Michelle Obama Swears Off Fur
Thursday June 11, 2009
One day after French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy told PETA that she no longer wears real fur, Obama made her own animal-friendly announcement, the Washington Times reports.
"Mrs. Obama does not wear fur," her deputy press secretary, Semonti Mustaphi, said Thursday.
Obama and Bruni-Sarkozy -- who have met twice in recent months -- are both widely known as two of the most fashionable political wives. PETA has pushed Bruni-Sarkozy -- who was photographed wearing what appeared to be fur -- in particular to donate her coats to the homeless.
"I do not wear, buy or own fur or animal skin other than leather or skin of animals raised for feeding purposes," she said in a letter to PETA. "I am not a vegetarian, and I don't find it illogical to wear skins of animals whose meat is also eaten. I would gladly consider giving away sable, fox and other fur coats -- if I owned any."
To read the full article: http://www.usmagazine.com/news/michelle-obama-swears-off-fur-2009116
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Obama Surges Ahead in the Race to be Green
Obama surges ahead in the race to be green
The President's bold speech on renewable energy has thrown down the gauntlet to the rest of the world's leaders
by Camilla Cavendish
February 6, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5671343.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5671343.ece?print=yes&randnum=1233915255121
The green race is on. Did you notice? Barack Obama fired the starting gun a week ago, but most Europeans were looking the other way. Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, is on the track, but has no one to hand his baton to - his colleagues in the Government are off expanding Heathrow and coal power. Coming up behind him are people who saw dollar signs flashing in President Obama's strident words about oil last week.
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
The President's bold speech on renewable energy has thrown down the gauntlet to the rest of the world's leaders
by Camilla Cavendish
February 6, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5671343.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5671343.ece?print=yes&randnum=1233915255121
The green race is on. Did you notice? Barack Obama fired the starting gun a week ago, but most Europeans were looking the other way. Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, is on the track, but has no one to hand his baton to - his colleagues in the Government are off expanding Heathrow and coal power. Coming up behind him are people who saw dollar signs flashing in President Obama's strident words about oil last week.
Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.
The President's speech was astonishing. “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said, on his sixth day in office. The US would no longer “bankroll dictators” but would create its own energy from the Sun, wind and soil. Unchecked climate change would lead to “violent conflict, terrible storms and irreversible catastrophe”. It was wrong to deny the science, he said. It was wrong to think that clean energy would damage prosperity. This was not the lukewarm language of appeasement, aimed at the green lobby. It was the language of wartime: a declaration of war on fossil fuels.
In one week America has gone from playing the dirty, recalcitrant schoolboy to auditioning as the world leader on climate change. That's quite a shift. And it has indicated to every energy investor and green entrepreneur that America is now the place to do business.
BP and Shell have abandoned their investments in renewable energy in Britain, in favour of the United States. The German power company e.on is close to pulling out of the London Array, Britain's biggest experiment in wind power. Even the Bush Administration operated a more attractive regime of subsidies for renewables than Britain. Now the world has a White House that will invest and regulate on an unprecedented scale.
The first two executive orders signed by the President were, he said, a “downpayment” towards the green economy. One tightened fuel-efficiency standards for cars, an issue once thought to be politically untouchable. The other gave permission to states to move faster than the Federal Government. This was a triumph for Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of whose attempts to green California have been frustrated by George W. Bush. President Obama seems determined that Washington will not stand in the way of innovation. He is colour-blind: it doesn't matter whether you're from a red or a blue state if you're green.
No country rises to a challenge like America. In the 1990s the US cap-and-trade scheme to limit acid rain worked far more quickly and cheaply than expected because, once companies saw the writing on the wall, they stopped moaning and invented clever alternatives.
Today 23 states have their own cap-and-trade schemes for capping carbon emissions. It will not be a huge step to take that national. Even the Republican Governor of Texas is proposing a $5,000 subsidy for his citizens who buy electric hybrid cars. President Obama faces an almighty fight over his stimulus package, which contains $90 billion of clean energy investments. But he is clearly determined to unleash a “big bang” that will change the energy game fundamentally.
For several years, I have been talking to investors and entrepreneurs who have been waiting for this moment. They want to grab some of the $16 trillion that the International Energy Agency thinks will be invested in energy infrastructure between now and 2030. They know that the low-carbon market could grow very fast.
It is no accident that some of the earliest clean-tech investors, such as Paul Allen, of Microsoft, and Vinod Khosla, of Sun, are dot-com billionaires. They remember how quickly fortunes were built when a critical mass of consumers suddenly shifted online. They know that canal barges ran out of customers long before they ran out of canals.
California has effectively outlawed the building of new fossil fuel plants. If the rest of the US follows suit, the big oil companies will have to move rapidly or risk running out of customers for their ageing infrastructure.
There is a long way to go. But what is particularly impressive about President Obama is his determination in the face of public apathy. By pressing the issue early and hard, he is showing true leadership. He wants to make insulated homes, clean technologies and connecting infrastructure a fait accompli. The risk for European politicians is that their own faltering steps will soon be outpaced. The EU carbon market is failing because its politicians speak green but keep shoring up old-fashioned industries.
Only one European leader seems to understand the need to unleash a “big bang”. Two weeks ago David Cameron launched an ambitious strategy for making Britain a low-carbon economy. It has put the Conservative Party way ahead of the field. While Labour writhes in the stranglehold of vested interests in the aviation and fossil fuel industries, the Tories, who are less naive about business, have plans to decentralise energy supply, invest properly in carbon capture, develop marine power and offshore wind, insulate all homes and build an “electricity internet” to help suppliers to make much more finely tuned decisions.
It is a big vision. It understands the need to offer the public what Mr Cameron calls the “holy trinity” of cheap, secure, low-carbon energy supplies. It also understands - which the Government does not - that Britain has very little time left to gain a commercial advantage in the clean energy field. There will be no prizes for coming third in a race in which the US is setting the pace.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Obama Cites Global Warming, Renewable Energy as Top Priorities
We already knew that President elect Barack Obama is serious about tackling climate change and switching this country to renewable energy as quickly as possible. Tuesday, in a surprise video appearance at an international conference on climate change convened by California Gov. Schwarzennegger, Obama reconfirmed his dedication to both issues.
Obama addressed the audience in taped remarks repeating his campaign promises to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050, and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving technologies. Watch the video below:
From The New York Times:
“Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,” Mr. Obama said. “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”
“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,” Mr. Obama said.
State officials and environmental advocates were cheered that Mr. Obama choose to address climate change as only the second major policy area he has discussed as president-elect. In a press conference and television interview last week he said that his first priority as president will be to revitalize the economy.
This is great news for people who feared that the need to focus on the economy would, by necessity, put global warming and renewable energy on the back burner. Those of us in favor of the Green Collar Economy idea, however, are well aware that finding a solution to these three issues means addressing all at once. Now, we’re just waiting for Obama to offer a high-level position in his administration to Van Jones,
Link [The New York Times]
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Alice Walker's letter to Barack Obama
Nov. 5, 2008
Dear Brother Obama,
You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.
I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.
I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker
© 2008, Alice Walker
Dear Brother Obama,
You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.
I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.
I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker
© 2008, Alice Walker
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