Ohio mayor asks Trump for help combating Lake Erie algae

Washington Post

Ohio mayor asks Trump for help combating Lake Erie algae

In this Sept. 20, 2017 photo, a catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters at the end of 113th Street in the Point Place section of North Toledo, Ohio. The 2017 algae bloom has stretched along the shores of Ohio, Michigan and Ontario, Canada, and will be among the largest in recent years. The 2015 bloom was the largest on record, covering an area the size of New York City. (Andy Morrison/The Blade via AP) (Associated Press)

By John Seewer | AP October 7, 2017

TOLEDO, Ohio — Three years after toxic algae in Lake Erie tainted the drinking water for more than 400,000 people, many are still leery about what’s coming out of their faucets.

Some have taken to stockpiling bottled water in the summer months when algae blooms blanket the western end in the shallowest of the Great Lakes.

Store shelves were emptied of bottled water a week ago when algae pushed into a river that flows through downtown Toledo into the lake, turning the river fluorescent green and sparking rumors that another “do not drink” advisory was looming.

It wasn’t the first time there’s been a run on bottled water even though there have been no water warnings since the first one in 2014.

Toledo’s mayor has asked President Donald Trump for help from the federal government in cleaning up the lake and wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to declare the western end impaired, which would allow for increased pollution regulations.

“There is something very wrong with our country when our rivers and lakes turn green,” Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson wrote in a letter sent to Trump last week. “As I look out my office at a green river, I can tell you one thing: the status quo is not working.”

A message seeking comment on the letter was left with the White House.

Scientists largely blame farm fertilizer runoff and municipal sewage overflows for feeding the algae growth. While there are a number of efforts to tackle the problem, it won’t be solved for years.

This year’s algae bloom has stretched along the shores of Ohio, Michigan and Ontario, Canada, and will be among the largest in recent years. The 2015 bloom was the largest on record, covering an area the size of New York City.

The uncertainty some still have about the Toledo’s drinking water, the mayor said in an interview Wednesday, shows there’s a general mistrust about what some hear from government leaders and how easily rumors spread.

She pointed to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and how residents there were told the water was safe for months despite dangerous lead levels.

“We’re going to do what we can to regain their trust,” said Hicks-Hudson, a Democrat who’s up for re-election in November. “That’s all we can do.”

She said she has spent many hours talking with residents and reassuring them the water is safe. “Some will give me a suspicious look,” she said.

The tap water, she said, is tested daily and more often than the state requires. The city also has invested in upgrading its treatment plant and there’s an early warning system in the lake to notify the plant’s operators when toxic algae is increasing.

The city also has created a site that shows the daily tests on raw and treated water. But that’s not enough for some.

Tammie Nixon, of Toledo, said her family hasn’t drunk the city’s water since officials issued a “do not drink” for two days in September 2014. She was pregnant at the time and now also has a 3-month-old.

“Definitely not with the kids,” she said while loading jugs of milk and water into her car at the grocery. “It’s kind of scary. There’s only so much you can filter out.”

Chief justice: Pay no attention to the rigged election behind the curtain

Detroit Free Press-USA Today

Chief justice: Pay no attention to the rigged election behind the curtain

Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press Columnist October 8, 2017

SCOTUS is lined up to hear cases on topics like labor relations, gerrymandering and voters’ rights. Video available by Newsy Newslook

(Photo: Olivier Douliery, Getty Images)

For 12 years, Chief Justice John Roberts has worked overtime peddling the dubious conceit that he and his life-tenured colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court are above politics and determined to remain so.

Yet Roberts himself is a consummate politician — a strategist who worries about appearances and harbors a ward heeler’s contempt for the intelligence of the average voter. And his cynicism was on full display last week when justices took up the politically fraught problem of gerrymandering.

Plaintiffs in a case known as Gill v. Whitford want the Supreme Court to rule that Wisconsin legislators violated the U.S. Constitution when they drew district boundaries that systematically diluted the electoral clout of their state’s Democratic voters.

Dickerson: Has Justice Kennedy finally had enough of partisan gerrymandering?
More: State panel approves petition aimed at ending gerrymandering

A lower court ordered Wisconsin to draw a fairer map after concluding that evidence and voting data submitted by the plaintiffs proved Republicans had configured districts designed to preserve their party’s legislative majority even when Democrats win a majority of the popular vote.

Roberts, who knows a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs will jeopardize Republican gerrymanders in more than a dozen other states, wants his colleagues to stay out of a partisan process even simpatico conservatives like Justice Samuel Alito concede is “distasteful.” The chief justice says the public will lose respect for the courts if he and his colleagues stick their noses into all that distastefulness.

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says voters would think the high court was throwing elections for Democrats if tried to put a stop to gerrymandering. (Photo: Mike Thompson/Detroit Free Press)

But what if a majority party uses its mapmaking prowess to effectively disenfranchise the opposing party’s voters? And what if those aggrieved voters can use the same technological advances their opponents exploited to prove an election was rigged, and even to quantify the advantage its rivals gained by manipulating a state’s political boundaries?

That’s exactly what has happened in the Wisconsin case, as one of the country’s premier scientists explained in a remarkable friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Mapping chromosomes and rigged elections

It’s rare for disinterested third parties to play a decisive role in landmark Supreme Court cases. But the arguments filed by Eric Lander, a geneticist and mathematician who oversees the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, may prove an exception.

Lander was one of the principal leaders of the decade-long effort to map the human genome, and he has advised the White House and the Pentagon on innovative uses of technology for national defense. In a brief that several justices cited during Tuesday’s oral arguments, Lander says the sort of data-crunching the federal government uses to assess whether a nuclear weapon will detonate properly or whether Miami is safely outside the path of a hurricane can be used to prove when political boundaries have been manipulated to guarantee one party the largest possible electoral advantage.

Lander’s argument is a crucial one, because lawsuits challenging the fairness of gerrymandered political districts have foundered on the high court’s doubts that challengers could propose an objective standard for evaluating partisan bias.

Lander says technological advances that allow mapmakers to project likely electoral outcomes in thousands of different scenarios mean that a party that controls the redistricting process can pick the map that yields the most extreme partisan advantage. But he adds that the same analytical methods allow courts to discover when district lines have been manipulated to produce the maximum distortion of the electorate’s will, whether by amplifying the impact of one party’s voters or minimizing its opponents’ ability to muster an electoral majority in most districts.

By comparing the district lines a state has adopted with all the other possible configurations that comply with state and federal law, courts can determine not only whether a given map handicaps one party’s voters, but also how much. Using these reliable analytical tools, Lander says, deciding which of several possible maps yields electoral outcomes most consistent with the majority’s druthers becomes “a mathematical question to which there is a right answer” — exactly the sort of objective test judges worried about the corrosive effects of gerrymandering have been seeking.

Gobbledygook?

Chief Justice Roberts, of course, doesn’t see it that way. During oral arguments last week, he dismissed the evidence Lander and other mathematical analysts have submitted as proof Wisconsin’s legislative elections are rigged as “sociological gobbledygook.”

In another exchange with the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the chief justice appeared to concede that the evidence he disparaged might be persuasive after all, once you took the time to digest it, but hinted that few voters had the patience or smarts to do so.

“The intelligent man on the street is going to say that’s a bunch of baloney,” Roberts insisted. If justices blow the whistle on Republican cheating, he believes, the public will inevitably conclude that they’re simply shilling for Democrats — “And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and the integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country.”

Roberts’ argument amounts to a rejection of rational inquiry itself: If the evidence that Wisconsin has violated its citizens’ constitutional rights is too sophisticated for laymen to grasp at first glance, he says, the court would be better off to ignore it.

This is the same cynically anti-intellectual rationale cheerleaders for the fossil fuel industry have marshaled to discredit the evidence of climate change. Until “the intelligent man on the street” has a keener understanding of the role greenhouse gases play in global warming, why should elected officials kowtow to experts who do?

Of course, the same logic could be marshaled to discount the warnings of hurricane forecasters or military strategists trying to anticipate the likely consequences of a military confrontation in the Middle East or on the Korean peninsula. If we don’t understand their calculations, why should we pay any attention to them?

The answer, of course, is that democratic government, like many other aspects of daily life, requires a reasonable deference to those with superior expertise: the surgeon who does hundreds of bypass operations a year, the repair technician who diagnoses malfunctioning furnaces for a living, or the pilot with 10,000 hours of in-flight service under her belt.

Roberts is right to be worried about the credibility of the judiciary, and its capacity to command the confidence of citizens across the political spectrum. But he should be at least as concerned about the credibility of representative democracy itself.

As Paul Smith, who represents the plaintiffs challenging Wisconsin’s legislative map argues, the stakes in Gill v. Whitford are larger than the public’s perception of Justice Roberts and his colleagues.

“If you let this go, if you say … we’re not going to have a judicial remedy for this problem, in 2020 you’re going to have a festival of copycat gerrymandering the likes of which this country has never seen,” Smith warned Roberts near the end of Tuesday’s oral arguments. “Voters everywhere are going to be like voters in Wisconsin, and (say): No, it really doesn’t matter whether I vote.”

Contact Brian Dickerson: bdickerson@freepress.com

Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Want Government To Act On Climate Change, But There’s A Catch

DeSmog

Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science

Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Want Government To Act On Climate Change, But There’s A Catch

By Farron Cousins October 4, 2017

Image: Texas Army National Guardsmen assist residents affected by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Aug. 27, 2017. Army National Guard photo by Lt. Zachary West.

New polling data provides some inspiring news about the prospects for climate change action in the United States. According to public policy polling conducted by AP-NORC and the Energy Policy Institute at The University of Chicago, 61% of American citizens believe that climate change is a threat that the federal government should actively work to prevent. The poll also reveals that majorities in both major political parties – Democrats and Republicans – accept the fact that climate change is actually happening and that human activity is making it worse.

This data reinforces previous polling data indicating that a majority of American citizens, regardless of party affiliation, believe that climate change is a serious issue demanding urgent political action.

What sets the new set of data apart from the rest is also the part that makes it slightly less uplifting.

The poll found that 51% of Americans are willing to pay $1 per month to combat the growing threat of climate change, but when you start look at numbers higher than a dollar per month, the willingness of American citizens to foot the bill begins to decline sharply.

Additionally, the poll found a majority of citizens are against fracking, especially when they learn about the negative health effects from the oil and gas drilling process. However, support for fracking rises to nearly 41% when citizens are told that it could save them a few hundred dollars each year on their electric bills.

The new data helps to provide a clearer picture of how American citizens tend to view most non-social issues, and that is through the lens of finance.

When presented with data showing that dirty energy is harmful — but might save them money (in the short term) — they gravitate towards the “saving money” rather “saving lives” side of the climate equation.

But the fact that most people are willing to shell out even one dollar per month is actually a giant leap forward in terms of Americans’ willingness to address the growing threat of climate change, even if they may have to foot part of the bill.

Another interesting point about these polls is that the data was actually collected prior to the devastating string of hurricanes that hit the US — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — that captured the attention of the public and brought the issue of climate change to the forefront, albeit for a brief period of time.

There’s no doubt that the federal government could and should devote a lot more taxpayer money to fight climate change. Instead, Washington is currently choosing to subsidize an industry that is struggling to survive, and is significantly responsible for the climate change that’s hurting us now.

Why Not Fund Climate Action With Polluter Profits?

Ultimately, when it comes to paying for action to combat climate change, American citizens might consider asking their representatives in Washington to hold polluting industry responsible for funding the US response to climate change. After all, the fossil fuel industry bears significant responsibility for our current and future global warming predicament.

A recent report found that subsidies to the fossil fuel industry top $5 trillion a year – money that could instead be spent on infrastructure to protect low-lying cities from flooding in the event of rising waters, for instance. That money could also be used to provide more subsidies to the renewable energy sector which is already growing at a pace that far exceeds that of the fossil fuel sector.

Perhaps if we end the federal life support going to fossil fuel companies — a form of corporate welfare that is far from necessary — we could finally start addressing climate change without having to ask taxpayers to cough up a few extra dollars every month.

Republicans Are Kicking People Off Food Stamps

Newsweek

Under Trump’s New Budget, If You Don’t Work, You Don’t Eat: Republicans Are Kicking People Off Food Stamps

By Christianna Silva October 7, 2017

UPDATE: The budget resolution passed by the House on Thursday will push millions of already struggling people off food stamps, leaving the neediest Americans—children and the elderly among them—without food.

The $4.1-trillion budget will take over $150 billion away from several poverty programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps low-income people keep food on the table, by giving them small amounts of supplemental money to spend on groceries—anywhere from $100 a month to $700 a month for a family of five, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

This budget isn’t the newest problem SNAP has had to face. The number of people on SNAP ebbs and flows with the economy, but only 75 percent of people who are eligible for SNAP actually participate in the program, the website Snap to Health says. And it’s because applying can get really complicated.

Evan Teske, a 26-year-old medical student, needed assistance while he was working for Americorps. After graduating from college in 2014, Americorps assigned him to Focuspoint Family Research Center, which focuses on education from childhood to adulthood. His stipend just wasn’t enough.

“So I had to apply for food stamps,” Teske told Newsweek.

The application process was pretty confusing, he said, but Americorps helped him apply. Then, after about a year and a half, he was taken off.

“I got taken off by the government against my will because every six months I had to update my paperwork so they could see how much they were giving me,” Teske said. “And at one point, when food stamps and a stipend still wasn’t quite enough, I had help from my parents and family members to help me out in a pinch. When I put that down in the updated documents, they didn’t call it an income, but they said it was extra. So they cut me off.”

Teske worked for Americorps for the next six months and then moved to New Mexico for medical school. He said SNAP and food stamps made his life more livable.

Teske was taken off food stamps because his family helped him when he was needing a bit more. If Trump’s budget proposal passes the Senate, as it has already passed the House, many more people will be bumped off SNAP—and a lot of them won’t have the familial safety net that Teske did.

“SNAP is the first line of defense against hunger in the U.S.,” Ellen Vollinger, the legal director who directs SNAP work at the Food Research and Action Center, told Newsweek. “It’s the one program that’s available all over the country to serve people who need food. It’s the most accessible and available to people.”

But lately, for two big reasons, fewer people have been taking advantage of SNAP. First of all, the economy is doing better, which means fewer people are struggling with poverty and fewer people need the program.

In 2009, about 32 million people received SNAP benefits. The number increased during the great recession to an annual high of 47.6 million in 2013. Then, as the economy began to improve, it was down to 43 million in April 2010. And it’s continue to show. From April 2015 to April 2016, it was all the way down by 1.9 million participants.

“The unemployment rate has often been a pretty good indicator for the need for SNAP. As it comes down, there might be a bit of a lag, but we see SNAP come down,” Vollinger said.

The second reason, however, is that some states are cutting corners by making it more difficult to apply for SNAP so they make more room in their budget.

“A lot of people don’t know that they’re eligible,” Ginger Zielinskie, president and CEO of Benefits Data Trust, a company that connects people with the services they need, told Newsweek. “The first barrier is awareness. … It can be a really complicated application process.”

Moreover, some state laws don’t allow people to stay on SNAP for longer than a few months unless they have jobs, are training for jobs or are doing community service. But in times of economic stress, there aren’t always jobs available for them.

Take, for example, Devon Bracher, who graduated from Vanderbilt with an engineering degree and was living with her two sisters in Portland, Oregon, when she applied to get on SNAP after not being able to find a job.

“Technically, my residency was in Virginia, but all my work experience was in Tennessee,” Bracher told Newsweek. “I didn’t have a job, I was looking for jobs. This was my first year after graduating. That was part of what’s complicated. I wasn’t an Oregon resident, but I didn’t have an official job in Virginia. Virginia told me to apply to Tennessee.”

So Bracher went through the online application for SNAP. But the system had her call a SNAP representative because she wasn’t a Tennessee resident.

“I probably called maybe like five different times and the line was always busy,” Bracher said. Eventually, she just gave up.

“I benefitted a lot from being able to live with family,” Bracher said. “My sisters helped a lot.”

Not everyone has a family like Bracher’s, and if the proposed cuts to SNAP make its way through, the states will be responsible to keep families from starving.

In Alabama, for instance, the number of able-bodied people on SNAP has dropped from around 5,000 to 800. Most of it is because of the regulations states are forced to place on the benefits so that they can make their budget, a trend that’s seen all over the U.S.

Californians have concerns people who need programs like SNAP won’t be able to access them under Trump’s new budget, according to Jared Call from California Food Policy Advocates.

“We try to think of people first, but this particular [budget proposal] … would really seek to shift a substantial share to the states or propose penalties to put states on the hook and that’s just not something that state budgets are prepared to absorb,” he told Newsweek.

“California would go down $1.8 billion to just keep even. So you’re faced with cutting other important services or education or other programs or cutting benefit amounts or cutting eligibility,” Call said. “We want SNAP to go to the people who need it, but this proposal does not work that way. There is no way to cut SNAP without impacting benefit levels or eligibility. Ninety-four percent of these funds go directly to benefits, there’s no fat to cut.”

One in six people in America faces hunger, more than almost any other country in the developed world. If this budget goes through, and important programs like SNAP are axed, that number will be on the rise.

Story was updated to clarify the number of SNAP participants between 2015 and 2016 and the number of able-bodied people on SNAP in Alabama.

The U.S. Could Learn From Australia’s Gun Control

Fusion is with Splinter

Two decades ago, Australia took action on gun control after a mass shooting.

Now, gun violence has drastically declined in the wake of some of the strictest gun laws in the world:

The U.S. Could Learn From Australia's Gun Control

Two decades ago, Australia took action on gun control after a mass shooting.Now, gun violence has drastically declined in the wake of some of the strictest gun laws in the world:

Posted by Fusion on Friday, October 6, 2017

Game-Changing Lamp Powered by Gravity Could Provide Light to Billions

EcoWatch via ZINC

Gravitylight is changing lives in Africa

Game-Changing Lamp Powered by Gravity Could Provide Light to Billions

by Elaine Chow

Solar-powered electricity systems have often been touted as a solution for those living without reliable access to electricity, but another Earthly force is also readily available (and doesn’t surrender to inclement weather or nightfall): Gravity.

That’s the idea behind the GravityLight—a lamp that only requires the weight of a bag of sand or rocks to provide light. And for the 1.3 billion people in the world who live in “energy poverty,” this simple yet genius idea could be a game changer.

For the majority of people without reliable access to electricity, dangerous and polluting kerosene is the primary source for light. But as designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves said in their Indiegogo campaign, the GravityLight is “a low-cost [less than $10], safe and reliable alternative to the kerosene lamp, one that costs nothing to run, doesn’t need batteries and pays for itself within weeks switching from kerosene.”

It doesn’t take much to provide a lot of power. Photo Credit: GravityLight

It basically works like a hand-cranked lantern. To activate the GravityLight’s bright LED, the user attaches a weighted bag that’s at least a 12 kg (about 26 lbs) to a beaded chain. The user then lifts the bag up by pulling on the chain.

When user releases the bag, the bag’s slow descent to the floor (at about 1mm a second) helps power an internal DC generator that runs at thousands of rotations per minute. With these easy steps, the lamp can provide enough light for up to 30 minutes and can be repeated over and over as needed.

This simple pulley system allows the process to repeat indefinitely. Photo Credit: GravityLight

The project, which reached half of its $199,000 crowdsourcing goal in only 10 days and is nearing complete funding, is actually version 2.0 of the lamp. After the first version of the lamp, called GL01, was fully funded by a 2014 Indiegogo campaign, the makers tested it on more than 1,300 off-grid families around the globe. According to the designers, more than 90 percent of those who tried the lamp preferred it over a kerosene lamp.

This current version allegedly hammered out GL01’s kinks and is also brighter, simpler, lasts longer and stays lit even while it’s being charged, Gizmodo Australia reported.

Makers of the lamp are hoping to “empower those without electricity” and enable people to “break free from the economic, health and environmental hazards of kerosene lamps.”

Did you know 28% of Africa’s rural pop have electricity @UNDPAfrica @WorldResources #SE4ALL http://t.co/SQPR9Rdhdv pic.twitter.com/RIu3aO4p6b
— GravityLight (@GravityLight) May 22, 2015

The goal of the crowdsourcing campaign is to set up an assembly line in Kenya as well as provide local jobs and skills.

Now that’s a bright idea.

Tom Steyer: I’m a billionaire. Please raise my taxes

Los Angeles Times Op ED

Tom Steyer: I’m a billionaire. Please raise my taxes

Tom Steyer, the author of this article, speaks at the California Democratic Convention, in Los Angeles on March 8, 2014. (Los Angeles Times)

Tom Steyer October 5, 2017

As a billionaire, I would profit substantially from the tax cuts proposed last week by President Trump and the Republican Party. But I am strongly opposed to even one more penny in cuts for rich people and corporations.

My reason is simple: Tax cuts for the rich defund the critical public programs on which American families depend.

Three decades of data prove that tax cuts for the wealthy do not “trickle down” to working people or grow the overall economy. Since the Reagan era, Republicans have prescribed cuts for rich people and corporations as a cure-all. But every time they put their theory into practice, the rich just get richer and everyone else gets left behind. When such cuts drain the government of the revenue it needs to pay for essential services like public education, Medicare and Social Security, Republicans then seize the opportunity to shrink those programs.

Consider Kansas, where Republicans recently had the chance to pursue their tax-cut fantasy with an extreme anti-tax experiment. In 2012, they slashed taxes and promised fantastic growth. Instead, their scheme blew a hole in the state budget. The resulting shortfall in revenue forced severe cuts to public education and other essential programs, hurt working families and drove businesses out of the state.

Let’s raise taxes on the rich and use the money to invest directly in the American people.

Similar experiments at the national level have left the U.S. teetering on the edge of dangerous economic inequality. Today, the top 1% of the population takes more than 20% of the income generated here in a year. That’s more than double the share that rich people took in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the earnings of America’s working families have stagnated.

This degree of inequality is a major crisis, yet Republicans are proposing to exacerbate it by stripping trillions more in government revenue. Indeed, the GOP plan would put the country on a path to permanent economic inequality — and maybe that’s the point.

Some members of the ruling class are making a concerted effort to expand the wealth gap. A gang of powerful interests, led by the Koch brothers, launched a campaign to build support for the tax overhaul before it even existed. The coalition of wealthy conservatives spent tens of millions to mislead Americans about tax cuts. They had to: As the president of the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, Tim Phillips, recently said of the “average Americans” whose support would be needed: “If they think it’s just a group of wealthy corporations or powerful special interests battling it out to see who gets the best carve-outs, then it will fail.” If the coalition succeeded in obscuring the truth, in other words, its investments would pay off.

This campaign illustrates why economic inequality poses a grave threat to democracy. In our political system, money is power. The more we allow Republicans to concentrate the lion’s share of wealth in the hands of a few, the more power these wealthy few will have. And they will use this power to continue rewriting the rules of both our economy and our political system in their favor.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to “fix the rigged system.” By “fix,” he apparently meant rigging it to permanently benefit billionaires like himself.

Unrigging the system will require us to acknowledge that the American middle class enjoyed its strongest period of growth from 1950 to 1970 — a time when the effective tax rates for the wealthy were above 40% and the U.S. took unrivaled leadership in the global economy. It will require that we think of investment not as something done solely by the private sector, but as a category that encompasses public spending.

Bullish investment in the American people has arguably been the most important factor in our national success. But out of greed and selfishness, Republicans are intent on fighting such investment at every turn. After accumulating nearly all of the economy’s gains over the last 10 years, billionaires like Trump, and me, can more than afford to pay our fair share.

Let’s raise taxes on the rich and use the money to invest directly in the American people — by improving infrastructure, promoting clean energy, strengthening public education and expanding healthcare. Let’s boost wages to stimulate economic growth and job creation. It’s the only way we will create broad prosperity, rebuild the middle class and give working families a fair shake.

At a time like this, there’s only one reasonable position to take: I’m a billionaire. Please raise my taxes.

Tom Steyer is president of the progressive advocacy organization NextGen America.

Notes from closed meeting show how Interior aims to weaken environmental laws

Washington Post

Energy and Environment

Notes from closed meeting show how Interior aims to weaken environmental laws

By Darryl Fears October 5, 2017

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talks with rancher Heidi Redd at the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in May. (Scott G. Winterton/Salt Lake City Deseret News via AP)

Near the end of September, officials at the Interior Department bureau that oversees hundreds of millions of acres of public land hosted a conference with state, county and local government representatives to discuss ways to loosen environmental rules.

Bureau of Land Management hosts told attendees and those joining the invitation-only meeting remotely that they wanted to streamline a powerful law that protects wildlife and public land, the National Environmental Policy Act. They asked how its rules could be smoothed out to limit delays that slow public and corporate development so that the federal government, as President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have said, can be a better partner rather than a hindrance. The meeting covered ways to fulfill the president’s executive order to remove impediments to new infrastructure, mining and other development on federal land.

At least two groups not on the invitation list obtained the call-in information for the meeting and secretly sat in and took notes, which one group provided to The Washington Post.

Surrounded by miners from Rosebud Mining, President Trump signs his executive order on energy independence at the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington in March. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

During the Sept. 21 webinar, the BLM and its guests discussed ways to water down NEPA and more. They talked about working around environmental analyses that determine whether infrastructure projects harm ecosystems, about stripping conservation groups of the power to sue the BLM if it wrongly approves a project and about limiting the number of federal Freedom of Information Act requests that allow the public to scrutinize how decisions were made.

“We’re seeking a better decision-making process that’s more productive and getting decisions faster,” Leah Baker, the BLM division chief for planning and NEPA, said in an interview Tuesday. “We heard through this process that we should try and streamline regulations … and that the agency leaves a little to be desired in how effectively we coordinate” with states and local governments.

When a participant in the meeting noticed that the event was being recorded, BLM officials assured the group that it would not be distributed. A second webinar attended by native tribes took place Sept. 25, BLM officials said in an interview this week.

A few days after the webinars, Zinke called employees who disagreed with Trump’s vision for change disloyal and vowed to move policymaking positions at Interior’s Washington headquarters to offices out West, possibly to Denver. Zinke has already reassigned dozens of senior Interior employees to positions they did not want. Interior’s inspector general is probing the legality of Zinke’s rapid reassignments.

NEPA is one of the oldest and most progressive environmental laws on the books. Established in 1970, it has been called an environmental Magna Carta that dozens of governments across the globe have used to craft their own environmental policies. But corporations and some state and local government officials have long criticized it as an impediment to development and revenue.

The webinar’s participants, which included the Western Governors’ Association and the National Association of Counties, also took aim at the Equal Access to Justice Act, which allows groups to seek reimbursement of attorneys’ fees when they win cases against the government. BLM officials and their guests said the reimbursements fuel more lawsuits from people who disagree with their land management practices.

The participants complained that the BLM is being overwhelmed with Freedom of Information Act requests from groups and individuals, more than 1,000 so far this year and growing. They discussed submitting recommendations to Zinke to limit those requests in addition to altering NEPA and EAJA.

Kelly Fuller, energy campaign coordinator for the Western Watersheds Project, said some state and local governments want to align the BLM’s environmental priorities with weaker or, in some cases, nonexistent rules of municipalities.

“They want BLM planning outcomes to match local and state plans … but there are different obligations,” Fuller said. “State and local plans are about development and extraction and making more money, creating more revenue.”

Since legislation is required to make those changes, they hoped Zinke would encourage Republicans in Congress, some of whom are working to weaken environmental rules such as the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Act, to include the September meeting’s recommendations as part of overall reform.

“They may say they want to streamline, but what they mean is cut the public out of the process, do less environmental review and have more secrecy so they can give oil, gas and coal companies unfettered access to our treasured public lands,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, who called the meeting an attempt to weaken NEPA.

“Let’s be perfectly clear,” said Bethany Cotton, a spokeswoman for WildEarth Guardians, based in Santa Fe, N.M. “The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back environmental protections are meant to strip the public of the opportunity to be informed and weigh in on proposals that will negatively impact our public lands, air, water, and most imperiled animals and plants. Each of these attacks is meant to cede power to resource extractive industries and anti-conservation localities.”

Cynthia Moses-Nedd, the BLM’s liaison to local and state governments who participated on the webinar with Baker and at least two other federal officials, said the issue isn’t so black and white. She recalled that a local government official suggested introducing legislation that would change the Equal Access to Justice Act.

“EAJA … is used to fund lawsuits against the BLM,” Nedd said, and can “paralyze the BLM when it’s doing its work. There needs to be something that deals with that … so BLM can do the work and not be hampered and paralyzed.”

Nedd said BLM isn’t necessarily trying to give its allies a greater role in environmental assessments. “I think our goal is to make sure we’re coordinating better … that’s where we saw the greatest input from our state and local partners.”

A gas flare burns as a driver monitors a water tank near Sidney, Mont., in February 2015. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)

Baker called the NEPA statute “a cool law” but said complying with its rules is “a heavy lift. We’re trying to figure out how we do it quicker. … There are things routine in nature that can make [the process] speed up.” She said she recalled an experience where a single misstep caused a decision that could have been completed in months to take years. Officials worried that the misstep would trigger a lawsuit that would doom an entire project.

The National Association of Counties agrees with local officials who say they’re cut out of NEPA’s processes to determine environmental harm and want to help decide how its analysis should be done. Association spokesman David Jackson said counties suffer when a NEPA analysis drags on for months and sometimes years. “NACo supports the revision of NEPA to strengthen the involvement of local government in the federal decision-making process. We also support more public involvement.”

Jackson said the association’s position is that EAJA also should be reformed to ease lawsuits. “You can’t do effective forest management, for example, because you get sued at every turn.”

Fuller, of the Western Watersheds Project, said: “We’re waiting to see the BLM’s recommendations report to Secretary Zinke to give local governments and the states greater control. … How far is he going to go?”

Energy efficiency: The hidden hand in the fight against climate change

The Hill

Energy efficiency: The hidden hand in the fight against climate change

By Ted Trabue, opinion contributor October 5, 2017

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

The danger and destruction of three high-category hurricanes within a week of each other on one side of the country, while wildfires and heatwaves racked the west coast should have woken up the United States — Climate change is real and the risks are growing.

Seeing the devastation of those affected by extreme weather amplified by climate change leaves many of us angry and helpless. It also makes the recent regressive steps taken to continue our nation’s climate-changing fossil fuel addiction all the more frustrating. At the same time, it inspires my work as a leader of an organization that is helping D.C. stay focused on energy solutions.

On October 5, we celebrate the second annual Energy Efficiency Day. Energy efficiency is not the most exciting way to reduce fossil fuel pollution, but it is the easiest. Energy not used reduces carbon emissions, while saving residents money. It also lets us redirect public resources to other causes like health care and public housing and local jobs. Less pollution, more savings — what’s not to like?

We at the DC Sustainable Energy Utility (DCSEU) are supporting Energy Efficiency Day as a collaborative effort of scores of organizations, companies and government agencies to spotlight the best ways to manage the District’s energy demand. Our message is simple: Save energy, save money, reduce emissions. Lightbulb for lightbulb.

In partnership with the District Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE), the DCSEU was born in 2011 with a mission to reduce the city’s energy use — and with it, pollution. That’s what we’ve done. Over the past six years, the DCSEU has prevented lifetime emissions of more than 3 million tons of CO₂. This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 3 billion pounds of coal burned or more than 670,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year. Fewer greenhouse gasses means less warming, which reduces the risks from extreme weather events worsened by warming.

D.C. faces a particular energy struggle: About 900 people move to the city every month — with population growth surging, energy demand is soaring. But we don’t have our own power plants. Nearby states generate most of D.C.’s electricity, and fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas account for 60 percent of that mix.

At the DCSEU we focus on energy efficiency because we know that it’s helping the District become more energy self-sufficient while creating new economic opportunities for District residents. Our rebate program makes energy efficient lighting and appliances more affordable and is part of our support for a more equitable energy future.

Our Workforce Development Program is one way we are building this future, by training underemployed, unemployed and other job-seeking D.C. residents so they have the skills for the ever-growing green jobs market. Since 2011, we have helped the District, its residents, and businesses save half-a-billion dollars on their energy bills. And we are not done yet.

But how can energy efficiency help you combat climate change by reducing your own carbon footprint? The answer is easy. You can start by switching your old incandescent or CFL lightbulbs to LED’s, which use 75 percent less energy. Buying a new washing machine? Consider picking one that’s ENERGY STAR-certified, which means it will deliver the same results as a standard washer — clean clothes — but will require 45 percent less water and 25 percent less energy. And it will show on your utility bills. Thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Appliance and Equipment Standards Program. By 2020, a typical family with new appliances will be able to save an average of $500 per year. The total savings are estimated to accumulate to $64 billion annually as appliances become more efficient.

While cities have become the main drivers in the transformation of the energy economy, everyone can take action. Today, I am asking you to reconsider your environment in a new light — whether home or business — and think about their energy choices. Small steps will translate into a larger transformation, lightbulb for lightbulb.

Ted Trabue is the managing director of the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility.

Food and farming policies ‘need total rethink’

BBC News Science and Environment

Food and farming policies ‘need total rethink’

By Claire Marshall BBC News October 5, 2017

Image copyright SPL Image caption The world needs to be fed but in a more sustainable way, says the CiWF

Can farming and food production be made less damaging to the planet?

A big meeting in London will look at how reforms could help halt species extinction, meet climate goals, limit the spread of antibiotic resistance and improve animal welfare.

The organizers of the Extinction and Livestock Conference say diverse interests will be represented.

They include multinational food corporations, native breed farmers, neurologists and naturalists.

McDonalds, Tesco and Compass will be rubbing shoulders with those from the Sustainable Food Trust, Quorn and WWF. The 500 delegates come from more than 30 countries.

Their wide interests illustrate the complex and difficult issues arising from global livestock production.

‘Catastrophic impacts’

The two-day conference is being organized by Compassion in World Farming (CiWF).

The campaigning organization warns that “there will be catastrophic impacts for life on Earth unless there is a global move away from intensive farming”.

The world is on track to lose two-thirds of its wildlife by the end of this decade, largely because habitats have been destroyed to produce food for humans.

There has been a rise in so-called “superbugs” linked to the use of antibiotics in farmed animals. And methane emissions from livestock have made a significant contribution to climate change.

CiWF CEO Philip Lymbery said: “Livestock production, the environment, wildlife conservation and human health are all interlinked, so it’s vital that experts from each of these fields work together to come up with practical solutions to stop this before it’s too late.”

CiWF believes that there should be a total rethink of food and farming policies, enshrined in the framework of a UN Convention.

The aim would be to properly integrate objectives such as food security, climate change, animal welfare and human health – so one isn’t pursued at the expense of the other.

Mr Lymbery added: “Many people are aware that wild animals such as penguins, elephants and jaguars are threatened by extinction. However, few know that livestock production, fuelled by consumer demand for cheap meat, is one of the biggest drivers of species extinction and biodiversity loss on the planet.”

Image copyright CiWF Image caption Future farming must work with Nature, not against it, says Philip Lymbery

Award-winning writer and activist Raj Patel from the University of Texas is speaking at the conference.

He said: “The footprint of global agriculture is vast. Industrial agriculture is absolutely responsible for driving deforestation, absolutely responsible for pushing industrial monoculture, and that means it is responsible for species loss.

“We’re losing species we have never heard of, those we’ve yet to put a name to and industrial agriculture is very much at the spear-tip of that. Conferences are for forging the alliances and building the movement that will change the world.”

Also attending is Martin Palmer, secretary-general of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

He said: “Our current food system is not about a healthy, sustainable world of food but about excess, greed and foolishness disguised as ‘market forces’.

“It treats the natural world not as something we are part of and therefore should treasure, but as a larder we can raid and somehow hope it gets filled again.

“But the truth is, it won’t! As a result of this conference I would hope that all the key players – including the great faiths – would find a place at the table and together, each in their own distinctive way, will be able to inspire and guide us towards a better, fairer world.”