North Carolina in the News

You don't have to be a resident of North Carolina to realize it sure has been in the news a lot lately and not for good reasons.

Started with the sad vote for amendment 1 on May 8th. Not only was this an attack on the gay community but also had other potential repercussions on non-married heterosexual couples as far as limiting doctors visits and employee benefits. Although the law does specifically refer to "personal relationships" which does include most heterosexual couples living together. Homosexual couples have every right to have the same legal rights as heterosexual ones. As I have said before I think marriage is more of religious based term and should be determined by those institutions with the government simply providing the legal rights of partnerships.

North Carolina next sad move was on sea level rise. For the time being with global temperatures increasing causing both sea ice to melt and ocean water expansion to just base sea level rise on past increases is illogical. Things change we cannot say just because something has happened in the past it will continue to happen just that way.

I don't think anyone said it better than Colbert in his "The Word - Sink or Swim": http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/414796/june-04-2012/the-word---sink-or-swim

The most recent now being legalizing fracking due to a voting mistake. Fracking is such a difficult issue to deal with because of how little known on its more longer term affects. The even larger issue in NC being that many of the underground water reserves are connected so that if one gets contaminated it could affect many others. Although many environmentalists would utterly prioritize avoiding this contamination over any economic benefits I think both must be considered. Sadly this as many environmental issues can not be solved completely by property rights since free flowing air or water is hard to define as being owned by one person or another. As fracking technologies increase, so do those attempting to help with the contamination issue. A great example of this is a group of students at Duke trying to do a start up company: http://safetna.com/