Samuel L. Jackson Hits Donald Trump’s Supporters With A Damning Question

HuffPost – Politics

Samuel L. Jackson Hits Donald Trump’s Supporters With A Damning Question

Lee Moran                         

 

Samuel L. Jackson— never shy about slamming Donald Trump— asked a damning question about the president’s supporters on Friday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The actor, who was standing in for comedian Jimmy Kimmel as guest host, listed just some of the scandals that Trump has caused in only the last week.

He then asked: “Who can still be voting for this guy after all the stuff that has gone down on his watch?”

“The fact of the matter is that Donald Trump is dangerous for our country,” Jackson later added, cutting to a spoof Trump campaign ad detailing the possible side effects of voting for the president.

Plastic Doesn’t Actually Get Recycled Like You Think It Does

Plastic Doesn’t Actually Get Recycled Like You Think It Does

Madison Vanderberg                      

Most of the plastic you put in the recycling bin is just going to a landfill

If you live anywhere in America, chances are you have between one and three trash bins outside your home or apartment and one of those is designated for recycling. However, if you’ve been dutifully washing, drying, and recycling all the plastic that comes in and out of your home, it might all be for naught. Over 350 million metric tons of plastic are produced annually across the world, but according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 14-18% of that is actually recycled. But why? Because it’s cheaper to make new plastic than it is to recycle it.

Related: Americans don’t know how to recycle

Essentially, we’ve been sold a lie about recycling thanks to marketing. It makes us feel good to know that recycling exists, but when it comes to plastic, it just goes to the landfill or is burned. Up until two years ago, the U.S. sent the majority of its plastic to Chinese landfills, but now they just land in domestic dumps. It would appear that this is a new problem since China cut off our plastic chain, but according to a new NRP expose, the plastics industry has known about this issue all along.

<a href="https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:EPA.gov" class="link rapid-noclick-resp">EPA.gov</a>
EPA.gov

According to research from NPR and PBS, the plastic industry sold the public on the idea that the majority of plastic could be recycled, despite knowing it wouldn’t be economically feasible to do so and while making billions of dollars making new plastic. Basically, all used plastic can technically be recycled into new things, but sorting it out is more expensive than just making brand new plastic items from oil and gas. Also, plastic degrades each time it’s reused, so it can only actually be reused once or twice. New plastic is cheaper to produce and of better quality, so there’s literally no financial incentive to recycle old plastic, now add powerful lobbyists for the major oil companies into the mix and well.. that’s why we don’t recycle enough plastic.

Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

 

As for those ubiquitous recycle symbols on the side of plastic containers, industry officials told NPR that the recycle code seen on plastic items is to help recycling facilities sort plastic, but that information hasn’t been clarified to the consumer at all. Ask any person what the recycle symbol means, and most people would tell you that means the plastic is safe to go in the recycling bin. In fact, Earth911 says that if you want to know which plastics you can actually toss in your curbside bin, you have to call your local recycling service provider, as the types of plastics accepted differ by location. For example, those plastic clamshells that strawberries come in during the summer? That’s just one example of something you aren’t supposed to throw in the recycling bin. But since nobody knows which plastics should actually be going to their local recycling center, everyone throws all sorts of different plastic into their recycle bins and it all arrives at the plant and there is no feasible way to sort through it all that makes sense financially. So? Most of that plastic remains unsorted and ends up in a landfill.

As more people are starting to get privy to the plastic disaster, a brand new plastics plant in Texas claims they will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes by the year 2040. Though they don’t know exactly how they’ll achieve that, Jim Becker, the vice president of sustainability for Chevron Phillips’ $6 billion plastics plant told NPR that “recycling has to get more efficient, more economic. We’ve got to do a better job, collecting the waste, sorting it. That’s going to be a huge effort.”

Despite the fact that environmentally-minded companies claim to be committed to developing new sorting and recycling methods, it could likely just be more marketing mumbo jumbo as The World Economic Forum expects plastic production to triple by 2050.

So what can you do? Well, nows a good time to invest in a reusable water bottle and start consuming fewer single-use plastic products.

Climate Point: Big Oil battered by lawsuits. America battered by extreme weather.

USA Today

Climate Point: Big Oil battered by lawsuits. America battered by extreme weather.

Mark Olalde, USA TODAY                    September 11, 2020

 

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news from around the Golden State and the country. In Palm Springs, Calif., I’m Mark Olalde.

Hard to believe it’s been 19 years. Nearly two decades since those planes flew into the Twin Towers, into the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, we still must pause to reflect on those innocent lives snuffed out on 9/11. I was a youngster in elementary school that fateful day, but I still remember it clearly.

I have no grand, environmental lesson to draw from this yearly, dark milestone. But I do have a question: When tragedy strikes, be it terrorism or slow-moving catastrophes, how do we respond? We’re watching unseasonal snow fall in one part of the country while another part burns. Rising seas chew up the coast, while droughts and floods condemn interior agriculture. How do we respond?

Staring down threats from climate change, a groundswell of citizens, cities and states are taking Big Oil to court. Many of these lawsuits aim to force fossil fuel companies to pay costs associated with mitigating extreme weather, but they’re also an attempt to break the industry’s grip on global politics. It’s been a big week climate litigation.

The Post and Courier reports that Charleston, the largest city in South Carolina, became the first in the conservative South to sue the oil industry for lying about its products’ ties to climate change. The News Journal writes that Delaware’s attorney general has also launched a lawsuit against 31 fossil fuel companies, ranging from Chevron to BP. And internationally, DeSmogBlog writes that other climate lawsuits are picking up steam, including a recently filed attempt from young adults in Mexico to hold their government accountable.

Now, here’s some other important reporting….

Men row on the lake of oil created by the 1910 Lakeview Gusher.
Men row on the lake of oil created by the 1910 Lakeview Gusher.
MUST-READ STORIES

There will be fraud. Bloomberg’s also out with a new, damning piece that digs into unfilled promises made by oil executives. According to the story, top-level employees at oil and gas company Anadarko have been accused of lying about their potential reserves — and therefore profitability — while taking home handsome golden parachutes. It’s not an isolated case study in the modern oil business.

Grief through the flames. We can rip up, pave over and build on as much nature as we want. Humans will still have a deeply held connection to the natural world. I was on the scene while the Dome Fire was still burning in the Mojave National Preserve, ultimately torching more than 43,000 acres of some of the densest Joshua tree woodlands in the world. Join me as I, for The Desert Sun, explore what this tells us about how climate change fuels catastrophic wildfires and how this doesn’t bode well for iconic species like the Joshua tree.

Plant life that burned in the Dome Fire, right, contrasts with an adjacent area that did not burn in the remote Mojave Desert near Cima, California, September 2, 2020.
Plant life that burned in the Dome Fire, right, contrasts with an adjacent area that did not burn in the remote Mojave Desert near Cima, California, September 2, 2020.
POLITICAL CLIMATE

Water wars bubble up again. Ian James of The Arizona Republic tracks water in the West as closely as anyone, and he’s out with a new report on a proposed 140-mile-long pipeline in Utah that would draw on Colorado River water. The other six states that touch the river basin are pushing back.

Coal in the Cowboy State. Investigative newsroom WyoFile this week published a new report digging into carbon capture and storage. It’s the process of pulling carbon dioxide out of the air to reduce the greenhouse effect, but it’s pushed less by environmentalists and more by the fossil fuel industry as a way to justify the burning of hydrocarbons. In Wyoming, which produces 40% of America’s coal, a fight is brewing over whether the technology actually has a viable future.

A stark warning. Politico got their hands on a report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent U.S. government agency, that acknowledged the dire implications of climate change on the economy. “Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy,” the study concluded.

ENERGY POLICY, IT IS A CHANGIN’
This photo taken on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, near Frederick, Colo., shows an oil well being drilled on a property across from a subdivision.
This photo taken on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, near Frederick, Colo., shows an oil well being drilled on a property across from a subdivision.

 

Oil facing a major setback. The fight to mandate buffer zones — otherwise known as setbacks — between oil wells and homes, schools and other important infrastructure has been won time and again by the fossil fuel industry. In the last election, massive spending from oil and gas companies led to one such easy victory. But, the Colorado Sun reports, times might be changing in the Centennial State, as “four of the five commissioners (who oversee oil and gas) voiced support for an extended setback to protect public health and safety.”

In the black no more. Even the coal industry itself no longer argues whether King Coal has been dethroned. In the latest example of this fall, Taylor Kuykendall from S&P Global Market Intelligence reports that a bankrupt mining company called Rhino Resource Partners LP asked a bankruptcy court to let it sell its assets for pennies on the dollar. A mine went for $213,366. One preparation plant went for $25,000 with only one bidder.

Back in blackout. Do you question how a state like California — which by itself would be one of the world’s largest economies — could be hit by blackouts from not enough electricity in 2020? You’re not alone. Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times recently published a Q&A with Stephen Berberich, president of the California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the Golden State’s grid. It’s an interesting read for anyone wondering what or who is to blame.

The sun begins to set behind an energy power pole near Coachella on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020
The sun begins to set behind an energy power pole near Coachella on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020
AND ANOTHER THING

A hot new destination. This summer has absolutely obliterated many heat records here in the Southern California desert. In Palm Springs, we already hit 55 days of 110 degree weather or hotter by Sept. 1. Maybe I’ll move back to Chicago. Together, Desert Sun business reporter Melissa Daniels and I examined new research that predicts, by the end of the century, rising temperatures will doom a large swathe of local tourism economies if we don’t act soon. It’s an important case study that has implications from California to Florida.

Scientists agree that to maintain a livable planet, we need to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to 350 ppm. We’re above that and rising dangerously. Here are the latest numbers:

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rapidly rise.
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rapidly rise.

And one last thing before I sign off. If you’re interested, riled up or concerned about what’s going on with climate change, you should learn more. The Cooper Union, a university in Manhattan, will soon be hosting an intriguing week of virtual talks on international climate policy, sustainable agriculture, scientific activism and other inter-sectional subjects.

Trump’s spotty record on manufacturing jobs

Yahoo Finance – Politics

Trump’s spotty record on manufacturing jobs

Rick Newman, Senior Columnist             

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is visiting swing-state manufacturing regions to bash President Trump’s record on factory jobs. “President Trump has broken just about every promise he’s ever made to American workers and he has failed our economy and our country,” Biden said in Warren, Mich., on Sept. 9. Voters will hear a lot more of that. Biden specifically points to a manufacturing recession in 2019, the increased offshoring of jobs under Trump, and a slower pace of job creation under Trump than under the last three years of the Obama administration.

While running for president in 2016, Trump promised to “bring back manufacturing,” which may have helped him win crucial Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Did he bring it back? The answer could very well determine who wins those states—and the White House—in 2020.

Business shutdowns associated with the coronavirus recession have hammered manufacturing, like many other sectors. Manufacturers have lost 720,000 jobs since February, though employers have been slowly rehiring since May. But some voters may give Trump a pass on the coronavirus and try to assess his record on manufacturing during the first three years of his presidency, before the virus upended things.

From that perspective, Biden’s criticism largely holds up. Trump claims to have created the “greatest economy ever” before the coronavirus arrived, which is a comical exaggeration. In many respects, the U.S. economy grew at a similar pace from the last three years of the Obama administration into early 2020. Overall employment growth slowed a bit under Trump, but wages rose, which is typical of an expansion moving from middle to later stages. On manufacturing, however, one factor—Trump’s trade disputes with China and other countries, and the protectionist tariffs he imposed on many imports—may have caused a manufacturing slowdown and undermined the promises Trump made in 2016.

After taking a huge hit during the 2007-2009 recession, manufacturing recovered at a consistent pace from 2010 to 2015, as the following charts show. There was a slowdown toward the end of Obama’s second term, but manufacturing output picked up again near the end of 2016 and continued into 2018. Then another slowdown occurred in 2019. Biden calls that a manufacturing recession, and technically, that’s correct, since it entailed two consecutive quarters of declining manufacturing output. Production recovered in the third quarter of 2019 but dipped again in the fourth quarter, before output plunged in 2020 amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Graphic by David Foster
Graphic by David Foster
Graphic by David Foster
Graphic by David Foster

 

During the manufacturing slowdowns in 2015 and 2019, hiring flattened out—but manufacturers didn’t start laying off workers. That’s probably because CEOs saw the softness as temporary, rather than the start of another recession. They turned out to be right. Production and employment picked up after each slowdown.

Graphic by David Foster
Graphic by David Foster
Blame the trade war

Biden blames the Trump tax cuts for the modest manufacturing recession in 2019, claiming they gave manufacturers an incentive to move some production overseas. But Trump’s trade wars were probably the more likely cause of the 2019 slowdown. Trump began imposing tariffs on many Chinese imports, along with steel and aluminum from other countries, in 2018, and most of these nations imposed their own retaliatory measures on U.S. exports. By 2019, the trade war some analysts expected to peter out was escalating, instead. Trump ultimately slapped tariffs on about $361 billion worth of imported goods, imposing a cost of about $57 billion on the U.S. economy, according to the American Action Forum think tank.

Before the coronavirus contraction, Trump could credibly that manufacturers created about 100,000 more jobs during the first three years of his presidency than during the last four years of Obama’s. The Trump tax cuts may have helped a bit, by boosting after-tax income at most companies. But Trump also benefited from the recovery he inherited, with many deep scars of the prior recession finally healing by the time Trump took office. And there’s no evidence of manufacturing jobs that had left for other countries returning to the United States during the last three years, as Trump promised.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden arrives to speak during a campaign event on manufacturing and buying American-made products at UAW Region 1 headquarters in Warren, Mich., Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Factoring in the coronavirus shutdown, manufacturing has lost 237,000 jobs during the entirety of Trump’s presidency, which still compares fairly well with the performance of other presidents. On the Yahoo Finance Trumponomics Report Card, Trump still ranks third out of the last seven presidents on manufacturing employment. That’s because the manufacturing sector lost even more jobs at the same point in the first term of Presidents Obama, both Bushes and Reagan. During Obama’s second term, things got better, with manufacturers adding 386,000 jobs.

Biden says he’ll do better than Trump, through tax incentives meant to punish companies sending work overseas and reward those reopening closed factories here at home. Biden also says he’ll establish more muscular Buy America policies for the federal government than Trump has. Factory workers hear these types of promises every four years, and sometimes decide to give the promiser a shot. That helped Trump in 2016, but now he’s the one who has to prove he kept those promises.

Mexican water wars: Dam seized, troops deployed, at least one killed in protests about sharing with U.S.

Mexican water wars: Dam seized, troops deployed, at least one killed in protests about sharing with U.S.

Patrick J. McDonnell                        September 11, 2020
National Guard troops equipped with riot gear stand guard at Las Pilas dam, two days after withdrawing from nearby La Boquilla dam after clashing with hundreds of farmers, in Camargo, Chihuahua State, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. President Andr&#xe9;s Manuel L&#xf3;pez Obrador said Thursday he regretted the killing of a woman and the wounding of her husband following a Tuesday clash between National Guard troops and farmers over water. (AP Photo Christian Chavez)
Troops guard a dam Thursday in Camargo, Mexico. (Christian Chavez / Associated Press)

 

Mexico’s water wars have turned deadly.

A long-simmering dispute about shared water rights between Mexico and the United States has erupted into open clashes pitting Mexican National Guard troops against farmers, ranchers and others who seized a dam in northern Chihuahua state.

A 35-year-old mother of three was shot dead and her husband seriously wounded in what the Chihuahua state government labeled unprovoked National Guard gunfire.

The demonstrators and state officials complain that the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is diverting water to the United States at the expense of drought-stricken Mexican farmers and ranchers.

“We will defend our water until the end,” said Alejandro Aguilar, 57, a Chihuahua tomato and onion grower who was among the protesters. “We will not end our fight, because this liquid is vital to our future.”

La Boquilla dam remained in protesters’ custody as of Friday amid rumors that the federal troops were readying to mount an assault to recapture the strategic facility.

The conflict has escalated into a national crisis in which both sides allege rampant corruption and the meddling of shadowy provocateurs and hidden political interests in a complex scenario reminiscent of “Chinatown,” the iconic film about early 20th century water battles in Southern California.

López Obrador denies any water shortage for farmers in Chihuahua and charges that his opponents are fomenting a politically motivated “rebellion.” Mexico has been sending water north in advance of an October deadline to provide the United States with a vast amount of water owed under terms of a 76-year-old treaty.

“We have to comply with the agreement,” López Obrador told reporters, insisting that doing so will not result in any scarcity now or in the future. “We will not allow that Chihuahua be left without water.”

Mexico is playing catch-up in its water debt to the United States after falling behind on last year’s installments. Meanwhile, Chihuahua growers say they are suffering the effects of an almost decade-long drought.

López Obrador, a leftist populist, has carefully cultivated strong ties with the Trump administration. And in a U.S. presidential election year, he clearly does not want the binational water issue to provide fodder for President Trump to engage in a new round of campaign-time Mexico-bashing.

López Obrador has voiced fears that Trump, who launched his 2016 campaign with a message that Mexico was sending “rapists” and criminals to the United States, could retaliate should Mexico fail to pony up its water debt.

“We don’t want sanctions; we don’t want a major conflict,” López Obrador told reporters. “Imagine if, for failing to comply, they close the border on us.”

In recent months, Mexico has endeavored to meet its obligation by opening dam sluices and releasing water into rivers that flow into the Rio Grande, which forms much of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The flows from Mexico provide crucial irrigation for vegetables, sugar cane and other crops in south Texas.

Mexican officials “need to increase their water releases to the United States immediately,” Jayne Harkins, U.S. commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the binational body overseeing border treaties between the United States and Mexico, warned in July.

“Continuing to delay increases the risk of Mexico failing to meet its delivery obligation,” said Harkins, a Trump administration appointee.

A 1944 binational treaty — still hailed as a groundbreaking international pact — mandates U.S. water distribution to Mexico via the Colorado River and Mexican allocation to its northern neighbor via the Rio Grande. Mexican officials concede that the treaty is advantageous because Mexico receives four times the volume of water that it delivers to the United States.

The treaty requires that Mexico provide water to the United States based on five-year cycles. Currently, however, Mexico is facing a huge shortfall — 307,943 acre-feet, or 379.8 million cubic meters — due by Oct. 24, when the current five-year cycle ends. The deficit is about 88% of what Mexico is expected to supply per year to the United States.

“That’s a lot of water to make up in a short period of time,” said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the U.S. section of the commission. “Mexico cannot simply kick the can down the road.”

The treaty, Spener noted, does not specify sanctions for noncompliance and assumes that both parties will make “good-faith efforts” to fulfill mutual obligations.

Recent Mexican discharges meant to shrink the water balance to the United States sparked sometimes violent protests in Chihuahua, a mostly desert state that is home to large-scale farming of vegetables, grains and other crops, along with ranching.

Protesters have blocked railway tracks and torched highway toll booths and federal government vehicles, prompting the dispatch of hundreds of National Guard troops. But the unrest escalated to a new level this week.

Several thousand protesters, many wielding rocks, sticks and Mexican flags, descended on the La Boquilla dam. The marchers clashed with National Guard troops, who fired tear gas and wielded batons and plexiglass riot shields.

The outnumbered troops finally pulled back — a step that the president later called “prudent” — and the protesters occupied the dam.

The National Guard says “armed civilians” in vehicles later attacked retreating soldiers, who “repelled the aggression.” But in doing so, soldiers reportedly killed the woman and seriously wounded her husband.

Chihuahua state authorities and protest leaders blame the soldiers.

“In our investigations, no one confirms the version that the National Guard was attacked first,” said Chihuahua Gov. Javier Corral, who is a member of the National Action Party, a conservative opposition bloc that the president has blamed for fanning the crisis.

“It is one thing to look to win the governorship of Chihuahua, and something else to deceive, manipulate and use such a delicate matter for electoral goals,” Lopez Obrador said.

Gubernatorial elections are scheduled for next year in Chihuahua, where, as elsewhere in northern Mexico, voters have long been cool to López Obrador. The ex-Mexico City mayor’s power base is in central and southern Mexico. The country’s north-south political divides play into the bitter water conflict.

The president has alleged that unnamed “interests” and “water bosses” in Chihuahua have long manipulated supplies to benefit wealthy growers, who have made fortunes from planting large tracts of crops such as alfalfa and walnuts that need extensive irrigation.

“We are talking about very prosperous farmers, about businesses, a clear association of the economy and politics, but everything linked to the water,” López Obrador told reporters Friday. “The corrupt politicians become businessmen. And the businessmen become corrupt politicians.”

Water users in Chihuahua have likewise cited sinister “dark interests” fomenting discord, in the words of Salvador Alcántar, who heads the state’s association of irrigation users.

Protesters say they do not seek to renegotiate the binational water treaty. Rather, they say the Mexican government should seek alternative solutions, such as waiting for fall rains or diverting water from border areas less drought-afflicted than Chihuahua.

Mexican officials respond that time is running out and that the water flows from Chihuahua are essential to settle the country’s international arrears. The two sides appear no closer to a solution.

“For us, here, the question of water is fundamental,” Alcántar said. “It is the patrimony that we inherited from our grandparents, our parents. And now we have to leave it for our children.”

Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez and Liliana Nieto del Río contributed to this report.

Devastating consequences’: At least six dead as wildfires rage across West Coast

NBC News

Devastating consequences’: At least six dead as wildfires rage across West Coast

David K. Li and Matteo Moschella and Whitney Lee and Tim Stelloh and Sarah Kaufman                      September 10, 2020.
Scenes of devastation as two wildfires merge in Northern California

Wildfires continued to rage out of control throughout California and the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday, killing at least six people and devastating half a dozen towns in Oregon.

 

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said that in the last 24 hours, the state had “experienced unprecedented fire with significant damage and devastating consequences.”

“This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history,” she said at a news conference.

In Washington State, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said that a child had died in one of the state’s largest wildfires, the 163,00-acre Cold Springs fire. The blaze is burning mid-way between Spokane and Seattle. Franz didn’t offer details but said she was devastated by the death.

“The pain that family is going through is unfathomable,” she said.

In Oregon, wildfires burning east of the state capital tore through the small city of Lyons, killing Wyatte Tofte, 12, and his grandmother, Peggy Mosso, according to the boy’s father, Christopher Tofte. The boy’s mother, Angela Mosso, suffered severe burns and is in critical condition, he said.

And in Butte County, California, where the state’s deadliest fire on record killed 85 people and all but destroyed the town of Paradise two years ago, the remains of three people were found Wednesday after a wildfire burned through the area, Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters.

Two people were found at the same location, Honea said. The third was found elsewhere. Honea declined to provide additional details until the remains are identified.

In Southern Oregon, officials in the town of Talent told their 6,600 residents to stay outside the city limits because there’s scant electricity and it’s not safe stepping around fallen power lines.

While City Hall, the police department and other government buildings survived, there were whole neighborhoods and blocks of businesses completely gutted by the blaze.

“The fire ripped through the core of our (Oregon Route) 99 corridor,” the main stretch of town, Talent Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood told NBC News. “Where it burned, it burned completely and totally. I’m exhausted and shocked by it.”

City officials were hoping that their fast-acting residents, who evacuated Tuesday and Wednesday, would keep deaths at zero.

“I believe that most everyone is safe, it could have been far worse,” Ayers-Flood said.

Brown enacted a fire conflagration act for the first time in state history, with at least 35 fires scorching more than 300,000 acres of land in Oregon.

“Our number-one priority right now is saving lives,” Brown said on Twitter Wednesday. During the news conference, she said that six towns in Marion, Lane, and Jackson counties have been “substantially destroyed.”

Meanwhile, up the road in Medford, residents in the southern end of the city were ordered to evacuate on Wednesday as the Almeda Fire made its way north.

And to make matters worse, another blaze dubbed the Obenchain Fire was gaining strength north of Medford, according to Jackson County Emergency Management, prompting more evacuation orders.

“Level 3 (evacuation order), that’s as serious as it gets,” Rudy Owens, spokesman for the Oregon Office of State Fire Marshal, said of the emergency actions taken in and around Medford.

Huge swaths of tinder-dry brush across the western U.S. were ablaze on Wednesday as firefighters battled flames, hot weather and high winds.

There were 14,000 firefighters on the lines in California as 28 wildfires burned out of control, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

Near the Oregon border, a fire that began Monday had exploded to 30,000 acres by Wednesday and destroyed an estimated 150 homes in the small community of Happy Camp, the U.S. Forest Service said.

In the central part of the state, the Creek Fire had consumed nearly 167,000 acres by Wednesday evening, officials said. In Butte County, the blaze that killed three people, the Bear Fire, prompted evacuation warnings for part of the town of Paradise.

Remarkably, three other fires still burning on Wednesday — the August Complex, SCU Lightning Complex and LNU Lightning Complex blazes — were classified as the second, third and fourth biggest wildfires in state history, firefighters said Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, wildfires had killed eight people in California, including five during the LNU fire, which was sparked by a rare summer thunderstorm last month. The state has seen a record 2.5 million acres burn this year.

While these flames were burning well outside the state’s biggest cities, their smoke had enveloped large urban cores.

An eerie orange and brown glow filled the sky above the Bay Area, a mixture of fog and smoke from the fires that cast San Francisco in a perpetual rust colored haze on Wednesday.

Citing the “unprecedented” and “historic fire conditions” in California, 10 national forests were ordered closed on Wednesday, meaning that all 18 national forests in the state were shut down.

“These temporary closures are necessary to protect the public and our firefighters, and we will keep them in place until conditions improve and we are confident that National Forest visitors can recreate safely,” Regional Forester Randy Moore said in a statement.

Wildfires in the state of Washington also continued to burn on Wednesday, with more than 576,400 acres charred since a series of blazes were touched off on Labor Day, said state Department of Natural Resources spokesman Joe Smillie.

In the small community of Malden, near the Idaho state line, most of the town was destroyed by a fast-moving blaze that swept through the area Monday. Larry Frick, who stayed and fought the fire as it surrounded his home, compared the scene Wednesday to a war zone.

“There were explosions going off non-stop and some really big ones where I could feel it shake the ground,” he said in an interview.

Frick said he tried to save his neighbor’s house, but the wind-whipped flames roared through its facade, reducing the structure to rubble in what seemed like minutes. The fire, which has destroyed 98 buildings, had grown to nearly 18,000 acres by Wednesday, fire officials said.

The ugly numbers are finally in on the 2017 Trump tax rewrite

Salon

The ugly numbers are finally in on the 2017 Trump tax rewrite

David Cay Johnston, Salon                     September 7, 2020
Donald Trump; Tax Forms
Donald Trump; Tax Forms.      Getty/Salon 

The first data showing how all Americans are faring under Donald Trump reveal the poor and working classes sinking slightly, the middle class treading water, the upper-middle class growing and the richest, well, luxuriating in rising rivers of greenbacks.

More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.

The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office, I find.

That 57% of American households were better off under Obama contradicts Trump’s often-repeated claim he created the best economy ever until the pandemic.

The worsened economic situation for more than half of Americans contradicts Trump’s frequent claims that he is the champion of the “forgotten man” and his vow that “every decision” on taxes “will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

The figures in this story come from my annual analysis of IRS data known as Table 1.4. The income figures are pre-tax money that must be reported on tax returns.  I adjusted the 2016 data to reflect inflation of 4.1% between 2016 and 2018 (slightly more than 2% a year).

This is the first data on the first full year when Trump was president. It also is the first year of the Radical Republican tax system overhaul, passed in December 2017. The Trump tax law, the most significant tax policy change since 1986, was passed without a single public hearing or a single Democratic vote.

High income households multiply

Trump policies overwhelmingly favor the top 7% of Americans. And, oh, do they benefit!

Prosperous and rich people, the data reveal, include half a million who are not even filing tax returns. Yet they are not being pursued as tax cheats, a separate report shows.

The number of households enjoying incomes of $200,000 or more soared by more than 20%. The number of taxpayers making $10 million or more soared 37% to a record 22,112 households.

Who saves on taxes

The Trump/Republican tax savings were highly concentrated up the income ladder with hardly any tax savings going to the working poor and only a smidgen to the middle class.

Those making $50,000 to $100,000 for example, paid just three-fourths of 1 percentage point less of their incomes to our federal government. People making $2 million to $2.5 million saw their effective tax rate fall by about three times that much.

Now let’s compare two groups, those making $50,000 to $100,000 and those declaring $500,000 to $1 million. The second group averaged nine times as much income as the first group in 2018.

Under the Trump tax law, the first group’s annual income taxes declined on average by $143, while the second group’s tax reduction averaged $17,800.

Put another way, a group that made nine times as much money enjoyed about 125 times as much in income tax savings.

This disparity helps explain Trump’s support among money-conscious high-income Americans. But given the tiny tax benefits for most Americans, along with cuts in government services, it is surprising Trump enjoys significant support among people making less than $200,000.

But realize none of the biggest news organizations do the kind of analysis you are reading, at least not since I left The New York Times a dozen years ago. Instead, the major news organizations quote Trump’s claims and others’ challenges without citing details.

Understating incomes

The figures I cite here understate actual incomes at the top for two reasons. One is that loopholes and Congressional favors allow many rich and superrich Americans to report much less income than they actually enjoy. Often they get to defer for years or decades reporting income earned today.

Second, with Trump’s support Congress has cut IRS staffing so deeply that the service cannot even pursue growing armies of rich people who have stopped filing tax returns. The sharp decline in IRS auditing means tax cheating—always a low-risk crime—has become much less risky.

Trump ignores rich tax cheats

In the three years ending in 2016, the IRS identified 879,415 high-income Americans who did not even bother to file. These tax cheats owed an estimated $45.7 billion in taxes, the treasury inspector general for Tax Administration reported May 29.

Under Trump more than half a million cases of high-income Americans who didn’t file a tax return “will likely not be pursued,” the inspector general wrote.

One of the Koch brothers was under IRS criminal investigation until Trump assumed office and the service abruptly dropped the case. DCReport’s five-part series last year showed, from a thousand pages of documents, that William Ingraham Koch, who lives one door away from Mar-a-Lago, is collecting more than $100 million a year without paying income taxes.

Borrowing to help the rich

Trump’s tax law will require at least $1.5 trillion in added federal debt because it falls far short of paying for itself through increased economic growth even without the pandemic. Most of the tax savings were showered on rich Americans and the corporations they control. Most of the negative effects will fall on the middle class and poor Americans in the form of Trump’s efforts to reduce government services.

The 2017 income tax law caused only a slight decline in the share of adjusted gross income that Americans paid to Uncle Sam, known as the effective tax rate. Adjusted gross income is the last line on the front page of your tax return and is in the measure used in my analysis.

The overall effective tax rate slipped from 14.7% under Obama to 14.2% under Trump.

Curious anomaly

In what might seem at first blush a curious development, Americans making more than $10 million received a below-average cut in their effective tax rate. The effective tax rate for these 22,000 households declined by less than half a percent.

The reason for that smaller-than-average decline is that these super-rich Americans depend less on paychecks and much more on capital gains and dividends that have long been taxed at lower rates than paycheck earnings.

The new tax data also show a sharp shift away from income from work and toward income from investments, a trend which bodes poorly for working people but very nicely for those who control businesses, invest in stocks and have other sources of income from capital.

Overall the share of American income from wages and salaries fell significantly, from almost 71% in 2016 to less than 68% in 2018.

Meanwhile, if you look just at the slice of the American income pie derived from business ownership and investments, it expanded by nearly one-tenth in two years. Income from such investments is highly concentrated among the richest Americans.

Infuriating fact

There’s one more enlightening and perhaps infuriating detail I sussed from the IRS data.

The number of households making $1 million or more but paying no income taxes soared 41% under the new Trump tax law. Under Obama, there were just 394 such households. With Trump, this grew to 556 households making on average $3.5 million without contributing one cent to our government.

Again, Trump seems to have forgotten all about the Forgotten Man. But he’s busy doing all he can to help the rich, then stick you with their tax bills.

Federal Report Warns of Financial Havoc From Climate Change

The New York Times

Federal Report Warns of Financial Havoc From Climate Change

Coral Davenport and Jeanna Smialek                     September 9, 2020
Southern California Wildfires
Fountain Valley, Caif., firefighters extinguish hot spots at a structure destroyed by the El Dorado wildfire on Monday, Sept. 7, 2020, near Yucaipa, Calif. A couple’s plan to reveal their baby’s gender went up not in blue or pink smoke but in flames when the device they used sparked a wildfire east of Los Angeles. The fire started Saturday morning in dry grasses at El Dorado Ranch Park, a rugged natural area in the city of Yucaipa. (Cindy Yamanaka/The Orange County Register/SCNG via AP)

 

WASHINGTON — A report commissioned by federal regulators overseeing the nation’s commodities markets has concluded that climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, as the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts and floods spread through insurance and mortgage markets, pension funds and other financial institutions.

“A world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system,” concluded the report, “Managing Climate Risk in the Financial System,” which was requested last year by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and set for release Wednesday morning.

Those observations are not entirely new, but they carry new weight coming with the imprimatur of the regulator of complex financial instruments like futures, swaps and other derivatives that help fix the price of commodities like corn, oil and wheat. It is the first wide-ranging federal government study focused on the specific impacts of climate change on Wall Street.

Perhaps most notable is that it is being published at all. The Trump administration has suppressed, altered or watered down government science around climate change as it pushes an aggressive agenda of environmental deregulation that it hopes will spur economic growth.

The new report asserts that doing nothing to avert climate change will do the opposite.

“This is the first time a government entity has looked at the impacts of climate change on financial markets in the U.S.,” said Robert Litterman, the chairman of the panel that produced the report and a founding partner of Kepos Capital, an investment firm based in New York. “Rather than saying, ‘What’s the science?’ this is saying, ‘What’s the financial risk?’ ”

The commodities regulator, which is made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, voted unanimously last summer to create an advisory panel drawn from the world of finance and charged with producing a report on the effects of the warming world on financial markets. The initial proposal for the report came from Rostin Behnam, one of the panel’s two Democrats, but the report is written by dozens of analysts from investment firms including Morgan Stanley, S&P Global and Vanguard; oil companies BP and ConocoPhillips; and agricultural trader Cargill, as well as academic experts and environmental groups.

It includes recommendations for new corporate regulations and the reversal of at least one Trump administration policy.

“It was shocking when they asked me to do this,” Litterman said. “This is members of the entire community involved in financial markets saying with one voice, ‘This is a serious problem, and it has to be addressed.’”

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, declined Tuesday to comment on the report because the White House had not yet seen it.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, who served as economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “This was initiated by the Trump administration. It is the only document of its type.”

He added, “If you’re denying this exists, you don’t ask for a report on it.”

The Republican chairman of the CFTC, Heath Tarbert, acknowledged the risk of climate change, but he noted that the report also detailed what the regulators called “transition risk” — the financial harm that could befall the fossil fuel industry if the government enacted aggressive policies to curb carbon dioxide pollution.

“I appreciate Commissioner Behnam’s leadership on convening various private sector perspectives on the important topic of climate risk,” Tarbert said in a statement. “The subcommittee’s report acknowledges that ‘transition risks’ of a green economy could be just as disruptive to our financial system as the possible physical manifestations of climate change, and that moving too fast, too soon could be just as disorderly as doing too little, too late. This underscores why it is so important for policymakers to get this right.”

The authors of the report acknowledged that if Trump is reelected, his administration is all but certain to ignore the report and its recommendations.

Instead, they said they saw the document as a policy road map for a Joe Biden administration.

Biden’s climate policy proposals are the most ambitious and expensive ever embraced by a presidential candidate, and most of them would meet resistance in Congress. But even without legislation, he could press forward with regulatory changes. Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor who is seen as a top contender to be Treasury secretary in a Biden administration, has called for financial regulators to treat climate change as a significant risk to the financial system.

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks in Wilmington, Del., Sept. 2, 2020. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks in Wilmington, Del., Sept. 2, 2020. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

 

In calling for climate-driven policy changes, the report’s authors likened the financial risk of global warming to the threat posed by the coronavirus today and by mortgage-backed securities that precipitated the financial crash in 2008.

One crucial difference, they said, is that in the case of climate change, financial volatility and loss are likely to be spread out over time, as they hit different regions and markets. Insurance companies could withdraw from California in the wake of devastating wildfires, and home values could plummet on coastlines and in floodplains. In the Midwest, banks could limit loans during or after extended droughts that drastically lower crop yields. All of those problems will be exacerbated by climate change, but they are unlikely to hit all at once.

“Financial markets are really good at managing risk to help us provide credit, so that the economy can flourish,” said Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, an editor of the report who served as senior official at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. But, he added, the system breaks down “when it’s no longer able to manage risk, when it’s invisible, it’s not captured by the price of stocks.”

“That’s what we saw in the financial crisis of 2008, and it’s as relevant now on climate change as it was then on mortgage-backed securities,” he said.

Among the first of those risks already pervading the markets, the report’s authors say, are falling home prices and rising mortgage default rates in regions where wildfires and flooding are worsening.

“Climate change is linked to devaluing home values,” said Jesse Keenan, an editor of the report and a professor of real estate at Tulane University in New Orleans.

“If in your town, your house is devalued, that makes it harder for your local government to raise money,” he said. “That’s one set of risks that could lead to a contagion and broader instability across financial markets.”

Extreme weather could cause swings in agricultural commodity prices, the report warns, and climate-spurred market volatility could afflict pension and retirement funds, which invest across a range of asset classes.

“Climate change is one of the top three risks to our fund,” said Divya Mankikar, an author of the report and an investment manager at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s biggest public pension fund. “We pay pension and health benefits to over 2 million current and former state employees. So the payout is decades out.”

The report makes several concrete recommendations for inoculating the financial system against potential harm.

It emphasizes the need to put a price on carbon emissions, which is often done either by taxing or through an emissions trading system that caps carbon emissions and allots credits that polluters can buy and sell under that cap.

The report calls for the reversal of a proposed rule being put forward by the Trump administration’s Labor Department that would forbid retirement investment managers from considering environmental consequences in their financial recommendations.

“If there’s any class of investors that should be thinking about the long run, it’s retirement funds and pension funds,” said Nathaniel Keohane, an author of the report and an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.

The report suggests that the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a Treasury Department-led body created in the wake of the 2008 crisis, incorporates climate risks into its annual report and its communications with Congress. It suggests that the Federal Reserve and other major financial regulators join international coalitions that focus on climate threats.

The report also suggests that bank regulators should roll out a climate risk stress testing pilot program. Such stress tests, which assess how bank balance sheets and the broader system would fare in bad climate-related economic scenarios, have been under development in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

The authors also recommend that another financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, strengthen its existing requirements that publicly traded companies disclose the risks to their bottom lines associated with climate change.

Coca-Cola has noted in its financial disclosures that water shortages driven by climate change pose a risk to its production chains and profitability. But many other companies “just check the box” on that requirement, Keohane said.

Such disclosures should also include the risk to companies’ bottom lines posed by future policies designed to mitigate climate change, such as taxes or regulations on carbon dioxide pollution, which could hurt fossil fuel producers.

“If carbon risk is priced, this will add cost to the oil and gas industry,” said Betty Simkins, a report author and professor of finance at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. “But they need to be prepared for this. It’s better for the companies to disclose the risk and be as financially fit as possible.”

Summer 2.0 has reached B.C., here’s how hot it’ll get

The Weather Network

Summer 2.0 has reached B.C., here’s how hot it’ll get

Tyler Hamilton, The Weather Network                 September 6, 2020
Summer 2.0 has reached B.C., here's how hot it'll get
Summer 2.0 has reached B.C., here’s how hot it’ll get

 

Summer 2.0 has set in across British Columbia, and its accompanying warmth looks to stick around for a bit, will likely make up for lost ground.

Early summer was a bit of a bummer for the province, as below-normal temperatures spilled well into July.

By early next week, a record-breaking ridge that’s settled in offshore of the province is forecast to reach peak heights. Current modelling suggests temperatures could be up to 10 degrees above average for some as the atmosphere pushes outside the boundaries of climatology.

records

The province’s all-time temperature records for September are tough numbers to beat, as a similar setup in 2017 developed a thermal trough caused by down-sloping winds from the higher terrain inland. This pattern is known to bring warm, dry air down-sloping towards the ocean; consequently, shutting off the natural air-conditioning – onshore flow and marine air.

setup

Here’s a fun hypothetical scenario: If this were winter, this same upper air pattern would likely bring low elevation snow down to sea-level. The warm, dry air would be dense, bitter air flowing out of the Fraser River.

smoke

Throughout the summer, the South Coast has dodged the forest fire smoke. The latest smoke models indicate this may change late-Thursday and beyond as the high pressure off the coast of California siphons smoke north.

Climate change has arrived

The Week

Climate change has arrived

The Week Staff                September 6, 2020

The connection between hellacious weather and man-made climate change is becoming undeniable. Here’s everything you need to know:

What has shifted?

For years, climate scientists have been wary of attributing extreme weather directly to man-made atmospheric warming, but that’s changing in the face of historic heat waves and cascading natural disasters. In recent weeks alone, a “derecho,” a complex of unusually powerful, hurricane-like storms, tore through the Midwest, destroying homes and crops across a 745-mile path; Hurricane Laura crashed into the Gulf Coast with sustained 150-mph winds; and hundreds of California wildfires incinerated an area the size of Rhode Island in just a week. The Southwest suffered a punishing heat wave with a high of 130 in Death Valley, perhaps the hottest day in world history. It followed highs of 125 in Iraq and a record 100-degree day in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, a once-in-100,000-years event. These freak patterns, researchers say, are almost certainly the result of mankind pumping 2.6 million pounds of CO2into the atmosphere per second. “We’ve gotten to the point where, when it comes to extreme heat waves, there is almost always a human fingerprint,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

How strange is recent weather?

The expression “500-year storm” is losing its meaning: Houston has suffered five of them in a five-year span. California’s wildfires — ignited by 1,200 lightning strikes in a 72-hour span — produced the second- and third-worst blazes in state history, even without the aid of the fall’s strong Santa Ana winds. The Atlantic coast has seen 10 named storms so far this season, a mark typically hit in October, and upcoming storms are projected to be twice as intense as usual, because of extremely warm ocean waters. Hurricanes have done $335 billion in damage over the past three years, compared with $38.2 billion across the entire 1980’s, adjusted for inflation. Climate disasters of all types inflicted $807 billion in damage during the 2010’s, the hottest decade on record.

What’s the link to climate change?

Weather patterns are shaped by an intricate web of atmospheric and oceanic conditions, which is why scientists traditionally resist drawing causal links between climate change and any one event. But when both rising temperatures and disasters become consistent and pervasive, the connection becomes obvious. The average daily highs in Northern California during wildfire season are 3 to 4 degrees warmer than they were in 1900. Warming of the planet’s surface causes atmospheric instability than can producer stronger, more frequent storms, while rising ocean temperatures and unusually moist air spawn hurricanes that grow rapidly more powerful, then stall after making landfall and dump torrential rain.

Where is it worst?

The future of climate chaos is being previewed in northern latitudes, where a CO2 domino effect plays out: Warm winters melt more snow, causing the ground to absorb more heat, which leads to dry soil that fuels wildfires and thaws permafrost, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. In Russia this summer, thawing permafrost caused a power-plant fuel tank to collapse, spilling more than 20,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya River. Russia’s average temperature was nearly 11 degrees above its January-to-April norm, the largest anomaly ever for any country. In February, Antarctica hit a record 69 degrees, causing a 120-square-mile chunk of glacier to break off.

How else is climate change felt?

Disrupted weather patterns are rippling around the globe, creating bizarre, almost biblical catastrophes. Extreme temperatures in the Indian Ocean caused drought and wildfires in Australia while spawning cyclones in eastern Africa. The torrential rain there created perfect conditions for desert locusts, which reproduced at terrifying rates. By March, hundreds of billions of the finger-length insects swept across the region, devouring every crop in their path, and pushing tens of millions of Africans to the brink of starvation. People are even experiencing climate change through their sinuses. Airborne pollen increases as temperatures climb, which is why residents of Alaska, where warming is happening twice as fast as the global average, report especially bad allergies. “There’s irrefutable data,” said Jeffrey Demain, director of an Alaskan allergy center.

What does the future hold?

Much depends on the oceans, which play a critical role in absorbing CO2 and heat, and regulating weather. “The amount of heat we have put in the world’s oceans in the past 25 years equals 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom bomb explosions,” said Lijing Cheng, a Beijing physics professor. Warming oceans are circulating more slowly — by about 15 percent in the Atlantic Ocean since 1950. The reduction in their moderating influence could cause warmer summers, colder winters, changing rainfall patterns, and more destructive storms. Climate change is no longer a theoretical threat. In California, average temperatures have climbed 1.8 degrees since 1980 while precipitation has dropped 30 percent, doubling the number of extreme-risk days for wildfires each year. A few weeks ago, rancher Taylor Craig drove for his life as flames raced toward his Northern California home. Later, sitting in a Walmart parking lot, Craig said he realized he had joined a new and growing club. “I’m a climate refugee,” he said.

A CO2 silver lining

The pandemic forced automobile and airplane travel to fall off a cliff, and satellite images of pollution in the atmosphere offered a striking before-and-after contrast. At the height of April’s coronavirus lockdowns, Google’s mobility data indicated that 4 billion people cut their travel in half. As a result, worldwide daily CO2 emissions dropped by an estimated 18.7 million tons, falling to levels not seen since 2006. Reduced car, bus, and truck traffic contributed to 43 percent of the drop-off, although emissions from residential buildings ticked up 2.8 percent, mostly from people running air conditioners while stuck at home. Scientists, however, are not celebrating. They anticipate just a 7 percent decline in carbon emissions this year, and point to historical evidence of emissions shooting back up after declines during recessions or world wars. “It goes to show just how big a challenge de-carbonization really is,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. To reach the global emissions targets of the 2015 Paris climate accord, CO2 would need to drop as it did in 2020 every year for the next decade.