I have compiled a summary outline list of 15 "Top 10ish Environmental lists of 2010" found on the Internet - these are drawn from diverse, largely US-oriented environmental media services and organizations - many focus on organizational objectives - most feature positive and negative developments. I have summarized all but the last list - A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice - by Joe Romm, as that should be read in its' entirely, including linked reference material.

Romm points out: "The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year." "Any one of these would be cause for action — and combined they vindicate the final sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s  Field Notes from a Catastrophe:  “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

Romm concludes: "Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action.  Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable.  The fact that the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media ignored the overwhelming majority of these studies and devoted a large fraction of its climate ‘ink’ in the last 12 months to what was essentially a non-story (Climategate) is arguably the single greatest failing of the science media this year."

Fisheye view of KushCon2 Marijuana Industry Convention in Denver, Colorado, December 17-19, 2010

December 17 - 19, 2010, the Colorado Convention Center hosted the world's largest marijuana lifestyles convention TO-DATE - KushCon2 - offering those active in the legal global marijuana industries a place to meet, collaborate, learn and grow their new-economy enterprises, together. In one convention hall, in one weekend, mingled 10,000s of cannabis entrepreneurs and their stakeholders - nurturing $ billions in new GREEN, taxable economic opportunity for America - and their truly Green Revolution is just taking off.

Meet America's Greenest Revolutionaries ever... Mom and Pop Mainstreet, Small Town, Middle America!

Entrance to Press Briefing Room and media facilities at the White House (seen in the distance)

On December 15, 2010, Obama administration officials convened the first-ever White House Forum on Environmental Justice, and I felt it was important to attend. As an environmental injustice victim, and activist for environmental justice, I wanted my voice to be heard... and as a media representative of real NEO, where the mainstream media does not cover environmental injustice, I wanted to listen, learn, and help other citizens here and worldwide understand what is being planned in Washington to combat environmental injustice in Cleveland, America, and globally.

While I was covering what was happening inside the White House, I thought I'd share a few snapshots of the backstage workings of the "White House" itself, which is certainly one of the best known and most important places in world history... and a spectacular architectural masterpiece.

I have no doubt everyone interested in public health, planning, engineering, architecture, real estate development, cool stuff and local foods will find absolutely fascinating the feature and the following three videos from The Economist on vertical farming...

Three views of the vertical farm

GROWING crops in vertical farms in the heart of cities is said to be a greener way to produce food. The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. But the concept is still unproven. Does it really stack up? To accompany our article on vertical farming in this week's issue, here are three videos offering different perspectives on the subject.

With the deceptive headline "68% in poll say parents, not teachers, are to blame for students' poor performance" the Cleveland Plain Dealer published today results of a "poll", paid for by eugenics champions and world's richest "humans" Bill and Melinda Gates, which misrepresents poorly-surveyed, poorly-reported opinions of 1,001 Americans about public education in America as significant indicators regarding the failure of the American public schools system, and reports "68 percent of adults believe parents deserve heavy blame for what's wrong with the U.S. education system -- more than teachers, school administrators, the government or teachers unions."

In fact, "government" was not a category in this poll... and, statistically, these Americans placed the same level of blame on State Education Officials (65%, with +/-3.9% sampling errors) as on parents... and all these answers are irrelevant.

Science proves a primary cause of failure in education in America is lead poisoning and other toxins put in the environment by the industrialists partnered with the Gates to control the world.

Did You Pay Homage and Taxes To One Of The Most Heinous Humans Ever To Walk The Earth, Today? Did You Turn on Microsoft today! If you use Microsoft, you turned on the Bill Gates fortune and all the harm that causes the world, today and forever hereafter. If you use a computer running any Microsoft products, you must know how your Microsoft addiction and dollars work for the world today, via perversely enriched micro-psychopath Bill Gates... from AlterNet's "5 Awards For the World's Most Heinous Climate Villains":

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

Misdeeds: Pretend to be friends while engaged in a vicious competition to see who ends up with the most expensive coffin. Flew together to inspect the Alberta Tar Sands and ponder investments, looking to add to Buffet's $34 billion Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal-hauling railroad purchase and the Gates Foundation Nigerian oil portfolio. Gates is dumping cash into geo-engineering as a way to "hack" the climate, instead of getting off oil and coal. The duo insist that the government should be responsible for clean energy development, but that we need to tax our citizens to pay for it. They can't be bothered, since they're too busy banking on sure things like fossil fuels.

Corporate Teat: They're the tits, not the pups. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, much of it tax sheltered by the Gates Foundation.

My Message to Washington DC about Working Class Issues With CRA, CDCs and Urban Planning In real NEO

My posting on CRA - Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to Bring Trillions MORE Dollars in Safe and Sound Investments to America's Neighborhoods - has had enough time online to offer some important insight.

First of all, from comments, CRA is a confusing issue and even liberal community development advocates associate CRA with urban development ills - projecting frustrations with local political corruption and planning failure upon all Federal urban renewal efforts, lumping in CRA (and organizations like NCRC). In fact, these citizens do not understand where CRA fits in and are misplacing their anger - missing an opportunity to support what may help.

Those responsible for educating citizens about CRA and credit issues - the councilpeople and CDCs - are the ones causing the harm and frustration for working class citizens, who feel under-served and under-represented - and they are under-educated about Federal efforts to improve their lives, and the availability of basic help.

Study Will Recommend Ways to Strengthen Sustainability at EPA

Science Wednesday: The Future is Sustainability - Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 - By Paul Anastas

Wow! November 30th was an amazing day for the EPA. Not only are we in the midst of commemorating four decades of accomplishments in protecting the health and the environment, but Administrator Jackson also made a landmark speech at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Science on the future of the EPA. That future is sustainability. The Administrator laid out her vision to a packed house of luminaries from across the spectrum, from academia to industry, to environmental groups.

2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement

"Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth… A clean, green, healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family; it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses; and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity." – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, March 8, 2010

Location

More valuable than all the steel we mill, Cleveland has forged from our blighted, industrial, rustbelted, toxified, sprawling fruited-plains some of the most innovative, transformational music ever heard on Earth, since long before we gave birth to Rock and Roll.

Democratic political leadership of today, to the White House, seems intellectually and socially disconnected from the progressive Democratic concepts I embraced growing up in America since 1961, personified to me by John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., in their most-glorified trappings. Today, in my part of America - the region of Northeast Ohio that includes Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron - villainous democratic leaders and their corrupt political and business machines have paralyzed all forms of social and economic progress - extinguished liberal progressivism completely - and made the region such a polluted, incompetent, FBI-embedded disgrace our citizens and economy shall never remotely recover.

At the top of our broken Democratic political, social, environmental, and economic pyramid-scheming is President Obama, who has "turned out to be such a political dud as chief executive" that our "blue-state financial misery continues", along with other blue-states, and that "deepens the ideological crisis for American liberalism" worldwide. Even billionaires traditionally supportive of Democratic party interests and candidates appear to be seeking "alternative brands to Obama himself."

I quote above two excellent columns published online this week, coming from opposite directions, analyzing the challenges Obama faces ahead, mid-term into his presidency, if he seeks any hope of winning a second term in office in 2012 - The Second Wave, by conservative writer Michael Gerson... and Saving Progressivism from Obama, by liberal writer Robert Kuttner.

I was just commenting to a Facebook Friend that "I was driving on I-10 in Texas a few weeks ago and they have Border Patrol imprisonment centers ON THE FREEWAY IN AMERICA (I've seen them in New Mexico as well) where they stop every car and truck looking for illegals, I suppose. They searched my whole car - without ever asking my name... they obviously had the car in their system. 1984 but worse, as our society is a complete lie, claiming we are free."

So it is timely to read Willie Nelson Arrested After Pot Found on Tour Bus - traveling from California to Austin, Texas... detained as a US citizen on US soil and searched by US Customs Patrol, though he crossed no borders, just like me - in poor Willie's case to be arrested for what is legal in 15 states in America. From ABC News:

Cleveland NORML will be meeting at Sidetracks Cafe on December 4th from 1 to 6pm! We welcome members and non-members alike! Join us in our fight to reform marijuana laws in Ohio and advocate for safe, compassionate access to marijuana for all patients.

Location

Colorado Convention Center set to buzz with largest-ever cannabis convention, December 17-19

DENVER, CO – Over 300,000 square feet of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this December 17-19 will be consumed by KushCon II, the largest star-studded Cannabis Lifestyle convention ever to take place.

The event, sponsored by Kush Magazine and dailybuds.com, is open to the public, family-friendly and cannabis free. The event will feature over 450 vendor booths running the gamut of the marijuana industry – from a daily concert series to ski jumping demonstrations to dispensaries to gift items that are sure to complete any “Kushmas” list.

Location

Shortly after my daughter Clara was born, nearly 11 months ago, I shared her birth with the world on YouTube - realNEO homemovie 1 Women in HypnoBirth in Waterbirth Delivering Baby Happy - and on realNEO and it has since been viewed by nearly 110,000 people.... showing 300-400 people a day (and growing) how pure and simple birth and human life may be, to help the modern world rediscover the dignity of the human person. Feedback and inquiries from expectant mothers (and fathers) shows me the modern world heard us, and Clara helped many babies enjoy the best possible starts in life.

I missed an important and telling article in the New York Times, September 29, 2010, about Cleveland home-town billionaire Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of Progressive Insurance  - Many Big Donors to Democrats Cut Support - which analyzes why "Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far"... showing many of the world's most powerful people think, feel and act the same way I do about our failed leadership in America and their failure to address the failure of their racist, unethical, immoral "War On Drugs".

Watch this amazing video of award-winning filmmaker and intellectual activist Michael Moore nearly speechless as he comes to terms, on Countdown, with a Cigna Insurance industry executive, now retired from the industry, who has written a book about how the insurance industry conspired to attack Moore and his movie "Sicko", and deny Americans good healthcare, ultimately being about the failure and sorry state of corporate America, subverting and smearing the best interests of citizens... "which kills 45,000 people a year".

Sicko promotes the concept of universal healthcare, which renders the health insurance industry useless. In its current state, revealed here, the health insurance industry is far worse than useless than you may ever imagine... it is collusive, murderous, and evil, as confirmed by one of their top executives ever.

Hemp Industries Association (HIA) President Steve Levine - speaking to membership at the 2010 Annual HIA Convention, November 08, 2010, in San Francisco - discusses his expectation that California will pass and enact into law a Hemp Farm Bill in 2011 - "Definitely in 2012 it (hemp) will be grown in California" - "there is talk there may be some hemp grown in 2011". Steve indicates developments are positive for a 2011 version of Ron Paul's Federal Hemp Farm Bill to pass congress and become Federal law in 2011, making it legal to farm hemp nationwide in 2012 - "as hempsters, we did not lose one of our sponsors for the bill - all 25 were re-elected". This is one of the most important economic development forecasts for America of the 21st Century, to-date.

Google Analytics Traffic Data for realNEO.us for October 19 - November 18, 2010 (31 days)

Based on Google Analytics of realneo.us traffic, we are now at a level that exceeds 500,000 unique visitors and 1,000,000 page visits per year, and both metrics have been growing steadily for as long as we have tracked our web traffic metrics... so expect realNEO.us to exceed 1 million hits per year forever hereafter. By how much we exceed these metrics, with what growth rate for the future, is up to our members and community who create the content here that now attracts over 1,000,000 reads a year.

It is interesting to see published in Crain's Cleveland Business today Study advocates creation of NEO Food Authority to aid in localizing region's food supply that reports "A comprehensive study that examines the state and potential of Northeast Ohio's food economy calls for the creation of a NEO Food Authority that would facilitate a 25% shift in localizing the region's culinary and agriculture systems." That's the leading recommendation I made in my Preamble: Real Co-op for Open Food, Information and Community Development 2009, which I developed with one of the authors of the study Crain's references today, Brad Masi, about two years ago.

To optimize value in these critical sectors, I have recommended Cuyahoga County convene and sponsor overarching Greater Cleveland Food and Information Advisory Councils, like and associated with the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, and county leaders should take active roles leading the councils and in planning these multi-billion-dollar sectors of our economy and society... we must not entrust the leadership, innovation, financial engineering and decision-making control to under-engaged government and over-engaged foundations, academe, industry and non-profits.

Planning these sectors should not happen behind closed doors in any ways at all, as has been the case in the past.

Crain's is reporting on "Economist Michael Shuman, who is part of the local and national consulting team that has conducted the Northeast Ohio Local Food Assessment, presented the study's findings Tuesday, Nov. 16, to a sold-out meeting at the City Club of Cleveland." Apparently, a bunch of Foundation-paid consultants have finished planning local foods behind closed doors.

The report is found at the NEO Food Web portal - you must register for access, which seems open to the public, and Drupal.... see Summary of NEO Local Food Assessment and Plan after you have set up an account... or just click the following link for a 354 KB .PDF of the "summary" report (the only report posted)... Summary of The 25% Shift- Northeast Ohio Local Food Assessment and Plan.

OCA Image TV Episode 6 - Cleveland Asian Town Community from Johnny Wu on Vimeo.

November 14, 2010, AlterNet featured an important article by G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting: Workers, Be Careful: Facebook Snoops Looking Over Your Shoulder - Corporations and government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, are increasingly using new communications tools for surveillance purposes. In this report, Schulz profiles "a new company called Social Intelligence billing itself as a social media private eye will observe your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other online accounts on behalf of employers to make certain you’re not a liability."

    Background checks involving criminal records and credit histories are typical and even expected of many major employers responsible for children, nursing homes or public safety.

    But the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company takes this concept to a new level offering an automated tool that mines social media content for troubling signs. Search filters can be customized “to reflect corporate culture,” and additional manual reviews are conducted by “social media experts.”

    A display tells the human resources manager in your workplace how many “negative” hits are uncovered, placing the names of both job applicants and active employees next to red flags like “drugs/drug lingo,” “gangs,” “poor judgment” and “demonstrating potentially violent behavior.”

    Social Intelligence is the latest in an ever-expanding movement by both corporations and government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, to use new communications tools for surveillance purposes. Some of the most provocative examples yet emerged only in recent weeks.