The Natural Resources Defense Council has been working hard for the past eight years with groups on the ground like the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming to address the impacts of oil and gas drilling so we can increase our domestic supplies without trashing our air, water and land. See NRDC’s report Drilling Down: Protecting Western Communities from the Health and Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Production.

We will have to work closely with communities on the ground in the West in the same way to site the renewable energy projects that we need to end our dependence on oil and gas.

In terms of worker safety issues, NYCOSH in New York are up on their game. http://www.nycosh.org/

OMB Watch tracks regulations on a broad spectrum, and you can keep track of a wide range of issues. Find them at http://www.ombwatch.org/regs

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington keeps track of the high crimes and misdemeanors, check them at citizensforethics.org/

Union of Concerned Scientists and the Endangered Species Coalition follow the mis-use of science in de-regulation.
http://www.ucsusa.org/
http://www.stopextinction.org/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?c=1704

The de-regulation story can be found at the end of almost any road in America. From SoCal surfers fighting the Commerce Dept. to keep a state park at Trestles from becoming a private toll road, to First Responders in Manhattan asking for medical benefits for what they suffered at Ground Zero, “de-regulating” our democracy is an almost ubiquitous issue. People have organized around it in some localities, but that needs to be expanded and linked nationally.

And, there is no question that the fallacy of a “free market” has been used as the “heads I win, tails you lose” excuse to favor the powerful. The failure of this rationale is now painfully evident as the economy tanks and the environment sputters.

td

Even Adam Smith warned against the deleterious effects of wealth concentrated in too few hands, and made it clear that there should be rules and a tax structure to protect both sides of every transaction. Republican oligarchs would prefer that we all forget that part of Smith.

Deregulation of the environment, the lack of government oversight and accountability to the public interest, and the similar trends of deregulation in fields such as banking, air emissions, and development, are topics that need to be elevated in the public dialogue. We need more stories like these that show us how to connect the dots.

-EnvironmentalJustice

Fair criticism. I usually do mute my laptop and change my cell and pager to vibrate. I picked a pretty bad day to forget.

Nonetheless, (speaking as someone with a hobby of creating and maintaining some web sites for a small number of non-profits), I think it is simply rude to have a site (or a post within a site) suddenly blast forth music or conversation.

Can you find me any other post in the last 6 months on any of the ThinkProgress blogs that does this?

P

It’s a good idea to have your electronics on mute in the library…come on…be the change…

But it is unacceptable to have a video with music play automatically when the page opens. Readers may well be in a setting where silence is expected (in my case, a medical library).

For me this is a two strikes and you are out offense. If it happens again, you will have lost a pretty regular reader. Your choice.

Peter Elias, MD