Maybe it’s the fact that people are tired of having their favorite TV shows as a side dish to political attack ads this time of year, but a new poll shows that Americans think there’s way too much money in politics. Almost 90 percent of respondents agree there’s too much corporate money in politics, with 51 percent strongly agreeing, according to a new poll released today by the Corporate Reform Coalition. The poll of 804 Americans was conducted by the Democratic-leaning P.R. firm Bannon Communications.

What if I were to tell you that the one on the left was provided by a member of the United States Treasury and had the endorsement of virtually every currency expert on the planet? What if I told you that the one on the right was passed by a guy who has a history of deception and that virtually every currency expert thinks the one on the right is fake? I am guessing that you think the one on the left is real and the one on the right is a fake because you considered the credibility of the people who passed that bill to you. Now keep your “credibility eyes” open when Patrick Michaels tries to pass you a counterfeit document that is supposed to make you and our elected officials believe climate change is not a major concern for the United States.

EJView, formerly known as the Environmental Justice Geographic Assessment Tool, is a mapping tool that allows users to create maps and generate detailed reports based on the geographic areas and data sets they choose. EJView includes data from multiple factors that may affect public and environmental health within a community or region, including: demographic health environmental facility-level data

Morgan Stanley - Total money spent on lobbying: $2.25 million Political candidates who've gotten the most money 2011-2012: Mitt Romney (R, Presidential Candidate) —$199,800 Barack Obama (D, President) —$33,175 Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY Senator) — $33,075 Tim Pawlenty (R, Presidential Candidate) —$31,715 Debbie Stabenow (D, MI Senator) — $24,750

These 280 companies spent a total of $2 billion lobbying on tax and other issues between 2008 and 2010. The report explains why exploiting offshore tax havens is an example of tax dodging at its worst and that at least 22 of the Dirty Thirty reported subsidiaries in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Since profit artificially shifted offshore is often counted as “foreign” profits, the data likely underestimates the amount lost due to tax havens. To stop the abusive use of tax havens, we lawmakers must end rules allowing U.S. companies to defer taxes on their offshore profits. In the meantime, there are concrete steps Congress can take that would stop the worst of the abuses by requiring more honest rules and reporting. To limit corporate money in elections, lawmakers should: • Require full and honest disclosure – the public should know who is funding what candidates • Empower shareholders – the shareholders that own corporations should have a say in how corporations spend their money on elections • Reverse Citizens United

ThE Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2005 requires the Department of Labor’s Bureau of international Labor Affairs (iLAB) to “develop and make available to the public a list of goods from countries that [iLAB] has reason to believe are produced by forced labor or child labor in violation of international standards.”2 iLAB published its initial List on September 10, 2009, which included 122 goods from 58 countries. iLAB published its first update to the List on December 15, 2010, adding 6 goods and 12 countries. The 2011 update adds 2 goods and 1 country to the List, a relatively small number compared to the 2009 initial List and the 2010 update. The List includes only those goods for which we are able to document the use of child or forced labor in their production. Given the pervasive nature of these global problems, it is likely that many more goods are produced through these egregious forms of labor abuse.

I am pleased to present EJ Legal Tools, a review of legal authorities under the environmental statutes administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that may have contributive application in the effort to advance environmental justice under Plan EJ 2014 – the Agency’s overarching strategy for advancing environmental justice. Plan EJ 2014 implements one of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s top priorities: expanding the conversation on environmentalism and working for environmental justice. That priority reflects the recognition that all too often, minority and low-income communities in our country suffer disproportionate pollution burdens and the intensified health risks and environmental quality-based obstacles to economic growth that attend such burdens. Plan EJ 2014 focuses EPA’s efforts to address these conditions by more effectively integrating environmental justice into our programs, policies, and daily work.

The Copenhagen Accord reiterates the international community’s commitment to ‘hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius’. Yet its preferred focus on global emission peak dates and longer-term reduction targets, without recourse to cumulative emission budgets, belies seriously the scale and scope of mitigation necessary to meet such a commitment. Moreover, the pivotal importance of emissions from non- Annex 1 nations in shaping available space for Annex 1 emission pathways received, and continues to receive, little attention. Building on previous studies, this paper uses a cumulative emissions framing, broken down to Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 nations, to understand the implications of rapid emission growth in nations such as China and India, for mitigation rates elsewhere. The analysis suggests that despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2◦C. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2◦C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2◦C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change. Ultimately, the science of climate change allied with the emission scenarios for Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 nations suggests a radically different framing of the mitigation and adaptation challenge from that accompanying many other analyses, particularly those directly informing policy.

The Canadian government is considering a proposal to build a pipeline under mountains and across rivers that could carry more than half a million barrels of raw tar sands crude oil (known as bitumen) daily across important salmon rivers, coastal rainforests, and sensitive marine waters. The Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed by energy company Enbridge, would stretch over 1,000 kilometers to connect the tar sands of Alberta with the Pacific coast of British Columbia.

A new report called More Jobs, Less Pollution was released last week, showing that a national 75% recycling rate would create nearly 1.5 million new jobs while reducing an amount of climate pollution equal to shutting down 72 coal-fired power plants, or taking 50 million cars off the road. This report, produced for GAIA, the Teamsters, Blue Green Alliance, NRDC, and SEIU, describes the benefits of building a resource recovery economy that creates