"Project Censored"

Each year, Project Censored publishes original research and media commentary from a broad selection of journalists and authors. Two hundred Sonoma State University students and faculty and national judges put together Project Censored annually. Project Censored 2005 includes 25 crucial stories that were underreported, ignored or censored in the United States. These are the top three environmental stories Project Censored identified between 2003 and 2004.

Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from U.N.
By The Independent

The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization views the events of 2003 in Europe, America and Asia as so astonishing that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately. The WMO reports extreme weather and climate occurrences around the world. Reports on record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record rainstorms in different parts of the world are consistent with the predictions of global warming. The significance of this particular report is that it comes from the highly respected U.N. organization known for its conservative predictions and statements.

“New record extreme events occur every year somewhere around the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes has been increasing,” one WMO representative said.

New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits
By Cindy Flokers and Michael Mariotte

Sen. Peter Domenici, R-N.M., is looking to give the nuclear power industry a huge boost through the new Energy Policy Act. The bill, supported by the White House, will give nuclear power plants a production credit for each unit of energy produced. This provision, costing taxpayers an estimated $7.5 billion, will be used to build six new privately owned, for-profit reactors across the country. This is an additional $4 billion already provided for other nuclear energy programs. The goal is to have 50 new generators adding 50,000 megawatts of atomic power generation by the year 2020.

The Whole Sale Give Away of Our Natural Resources
By Adam Werbach

Coal bed methane development, the Clear Skies initiative and the Healthy Forests initiative are just a few examples of the Bush administration’s efforts to undo 30 years of environmental progress. Bush’s war on terror has pushed the most rapid destruction of the commons witnessed this century into the back pages of major newspapers. While most American news consumers can describe in detail the military hardware deployed in Iraq, the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of America’s common assets is absent from political conversation. From the planned sale of trees in the Tongass National Forests in Alaska to the weakening of the Federal Communication Commission’s media ownership caps on the people’s airwaves, the Administration’s policy has been to sell off, neglect or destroy the commons ­— those resources we own collectively.


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