Progressive Commentary Hour

Progressive Commentary Hour - Big Energy’s Economic Threat to the Environment and American Society - 06/23/14

Richard Heinberg is widely regarded as one of the world’s experts in peak oil, its repercussions on the world economy, food and transportation, and the need to transition away from fossil fuels and create a more sustainable future. He is currently the Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. He was featured in Leonardo DiCaprio’s film “The Eleventh Hour” and frequently appears on major media networks to address our fossil fuel based culture and the future of climate change.   

Richard is the author of over ten books on oil depletion, energy economics, climate change and ecological issues, including “The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality.” His most recent publication is “Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future. His websites are RichardHeingberg.com AND   PostCarbon.org.

Kurt Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist who speaks and writes frequently on peak oil, energy and the environment. He is a regular contributor to The Christian Science Monitor and has written columns for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen.  

Kurt’s writings have been featured on Resilience, The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Investing.com, Peak Oil Review, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, and many other sites. He is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas—USA, and has served on the board of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.  

Kurt is a graduate of Stanford University and his novel “Prelude: A Novel About Secrets, Treachery and the Arrival of Peak Oil” is a startling reinterpretation of contemporary events and a window onto our energy future. His website is ResourceInsights.blogspot.com.

Kevin Kamps the specialist in Radioactive Waste Storage and nuclear facility operations for Beyond Nuclear, a non profit organization opposing nuclear power and weapons and advocating for safeguarding our future. For years he was a leader opposing the nuclear industry’s efforts to dump radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain Nevada and to challenge federal subsidies for new reactors and nuclear waste projects. He has traveled to Chernobyl which resulted in his founding a chapter of the International Chernobyl Children’s Project and continues to network with anti-nuclear groups across the nation protesting the relicensing of old decaying reactors and efforts to shut existing ones down. His website is www.BeyondNuclear.org.

Dr. Zane Selvans is a planetary geophysicist turned energy and climate policy wonk. He is currently the Director of Research and Policy at Clean Energy Action, a nonprofit based in Boulder Colorado where he focuses on coal supply issues, carbon and risk pricing, and renewable energy alternatives. He is has especially active in decarbonizing the city of Boulder’s electricity supply.   

Zane has a doctorate in geophysics from the University of Colorado and has worked at the university’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics and NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory and has done research on the climate of Mars and the techonics of Jupiter’s moon Europa. His organization’s website is CleanEnergyAction.org and his twitter is @ZaneSelvans

Progressive Commentary Hour - Peter Koenig - 06/16/14

Peter Koenig is a former economist and water resource specialist for the World, where he was employed for three decades. A native of Switzerland, Peter has traveled extensively throughout the world, especially thru South America, working on numerous World Bank development and environmental projects.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Voice of Russia, and is the author of a fictionalized novel based upon his work and observations with the World Bank -- “Implosion: An Economic Thriller About War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed.” 

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/09/14

Dr. Andrew Wakefield (Andy) is an gastroenterologist and academician specializing in inflammatory bowel disease and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or MMR. He is a former Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and has published over 130 original scientific papers and book chapters. In 1998, he and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London reported a novel inflammatory bowel disease in children with developmental disorders such as autism.  Dr. Wakefield resisted pressure to stop his investigations into a possible link between vaccinations, intestinal inflammation and autism. In 2001 he was awarded the fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists and he has been a board member of the American charity Medical Interventions for Autism.   Dr. Wakefield is the co-founder and director of the Autism Media Channel which has been airing on different television stations – www.AutismMediaChannel.com. His book “Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines, The Truth Behind the Tragedy” published by Skyhorse Press recounts his research into autism, the MMR vaccine and GI illnesses and his legal struggles by government and medical health authorities to discredit him and his work.

Dr. David Lewis is a former senior research microbiologist with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Research and Development department and the only EPA scientist to be a lead author on research published in Nature, the Lancet and Nature Medicine. He was responsible for discovering that HIV could be transmitted through certain dental equipment, which led to the standardization of heat-sterilization in dentistry. His research also forced the EPA to abandon the policy of promoting sewage sludge on farms, which subsequently forced him to lose his job when he turned his attention to studying illnesses and deaths associated with this practice – including biosolids link to autism.  Dr. Lewis has received many awards and is currently the Senior Science Advisor to the national Whistleblowers Center. He has also reviewed the research of Dr. Wakefield, which was provided to him personally by Andy, and has his own case going with Brian Deer.  He is the author of a recently published book:  “Science for Sale” which details how the US government uses powerful corporations and leading universities to support policies, silence top scientists, jeopardize public health and protect corporate profits.  

Dawn Loughborough is the President of the D.A.I.R. Foundation, a non profit organization dedicated to defending the interests of physicians and scientific researchers working in the best interest of public and environmental health, and whose research has been suppressed.  DAIR has been supporting and generating funds for Dr. Wakefield’s legal case. She is also the Principal of the Enterprise Solutions Group, a consulting firm providing IT solutions to the healthcare industry.  Dawn has three children, two who were injured following vaccination.  She has a Masters degree in Law Education from the University of Baltimore and a degree in journalism from Indian University.  Her website is DairFoundation.org.

Progressive Commentary Hour - 06/02/14

Dr. Mark Weisbrot is the co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC, specializing in domestic and international economic policy and US economic relations with Latin America. He writes weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited in the UK and is a frequently contributor on economic policy issues for McClatchy news services and Brazil’s largest newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. Mark is also the President of Just Foreign Policy, an independent non profit organization dedicated to reforming US foreign policy based upon diplomacy, cooperation and international law. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan and co-wrote the screenplay with Tariq Ali (Tar-eek Al-ee) for Oliver Stone’s film “South of the Border” – about leftist governments in Latin America. His organization’s website where you can find his writings is CEPR.org.