Category: Health – Happiness

An Indigenous Community Finds its Agricultural Roots

Civil Eats

An Indigenous Community Finds its Agricultural Roots in Tucson’s San Xavier Farm

After securing much-needed water rights, the co-op farm on the Tohono O’odham reservation is honoring thousands of years of the tribe’s farming history.

By Rudri Bhatt Patel, Indigenous Foodways     April 25, 2019

In a quiet part of Tucson, Arizona, only a few miles southwest of the city center, the San Xavier Cooperative Farm honors the agricultural legacy of the Tohono O’odham, a Native American tribe that has farmed the land for over 4,000 years. Located on the ancestral village of Walk, the 860-acre operation, one of the few farms on an Indian reservation at last count, is a lush green oasis in the otherwise dry desert.

Julie Ramon-Pierson, president of the San Xavier Co-op board, grew up hearing stories about her grandparents and great-grandparents cooking traditional O’odham foods such as tepary beans, squash, and corn, and she remembers seeing her mother harvest and clean the native beans. She hopes the co-op will help resurrect narratives like the ones she was raised with.

“The primary goal of the co-op is to create economic development in the community, re-educate people about traditional foods so they can prepare them at home to adopt a healthier lifestyle, and preserve O’odham values, like respect of land, plants, animals, and elders,” she says.

The Tohono O’odham Nation spans 4,460 square miles in Southern Arizona and includes 28,000 enrolled tribal members. The land is divided into 11 districts, and the San Xavier District is home to about 2,300 members. Founded in the early 1970’s, the co-op leases farmland from the landowners, called allottees, and about 90 percent of its 25 to 28 employees are O’odham tribe members, according to Gabriel Vega, the co-op’s farm manager for 13 years.

The welcome sign outside the entrance reflects this agricultural history; it is a shield painted with a traditional planting stick and feathers representing a blessing. In the center is a sprouting seed, considered “new life,” and the four parts represent seasons containing the cycle of the sun, rain, moon, and wildlife. (Photo by Rudri Patel)The welcome sign outside the entrance reflects this agricultural history; it’s a shield painted with a traditional planting stick and feathers representing a blessing. In the center is a sprouting seed, considered “new life,” and the four parts represent seasons containing the cycle of the sun, rain, moon, and wildlife. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

While the co-op grows alfalfa as its primary money-maker, other parts of the property are home to orange, plum, and apple orchards; an assortment of vegetable crops; and native foods such as tepary, pima lima, black, and white beans, wild mesquite trees, and pima wheat.

In addition to growing and selling crops, the co-op hosts blessing and spiritual ceremonies and provides educational opportunities for the tribal community. In early March, for example, it hosted a cooking and culture workshop for women tribe members.

Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, is focusing her dissertation research on water and land rights, as well as the impact of the San Xavier Co-op. She sees the co-op’s impact as three-fold: “It keeps traditional ecological knowledge alive, assists with food sovereignty, and allows the community to know its history,” she says.

There is a real effort, says Ramon-Sauberan, to keep doors open and educate people. If a member of the O’odham community wants to learn how to cultivate a certain food, she says, the co-op creates a teaching space to achieve this goal. More importantly, this attitude helps foster a “communal spirit among the members” that extends beyond the organization.

Bringing the Water Back

Though the O’odham has built an agricultural history in the Sonoran Desert over the course of thousands of years—one that recently helped earn Tucson the honor of becoming the first U.S. city designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy—the tribe’s farming legacy has been threatened in recent decades by a conflict over the desert city’s limited water supply.

Traditionally, the O’odham people structured their fields to channel water into planting areas, using the Santa Cruz River as the main source. When Tucson began to develop, however, its water demands drained the aquifers from the area, and by 1950, Vega says, “much of the agriculture ceased.”

Farm manager Gabriel Vega has worked for San Xavier Co-op for 13 years. (Photo by Rudri Patel)Farm manager Gabriel Vega has worked for San Xavier Co-op for 13 years. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

When the farm formed in 1971, it fought to reclaim tribal water rights and reintroduce farming practices that had been halted during the dry years. In 1975, the San Xavier District sued the City of Tucson over water rights. Ten years later, the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act granted an allotment of 56,000 acre-feet of water yearly from the Central Arizona Project—enough to sustain roughly 900 acres of land.

“Water to this community is a sacred element,” Vega says. “To have a running flow of water is fulfilling the prayers of the O’odham people.”

During the period when water supplies were nonexistent, the connection between the land and its people diminished, according to Vega. “Wells went dry, farming decreased, and it led to the decline of mesquite trees,” which in turn led to the loss of agriculture and tradition, and a rise in diet-related diseases like diabetes.

When water returned, it opened the door to reintroduce native foods, a healthier way of living, and a pathway to reconnect to the land. And that’s where San Xavier comes in.

Even with the busy undercurrent of activity, the farm is a tranquil space where a palpable sense of peace permeates the air. This isn’t accidental, according to Vega. “Many of the O’odham elders wanted this area to return to an agricultural community,” he says.

Reconnecting with Tradition by Saving Seeds and Cultivating Wild Plants

Although the water has returned to the area and re-enabled agriculture, healthy eating habits are slower to catch up. Vega says for many people the reality of day-to-day life on the reservation includes fast food.

To reverse this trend, San Xavier Co-op is preserving the “genetic resources” stored in seeds. Though the O’odham have 19 different varieties of corn, San Xavier has access to only two. Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded the farm a grant to build a 2,400-square-foot cold storage facility to preserve its seeds.

“The plan is to go door-to-door in the community and see if families have corn seeds that were lost in the last few decades,” Vega says.

A large nursery houses several different varieties of seeds. (Photo by Rudri Patel)A large nursery houses several different varieties of seeds. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

Organizations like Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) help preserve indigenous seeds and serve as a repository to protect cultural heritage. Although there isn’t an official partnership in place, Laura Neff, an associate at NS/S, says that San Xavier Co-op recently received two community seed grants from the organization. Additionally, San Xavier sells its products in the Native Seed/SEARCH retail store. With efforts like these, the O’odham people may be able to return to the foods their ancestors enjoyed.

Another focus at San Xavier is cultivating wild foods. In the past, the O’odham relied on the pods of mesquite trees to supply them with protein. Once the pods dry, the O’odham harvest, mill, and eventually turn them into flour. “Traditionally it was eaten with water, and these high nutrients provided energy,” Vega says.

Diversity of Sustainable Crops

San Xavier Co-op remains viable—and able to aggressively pursue growing native foods—“because it invests in alfalfa crops, its best-seller on the farm,” Ramon-Pierson says. But the focus on income doesn’t mean sacrificing what is good for the land, Vega emphasizes. The co-op is Certified Naturally Grown, he says, which means it grows everything without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or GMOs.

“This farming community has been here for several thousand years, and there is an intentional purpose to how the O’odham use the land,” says nursery coordinator Cie’na Schalaefli. Keeping it chemical-free helps the tribe maintain its traditional values.

Orchards line the property near the side of the farm. (Photo by Rudri Patel)Orchards line the property near the side of the farm. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

The co-op has also formed a partnership with the Compost Cats program through the University of Arizona, a student-run organization that collects food waste and scraps from local businesses, processes the material at the San Xavier Co-op, and sells it as compost to the community.

The co-op constantly looks for ways to diversify its offerings in order to stay afloat, Vega says. San Xavier has a blossoming partnership with both the food bank community and Tucson schools, says Ramon-Pierson, where it sells broccoli and melons. It also runs a catering business that blends seasonal indigenous O’odham foods with non-traditional items like tortillas and tamales.

Several other projects are in the works or already underway, Vega says. “Bridgestone, the tire company, recently contacted the co-op about the Gualye, a woody shrub which thrives in the desert Southwest,” he says. The interest is to produce rubber for tires. There’s also the possibility that pork production could begin on the property, he adds.

Giving Back to the Community

Even though the farm looks for numerous ways to be profitable, the O’odham Nation is the first priority. Workshops like the Wild Harvest teach community members how to harvest, process, and prepare traditional foods such as cholla buds from a cacti, also known as ciolim, mesquite, and prickly pear.

A colorful mural serves as a reminder of San Xavier’s ancestral roots. (Photo by Rudri Patel) 

“Once they learn how to harvest, they can do this on their land at home, bring it back to the farm, and we pay them by the pound,” Vega says. This fosters economic resiliency and a way to reintroduce traditional foods to children and families.

The workshops also cover the basics of how to cook foods like tepary beans—which can easily boiled in water with chiles—and sends participants home armed with how to search for online recipes used in making traditional O’odham meals. A resurgence of traditional foods, according to Ramon-Sauberan at the University of Arizona, is working to reduce the rates of diabetes and other health issues among the O’odham people.

San Xavier Co-op’s multi-pronged approach to caring for its community, is merely a “continuation of what’s in their ancestral genes,” Vega says. “Not many spaces that allow you to pay your bills, take care of your elders, and adopt a healthy way of living.”

Fast Food Workers Can Be Fired For No Reason

 

The New York City Council is considering “just cause” legislation to enshrine fairness and dignity for fast food workers. It could become a model for other cities and industries.

Nadra Nittle, Food and Farm Labor          April 24, 2019

Taco Bell employees at the Barksdale Base Exchange in Louisiana. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joanna M. Kresge.)

 

Francis Gomez vividly remembers the day she was fired from her cashier job at a Taco Bell in Queens, New York. Just before last Christmas, she showed up for her shift when a manager told her, “Don’t clock in; you’re terminated.” The firing stunned Gomez, 27, who had worked on and off for the fast food chain since 2014.

Francis Gomez. (Photo courtesy of SEIU 32BJ)

Francis Gomez. (Photo courtesy of 32BJ SEIU)

“I was completely surprised. I was accused of disrespecting a customer, but there was no customer complaint,” she said. “When I asked for a letter, I was basically told, ‘You’re already terminated, so it doesn’t matter.’”

Taco Bell hasn’t responded to Civil Eats’ request for comment about its firing practices, but stories like Gomez’s are one of the reasons New York City Council members Brad Lander and Adrienne Adams have introduced “just cause” legislation to give fast food workers more job protection. The bill prohibits fast food companies from firing workers or significantly reducing their hours without a stated reason and would give employees the chance to correct their behavior before termination. With this legislation, New York City could lead the nation in offering job security for fast food workers.

Tsedeye Gebreselassie, president of Fast Food Justice, an organization that fights for workplace improvements for fast food employees, said that staff have been fired for infractions as trivial as not smiling enough. But more often than not, she said, they’re deprived of real reasons for their terminations, making New York City’s just cause bill a potential game changer for workers.

“The legislation the New York City Council is considering the first of its kind in the country for the fast food industry, but it could become a model for other cities and industries that want to enshrine fairness and dignity for workers and ensure they are only fired when there’s a reason that warrants it,” she told Civil Eats.

Princess Wright (center), a worker at a Brooklyn McDonald’s, speaks on Feb. 13, 2019, next to New York City Council Member Adrienne Adams, who sponsored one of the two “Just Cause” bills.Princess Wright (center), a worker at a Brooklyn McDonald’s, speaks on Feb. 13, 2019, next to New York City Council Member Adrienne Adams, who sponsored one of the two “Just Cause” bills. (Photo courtesy of 32BJ SEIU)

As the national Fight for $15 campaign highlights the need for living wages for fast food staff, New York City’s just cause legislation stresses the importance of keeping some of the labor market’s most vulnerable workers employed. While more job protection certainly benefits workers, supporters of just cause legislation say it could also help the fast food industry save money by stabilizing its workforce.

Fast Food Industry’s ‘Disposable Culture’

By some estimates, the fast food industry has a 150 percent turnover rate. Each year, most chains lose their entire staffs, plus half of the replacements hired. The frequency with which fast food companies fire and hire workers usually comes at the expense of employees such as Gomez, who have little recourse when they’re terminated, labor advocates say. While nearly all Americans who don’t have union jobs are considered “at-will employees”—meaning they may be fired at any time for any reason—companies typically use progressive discipline for employees rather than terminate them without warning. Fast food workers tend to have the opposite experience.

“For far too long, fast food workers have been the victims of unfair reduction of hours or arbitrary termination,” New York City Councilwoman Adrienne Adams said in a statement to Civil Eats. “By enacting just cause legislation, the city could require that fast food chains demonstrate a legitimate reason for terminating a worker or reducing their hours.”

A recent report entitled, “Fired On a Whim: The Precarious Existence of NYC Fast-Food Workers,” found that 58 percent of 237 fast food employees have had their hours severely cut, and 65 percent have been fired without a reason. The National Employment Law Project (NELP), the Center for Popular Democracy, 32BJ SEIU, and Fast Food Justice collaborated on the analysis.

Paul Sonn, NELP’s state policy program director, said the New York bill would require fast food chains to implement basic fair practices before cutting employees’ hours or terminating them. The restaurants would have to clearly outline job expectations and give workers warnings, chances to improve their behavior, and notice of possible termination. In extreme cases, such as workplace violence, companies would not have to use these practices before firing an employee.

The “disposable culture” of the fast food world has made such guidelines necessary, Sonn said.

“This is an industry that has sort of latched onto a high turnover/low-wage business model,” Sonn argued. “They generally pay as little as they’re legally permitted to pay, and they don’t invest in workers. In some cases, having a high turnover model is a way to avoid workers from starting to organize and assert their rights. There’s also a very high turnover rate among the managers. There’s a lot of instability, and some of the basic good HR practices seem to be shockingly uncommon in a lot of the fast food industry.”

Gig Economy Poses Threats to All Workers, Especially Single Mothers

Stephanie Seguino, a University of Vermont economics professor, said that the legislation will lead fast food chains to reflect on their business practices, particularly the arbitrary dismissal of employees. She places the fast food workforce in the context of the Great Recession, which led to a process called labor market flexibilization, more colloquially known as the gig economy. The 2008 recession and the decline of labor unions means that workers in various fields have fewer protections than they once did, and companies in a number of industries are increasingly firing and hiring people at will, or using third-party contractors to hire workers, to avoid giving employees benefits.

“It shifts the burden of economic insecurity to the worker, and that’s the problem,” Seguino said. “We’re seeing workers involuntarily placed in part-time work or working for temp agencies on a contingency basis. This is a growing trend, and it’s particularly damaging to people with families.”

Seguino says that single mothers are especially at risk in industries such as fast food, where missing a shift or being late for one can result in job termination. These women bear most of the responsibility for childcare and, therefore, have few options other than to miss work if their children fall ill or a daycare crisis occurs. Having to pick up and drop off children at school also increases the odds that mothers will be late and possibly fired, Seguino said.

fast food workers serving a customerTerminating workers has dire consequences for fast-food workers. According to the “Fired on a Whim” report, 62 percent of respondents who lost a fast food job or had their hours cut experienced food insecurity, housing instability, and the inability to pay for childcare. Some were evicted or forced to move or quit school.

Gomez, who still has not found full-time work, said that she has struggled financially since losing her Taco Bell job in December. Joblessness during the holiday season is particularly challenging, not only because it makes paying for Christmas gifts tough, she said, but also because it’s too late to apply for the seasonal work already underway. Gomez has depended on her wife to support over the past five months and has used some of the financial aid from her college education to cover expenses.

“Right now, I’m a full-time college student,” she said. “I do odd jobs here and there. It’s hard to pay rent and bills even now.”

More Job Security Could Help the Fast Food Industry

While it’s clear that job security benefits workers, it also offers advantages to the fast food industry. According to the National Restaurant Industry, turnover costs restaurants an average of $150,000 per year. That number is likely higher for fast food restaurants, which have more than double the turnover of the overall restaurant average of 61 percent annually.

“Turnover absolutely costs tons of money,” said Rachel Deutsch, supervising attorney for worker justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “The recruiting process, the hiring process, training new people, it’s far more productive to keep workers who have been on the job because they’re more invested.”

Seguino agreed, pointing out how in the early days of the auto industry, carmakers such as Ford underpaid their workers, resulting in a high annual turnover rate. Ford eventually realized how much it cost to replace its workers and raised its pay to reduce turnover.

“Firms don’t realize that some of their practices may be undermining their bottom line,” she said. “Job security is a win-win for businesses and workers.”

As labor advocates support New York City’s just cause bill, Gomez said that she encounters far too many people who don’t consider the job “real work.” But Gomez has a very different take on her former position.

“We’re the backbone of this city,” she said. “When everyone goes to lunch, they don’t understand that the workers have sometimes been there since 5 or 6 in the morning or that the late-night workers are there until 2 a.m. cleaning up. There are workers who raise their children off these paychecks. It’s not fair, it’s not humane to fire someone without a proper reason, to know you can get fired at any moment. We’re doing a lot more than you think.”

The New York City Council will likely vote on the bill during the summer, and advocates hope that if it passes, it will have a domino effect nationwide.

“In New York City, we must stand up and address these injustices in an effort to protect workers in this industry,” Councilwoman Adams said. “Just cause legislation is a necessary step to bring accountability to fast food giants and security to their employees.”

Canada is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Globe

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Canada is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Globe, Says New Report

April 20, 2019
Greenpeace Canada analyst hopes study serves as a wake-up call for Trudeau government, but says “You can’t wake up a man who’s only pretending to be asleep” on climate change
Story Transcript

 

SPEAKER: It’s the 21st century. We know climate change is real. We know that one of the challenges we have is that pollution has been free, but we need to put a price on it.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Montreal, Canada. Earlier this week, officials from Environment and Climate Change Canada, a department of the Canadian federal government, presented the results of a study on warming in Canada. Their study concluded that Canada is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and that northern Canada is warming even more quickly, nearly three times the global rate. The officials also reported that three of the past five years have been the warmest on record in this country. Their study is the first of its kind. Entitled Canada’s Changing Climate Report, the study has been in the works for years and is the first of a series aimed at informing policy decisions and increasing public awareness and understanding of Canada’s changing climate. Now here to discuss this new study with us is Keith Stewart. Keith is a Senior Energy Strategist with Greenpeace Canada and part-time instructor at the University of Toronto. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from York University and has worked as a climate policy researcher and advocate for 19 years. He joins us today from Toronto. Thanks for coming back on The Real News, Keith.

KEITH STEWART: Thanks for having me.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So Keith, even with all of the warming that has occurred in this country since the beginning of the fossil fuels era, we Canadians continue to live in what is one of the world’s relatively colder climates. Why should Canadians be concerned about this report? How is the warming of the atmosphere and of the oceans affecting their lives in practical terms and what practical effects should Canadians anticipate as Canada continues to warm?

KEITH STEWART: It’s kind of a standard joke that oh, in Canada it would be nice if it was a little warmer. The problem is the rate of change. We haven’t historically– well, in the geological record climate has changed a lot over time– but we’re trying to pack change that usually take 50,000 to 100,000 years into 50 years. Because we’re burning fossil fuels and sort of increasing the greenhouse effect trapping heat, which it then causes a whole bunch of other changes. You might think oh, a little bit warmer that would be nice, but you’re also changing rainfall patterns. You’re going to have drought in some places. You are going to have more wildfires, the kinds we’ve seen in B.C. and Alberta the last couple of years where people literally couldn’t breathe. Walking outside in Vancouver was like breathing eight packs, smoking eight pack of cigarettes. In urban areas, one of the warnings in the report is we’re going to see even more flooding. In particular, the kind of flash flooding which in one incident here in Toronto back in 2013, we saw $960 million worth of damage in a couple of hours. We saw street cars under water. People had to be rescued from the GO train by boat. These kinds of severe impacts– the heat waves, the droughts, the wildfires, the flooding– these cause enormous damage to our economy, they cause enormous damage to our health, and we’re only seeing the thin edge of the wedge here.

When you look at this report, a big part of the message in the report is: what the future looks like depends a lot on what actions we take today. In their low emissions scenario, if Canada warmed about one point seven degrees, it would warm by another two degrees, that’s bad because it would have a whole bunch of negative impacts. The negative impacts by far outweigh the positives. In the high emissions scenario, the one we’re actually on the path to right now, they’re talking about warming by six degrees in Canada, on average even more than the far north, by the end of the century. That would make agriculture basically impossible in large chunks of the prairies. They say oh, you can just move further north. Well a lot of places in this country you move further north, they don’t have soil to be able to support agriculture. Here in Ontario, we have this thing called the Canadian Shield. It’s all granite. You can’t grow crops there. And similarly, forests which are suited for one climate system, can’t move themselves north 50, 100, 200 kilometers in the space of 20 years.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This study was released on April 1st, Keith, which also happened to be the date on which a federal carbon tax of $20 a ton took effect in provinces that lack provincial pricing plans, including the provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. The carbon tax, as I’m sure you know, is the centerpiece of the Trudeau government’s strategy for fighting climate change. In your view, is this carbon tax adequate both from the perspective of the amount of the tax and the breadth of its application? And if not, what kind of a carbon tax do you think we need in this country given the urgency of the situation?

KEITH STEWART: I think one of the problems we have in this country right now is action on climate change has been narrowed to carbon tax, no carbon tax. And really we need a whole, vast suite of efforts not just carbon taxes but also massive investments in things like public transit, so people can get to where they need to go without having to drive a car. We need to invest in better sewage/stormwater systems so that we’re not having these floodings. We need to invest in rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. A carbon tax is a key part of that. Raising the price of fossil fuels makes them less attractive relative to cleaner forms of energy. It also brings in some cash that can be done to build things like great public transit systems or, put up windmills and solar panels. So in the U.S. we are talking about this as a Green New Deal, kind of built on the New Deal that Roosevelt, that the Americans brought in to fight the Great Depression. That’s the kind of change we need. This carbon tax is a component of that and I think it’s kind of like the lowest possible measure, $20 dollars a ton kicking in this year. That’s 4.4 cents per liter of gasoline. When you look at the price of oil, the price of gasoline goes up and down. That’s not a huge change. That on its own is by no means enough. They’re also talking about increasing it $10 a year. Greenpeace would support that. We also think the money should be invested back in renewables, but that’s got to be just one piece of a much bigger package.

The big problem we have right now is no one is treating the climate crisis really like a crisis. We treat it more as kind of a messaging problem; we do a few things it will go away. Or, on one side of the political spectrum with the conservatives at the provincial level and federally who are fighting against even the small carbon tax that’s being proposed, they’re proposing we do nothing. That somehow if we ignore the problem, it will go away. One of my friends was asking me, “do you think this new report that just came is a wakeup call?” And was like well, there’s an old proverb that says “you can’t wake up a man who’s only pretending to be asleep” and that’s the problem with a lot of the politicians in this country and around the world. They’re pretending to be asleep on this issue, hoping they can get out of office and it will be someone else’s problem down the road.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Now at the same time as the Trudeau government has raised alarms about the extent of warming in this country, federal and provincial governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of about $3 billion a year. Also, as we’ve reported extensively on The Real News, the Trudeau government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars to buy its TransMountain tar sands pipeline. Keith, doesn’t this new study– I mean, what Justin Trudeau did on Monday was he held it up and said to the public and in particularly was addressing the conservatives and those who are opposed to the carbon tax, this shows that we have to impose a carbon tax. But doesn’t it also highlight the recklessness of the Trudeau government’s continued defense of the fossil fuels industry, its massive investments in the fossil fuels industry, this perpetuation of our dependence on fossil fuels?

KEITH STEWART: Absolutely. Subsidies in fossil fuels is basically like a negative carbon tax. You’re making them cheaper in order to get people to use more. Similarly, the federal government yesterday was denying that, in response, were denying that the purchasing the pipeline was a subsidy to fossil fuels. Well it is and I think the Trudeau government is trying to have it both ways. They say we’re going to do a carbon tax and we’re going to promote expansion of the oil industry. If you’re serious about climate change, that means getting off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible by mid-century, at the latest. Building a new tar sands pipeline that has to operate for 50 years to make the money back, makes no sense at this point if you’re seriously committed to achieving the Paris climate goals, to protecting the future of our economy, of our communities, of our ecosystems. So it’s not one step forward, one step back which is kind of what we’re seeing from the federal liberals. It’s got to be leaping forward and I think the big problem in Canada and also similarly in the U.S. and many other places is that entrenched power of the fossil fuel interests in Canada and particularly the oil lobby. In the US it’s also the coal lobby who are basically saying, don’t go too fast. Give us time to get our money out. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has launched an election campaign in Alberta saying, we want to double the rate of growth of oil production in Alberta and here’s all things you have to do to help us do that which is kill regulations, get rid of carbon pricing, build new pipelines. That’s basically asking people to vote for climate destruction.

And I think this is going to be a big issue in the federal election here in the fall as we have the conservatives who are saying do nothing about climate change and give more subsidies to the oil industry. You have the liberals who are saying let’s do stuff on climate change but not touch oil production. So they are doing a coal phase out, they’re doing a bunch of other measures. But basically, oil is sacrosanct and what we really need is a push for this kind of a Green New Deal which actually, we can make our lives better. We can create great green jobs right across the country. We can deal with all sorts of problems in this country by the kind of investments that are necessary, putting people to work, solving the climate crisis.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: We’ve been speaking to Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada about an important and alarming new study showing that the rate of warming in Canada is far above the global average. Thank you very much for joining us today, Keith.

KEITH STEWART: Thanks so much for having me on.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And this is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network.

U.S. states most and least dependent on the gun industry

Yahoo – Finance

These are the U.S. states most and least dependent on the gun industry

Aarthi Swaminathan, Finance Writer       April 23, 2019

‘In America, we value our guns more than our children:’ Fmr. Secretary of Education on gun debate

Some U.S. states rely on America’s robust gun culture more than others.

Gun manufacturers like Smith & Wesson (AOBC) and Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) saw sales boom under former President Barack Obama’s tenure, but firearms sales in the U.S. fell by 6.1% — the second year of decline.

And if the “Trump Slump” persists for gunmakers, Idaho will be the state hardest hit, according to a new report from WalletHub.

The study — which ranked all 50 states based on how the firearms industry contributed to the economic development of the state from jobs to sales, how prevalent guns were, and how far the state supported gun rights — found that Idaho was the state that was the most dependent on the gun industry.

(Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)(Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

Alaska came in second place, followed by South Dakota, Wyoming, and Arkansas.

“Most states in the top ten have state law immunity to the gun industry, which means that the state provides immunity from bringing lawsuits against certain gun industry defendants,” WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez told Yahoo Finance. “They also have more lenient age restrictions to purchase and possess firearms. Senators from the top ten states voted to either loosen gun restrictions or against a measure adding restrictions.”

Gun-friendly Idaho

Idaho’s dependency stems from its reliance on the firearms industry: Idaho ranked only behind New Hampshire — home to industry giants like Sig Sauer and Sturm Ruger — in terms of the number of people per capita employed by the firearms industry.

In 2018, the firearms industry contributed to nearly $1.2 billion in economic activity to the state, with over 3,600 people employed in companies that “manufacture, distribute and sell firearms, ammunition, and hunting equipment,” a National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) report found.

The state also ranked in the top 5 in terms of gun-friendliness and the prevalence of guns.

Idaho began ramping efforts to attract the firearms industry in 2008 by touting its low wages, gun-friendly culture, and business climate, according to the Idaho Business Review. The plan has since paid off in less than a decade, as employment by the firearms industry grew 40% between 2012 and 2017.

An estimated 800 pro-gun activists turned out for a rally inside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, Saturday, January 19, 2013. (Chris Butler/Idaho Statesman/MCT via Getty Images)An estimated 800 pro-gun activists turned out for a rally inside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, Saturday, January 19, 2013. (Chris Butler/Idaho Statesman/MCT via Getty Images)

Overall, the NSSF also estimated that the firearms industry contributes to over $52 billion in economic activity to all 50 states, as gun manufacturers employed nearly 150,000 people, generated over $52 billion in economic activity, and its employees paid over $6.82 billion in taxes.

No guns in New Jersey

Gun-shy New Jersey ranked last on the list.

Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware followed.

In March 2018, the National Rifle Association criticized New Jersey — which is known for its exceptionally tough gun laws — after it elected anti-gun advocate Governor Phil Murphy as launching a “historic assault on our Second Amendment rights.”

Speaking in November 2018, after the mass shooting in in Parkland, Florida, Murphy stated: “Mass murder is not the price that we have to pay for the Second Amendment.”

While the number of outstanding registered firearms are roughly the same between both states — 52,527 in Idaho versus 59,000 in New Jersey — the deliberate emphasis on gun control has been effective in keeping the firearms industry’s influence largely out of the state’s economy.

In this photo provided by the New Jersey Governor's Office, Gov. Phil Murphy, center, signs several gun safety bills at the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex Atrium in Trenton, N.J., Wednesday, June 13 , 2018. The half-dozen new gun control laws tighten the state's already strict statutes. (Edwin J. Torres/New Jersey Governor's Office via AP)In this photo provided by the New Jersey Governor’s Office, Gov. Phil Murphy, center, signs several gun safety bills at the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex Atrium in Trenton, N.J., Wednesday, June 13 , 2018. The half-dozen new gun control laws tighten the state’s already strict statutes. (Edwin J. Torres/New Jersey Governor’s Office via AP)

Nevertheless, the NSSF claimed that New Jersey did see a $560 million boost in economic activity because of the industry.

Overall, the bottom five overall had “some of the lowest numbers of firearms and ammunition dealers, importers and manufacturers per capita,” Gonzalez noted. “As a result, the total federal excise taxes paid by the firearms industry are also some of the lowest in the country.”

Another interesting takeaway from the study is that while Texas had the highest number of registered firearms at 637,612 in 2018, it was only ranked no. 22 on the list.

Aarthi is a writer for Yahoo Finance.

What If the Sahara Desert Was Covered With Solar Panels?

What.If

What If the Sahara Desert Was Covered With Solar Panels?

April 22, 2019

Could this be the solution to climate change?
#earthday

What If the Sahara Desert Was Covered With Solar Panels?

Posted by What.If on Monday, October 22, 2018

The planet has until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change

CNN is premiering a video.
How To Fix the Planet

April 22, 2019

According to United Nations experts, the planet has until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change. CNN climate change correspondent Bill Weir joins Full Circle to discuss his travels all around the world looking at the causes of, and solutions to, climate change.

How to fix the planet

According to United Nations experts, the planet has until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change. CNN climate change correspondent Bill Weir joins Full Circle to discuss his travels all around the world looking at the causes of, and solutions to, climate change.

Posted by CNN on Monday, April 22, 2019

Feedback loops will make climate change even worse

Yahoo News

David Knowles          April 22, 2019
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)

 

When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its dire report in October warning of humanity’s fast-approaching reckoning with global warming, one factor adding to the urgency was a new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.

With rising Arctic temperatures setting free a vast amount of carbon previously locked beneath permafrost, the additional greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere would speed up warming, the report concluded — and that, in turn, would further melt the permafrost.

It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.

“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”

Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”

Almost every scientist studying the effects of climate change is worried about the extent to which feedback loops will hasten global warming. One of the most serious concerns is the “albedo effect,” the amount of the sun’s radiation the planet reflects back into space, mostly from the polar ice sheets. The warming that has already occurred has begun melting the ice caps, leaving the relatively dark ocean and land exposed to absorb solar radiation — further warming the planet and leading to more ice melt.

“The impact that it has on making the earth darker by removing all the snow and ice is estimated by some to be 25 to 40 percent of the warming that we’ve experienced,” Jennifer Francis, research professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, told Yahoo News. “In other words, global warming is that much worse. There’s a lot of ways these things are totaled all together.”

Feedback loops are not a root cause of the climate change problem, but they make the problem that much worse. When climatologists began seriously studying global warming in the 1970’s, there was some doubt about how the feedback loops would operate. Scientists theorized there might also be negative feedback loops, which would slow global warming — for instance, by increasing cloud cover. But so far it has all gone in the opposite — wrong — direction.

Austfonna, a melting ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. (Photo: Jan Tove Johansson/Getty Images)
Austfonna, a melting ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. (Photo: Jan Tove Johansson/Getty Images)

 

“I’m not optimistic. It’s not just because of those feedbacks, it’s because we’ve already put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that carbon dioxide lasts a very long time,” Francis said. “A molecule of carbon dioxide, on average, lasts about 100 years in the atmosphere. So, we haven’t yet felt the impacts of the carbon dioxide that we’ve already put in the atmosphere. Even not thinking about feedbacks, we’re already got a lot more climate change built into the system just because it takes awhile for the climate system to adjust itself to this new level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. All the feedback that [happens is] just making that response even bigger than it would be otherwise.”

Francis has been researching how rising Arctic temperatures have been weakening the jet stream, causing shifts in weather and ocean current patterns that, in yet another feedback loop, warm the earth and further destabilize the jet stream.

“What we’re seeing is that the Arctic is warming much faster than the planet is farther south, making that north-south temperature difference much smaller and so there’s less of that fuel driving the jet stream wind,” Francis said. “That should cause the jet stream to take more of these big north-south swings. And the reason that’s important is because those waves in the jet stream are actually what create high- and low-pressure systems that we see on a weather map on TV and when you get those really big waves in the jet stream, they tend to move much more slowly, so those highs and lows we see on a weather map also tend to move much more slowly and so the weather conditions we see on the surface associated with those weather systems are much more persistent.”

Persistent weather patterns, such as periods of rain or drought lasting months, can have potentially devastating consequences, Francis said.

Harold Wanless, director of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department and a leading expert on sea level rise, has studied the rate at which the oceans have risen and retreated over millennia. He fears that a variety of feedback loops will contribute to a dramatic increase in sea level in the coming decades.

“My work on ancient climate shows we have these rapid pulses of rise that are rather dramatic, up to 10 meters of sea level rise certainly within a century, and that’s a really rapid disintegration of ice,” Wanless said. “We’re just seeing the beginning of ice melt and the beginning of the warming of the waters reaching up to the Arctic, in what is most certainly going to be the beginning of one of these rapid pulses.”

Floating drifting ice floe forming around the Antarctic continent. (Photo: Philippe Bourseiller/Getty Images)
Floating drifting ice floe forming around the Antarctic continent. (Photo: Philippe Bourseiller/Getty Images)

 

To Wanless, the evidence is clear that we’ve already reached a tipping point when it comes to the cascading impacts of climate change on sea level rise.

“Once you start adding up these different feedbacks, because that’s the only thing we have to go on in the modern era, well, there are all these things that are speeding up ice melt, some of which we’re just becoming aware of, like the collapse of the high ice sheets. We’re just trying to figure out how fast and how dramatic that will be,” Wanless says. “A lot of them work together. The warm water getting in under the outlet fjords of Greenland and Antarctica that ends up detaching the ice from the substrate and once that happens, you can have this sort of automatic fracturing of the detached ice like a stack of books starting to splay out off a table.”

It’s sobering to realize the extent to which the planet’s ecosystem is interconnected. For years, relatively little was known about the vital role the Arctic played in keeping the world stable. As the permafrost has begun to thaw, however, the global ramifications have become unavoidable.

“The permafrost acts like a giant freezer. The reason we have freezers in our kitchen is you put organic carbon in the form of food in your freezer and it doesn’t decompose,” said Charles Koven, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The same thing happens in these Arctic ecosystems. Plants grow and then die and form organic layers, kind of like compost on the surface of the soil and then over time, that carbon gets mixed down deeper into the soil where it gets locked into these deeper layers where it gets frozen and can stay for thousands of years.”

Koven is the author of a 2015 study that found that every 1 degree Celsius of warming releases from the permafrost the equivalent of 1.5 to two years of human-generated global carbon dioxide emissions.

“When you have warming, it causes the layer of soil that thaws every summer to thaw a bit deeper. It’s like taking stuff that’s been in your freezer and putting it into your fridge. It doesn’t last as long and it decomposes, and then you end up releasing greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.”

Yet Koven stressed that emissions from thawing permafrost were not, in and of themselves, necessarily catastrophic.

“The carbon that’s released from the permafrost isn’t such a strong feedback loop,” Koven said. “It’s more just that because you get this additional amount of carbon in the atmosphere with every additional bit of warming, that makes it that much more difficult to meet the kinds of climate targets that we’d like to.”

Icebergs stranded in shallow bay near Booth Island, Antarctica. (Photo: Eastcott Momatiuk/Getty Images)
Icebergs stranded in shallow bay near Booth Island, Antarctica. (Photo: Eastcott Momatiuk/Getty Images)

 

Roisin Commane, assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, has also been studying the thawing permafrost and was the lead author on the first study to show that Alaskan tundra was now a net emitter of carbon dioxide.

“Christmas Day last year the North Pole wasn’t frozen. The sea ice isn’t freezing, the soils aren’t freezing,” Commane told Yahoo News. “This past year, 2017-2018, a lot of Alaska’s North Slope and into Siberia never froze through. They had a very early snow, which provided an insulating layer and those soils never froze and the amount of CO2 and methane coming out was quite high.”

Unlike Wanless, who has witnessed firsthand the deterioration of the ice sheet in Greenland over decades, Commane has only recently begun traveling to the Arctic. Still, she has struggled with what she’s found there and fears that feedback loops will only exacerbate the metamorphosis of that landscape.

“All of our preconceived notions of what should be happening, they’re gone,” she said. “I didn’t grow up in the Arctic, so everything I’ve been learning about it is from what I’ve been reading. But then I go there and it’s a completely different place.”

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

John Oliver Revels In His Favorite Moment Of The Mueller Report

HuffPost – Politics

Ed Mazza, HuffPost       April 22, 2019

John Oliver said President Donald Trump was saved from criminal charges by two things described in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report:  incompetence and disobedience.

But the “Last Week Tonight” host also paused on Sunday to appreciate the moment Trump learned that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate the 2016 election and his campaign.

“This is the end of my presidency” Trump declared, according to the report. “I’m fucked.”

Oliver said:

‘Fucked.’ He said ‘I’m fucked.’ And while we obviously don’t know whether Trump will face any repercussions from this report, I’d just like to live for a little longer in the moment of him saying, ‘This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.’

Then, Oliver used a little “artistic license” to set the scene, complete with fantasy images from inside the Oval Office.

“It is a masterpiece!” Oliver declared as he described the moment in glorious “Last Week Tonight” detail:

Sri Lanka’s violent past has created a polarized society ripe for radicalization

The Independent

Sri Lanka’s violent past has created a polarized society ripe for radicalization

Andreas Johansson, The Independent        April 22, 2019
Sri Lanka attacks: Prime minister orders inquiry into prior information held by police

I have been travelling to Sri Lanka since 2006. The first time I visited, the Tamil Tigers carried out a suicide attack just a couple of blocks from where I was staying. It seemed that the war between the Tamil militants and the Sri Lankan government would never end. But it did: in 2009 the government launched a brutal attack that ended the war.

Even though the end came in a very cruel way, with the deaths of many civilians, I thought that maybe now the healing could start between the different communities in the country. I was wrong.

Since the war ended, both the Sri Lankan government and Tamil militants have been investigated for war crimes. A decade later, these investigations of crimes against humanity are ongoing, and a report released by the UN claimed both parties “were guilty of war crimes, especially in their treatment of civilians in the war zone”.

The leadership of the country has protested against these investigations, while reconciliation between the Tamils and Sinhalese has been criticised. There have been several reports that the Tamil minority are unhappy with the treatment from the Sri Lankan government.

Parallel to tension between Tamils and Sinhalese, another conflict has been on the rise in Sri Lanka. Over recent years, Buddhist nationalists have attacked Muslims and Christians in the country. Organisations such as the Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist power force) has been accused of inciting attacks on both groups.

In the town of Aluthgama in 2014, Muslims were killed in an attack by Sinhala and Buddhist nationalists. In 2018, two Muslims were killed when an angry mob of Sinhalese attacked them after a Sinhalese lorry driver had been killed by four Muslim youths. Buddhists groups also attacked Christian institutions after the war.

To make things even more complicated when it comes to understanding the different conflicts in the country, Muslims have also been mired in their own internal conflict between conservative (often called reformists, or wahhabis in the South Asian context) and Sufi Muslim groups.

In one attack in 2006, conservative Muslims destroyed parts of a Sufi mosque in the town of Kattankudy in the eastern part of the country, resulting in casualties. Such attacks were an early sign that some Muslim groups had adopted a militant Islamist agenda.

In my fieldwork in Sri Lanka I visited many mosques, and in some of these I obtained material that could be linked to Islamist and jihadi organisations. These included speeches from Osama Bin Laden translated into Tamil (which is the dominant language among Muslims). I did not know how widespread this material was, but the signs of radicalization were there.

Now it appears that a domestic Muslim radicalized group, most likely with the help of an international organisation, was behind the Easter terrorist attacks.

The magnitude of the attack and the targets, Christians and tourists, points in the direction of an international network of terrorists. And it is a sign that a new form of terrorism has reached this island country that already has been polarized by so many different conflicts. It has been ripe for exploitation by those with a twisted agenda.

The recent rise of Sinhalese and Buddhist nationalism means there is a risk that riots will occur between Sinhalese and Muslim groups, spurred by these attacks. There is also a presidential election this year and parliamentary elections next year – the Easter attacks have delivered a real fear that they could be defined by violence.

​Back in 2009, I hoped that peace might lie beyond violence. I was wrong that time, but we are left to hope that this attack might startle Sri Lanka’s disparate groups into something that leads towards unity for a country struggling to escape from a violent past.

Andreas Johansson is director of the Swedish South Asian Studies Network at Lund University and author of the book ‘Pragmatic Muslim Politics – The Case of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress’ (2019/Springer)