Savanna’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Women Are NOT Fungible

  Everything about the selection of Sarah Palin is offensive--exasperating.  McCain thinks he can draw Clinton supporters into his fold because he put a woman on the ticket? Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. What could be more sexist than thinking that women want a female president or vice president just for the sake of having a woman prez or VP? I want a qualified woman as president, an individual whose beliefs and policy proposals align with my own hopes for the future.

  It is not only women who are capable of understanding and advocating for women. I have more faith in Obama to support women's rights and promote women's status in this country than Palin, especially when it comes to the selection of justices.

  The sexism still so prevalent in this country has played a sad and divisive role in the media and the campaigns for the presidency.  My greatest fear is that disappointment over Clinton's defeat--and what I have heard veterans of the feminist movement describe as her pandering willingness to accept it--will poison this election. As a woman, I am not about to cut off my nose to spite my face by staying away from the polls in November or--worse yet--voting for McCain. The struggle for women's rights will be set back by decades if we allow the McCain/Palin ticket to secure the White House.

  Anti-choice?
  For Creationism?
  For drilling in ANWR?
  Doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change?
  Lifelong NRA member?
  A friend to Big Oil?

  Women's rights are human rights: the right to lives, families, bodies, homes, educations, and careers of our choosing with equal respect and equal pay for equal work, and the liberty to pursue our happiness in a safe and healthy environment without fear of violence or oppression.

  I don't even think Palin and I are looking at the same glass ceiling.On The eco-rundown on Alaska guv Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep pick posted 1 year, 3 months ago 120 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  True: No such thing as "Clean Coal"

  Thank you to Umbra and others who mentioned mountaintop removal mining in their comments. Coal will always be dirty. The industry is as bad as they come. And those "Clean Coal" adds, they're a marketing ploy backed by some of the biggest, meanest corporations on the planet.

  It is a waste of time to seek new ways to use old energy sources. We all know peak oil is coming, and the effects of climate change are more evident with every season. What will we have lost before we stop destroying the unique mountains, ecosystems, and communities of Appalachia? What will we have lost before we stop burning fossil fuels?

  Stopgap, band-aid measures like "Clean Coal" are born of delusion, greed, and a lack of imagination. There are millions, probably billions, of dollars poured into these kinds of projects--these just plain bad ideas--every year.

  My goodness, think what that money, that time and expertise, could achieve elsewhere! Think how quickly we would invest in energy conservation and develop sustainable energy sources if we just took the unconscionable options of coal and nuclear power off the table. If, instead, we got creative and sought out real, humane, sustainable solutions.    On Umbra on clean coal posted 1 year, 4 months ago 17 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  "Neither" is absolutely right

  Bravo! We do not have to choose between two evils.  Indeed, the only way our society is going to start thinking and acting creatively when it comes to power is if we take these dreadful options off the table.  
  One tour around the coalfields of Appalachia, or a trip through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will show you that the terrible consequences of these forms of power are not just abstract notions of looming disasters and carbon emissions.  Coal and nuclear have devastated the American landscape. And they will continue to do so until there is a drastic change in U.S. energy policy.  That change, for better or worse, will start with us, as individuals.  There are better options, as Grist readers know: efficiency, conservation, solar, wind, geothermal, even hydro. We need to choose them - all of them - in order to take coal and nuclear out of the picture.On Umbra on nuclear vs. coal posted 1 year, 10 months ago 25 Responses