Every Person Emits Two Tons of Carbon Dioxide a Year Through Eating, Spanish Study Finds

Every person emits the equivalent of approximately two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the time food is produced to when the human body excretes it, representing more than 20% of total yearly emissions. That is what a study by the Universidad de Almera says, confirming for the first time that human excrements contribute to water pollution, primarily with nitrogen and phosphorus.

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Election's big result: Expect more Washington gridlock

America's voters sent strong signals Tuesday that they're tired of Washington's endless partisan bickering, but lawmakers aren't likely to show that they get the message anytime soon. Instead, they're bracing for ugly partisan showdowns over government spending and health care.

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Mike Adams: How the 2010 election results will affect health care and health freedom

(NaturalNews) In what appears to be a broad backlash against Obama-era policies, U.S. voters swept Republicans into office in record numbers in last night's election. As of this writing, Republicans had clearly taken the House but failed to win a majority in the Senate. This effectively ends the Democratic super-majority alignment among the House, Senate and White House.

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Mary Bottari: Obama Economic Team Passes Out the Kool-Aid

Its the day before a hotly-contested national election, where it appeared the rabble was well positioned to deliver a colossal spanking to the elites who have too-long ignored their plight, so what does Team Obama do?

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Juan Cole: The World Is Safer Without a Republican House

Although Congress for the most part leaves foreign policy to the president, it can occasionally intervene pivotally in that arena, as when it shot down Woodrow Wilsons plan to have the U.S. join the League of Nations. Obamas hopes for better relations with the Muslim world were based on a renewed U.S.-brokered peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, on direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, on gradually bringing the Afghanistan war to an end after an initial troop surge, and on a military withdrawal from Iraq. If the freshman class of 2010 comes into town riding atop elephants, it is likely to contribute to the failure of these policies, some of which were already in trouble, and thus to worsen U.S. security.

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George Monbiot: We've Been Conned. The Deal to Save the Natural World Never Happened

'Countries join forces to save life on Earth", the front page of the Independent [1] told us. "Historic", "a landmark", a "much-needed morale booster", the other papers chorused. The declaration agreed last week at the summit in Japan [2] to protect the world's wild species and places was proclaimed by almost everyone a great success. There is one problem: none of the journalists who made these claims has seen it.

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David Rosen: Class War Spurs Violent Clashes in Europe -- Why Are Americans Just Letting the Super Rich Win?

The great unspoken two words of American political discourse are class war. The moral and political premise of the modern, post-World War II American Century is that the U.S. had overcome class divisions and struggle. Everyone, or nearly everyone save the very poor and the very, very rich, was absorbed into a vast, undifferentiated middle class. [See The End of the American Century?: Suffering the New Normal, CounterPunch, September 10-11, 2010.]

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Earth Will Take 100,000 Years to Recover from Global Warming Say Geologists

The Earth will take 100,000 years to recover from global warming if mankind continues to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, geologists have warned. A conference organised by the Geological Society in London this week will bring together scientists from around the world to look at how the world coped with climate change in the past.

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William Astore: The Face of War (Don't Look!)

Note for TomDispatch readers: For the last year or so, Timothy MacBain -- with one of the great soothing voices around -- has been producing top-notch audio interviews with TomDispatch authors at a rate of one or two per week. Today, TD is posting his latest interview, with retired Lt. Col. William Astore on what it felt like to come out of the military and learn how to write honestly about wars. You can hear it by clicking here or download it to your iPod, here. I just wanted to remind TomDispatch readers that, given MacBains growing archive of your favorite TD writers, you can be listeners here, too. Dont miss a chance to check out the Astore interview and others. Theyre special.

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Sugar, Sweet Suicide Part 2

Within America, slavery and child labor maybe a thing of the past, but this is not true throughout the world where most of the workforce is compelled to work for little or no pay. Desperately poor families in impoverished nations will sell their children into a life of drudgery in exchange for what amounts to only a few dollars. Templeton continues, "The flyer announced that 43% of the world's cocoa comes from plantations on the Ivory Coast, a part of the planet where child slavery is very much in practice. In response to massive national poverty caused in part by the bottoming out of cocoa prices, parents there are taking cash in exchange for sending their children to work the plantations. In other cocoa‑producing regions, those workers actually paid to harvest the cocoa earn such low wages their families 'are on the brink of debt and starvation,' according to the flyer. Workers who try to escape are severely beaten, as are any who fall under the weight of the cocoa bags they're forced to carry.""

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