It's true: Without a job it's difficult to survive in today's world. But, where would we be without clean water? And, what about our air quality? (Today is yet another code-orange day, by the way.) What about the forests? What about wildlife? Shouldn't we strive to protect all of these things, not only for our benefit, but for the benefit of future generations? Because money, as you know, can only buy so much.

Given its abundant resources and its concerns about pollution, North Carolina has a lot at stake when it comes to environmental protection, but issues concerning the protection of earth, air, water and wildlife are being forced backstage this election cycle, some environmentalists say.

Jim Warren, head of the environmental activist group NC Warn, said environmental issues are less prominent than in past years even though climate change is making the situation more dire than ever.

“There’s extremely solid evidence that we are in a planetary emergency and it’s not on the front burner. It should be being discussed at the local, state and federal level,” Warren said.

Sam Swartz, a spokesman for the U.S. Senate campaign of Elaine Marshall, said Marshall, a Democrat, has received endorsements from environmentalists, but their issues have largely been eclipsed by economic concerns.

“This election is about the economy and jobs,” Swartz said. “It’s what the election has to focus on.”

Read the rest of this American Independent article, by Ned Barnett, here.

One of my UNC Charlotte professors introduced me to the concept of "deep ecology," which asserts that the earth isn't just here for humans to conquer — it's here for all of God's creatures. He shared this video with my class, and I'd like to share it with you. Enjoy:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. She will be a guest on WFAE's "Charlotte Talks" program Sept. 23rd where she'll discuss coal ash. She'll also be live-Tweeting from TEDxCharlotte Sept. 24. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

OK, "saved" might be a little dramatic, but they did help identify and stop a problem, created by a 17-year-old Australian. It appears the teen was just experimenting, but then hackers pounced and the rest is virtual history.

You may or may not have noticed the "onmouseover" hack yesterday, and if you use a third-party Twitter client (like TweetDeck or HootSuite) you may have only heard about it in passing though your daily deluge of Tweets. Essentially, if you viewed your account on Twitter's website, you may have noticed some Java script or a black box. If you waved your mouse pointer over Tweets with those features, you could have been redirected to a Japanese porn site and your Twitter account may have been briefly hacked with a similar creepy message sent out in your name.

Fortunately, the uber-Techy among us picked up on the problem right away and swooped in to save the day. In the end, the hack was doable thanks to a loophole in Twitter's code. Oops.

Here's more about the hero-geeks:

But hours before the news broke in the U.S., a few select Twitter users in the UK had already been working to stop it from spreading—of course, while playing around with its code.

It was around 11 a.m. UK time (that's 6 a.m. EST and 3 a.m. Twitter HQ Time) -- three hours before Press Secretary Gibbs' sent his chaotic, infected tweet -- when a Quality Assurance (QA) employee named Daniel Bennett, busily testing software in IT, first noticed a strange tweet in his feed. Alongside the code, it read simply: "this could be an issue."

Bennett's not 100 percent sure, but he believes that the individual who sent this tweet was the first person to see the attack—the so-called Patient Zero. "I think [that tweet] was the person that first found it." he told The Daily Beast.

Bennett, 20, kept a close eye on the developing situation -- it wasn't very widespread yet. In fact, as far as he could tell, he was one of only three people in the world who were aware of it.

To confirm the existence of the vulnerability—and explore its potential for disaster—Bennett played around to see how bad this could be. As he tells it, it "turned out very bad."

Using a simple JavaScript command, he drafted a 110-character line of code that, when activated, launched a pop-up box with the message: "I HAX YEW <3." ("I hacked you.")

"That's an ace bug," he said.

Read the rest of this Daily Beast article, by Brian Ries, here.

A video about the hack:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. She will be a guest on WFAE's "Charlotte Talks" program Sept. 23rd where she'll discuss coal ash. She'll also be live-Tweeting from TEDxCharlotte Sept. 24. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

• Connaughton

John Connaughton, an economics professor at UNC Charlotte, has offered the university's quarterly economic forecast to citizens and leaders since 1981. This quarter, he predicts the state's economy will improve this year, after declining last year. He also predicts job gains, but doesn't want anyone to get too excited just yet since things will be slow going.

Note: It's important to remember when reading economic news that, while economists can use their data and knowledge to suggest what may happen in the future, it often takes many months, and looking backward in time, to determine, definitively, what the economy is doing. That's why you'll often hear economists confirm the occurrence of a recession, or some other economic shift, months after we've already experienced it.

Further reading: U.S. poverty rate jumps highest since 1994 — MSNBC.com

Here's the report from UNC Charlotte, which you can download in its entirety, complete with charts and graphs, here:

The North Carolina economy is expected to increase by 0.8 percent over the 2009 level, UNC Charlotte economist John Connaughton announced today in his quarterly report on the health of the state economy. This modest increase follows a decline of 2.7 percent in 2009.

Connaughton reports that the North Carolina economy experienced a modest increase in Gross State Product (GSP), an annualized real growth rate of 0.2 percent, during the first quarter of 2010. During the second quarter, Connaughton expects GSP to increase by an annualized real rate of 4.2 percent. Growth is expected to slow in the second half of the year, with an increase of 2.6 percent forecast in the third quarter. Fourth quarter GSP is forecast to increase by an annualized rate of 3.2 percent.

“The first quarter GSP performance was considerably weaker than the U.S. GDP increase of 3.7 percent,” Connaughton noted. “The national economy has been able to put together four consecutive quarters of expansion, while the North Carolina economy has struggled to put two quarters of growth together.

“The state’s economic growth during this time has only been sufficient to stem job losses, but not enough to generate job growth,” Connaughton continued. “Although there is little likelihood of a ‘double dip’ during the second half of the year, the economy will continue to be sluggish enough that to many people it will feel like a return to recession.”

• Click to enlarge.

I've got good news and bad news regarding today's EPA coal ash hearing. But before I get into that, get the lowdown on what coal ash is and why it's such a big deal for Charlotte here.

One bit of trivia: The Q.C. is one of only a small handful of cities to host the EPA's series of hearings, but it's unclear why Charlotte was chosen. (The EPA usually holds hearings in Raleigh where they have a field office.) Contrary to the rumor mill, however, the agency says Duke Energy, which is headquartered here, did not request for the meetings to be held in Charlotte. The EPA says they chose the hearing locations based on requests from the public and proximity to coal ash ponds (there are four near Charlotte).

Makes you wonder, then, why they didn't schedule one in Tennessee*, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia or Alabama ...

Now, the bad news: I have it on good authority that the planned protest has hit some snags. Since the environmental groups that planned the original protest wouldn't tell us what they had up their sleeves to begin with, there's no telling how they'll work around this latest hurdle. Guess you'll have to show up to find out. Environmentalists are still asking their supporters to wear a "C" on their shirts to show support for Subtitle C — the option which will allow the agency to classify coal ash as "special," or hazardous, waste. (Learn more about the differences between the two proposed regulations here.)

In good and bad news, 205 people (myself**, included) have signed up to speak at the hearing. In really bad news, some folks are saying they signed up but didn't make the cut. (Hopefully the EPA will clear that up today.) Each speaker will have three minutes to talk. That means, since the testimony will begin at 10:15 a.m., it's expected to last until nearly midnight. I'm double booking this as good news, though, because, looking at the list of speakers, a lot of everyday citizens are signed up to speak. Go Democracy!

Also in good news, you don't have to be signed up to speak to attend the hearing, nor is it your last opportunity to weigh in on the issue. You have until Nov. 19 to comment via e- or snail-mail. Learn how here. (Be sure to follow the directions exactly so your message won't get mis-routed.)

And, in great news: If you can't make the hearing, you can still attend virtually by following the #coalash hashtag on Twitter.

* UPDATE: EPA has announced it will hold a hearing in Knoxville, Tenn., in late October, roughly an hour from where the 2008 coal ash spill occurred.

* SPOILER ALERT: I'm planning to talk about coal ash issues in my home state, Alabama (aka America's landfill), since there will be no hearing there — even though that's where the muck from Tennessee's 2008 coal ash spill is being dumped right next to a bunch of poor folks. Find out who else is registered to testify here.

*** SECOND UPDATE: More bad news: Diane Hofner, of the Concerned Residents of Portland, NY, traveled to Charlotte for today's hearing with a PowerPoint presentation. She wanted to show photographs depicting her state's practice of coating rural roads with coal ash. Not surprisingly, when it rains the coal ash runs off into area streams, eventually ending up in Lake Erie. The EPA has denied her request to share the slideshow with the hearing's audience (though said she could submit it to them), but she shared it with us. In the interested of the First Amendment, here it is (pardon the quality, the photos were taken on a hotel wall):

**** THIRD UPDATE: Hofner says she'll display her slideshow in Room 141 of the Holiday Inn where the hearing is being held at noon, 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

***** FOURTH UPDATE: The message here at the hearing is on repeat: If you're for Subtitle C (the EPA's regulatory option that will re-classify coalash as a hazardous waste), you're likely to be from the environmentalist, religious or general population. If you're for Subtitle D (the option that will require citizens to sue to enforce), you're likely working for a coal ash-related industry. Meanwhile, North Carolina Representative Pricey Harrison testified and asked the federal government to help, says her efforts to introduce tougher regulations for coal ash in our state get stalled and that enforcement is difficult.

Man, I wish I had time to write a lengthy essay on the dichotomy antibiotics represent. To sum up: If it weren't for antibiotics, we wouldn't enjoy the standard of living we do today. But, as always, too much of a good thing can become a not-so-good thing.

Today, we overload our bodies with antibiotics even when we don't mean to. The medication is in our food, it's a cheap fix to numerous ails and it makes farmers more productive. But we've overdosed, and now antibiotics are creating problems — like Super Bugs.

Now there's news that we're literally making ourselves sick on antibiotics:

An antibiotic can temporarily upset your stomach, but now it turns out that repeatedly taking them might have lingering ill effects — by triggering changes in all those good germs that live in your gut.

Nobody yet knows if that leads to later health problems. But the finding is the latest in a flurry of research raising questions about how the customized bacterial zoo that thrives in our intestines forms — and whether the wrong type or amount plays a role in ailments from obesity to inflammatory bowel disease to asthma.

Don't be grossed out: This is a story in part about, well, poop.

Read the rest of this article, by Lauran Neergaard, here.

Then there's news that people are traveling to India for cheap(er) medical care and bringing Super Bugs home with them:

An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: A new gene that can turn many types of bacteria into superbugs resistant to nearly all antibiotics has sickened people in three states and is popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.

Scientists have long feared this — a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance.

"It's a great concern," because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "It's just a matter of time" until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person, he said.

Read the rest of this article, by Marilynn Marchione, here.

The only way to start combating this problem immediately, people, is to stop using antibacterial soaps and to stop eating foods known to contain antibiotics.

Usually, when the energy industry talks about coal they speak of it as if it's an endless resource that we're oh-so-lucky to be sitting on. But, there are no endless resources.

National Geographic takes a look at our country's coal supply in this month's issue. Here's a snippet:

No matter how bad coal might be for the planet, the conventional wisdom is that there is so much of it underground that the world’s leading fuel for electricity will continue to dominate the energy scene unless global action is taken on climate change.

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?

A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is bound to continue its inexorable rise. In fact, the authors predict that world coal production may reach its peak as early as next year, and then begin a permanent decline.

The study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and published in the August issue of Energy, predicts that by mid-century, the world's coal mining will supply only half as much energy as today.

The idea that the world will face "peak coal" as soon as 2011 flies in the face of most earlier estimates and analysis.

Read the rest of this article, by Mason Inman, here.

Knowing coal is an finite resource makes you wonder why the federal government continues to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, looking for a way to make coal clean. Shouldn't our tax dollars be used to find alternatives to coal instead?

Charlotte has made another list, and this time the news isn't good. Apparently, according to Portfolio.com and bizjournals, our city is the 18th most stressful city in the country. Eek.

The Queen City ranks 18th among the 50 most-stressful places to live and work in the United States, according to the 2010 Stress Rankings for Metro Areas.

Several factors contribute to stress, including unemployment, inclement weather, housing costs, traffic, poverty, crime and pollution. Nowhere is the situation worse than in Detroit, which ranks as the most-stressful metropolitan area in the country, according to the study by Portfolio.com and bizjournals.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article here.

You know, laughter is a great way to combat stress. Get your giggle on with this compilation of stressed-out employees losing their shit:

We are so far removed from real life these days, it's no wonder we assume we can only eat whatever the closest grocery store carries. That's simply not true. A hundred years ago today, your ancestors and mine were raising the majority of their foods, they barely generated trash and they knew how to care for the land so they could continue producing food for years to come.

Today, we whine if a pound of ground beef is a penny more at one store than another. Let me just remind you: You get what you pay for.

Kathy Rudy is tired of hearing colleagues tell her they can't afford to buy hamburger meat at the farmers market.

Yes, there are many people who really can't afford the higher prices there. But they are not her colleagues at Duke University, where she is associate professor of ethics and women's studies.

The way she sees it, it's cheap, industrial food that's killing us. It led to the most recent recall of half a billion eggs, followed by Walmart's recall of ham and beef deli meat. The recalled food, which sickened hundreds, has called attention to flaws in the nation's food safety system.

But to Rudy, 51, the problem is that middle-class Americans have grown so detached from their natural environments they expect food to be plentiful and cheap.

"What they're saying is, 'Food doesn't mean enough to me that I want to pay attention to the environment, the animals, my own health,'" she said. "To not attend to that interconnectedness seems very short-sighted to me."

Read the rest of this News & Observer article, by Yonat Shimron, here.

If you're a practicing carnivore and you haven't given locally sourced, grass-fed beef a try, you're really missing out.

There's more news out about leaders of corporations behaving badly then walking away with fat wallets which would set most people up for life.

This type of payout makes no sense to me on a variety of levels, but here's one bit of dissonance I can't get past: These same companies will cut every conceivable corner, send jobs to other countries to take advantage of cheap workers and lay off the people who actually run their companies (you know, the worker bees) so they can squeak out another penny for shareholder dividends and, at the same time, pay their misfit CEOs lottery-size amounts to go away — sometimes more than what they pay competent CEOs to actually do something productive.

Case in point:

A new report concludes that chief executives of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers at other large U.S. companies.

The report, from the Institute of Policy Studies, found that the 50 layoff leaders received $12 million on average in 2009, compared with an average compensation of $8.5 million for chief executives of companies in Standard & Poor's 500. Each of the 50 companies examined in the report laid off at least 3,000 workers between November 2008 and April 2010.

Read the rest of this MSNBC.com article, by Roland Jones, here.

Why aren't the shareholders revolting?

Carly Fiorina, another canned HP CEO given an enormous — $42 million — severance package (who also happens to be running for Congress in California) said, in a 2008 interview, the shareholders wanted her to get paid off big when the company shooed her away:

Well, it depends on who you ask and, apparently, if the speedy trains will zip through your neighborhood.

From the News & Observer:

Speakers at a packed public hearing Tuesday night criticized the state Department of Transportation's ideas for routing high-speed passenger trains through downtown, and some of them urged the City Council to call for more study.

Some DOT critics floated a fourth, hybrid option they said would avoid problems caused by DOT's alternatives. But a DOT analysis said that idea wouldn't work, either.

Read the rest of this article, by Bruce Siceloff, here.

Over at the Independent Weekly, however, they're hopeful about the "hybrid" option:

Following the session, City Councilor John Odom said the hybrid option "looked pretty good to me." Regardless of whether it survives scrutiny, however, Odom said, the NC3 option that is so unpopular with his constituents in the Five Points neighborhoods should be eliminated from consideration by DOT. Odom said he hopes the Council will join him in calling for the NC3 idea to be dropped when it decides what position(s) to take — if any — at next Tuesday's Council meeting.

Councilor Russ Stephenson, who's taken the lead in getting the hybrid idea in front of DOT, said he was pleased by Simmons' pledge "to give it full consideration." Stephenson said he concluded from what Simmons said that taking the time to study the hybrid option won't jeopardize DOT's ability to compete for federal funding down the line. Simmons did say, though, that in the new "competitive and discretionary" federal funding processes, time is of the essence — being "shovel-ready" is what helped DOT get $500 million for rail improvements between Raleigh and Charlotte, he said.

Read the rest of this article, by Bob Geary, here.

What are your thoughts on high speed rail?

Here's our president, in January, discussing high-speed rail and the funding behind it: