You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate.

The reason the ecosystem is dying is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities.

Tens of millions of the world's poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because rich countries have slashed aid funding.

Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable.

In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet?

Iraqi Oil Minister accused of mother of all sell-outs. To public fury, the country is handing over control of its fields to foreign companies.

Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies and the healthcare industry.

We heard from representatives of the Peruvian Amazonian peoples about the ongoing protests they were waging, and the repression faced as a result, from their opposition to some of the plans the Peruvian government has for 'developing' the Amazon region and opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation.

Climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million.

After hearing the disturbing news that 76% of Americans don't know what cap-and-trade is, Hank Green over at EcoGeek got his video camera and blue screen out to explain "the most important environmental legislation ever!"

Scientists have found that when Corexit is applied to the actual crude oil from BP's well, it releases 35 times more toxic chemicals into the water column than would be released with crude alone. And the tests conducted by the EPA which purport to show that dispersant plus crude is less toxic than oil alone used a combination of Corexit with Louisiana light crude oil. However, the oil coming out of BP's leaking well contains an unusually high concentration of methane. As CBS notes: The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill. " Tags: Oil pollution

"An oil platform has exploded in the Gulf of Louisiana, injuring at least one person. The Coast Guard tells MSNBC that the platform is still burning, but says it is not a drilling rig. Update at 12:14 p.m. ET: The New Orleans Tiems-Picayune descrbies the facility, called Vermillion 380, as a "fixed, manned production platform." The newspaper says the platform is not involved in drilling and, unlike the ill-fated BP rig, is not a floating rig, but rather is a fixed platform." Tags: Oil

At the turn of the 20th Century, smoke meant jobs. When noxious fumes spewed from factory stacks, workers brought home paychecks. Industries hired. The future was bright as molten iron flowing from a blast furnace. In industrial Pittsburgh’s heyday, the smoke was so dense streetlights remained lit at noon. White collar workers changed soot-covered shirts mid-day. The region’s residents suffered high rates of asthma and emphysema. In 1948, an inversion trapped industrial pollution in a small town south of Pittsburgh, killing 20. Smoke also meant death and disease. Now, however, good-paying industrial jobs need not exact untimely death from workers and their families. In fact, it’s the opposite. Development of clean renewable energy generators – the likes of wind turbines, solar cells, biomass – would create family-supporting industrial jobs in America and would reinforce traditional manufacturing jobs in the U.S., including those in steel mills, solar cell fabrication plants and wind turbine factories, such as those built by Gamesa in Pennsylvania." Tags: environmental justice pollution

The cap that ended BP's three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was set to come off Thursday as a prelude to raising a massive, failed piece of equipment and preparing for a final seal on the broken seafloor well. Engineers and the government were not expecting crude to break out again when the cap is lifted, but the government wasn't offering any guarantees and oil collection vessels were set to be on standby on the surface just in case. The cap is an elongated metal cylinder that was placed on top of the failed blowout preventer to finally stop the flow of oil and gas July 15. With the cap gone, the old blowout preventer can be removed and a new one put in place before engineers try to seal the well for good deep underground." Tags: Oil pollution

The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion. The announcement accompanied results from a second round of testing and analysis in the town of Pavillion by Superfund investigators for the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers found benzene, metals, naphthalene, phenols and methane in wells and in groundwater. They also confirmed the presence of other compounds that they had tentatively identified last summer and that may be linked to drilling activities." Tags: pollution water Oil

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which is being overseen by independent administrator Kenneth Feinberg, has been up and running for more than a week now. Feinberg has said all individual claims will be processed within 48 hours and business claims will be processed within seven days. But, according to statistics released by the GCCF, nearly 94 percent of the claims filed so far have not yet been processed because they lack the proper documentation. Between Aug. 23 and Aug. 30, according to the latest report from the GCCF, 28,880 people filed claims for damages they’ve suffered from the oil spill. Some people have filed multiple claims, bringing the total number of claims to 31,225. Of those claims, only 1,935 — just over 6 percent — have been paid. Tags: environmental justice Oil pollution

New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith knows something about radiation from oil drilling: Smith is well known for his role as lead counsel in an oilfield radiation case that resulted in a verdict of $1.056 billion against ExxonMobil for contaminating land it leased from the Grefer family in Harvey, Louisiana –– and attempting to cover it up. *** The court stated that from June 1986 to March 1987, “Exxon officials intentionally withheld information,” and that the company “knew the [radioactive] scale posed a direct danger to the physical health of those workers.” Oilfield waste, or TERM, is primarily composed of radium, a highly radioactive chemical element. Exposure to radium is known to cause a variety of devastating illnesses, including cancer. Radium’s impact on the human body is particularly acute because it is similar chemically to calcium –– and as such is frequently absorbed into bones after entering the body. Tags: Oil pollution

From the highways of Los Angeles to the Citarum River of Bandung, Indonesia, earth's most polluted city of Linfen, China to the streets of London, the world is laden with man-made pollution. Chemical, air, water and oil pollution ruin the environment, cause premature deaths, spoil the world's resources and worsen climate change. As the world's population soars to nearly 7 billion, we here at HuffPost Green decided to take a virtual tour of some of the world's most polluted places. Check out our slideshow of nine of the most polluted places in the world. Find out which city's death rate surpasses its birth rate by 260 percent. Or which city has 50,000 people die prematurely each year due to man-made air pollution. As always, we want to hear from you. Tell us what you think in the comments. " Tags: pollution

As powerful hurricane Earl heads away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, federal officials are warning coastal residents from North Carolina to Maine to plan evacuation routes in case they need to seek safer ground. Based on the expected storm track, Earl may stay just out to sea and parallel the coast. But a storm surge from the hurricane could cause significant damage to the coast as its winds have already hit 135 miles per hour. Bill Read, the director of the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday that he expects the first signs of the storm to come late Wednesday with big waves along the North Carolina coast. By Friday, Long Island and Cape Cod could see the big swells and dangerous rip currents. Tags: Extreme Weather

Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative. " Tags: environmental justice

A resurgence of bedbugs across the U.S. has homeowners and apartment dwellers taking desperate measures to eradicate the tenacious bloodsuckers, with some relying on dangerous outdoor pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators. The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest control companies and others making "unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost." Bedbugs, infesting U.S. households on a scale unseen in more than a half-century, have become largely resistant to common pesticides. As a result, some homeowners and exterminators are turning to more hazardous chemicals that can harm the central nervous system, irritate the skin and eyes or even cause cancer." Tags: pollution Personal Health EPA

"Greenpeace claims to have shut down offshore drilling by a British oil company at a controversial site in the Arctic after four climbers began an occupation of the rig just after dawn. The environment campaigners said the four protesters evaded a small flotilla of armed Danish navy and police boats which have been guarding the rigs in Baffin Bay off Greenland since the Greenpeace protest ship Esperanza arrived last week. The rigs are operated by the Edinburgh-based oil exploration company Cairn Energy, which last week prompted world-wide alarm among environmentalists after disclosing it had found the first evidence of oil or gas deposits under the Arctic. Several multinational oil companies, including Exxon. Chevron and Shell, are waiting for permission from Greenland to begin deep sea drilling in the Arctic's pristine waters." Tags: Arctic Oil environmental justice

The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest. The failure of last December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen means that cuts in carbon emissions pledged by the international community will not be enough to keep the anticipated warming within safe limits. Two analyses of the Copenhagen Accord and its pledges, by Dr Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and by the Climate Action Tracker website, suggest that, with the cuts that are currently promised under Copenhagen, the world will still warm by 3.5C by 2100. Such a rise would be likely to have disastrous effects on agricultural production, water availability, natural ecosystems and sea-level rise across the world, producing tens of millions of refugees. " Tags: Climate change environmental justice Extreme Weather

The oilsands industry increases the concentrations of dangerous metals, such as mercury, in locations downstream of development, according to a study released Monday. National or provincial guidelines for the protection of aquatic life were exceeded for seven of these metals -- cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, and zinc -- in melted snow and/or water, says the research, published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was led by Erin Kelly and David Schindler, two ecologists at the University of Alberta. Scientists from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and from Alaska also contributed. This is the second paper the group published in nine months relating to oilsands contamination. " Tags: water pollution Oil

There was already little margin for error in a world where, for the first time in history, 1 billion people are suffering from chronic hunger. But the fragility of world food markets has been underscored by the tragic events of this summer. The brutal wildfires and crippling drought in Russia are decimating wheat crops and prompting shortsighted export bans. The ongoing floods and widespread crop destruction in Pakistan are creating a massive humanitarian crisis that has left more than 1,600 dead and some 16 million homeless and hungry in a region vital to U.S. national security. These and other climate crises trigger widespread food-price volatility, disproportionately and relentlessly devastating the world's poor. Tags: food crisis Extreme Weather

The State of Mississippi's Department of Marine Resources (DMR) opened all of its territorial waters to fishing on August 6. This was done in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Food and Drug Administration, despite concerns from commercial fishermen in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida about the presence of oil and toxic dispersants from the BP oil disaster. On August 19, Truthout accompanied two commercial fishermen from Mississippi on a trip into the Mississippi Sound in order to test for the presence of submerged oil. Laboratory test results from samples taken on that trip show extremely high concentrations of oil in the Mississippi Sound. Tags: Oil pollution environmental justice

On Wednesday, video surfaced of an eerie 'fire tornado' that sent flames spinning high into the sky in Brazil (WATCH HERE). Now, CNN brings us a strikingly similar clip of a 'fire tornado' in Hawaii. According to KITV, the daunting spectacle was a product of a brush fire that firefighters were attempting to contain near the Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island on Sunday. The blaze claimed at least 1,400 acres. " Tags: Extreme Weather

As August draws to a close, we face a somber, sobering anniversary. Five years ago, on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The storm — and the horrifying ineptitude of the relief efforts before, during, and after — left the region devastated. Most of those who died or were abandoned to “sink or swim” were poor people, people of color, or both. Since that day, the Gulf Region has spent five years showing us where America is falling short. Starting with Katrina — and continuing with Hurricanes Rita, Ike, and Gustav — we have seen that we are simply not prepared to deal with the kind of extreme weather that will only become more common as climate change worsens. We have also seen that we are ill prepared to bounce back from such disasters. Many homes remain uninhabitable; many claims for support, whether from five years ago or five months ago, remain unanswered. Tags: environmental justice

President Obama visited New Orleans on Sunday and praised the recovery of the city and the resilience of its people five years after Hurricane Katrina. We talk to lifelong New Orleans resident and civil rights attorney, Tracie Washington, and Jordan Flaherty, a community organizer and author of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six." Tags: environmental justice Extreme Weather

This Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. We go back to 2005 to air some of the voices from New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm. Early on the morning of August 29th, 2005, the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, just south of New Orleans. It ravaged the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and left over 1,800 people dead. Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans was under water after the levees failed. Tags: Extreme Weather environmental justice