shall have had to commit ourselves to one or more of several possible energy futures. And the momentous decisions we take in the next few years will determine whether our heirs thank or curse us for the energy choices we bequeath to them. Sunset industry? Oil production could soon peak...

Oil is making headlines again. Never far from newsworthy, such is its over-riding economic and political importance, the spotlight has returned as harsh as ever. The price of benchmark US light sweet crude recently reached its highest level for 13 years, and the cartel of petroleum exporting nations, OPEC, maintained its decision to cut production - potentially fuelling yet more rises. Add increasing violence in Iraq delaying its return to full oil production, and it is understandable that oil analysts have been getting the jitters. Not to forget President George W. Bush, who in an election year really does not...

Fate of annual display uncertain if land is developed When is spring officially here? Is it when the first robin hops across the lawn hunting for worms, or is it the day when there's just something different in the air -- a sweet, fresh scent that calls like a siren to young and old alike, singing, "Let's play hookey"? Along a stretch of Warrendale Bayne Road in Marshall, it comes when the daffodils bloom in big letters that say, "Welcome spring." Next to that, 6,000 more daffodils form a cross 35 feet wide and 55 feet long. The flowers paint...

An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race. The explosive works by stimulating the release of energy from the nuclei of certain elements but does not involve nuclear fission or fusion. The energy, emitted as gamma radiation, is thousands of times greater than that from conventional chemical explosives. The technology has already been included in the Department of Defense's Militarily Critical Technologies List, which says: "Such...

CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- The county commissioners embarked on their bold Murdock Village project -- spending more than $20 million on land for that effort so far -- based on an assumption. A circuit judge, they wagered, would allow the county to seize properties from owners who didn't want to sell their land for the redevelopment. They could soon find out if they were right. The first condemnation hearing for the 1,100-acre project is scheduled to begin today, before Circuit Judge William Blackwell. At issue in the hearings are 106 parcels -- mostly undeveloped single-family lots -- in the far western...

<p>PESCADERO, Calif. (AP) - Mark and Dawn Kemp never thought such coastal quietude was possible on the Pacific shore, just 20 miles from the hustle of Silicon Valley.</p> <p>"I can't believe that we aren't seeing hotels and commercial growth scooping all this up," said Mark Kemp, making just his second trip to the seaside.</p>