Starting my own Colorado-born energy efficiency business, Lightly Treading Inc seventeen years ago was NOT a leap of faith. It was based on the notion that energy efficiency simply makes too much sense. Energy efficiency programs in Colorado boost local economies by saving businesses and homes money, reduces air pollution, AND combats climate change. It’s a win, win, win. For over five years now, Colorado has had a strong track record of setting energy efficiency goals that are strong but feasible. Those goals are now under attack. The Colorado Public Utility Commission is currently considering a proposal that would reduce those efficiency goals by 30% for the next five years. If cut by 30%, my business could very well drop 30%, but much more relevant to all Coloradans, so could those savings that allow home and business owners to spend fewer dollars on their utility bills and more dollars on their families and in their local communities. If rolled back, Colorado would be one of THREE states to reduce efficiency measures. That’s not company we want to keep. Colorado is a place that leads on forward thinking energy policies. Let’s continue that legacy, not stain it. The numbers behind Colorado’s energy efficiency programs are stunning and should be reason enough to strengthen our goals. To date, Colorado’s energy efficiency programs have saved consumers $950 million dollars, avoided 1.1 million tons of climate-changing carbon pollution, reduced water consumption by 650 million gallons, and created 1,000 advanced energy efficiency jobs. That’s a lot of numbers. The common theme is that they all tell a story that benefits Colorado consumers, protects the environment, and fights climate change. Add your name to the list and tell the PUC to support strong energy efficiency goals!

When I left the Army, I wanted to pursue a career as a video game designer. A recruiter for for-profit Gibbs College in Massachusetts, owned by Career Education Corp., told me their program would put me on a fast track to a job at a video game company, but the experience left me with poor training and a worthless degree. The paid internship they promised turned out to be an unpaid assignment doing the laundry of a wedding photographer. So I tried again, at the Art Institutes, owned by EDMC. Again, the recruiter promised their degree would get me the video design job I wanted. But as I went forward with classes, the school kept bringing me back to the financial aid office to push me to take out more high-interest student loans. When I couldn't afford any more, I had no choice but to drop out. Now I'm unemployed with more than $85,000 in student loan debt. It's time that predatory career colleges like ITT Tech, Everest, The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Sanford-Brown Institute, Heald College, Kaplan University, and The University of Phoenix are held accountable for abusing students and ripping off taxpayers. Career education programs are supposed to prepare students for jobs where they can earn a living, including the ability to repay your student debt. But far too often, these schools ruin students’ lives. The Department of Education recently proposed a rule to hold career education programs accountable. But the proposal is full of loopholes and giveaways to schools. We need a strong rule that protects students from sham colleges that leave them with overwhelming debt and dismal career prospects. For-profit colleges have about 13 percent of US college students but account for nearly half of student loan defaults. Many of these schools get close to 90 percent of their revenue from taxpayer dollars. But they spend more of that money on marketing, big CEO salaries, and profits for Wall Street private equity firms than on educating students. As a result, more than half of the students who enroll in these schools drop out within about four months. What's worse, these schools often target vulnerable populations, including veterans and disadvantaged communities who can least afford costly and worthless degrees. To adequately protect students and taxpayers and prompt schools to quickly improve or end weak programs, the rule (Docket ID ED-2014-OPE-0039) needs to be strengthened by: - Providing financial relief for students in programs that lose eligibility. Schools with ineffective programs that lose eligibility for federal aid should be required to make whole the students who enrolled in the program. Providing full relief to all such students is not only fair, it also creates a greater incentive for schools to quickly improve their programs. - Limiting enrollment in poorly performing programs until they improve. Under the proposed regulation, poorly performing programs can increase the number of students they enroll, without limit, right up until the day the programs lose eligibility. Instead, the rule should impose enrollment caps until a program improves. - Closing loopholes and raising standards. The proposed regulation is too easy to game, and its standards are too low. For example, programs can pass the standards even when 99% of their students drop out with heavy debts that they cannot pay down. Unscrupulous schools can easily manipulate job placement rates or evade accountability by limiting program size. They can exclude the debt of graduates who enroll in a program for just one day, and can enroll students in online programs that lack the accreditation needed to be hired in the states where the students live. These types of loopholes need to be closed and the standards raised. - Protecting low-cost programs where most graduates don’t borrow. Low-cost programs where most graduates do not borrow at all – such as community colleges -- should automatically meet the standards because, by definition, these programs do not consistently leave students with unaffordable debts. Burdening these programs with a complicated appeals process could prompt more schools to leave the federal student loan program and lead to the closure of effective, low-cost programs. It’s time to protect students and taxpayers by holding predatory colleges accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with our tax dollars. Join us and make your voice heard! #studentsDemand #Gainful

We need to tell Governor Brown to sign Senate Bill 1272, the Overturn Citizens United Act, which would let Californians vote this November to demand that Congress pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. The Supreme Court has gutted more than one hundred years of campaign finance laws and given corporations and the rich even more power over our government -- with the outrageous rationale that limiting spending on elections limits speech. If our democratic system of representative government is to survive, these deeply damaging rulings must be overturned. SB 1272 will put a proposition on this November's ballot that will let California voters demand that Congress create a constitutional amendment to do so. SB 1272 has now passed the legislature – now it's up to Governor Brown to sign it so it goes onto this November's ballot!

The widespread and routine use of antibiotics at factory farms is rendering them less effective, and the problem is growing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year more than two million people are hospitalized and 23,000 die because they have been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On Wednesday April 30th, legislators in the California assembly agriculture committee will consider a strong bill that would ensure that meat sold into California comes from animals that are only given antibiotics when they are sick -- not as part of a daily regimen to promote growth or prevent future illness. But factory farms are lobbying against stronger rules, so we need to act now in order to protect public health. Despite the serious consequences of the overuse of antibiotics, many large farms give antibiotics to their livestock and poultry in daily doses in their animal feed, when the animals are healthy. According to FDA data, nearly 80 percent of antibiotics are sold to be given to livestock and poultry. We need to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics so they can continue saving lives for generations to come. The misuse of antibiotics on farms leads to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria that can travel through our food, air and water. The CDC has said “much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe.” http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/pdf/ar-threats-2013-508.pdf http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/12/fda-finalizes-guidance-for-phasing-out-antibiotics-in-food-animals/#.U1mEQfldV50

My name is Aklima Khanam. I’m 20 years old. I started working in a garment factory when I was 14 years old. My dad was ill and couldn’t work and my mom had to take care of my four siblings. I started working at New Wave Style at Rana Plaza on January 3, 2013. We made clothes for Walmart and Children’s Place. Managers would say “This is for Walmart, you need to make it beautiful.” If I spent too long in the bathroom, they would pull my hair, kick me off the stool, call me “whore” or say “your parents are children of pigs” or many other kinds of abusive language. They would give me a ton of work and if there was one or two mistakes, they would do this. All I made was about $125 a month. My normal workday was from 8am to midnight. Sometimes they kept us there til 2am or 3am. I worked 7 days a week. The whole time January 3rd to April 24th, I was never given a single day off. On the morning of April 24th, the management forced us into the factory using physical violence and said that there was a shipment of 24,000 pieces that needed to go out. They said we would be fired and not paid if we couldn't meet the target. Soon after we started working the power went out. Then the generator went on. Moments later the building collapsed. A machine fell on top of me. I was trapped under it. A man next to me died immediately. I was trapped for 12 hours until a rescuer found me. I had a head injury, my chest hurt, my hip hurt, my ankle hurt. Now I stay at home. I do housework. I’m ill a lot of the time so I can’t do much. There are points when I had to stay in bed for 15 days at a stretch. All I’ve received since the collapse was 45,000 taka ($580) from Primark and 7,000 taka ($90) from Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association. Because the factory owner fled, BGMEA stepped in and gave us the wages we were owed for April – that’s what the 7,000 taka ($90) was for. I urge Walmart, Children’s Place and all the other brands and retailers whose clothes were made at Rana Plaza to pay full and fair compensation. If the brands don't pay compensation, it will be really difficult to get by. If they pay compensation we'll somehow get by. If everyone puts pressure on the brands then Walmart, Children's Place and all others might pay fair compensation. Translated by International Labor Rights Forum.

UPDATE: We are currently in Day 9 of our sit-in at Washington University. I’ve learned many things in my four years at Washington University in St. Louis--not all of them in the classroom. For example, before I became a student at Wash U, I had never heard of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal corporation. In St. Louis, Peabody ingratiates itself to the local community by posing as a benefactor of the arts, charitable corporate ‘citizen,’ and hero tackling “energy poverty.” It all sounds pretty good until you realize that Peabody Energy is the world’s largest private sector coal corporation whose business model propagates climate change and destroys communities. Peabody’s list of crimes is a veritable laundry list of social and environmental injustices: the destruction of mountains in West Virginia, the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes in Black Mesa, Arizona, being a major supporter of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which have been strong advocates of controversial legislation like “Stand Your Ground” laws, the destruction of Rocky Branch, Illinois through aggressive mining and logging, and the distortion of democracy here in St. Louis by striking down a city-wide ballot initiative. Peabody CEO Greg Boyce also holds one more distinction: member of the Washington University Board of Trustees. Since Boyce was placed on the board in 2009, students have been actively organizing against Peabody Energy’s presence on campus. We have demanded that Boyce be removed from the Board of Trustees and that the University change the name of the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization,” a research entity to which Peabody and Arch Coal donated $5,000,000. We have met with the Chancellor -- multiple times. We have dropped banners at coal events, peacefully disrupted speeches by Greg Boyce on campus, marched through campus and taken our demands to Peabody’s headquarters. We have protested with residents from Black Mesa, collected signatures for the Take Back St. Louis ballot initiative and rallied with the United Mine Workers in their fight against Peabody. But, five years later, Boyce is still on the board, the name of the Clean Coal Consortium remains unchanged, and Chancellor Wrighton continues to stand behind Peabody Energy. Indeed, just this week he emailed us saying, “your opinion that peabody energy behaves in an ‘irresponsible and unjust manner’ is not one that I share.” The Administration has successfully used a “deny by delay” process by holding town hall meetings and developing task forces around renewable energy and energy efficiency while ignoring the role that coal plays on the campus. Thus, like many campus divestment campaigns across the country, we are at a crossroads. We’ve decided that it’s time to escalate to let Chancellor Wrighton and Greg Boyce know that we’re running out of time and we’re not going to back down. We are engaging in a sit-in of our admissions office to tell Chancellor Wrighton that our university can no longer legitimize destructive fossil fuel corporations. By having Greg Boyce on the Board of Trustees and hosting the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization,” the University is propagating the lie that coal is clean. But people who live in the communities where Peabody mines, including Black Mesa and Rocky Branch, know that coal is never clean. Escalating on campus is scary. We know it is going to be divisive. We know our Chancellor fundamentally disagrees with us. But not escalating is even scarier. Not escalating means Peabody continues to destroy communities and our climate. And that’s a risk we cannot take. Let Wash U know that you stand with us by signing our petition.

Southern California Edison's hand picked panel of community stakeholders is only getting one side of the story. If Edison truly wants the public behind their decommission plans they need to listen to independent nuclear experts that WE trust. We call on Edison and the panelists to schedule their first public workshop to include independent nuclear experts. Independent experts are more likely to make recommendations based on safety – not profits. Edison should not spend a penny of our decommissioning money until these recommendations are considered. Tell Edison to “can it". To improve our safety, Edison should treat every spent fuel assembly as damaged and “can it". The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires damaged fuel assemblies to be individually canned in stainless steel containers prior to loading in dry cask storage. However, research shows that the crucial layer of protective cladding around the nuclear fuel is damaged by higher than normal heat and radiation produced by higher burnup fuel. In addition, the longer any fuel is stored, the more likely it is to become damaged. Higher burnup fuel was approved by the NRC to save the industry money, without knowing the impact it would have on short and long term storage. In addition, there is no technology available today to actually inspect all the fuel rods to see if they have been damaged while in storage. Now the NRC proposes to store all nuclear waste on-site at nuclear plants around the country for potentially hundreds of years, yet they only license the dry casks for 20 years for high burnup fuel and 40 years for lower burnup fuel. They won’t even approve transportation containers for high burnup fuel, due to the cladding damage caused by high burnup fuel. Canning all the fuel assemblies provides a needed layer of protection. By signing and sharing this petition you will make it clear to Edison we want safety over profits. Let's get all the facts on the table by listening to all sides. Meeting the low standards of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not enough. We want the ratepayer's money to be spent in a precautionary manner, validated by independent nuclear experts, to protect the public long after Edison considers their job to be done. We only get one chance to do this dangerous work right. If we allow nuclear waste to be stored in dry casks that begin to fail in twenty years, it might be impossible to transport or even retrieve the waste for reloading. If we don't have all the facts and we make the wrong decisions about storing nuclear waste at San Onofre then it is quite possible that we will miss our opportunity to move the waste before it becomes too fragile and unstable to ever move away from this paradise that 8.5 million people call home. We are concerned that if Edison gets their way by meeting the lenient requirements the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given them, nuclear waste might have to remain at San Onofre forever. Edison's strategy appears to be to get done with this task before things start going badly. By then, it will be up to someone else to deal with the radioactive mess they left behind. After all, they are just a corporation doing what is best for the shareholders by meeting minimum standards. Why should we expect them to take extra preventive measures if we don't insist on them spending our money on long term safety precautions? If Edison simply complies with weak regulations on how to handle 89 times more radiation than was released in the Chernobyl accident, then we will likely become the permanent repository for all of that waste at San Onofre. FYI - Additional information and references can be found at SanOnofreSafety.org

"Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it." --Theodore Roosevelt on the Grand Canyon For more than a hundred years, the Antiquities Act of 1906, brainchild of Theodore Roosevelt, has ensured that the executive branch can move quickly to stop business from destroying our national cultural resources by declaring them national monuments. The act allows the president to bypass the bureaucratic nightmare that is Congress and protect our national heritage directly. Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, and most recently the archaeologically important Chimney Rock Monument in Colorado are but a few examples of national heritage sites created by this act. Not only are these sites intrinsic parts of our national heritage, the tourism generated thereof is of massive significance economically, bringing money and attention to places that otherwise would get nothing (for instance, many Arizonan small towns near the Grand Canyon). HR 1459, which passed the House on March 26th, proposes to subject each antiquities proclamation to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, which would mean that monuments would only be even truly considered after an average waiting time of six years, without holds on fracking, mining, or other harmful activities. It also limits each president to one proclamation per term. This renders the Antiquities Act completely useless and would allow Big Money to wantonly destroy American heritage sites for their own profit. Rob Bishop, the sponsor, says this is to allow public involvement in the site; but in reality, the amendment simply allows Congress to hold prospective monuments hostage while corporations tear them apart. Vote against the amendment; doing otherwise would be an unforgivable betrayal of American heritage and of the American people.

On March 7th, 1,200 people detained in the privately run Tacoma Detention Center started a hunger strike for better food, better treatment, better pay (they currently receive $1/day for prison labor) and fairness, among other demands. The detainees currently receive just $1 per day for prison labor – which would violate U.S. labor law if it happened anywhere outside a prison or detention facility. The detention center is run by the GEO Group – a multi-billion dollar corporation that maintains corrections and detention centers all over the globe. The hunger strikers are blowing the whistle on how the corporation that runs the detention center, the GEO Group, is cutting corners on conditions to increase its profits. Since they started their protest, the GEO Group and immigration authorities have isolated the detainees, put them in "the hole" and threatened to force feed them. This is similar to reports of how prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center have been treated. The detainees have a clear message: "We are not animals. We're human beings. We did not come here to be tortured. We're doing our part to speak out." Please sign this petition to support their effort to improve conditions and blow the whistle on corporate abuse at the Tacoma Detention center. See Democracy Now coverage here: http://bit.ly/nwhunger

It should be a point of pride that so many residents--a remarkable one in ten--have opted for a more affordable, cleaner way to power their homes in Hawai'i. The bright abundance of rooftop solar in Hawaii, driven by strong consumer demand, is cutting-edge.   But while Hawaii consumers are leading the way, Hawaiian Electric is resisting innovation. The monopoly utility is standing in the way of its own customers. HECO pays lip service to clean energy, but their negligence of the grid demonstrates a crippling lack of commitment. We want our utility to succeed, but we can’t allow it to set the pace and dictate the terms of our transition to clean energy.     More than 90% of Hawaii residents support having 'as many people as we can install solar power in…homes and businesses to advance the state's clean energy goals.' (Source: Tulchin Research survey September 2013)   It’s long past time that HECO did, too. In exchange for its monopoly power, HECO needs to serve the public’s interest in choosing rooftop solar.

When I’m buying food at Hy-Vee, I should be able to make a healthy, informed, and responsible choice. But Hy-Vee doesn’t label its products that contain genetically modified ingredients, or GMOs. I'm working with CREDO and Iowa PIRG to change that. While more research needs to be done to understand the full impact of GMOs, they are not without risk. For example, some GMOs are designed to allow for increased use of pesticides, which have been linked to serious health and environmental impacts. And GMOs don’t always undergo safety testing before they’re allowed onto the market. Competitors like Whole Foods announced one year ago plans to label all of their store products for GMOs by 2018. Unfortunately, Whole Foods grocery stores are not readily available to most Iowans. We need Hy-Vee to follow suit to provide their customers with GMO labeling in neighborhoods across the state. If we want Hy-Vee to do the right thing, we need to make sure that they hear our calls for GMO labeling loud and clear. Please sign the petition to Hy-Vee today.

I've spent weeks in the hot Florida sun working solar installations, my hands worn and my skin chapped. I do this work because I believe in renewables, particularly smaller scale solar that powers homes and businesses and gives people energy choice. It's no surprise that "The Sunshine State" ranks third in America for solar potential. What is surprising and disappointing is that this sunny state ranks 17th for installed solar as of 2012. Florida is missing its potential to be a nationwide solar leader. Florida should be particularly sensitive to the benefits of a clean energy future. With hundreds of miles of coastline, Florida has already begun to understand the high risks of unchecked climate change through intense storms and sea level rises. Despite public support for solar, the Florida Public Service Commission has failed to set a renewable portfolio standard or remove current regulations which limit solar growth. Their failure to act hurts not only the fight to slow climate change but also Florida's economy. States like California and Hawaii have seen economic boosts by investing in the solar industry. Solar creates in-state jobs and prevents spending huge chunks of the budget on unsustainable, climate hurting fossil fuels. Now is the time to support solar. Now is the time for Florida to step up and truly own the title of "The Sunshine State. We don't want to see utilities like FPL and Duke Energy attempt a devaluation of solar in Florida. The Chairman Graham of the PSC should commit to supporting the will of the people, not the greed of large monopoly utility companies--in a recent poll, 85% of Florida voters thought Florida officials should encourage investment in solar energy (Mason-Dixon Florida Solar Energy Poll).