Trump and His Administration Are a Parasite on American Government

Esquire

Trump and His Administration Are a Parasite on American Government

The blight of corruption is festering beneath the surface.

By Charles P. Pierce May 9, 2018

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A few years back, in a national forest in Oregon, researchers found the largest single living organism ever discovered on earth. It was a fungus of the genus Armillaria. It covered 1000 hectares of land and it was nearly 9,000 years old. Through a vast system of thick tendrils called rhizomorphs, Armillaria can spread over a huge area and survive by latching onto the root systems of trees, from which it slowly and parasitically dines on the nutrients of the trees until the trees finally fall over, dead. Most of the damage is done underground, and one Armillariacan kill an entire conifer forest.

I’m beginning to think that the corruption of this administration* is the political equivalent of one of these super-fungi. It is so vast, and so much of it is hidden from view, that we may never see it entirely until it’s too late, and a whole lot of important things about this country go dead and topple down.

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The revelations on Tuesday that Michael Cohen, the president*’s personal lawyer, was one of the most ambitious bagmen in American political history all emerged from an improbable source: a lawsuit lodged against the president* by an adult-film actress with whom he allegedly had an affair. We discovered that Cohen reportedly got a half-million dollars from a Russian oligarch with “links” to Vladimir Putin, as though you could even be a Russian oligarch and stay alive without some kind of “links” to the newly re-elected goon-in-chief.

We also learned that a shell company set up by Cohen took in $200,000 in “consulting payments” from AT&T for, as the leaked documents put it, “insights into understanding the new administration.” They could’ve paid me half that and I would have told them all they needed to know: that these people are all a bunch of crooks and that the companies should adjust their payment schedules accordingly.

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I mean, really. Trump. Nixon. AT&T. ITT. Where have you gone, Dita Beard? A president* turns his greedy eyes to you.

Robert Mueller’s team already has interviewed Victor Vekselberg, Cohen’s buddy from Moscow, so we can probably assume there’s more there than we already know. (More women who were paid off? Checks with “kompromat” written in Cyrillic on the memo line? Who knows at this point?) The criminal rhizomorphs of this parasitic blight on government extend god knows where. That members of the administration—hi there, Scott Pruitt—see public service as an All-U-Can-Eat buffet on our dime is no secret any more. We’ve had Pruitt’s $43,000 phone booth, Ben Carson’s dinette set, and a great love for taxpayer-funded air travel by almost everyone.

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Nor is the fact that the president* has brought the principles he employed in private business into his public duties—to wit, keeping all the really rotten stuff underground by any means necessary, and reneging on debts you don’t have the money to pay anyway. And still, dammit, they can surprise you. As one of the scientists studying the massive Armillaria lamented to The Atlantic:

“I wish all of the substrate would be transparent for five minutes, so I could see where it is and what it’s doing. We would learn so much from a five-minute glimpse.”

Whether we’d all have the guts to look at what this spreading parasitic growth is doing to our country, however, is a whole different matter. If we saw it whole, we might have to do something about it, and then where would we be?

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None of Us Really Know These Guys

Esquire

None of Us Really Know These Guys

Eric Schneiderman completes the unholy trinity of New York’s prominent liberal politicians.

By Charles P. Pierce May 8, 2018

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The downfall of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman completes the unholy trinity of prominent liberal New York politicians whose careers went into the acid bath because, at one level or another, they failed to see women as actual human beings. Eliot Spitzer got involved with a prostitution ring. Anthony Weiner used women as sounding boards for his own pleasure. And Schneiderman, allegedly, physically assaulted his romantic partners. And, in this, again, political pundits learn the lesson that gets drummed into every sportswriter over and over: none of us really know these guys.

Hero worship among sportswriters is annoying, but largely harmless and, besides, there’s always someone who doesn’t buy into it. Hero worship in our politics, however, is a dangerous business. The search for the person on a white horse is an open invitation to counterfeit engagement and artificial activism. The impact of celebrity on our politics has been devastating enough; see the current tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for details. It’s a by-product of the constant calls for “leadership” among our political class, many of which are simple appeals for someone—anyone!—to remove the burdens of citizenship and self-government from our shoulders. And that has worked far too well.

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Let us dispense easily with any attacks on the journalism in the New Yorker piece. Ronan Farrow just won a Pulitzer for this kind of thing and Jane Mayer is a damn national treasure. Seeing your name as the subject of a story carrying both their bylines is like seeing your career’s death warrant. And Schneiderman’s original statement—that he was engaged in consensual rough sex—was, shall we say, inadequate. (He also allegedly used the considerable power of his office to threaten his victims into silence. Jesus, what a goon.) His swift resignation was more than justified and his disappearance from the ongoing drama of this presidency, while unfortunate, is wholly appropriate. He should’ve been in jail years ago.

Instead, for the purposes of this story, we should focus on one small slice of the account:

After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal business, and that she’d better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that she had taken this as a threat.

Who in the hell counsels a friend to hush up a violent assault on these grounds? My politics are as important to me as anyone’s are but if, say, Sherrod Brown came and burglarized your house, I wouldn’t tell you to let him keep your jewelry because we need him to save Social Security. (Note to Senator Brown: I do not believe you are a cat burglar.) This is turning your politics into a graven image, a golden calf of the soul. Believe it or not, there are some things that politics ought not to touch. Physical abuse of any kind is high on that list.

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(Not for nothing, and it’s a trivial matter compared to the horrors these women say they went through, but the great Dave Dayen has been making the case on the electric Twitter machine that, as a political actor and prosecutor, Schneiderman was pretty much a show-pony anyway.)

These instincts, alas, kicked in almost immediately after Schneiderman’s swift exit from the scene. There were instant calls for Preet Bhahara to replace Schneiderman. (Dayen’s not high on this idea, either.) These were based largely on the fact that Bhahara was 86’d by the president* after having been a thorn in his side as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And, just for fun, and for the possibility that the mere rumor would cause the president* to paint his body blue and dance a naked tarantella on the Truman Balcony, I suggested that we get the hashtag, #HRCforNYAG trending.

Preet Bharara. Getty Images

In truth, however, the search for a replacement should not be the search for A Name. For example, there are a lot of people saying good things about Ben Lawsky, a former U.S. Attorney and New York’s first Superintendent of Financial Services, an office created in response to the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Just a cursory search of the Intertoobz reveals Lawsky to have exactly the kind of attitude that this job needs going forward. In 2014, he said this to The Financial Times:

“Corporations are a legal fiction. You have to deter bad individual conduct within corporations. People who did the conduct are going to be held accountable.”

Hire this man immediately.

Because, even though there is great crowing within the pixels this morning about liberal hypocrisy and how no investigation of the current president* can be trusted, the work goes on. Lawyers and investigators you never heard of are beavering away—in Robert Mueller’s offices, and in the chambers of the New York Attorney General, whoever he may turn out to be. You’re still on the hook, Knocko. There’s just going to be someone new on the other end of the line. And, once the evidence is in, one way or the other, we shouldn’t look to some famous politician to tell us what to do with it. Once we know the truth, it’s on us to provide the consequences.

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Russian Leverage Over Trump Is Not Just a Theory. It’s Now Fact.

New York Magazine

Daily Intellegencer / The National Interest

Russian Leverage Over Trump Is Not Just a Theory. It’s Now Fact.

By Jonathan Chait May 8, 2018

No pee tape needed. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images

In the waning weeks of 2016, when the intelligence community and many politicians were passing around terrifying reports about Donald Trump’s links to Russia like samizdat, the frightening possibility arose that the sanctity of the United States government might be compromised in a way no living American had experienced. This was just one of the unnerving things about the rise of Trump, and it was one that many well-informed observers doubted. Russia, after all, was poor and weak. To imagine that a country with an economy smaller than Canada’s or Italy’s could leverage a superpower ten times wealthier beggared the imagination. And yet that paranoid, absurd belief seems to be creeping closer to reality than seemed possible even in those dark postelection days.

The New York Times has confirmed the explosive claims made by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, that Columbus Nova — a New York investment firm whose biggest client is a company controlled by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg — deposited half a million dollars into a secret account set up by attorney Michael Cohen to pay off Trump’s sexual partners. The possible reasons for this arrangement run from brazenly corrupt to far worse. Columbus Nova said the hefty sum was a “consulting fee” paid to Cohen, hardly a benign explanation.

5 of the Most Blatantly Unethical Moves by the Trump Administration

Columbus Nova reportedly retained Cohen’s services after Andrew Intrater, the company’s American chief executive, met him while attending Trump’s inauguration with Vekselberg, who is his cousin. Like all Russian oligarchs, Vekselberg operates in cooperation with the Putin government. The payments gave Russia several sources of possible leverage over Cohen and Trump. First, the money itself could amount to some kind of bribe, in return for which a favor would be expected. Second, Russia had knowledge of the secret payoff, which it could always expose. Third, the possibility (at minimum) exists that Russia knew the account was being used to silence Trump’s mistresses, yet another source of kompromat.

For all the speculation about the existence of the pee tape, the latest revelations prove what is tantamount to the same thing. Russia could leverage the president and his fixer — who, recall, hand-delivered a pro-Russian “peace plan” with Ukraine to Trump’s national-security adviser in January 2017 — by threatening to expose secrets they were desperate to keep hidden. Whether those secrets were limited to legally questionable payments, or included knowledge of sexual affairs, is a question of degree but not of kind.

Perhaps even more alarming has been the response of the political system to this crisis. The House of Representatives has assigned Devin Nunes, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, as its point man to defend Trump against the Mueller investigation. The Department of Justice has a long-standing policy of keeping Congress out of active investigations, for the obvious reason that elected officials have a powerful incentive to interfere. Nunes has demanded the virtually unlimited right to get inside the Mueller probe. Officials in the Department of Justice have come to suspect his goal is to compromise the investigation by handing information from the prosecutors over to Trump.

The Washington Post tonight reports another, and even more fanatical, step in Nunes’s crusade. Last week, Nunes demanded a piece of information that the FBI and other intelligence officials believed would “endanger a top-secret intelligence source.” They prevailed on Trump to support their request to withhold the information which, they argued, would “risk severe consequences including potential loss of human lives.”

Nunes is not only demanding the secret be revealed to him, but threatening to vote to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt. And officials who secured Trump’s support may have left out the fact that the source provided information to the Mueller investigation. As a result, “several administration officials said they fear Trump may reverse course and support Nunes’s argument.”

Think for a moment what this report tells us. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who enjoys the full backing of his party’s leadership, is willing to risk what his own government describes as the betrayal and potential loss of life of an intelligence source. And officials within this government believe the president would do the same, all in order to obstruct an investigation into the president’s secretive ties to a foreign power. They are acting as though Trump is compromised by Russia, or at the very least, that he cannot be trusted to defend his own country’s security against it. The sordid Russia scandal has already brought some version of a very dark nightmare scenario to life.

This post has been updated with additional information about Columbus Nova’s relationship with Michael Cohen.

Trump Destroys the Iran Deal—and a Lot More

The New Yorker – News Desk

Trump Destroys the Iran Deal—and a Lot More

By Robin Wright May 8, 2028

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal unravels Obama’s signature foreign-policy achievement and puts the U.S. on a collision course with Tehran. Photograph by Evan Vucci / AP

After months of threatening, President Trump withdrew from the historic Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, unraveling the Obama Administration’s signature foreign-policy achievement and putting the United States on a collision course with allies, as well as with Tehran. “This was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the President said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” Trump also announced that the United States is re-imposing economic sanctions on Iran and, over time, on companies in other countries that do business with the Islamic Republic.

Trump said that he was prepared to negotiate a new deal, but it would have to cover several issues beyond Iran’s controversial nuclear program—including Tehran’s ballistic-missile program, its support for extremist groups, and other “malign” activities in the wider Middle East. In a rebuke to Trump, however, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany expressed “regret” over Trump’s decision and vowed to remain in the pact, which also includes Russia and China. “We urge all sides to remain committed to its full implementation and to act in a spirit of responsibility,” they said. China also indicated that it would adhere to the accord.

In an initial reaction, Iran also appeared to reject new negotiations—and indicated that it might even stick to the original agreement, which curtails significant aspects of its nuclear program. President Hassan Rouhani said that his government would review the prospects of continuing to collaborate with the other five signatories of the pact, formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A.

“If, at end of this short period of time, if we come to the conclusion that with the collaboration of five countries it is feasible to attain what the Iranian people wish, despite the views of the U.S. and Zionist regime and also the impolite remarks by Trump, we should see whether it is possible to just keep up with J.C.P.O.A. and also take steps in line with regional peace and tranquility,” he said. (Iran refers to Israel as “the Zionist regime.”) But Rouhani—who won office in 2013, on a platform of negotiating a nuclear deal with the United States and getting a reprieve from economic sanctions in return—also suggested that Tehran was prepared for “subsequent measures, if needed,” including “starting industrial enrichment without limitations.”

Trump’s decision means that, technically, the United States is the first nation to violate the accord. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has issued ten reports that Tehran is in full compliance with its obligations. Iran is under the toughest inspections and verification-inspections regime ever imposed in an arms-control deal. In a rare public comment on Trump’s foreign policy, former President Barack Obama noted that the right to inspections disappears if the agreement ends.

“Every aspect of Iranian behavior that is troubling is far more dangerous if their nuclear program is unconstrained,” Obama said. “Our ability to confront Iran’s destabilizing behavior—and to sustain a unity of purpose with our allies—is strengthened with the J.C.P.O.A., and weakened without it.”

Critics were scathing about the U.S. withdrawal. James Dobbins, a former U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., who negotiated with Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and now works at the rand Corporation, said that the decision “isolates the United States, frees Iran, reneges on an American commitment, adds to the risk of a trade war with America’s allies and to a hot war with Iran and diminishes the prospects of a durable and truly verifiable agreement to eliminate the North Korean nuclear and missile threat.”

Trump’s decision is likely to have far-reaching impact. The premise of diplomatic outreach was to create conditions for eventual coöperation with Iran on other flashpoints in the world’s most volatile region. Instead, danger looms for deepening tensions in hot spots such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen—countries where the United States and Iran have rival interests. “By forfeiting American leadership in the one successful multilateral deal in the volatile Middle East, Trump could possibly make a bad situation worse,” Wendy Chamberlin, a former career diplomat who is now the president of the Middle East Institute, in Washington, told me.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have increased recently over Syria, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have established footholds in three dozen military facilities during its seven-year civil war. Israel has launched more than a hundred air strikes on Syria, the majority on Iranian and Hezbollah targets. “Israel and Iran are headed toward a dangerous confrontation,” Chamberlin said.

The withdrawal from the agreement comes days before the U.S. moves its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another controversial decision that has inflamed anti-American passions. “Trump is pouring gasoline on a Middle East in flames already, with his Iran and Jerusalem decisions,” Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A., White House, and Pentagon staffer who is now at the Brookings Institution, told me.

Trump’s decision also undermines the transatlantic alliance, crafted after the Second World War, between the United States and Europe. The President defied a determined last-ditch pitch by America’s three most important European allies, made during visits by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

Trump’s decision to nix rather than fix the deal fits his “America First” agenda. “Withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal—alongside withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Accord [on climate]—completes Trump’s reneging on U.S. commitments and undermining of U.S. credibility,” Daniel Kurtzer, a former Ambassador to Israel and Egypt now at Princeton University, told me. “The United States used to be the leader, the convener, and the engine of international diplomacy. Trump’s actions have turned us into an untrustworthy and erratic diplomatic outlier.”

The Europeans are clearly hoping that the deal—the crowning achievement of the E.U.’s diplomacy as a continental body—will survive without the United States.

Re-imposing sanctions on Iran will create the greatest division between Europe and the U.S. since the Iraq War, Mark Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Washington, told me. “Only this time it will be worse, since not a single European state sides with the U.S. on this matter.” Beyond Europe, American credibility worldwide “will go down the tubes,” he said. “Who will ever want to strike a deal with a country that, without cause, pulls out of a deal that everyone else knows has been working well? America will be seen as stupid, arrogant, and bullying. Pity the poor U.S. diplomats who have to explain this illogical decision to their host countries.”

Trump’s decision even benefits America’s adversaries, including Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. “We’re playing into Putin’s hand,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, now at Stanford University, said on CNN. “For Putin, it means that the U.S. is on the outside—and Putin is still on the inside. Why are we isolating ourselves when we need other countries to coöperate with on issues like North Korea?”

The U.S. decision will have fallout both economically and politically inside Iran, where foreboding about Trump’s long-threatened decision has already had a psychological impact. The value of Iran’s currency has plummeted by a third since December. The timing intersects with systemic change—and uncertainty—in Iran over dramatic demographic changes, aging leadership, and long-standing structural deficiencies. “The post-revolutionary baby boom is inching toward middle age, with nearly universal access to information and communications technology and after decades of thwarted hopes for economic improvements,” Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department policy-planning staffer now at the Brookings Institution, told me.

“I don’t see a revolution on the horizon, but I think we are witnessing the slow-motion metastasis of the revolutionary system that is echoing through the economy and the establishment,” she said. “I don’t think this is solely or even primarily provoked by the collapse of the deal but, rather, the culmination of a range of internal forces: long-simmering frustrations, the stalemate of two decades of gradualism, demographic pressures, communications technology, and the anticipated imminence of leadership succession.”

As dramatic as Trump’s curt announcement was, the repercussions of his decision—one of the most important of his sixteen months in office—may take months to play out in Iran, among allies, and even among adversaries. At a White House briefing, the new national-security adviser, John Bolton, said that the Administration will continue to talk with allies, starting on Wednesday, about ways forward. But the prospect of healing the policy divide with the world’s other five major powers—much less getting Iran to agree to a new deal—seems remote, at best.

Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Clean Energy Sector Employs More Than 10 Million For The First Time

Forbes

Clean Energy Sector Employs More Than 10 Million For The First Time

Mike Scott, Opinions expressed by contributors are their own. May 8, 2018

A worker installs solar panels atop a house in the Netherlands. (Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images)

More than half a million jobs around the world were created in the renewable energy sector in 2017 , bringing the total number of people employed in the sector to more than 10 million for the first time.

Figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) show that more than 70% of clean energy jobs are in just six countries – China, Brazil, the US, India, Germany and Japan – suggesting the sector has significant scope to continue growing in years to come.

IRENA’s fifth Renewable Energy and Jobs – Annual Review showed that the sector employs 10.3 million workers, with 60% of jobs in Asia. “Although growing numbers of countries are reaping the socio-economic benefits of renewables, the bulk of manufacturing takes place in relatively few countries and domestic markets vary enormously in size,” IRENA said.

“ Renewable energy has become a pillar of low-carbon economic growth for governments all over the world, a fact reflected by the growing number of jobs created in the sector,” said Adnan Z. Amin, director-general of IRENA.

“The data also underscores an increasingly regionalised picture, highlighting that in countries where attractive policies exist, the economic, social and environmental benefits of renewable energy are most evident,” he continued. “Fundamentally, this data supports our analysis that decarbonisation of the global energy system can grow the global economy and create up to 28 million jobs in the sector by 2050.”

The biggest sector is the solar photovoltaics industry, where the number of jobs grew by almost 9% to 3.4 million, two thirds of them in China. The top five countries, which also include Japan, the US, India and Bangladesh, have about 90% of the world’s solar PV employees.

The next biggest sector, wind, has just a third of the workers found in PV at 1.15 million, with 84% of all wind jobs based in China, Europe or North America. The wind industry remains highly concentrated geographically, with half of the 10 countries with the highest installed capacity in Europe. This is in part because the sector originated there, and in part because it has been the first part of the world where wind farms have spread from the land to the seas around its coastlines.

All About Monarchs: The Royals of the Butterfly World

EcoWatch

All About Monarchs: The Royals of the Butterfly World

By Natural Resources Defense Council – May 3, 2018

UnSplash

The Migration and Importance of Monarchs

Monarch butterflies, which pollinate many different kinds of wildflowers, are among nature’s great wonders. Their annual migration is one of the most awe-inspiring on Earth: Each fall, millions of these striking black-and-orange butterflies take flight on a 3,000-mile journey across the U.S. and Canada to wintering grounds in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains.

The Population Plummet

The monarch population, which is determined by measuring the number of hectares the butterflies occupy in their Mexico habitat, has declined to 2.48 hectares—almost 30 percent less than last year’s population. The population has been in steady decline for the past 20 years—reaching a high of more than 20 hectares in 1997 and plunging to 0.67 hectares in 2014. Two decades ago, nearly one billion wintering monarchs blanketed the mountain forests of Mexico. Today, that number has dropped by more than 80 percent.

Herbicides and Milkweed

Heavy use of an herbicide called glyphosate (marketed by Monsanto as Roundup) has greatly diminished milkweed, a native wildflower that is the sole food source for monarch caterpillars and the only plant on which adult monarchs lay their eggs. As milkweed disappears, monarch populations have also plummeted, and the annual migration of monarchs to Mexico is in danger of collapse. And yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently reapproved the registration for Dow’s Enlist Duo, a combination herbicide designed to kill milkweed.

Solutions?

Much effort has gone into planting milkweed throughout the continental U.S. in the past several years in an attempt to make up for the milkweed that has been lost through agricultural practices. Planting milkweed is a great way to help other pollinators, too, as it provides nectar to a diverse suite of bees and butterflies.

But this year’s monarch butterfly population demonstrates that we need to do much, much more if we are going to be successful at building its population back up again to secure numbers. We also need to curb the use of pesticides that are eliminating milkweed in the first place and come up with sustainable solutions—not just for butterflies, but for farmers and our public health.

How NRDC Is Helping Secure a Healthy Future for Monarchs

NRDC envisions a future where monarch populations across North America are healthy and resilient. To achieve this, we’re working at the federal, state, and international levels to secure limits on the use of toxic herbicides and create new milkweed habitat.

We’re taking legal action against the EPA to win restrictions on toxic herbicides, such as glyphosate, that are killing off native milkweed. And we’re calling on agribusiness companies to withdraw their toxic products. At the state level, we’re working with officials to plant new milkweed habitat along the monarchs’ migration route. Internationally, we’re leveraging pressure by petitioning UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to upgrade its protection of monarch wintering habitat in Mexico.

Recent NRDC Milestones in the Fight to Save Monarchs

We mobilized more than 113,000 of our members and activists to sign a petition demanding Dow AgroSciences remove Enlist Duo from the market. Not only that, we generated an outcry against Enlist Duo in Congress that included signatures from 32 lawmakers calling on the EPA to take a closer look at the devastating health and environmental impacts of this herbicide.

On the global arena, we ramped up international pressure, including 50,000 petitions from NRDC members and activists, on the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to declare the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico in danger due to the destruction of monarch habitat in the U.S. and Canada by glyphosate. In response, UNESCO launched a formal evaluation of the request.

NRDC and Monarch Watch Planting Milkweed

Monarch Watch is a nonprofit educational outreach program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. NRDC partners with Monarch Watch to plant milkweed at schools, churches and garden clubs to help save North American monarch butterflies.

Since 2016, Monarch Watch has been distributing milkweed plants, featured in this Monarchs for Moms campaign, for planting on tribal lands and other locations along the monarchs’ migration route.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Help Rebuild Monarch Butterfly Populations By Planting Monarch

Monarch Butterfly Migration Could Collapse, Scientists Warn

Climate Change and Invasive Milkweed Could Make Toxic Cocktail

Dicamba Drift Could Put 60 Million Acres of Monarch Habitat at Risk

4 inventions that give us hope for the planet this year.

EcoWatch shared We Need This‘s episode.

May 7, 2018

We Need This posted a new episode.

4 inventions that give us hope for the planet this year.

Inventions for the Planet

4 inventions that give us hope for the planet this year.

Posted by We Need This on Monday, April 30, 2018

Conaway facing uphill battle on farm bill as conservatives bash it

Politico

Conaway facing uphill battle on farm bill as conservatives bash it

By John Lauinger May 7, 2018

The hard-line conservative faction of just under three dozen members has been noncommittal and uncharacteristically quiet since Mike Conaway released his legislation last month. | AP Photo

Conservative groups are piling on against the House farm bill, underscoring the challenges confronting House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway as he seeks the GOP backing he needs to get it to the floor in May.

While Conaway’s team used last week’s congressional recess to whip the bill, H.R. 2 (115), groups including Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity made the case to reporters and lawmakers that the bill fails to reform farm subsidies and benefits wealthy farmers and agribusiness over taxpayers.

Though farm bills have a history of being bipartisan, Democrats are vehemently opposed to Conaway’s version because it would impose new work requirements on between 5 million and 7 million low-income people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and invest billions of dollars to expand capacity in state-run SNAP employment and training programs.

Without Democratic backing, Conaway will need to get the support of some conservative House Freedom Caucus members to pass the bill, which he hopes to bring to the floor the week of May 14. But the hard-line conservative faction of just under three dozen members has been noncommittal and uncharacteristically quiet since Conaway released his legislation last month. And the increasingly vocal opposition from outside groups isn’t helping the chairman’s cause.

“There’s not a whole lot of excitement around this bill,” among GOP conservatives, Dan Holler, vice president of Heritage Action, said last week at a briefing for reporters.

The pile-on began on Tuesday at the briefing by the Heritage Foundation, where the group’s political arm, Heritage Action, formally came out against the bill. On Wednesday the group joined about a dozen other right-leaning, free-market organizations in writing to Congress to denounce the legislation. And on Thursday, two conservative groups linked to the influential Koch brothers — Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners — penned a letter to Congress that said the bill moves the system farther away from free-market principles.

The groups took aim at some of the bill’s SNAP provisions, but their opposition is rooted in the farm policy side of the bill and, specifically, its lack of cutbacks to subsidy programs.

“Quite simply, respect for farmers doesn’t mean tolerance for wasting taxpayer money on handouts,” read the letter signed by Heritage Action and 13 other groups. “Our organizations are taking farm subsidy reform very seriously in the upcoming farm bill debate.”

Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners noted recent big-ticket spending bills the 115th Congress has passed, writing that the “reckless budget deal and the irresponsible omnibus bill” have made it increasingly important for farm and nutrition programs to be reassessed and put on a “fiscally responsible path.”

Instead, the groups wrote, the farm policy side of the House bill is “rife with corporate welfare” and includes provisions to expand access to subsidies for members of a family-owned farm, allowing cousins, nieces and nephews to qualify to collect government payments without having to live or work on a farm.

“These lavish programs already vastly exceed a reasonable safety net, yet this bill expands them further,” they wrote.

Their letter, like the one from Heritage Action and the 13 other conservative groups, faulted the House bill for ignoring subsidies reforms called for by the White House.

A spokeswoman for the House Agriculture Committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

When the committee marked up the bill last month, Conaway opened the session by outlining what’s at stake for the nation’s producers: “We’ve seen a 52 percent drop in net farm income over the last five years. Chapter 12 bankruptcies are up 33 percent over the last two years alone. And not long ago two key universities informed us that two-thirds of the representative farms that they use to model economic conditions in agriculture are currently in marginal or poor financial condition.”

The markup, like the entirety of the farm bill reauthorization cycle up until that point, was dominated by Democratic sniping over the bill’s proposals for SNAP.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of cost estimates for the House measure. It found that placing stricter work requirements on able-bodied adults receiving SNAP benefits would save $9.2 billion over a decade as people lose eligibility. But government spending costs would grow by $7.7 billion due to costs from state employment and training programs and administrative expenses. Overall, CBO projects the nutrition title would cost taxpayers about the same over the next decade under the bill, even with the projected drop in participation.

Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners highlighted the proposals to strengthen SNAP work requirements as “positive elements” of the bill, but questioned the call to redirect expected savings from those reforms into a ramp-up of SNAP Employment and Training programs, noting that those programs have “a poor track record for delivering results.”

According to the CBO, expanding SNAP job training could take more than 10 years, but states would be given just two years to complete build-outs. CBO estimated that “by the end of 2028, about 80 percent of the beneficiaries who are subject to the work requirement would be offered such services through a state program.”

Nan Swift, director of federal affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative fiscal watchdog, argued in a blog post on Thursday that there’s “little reason” to assume that a major expansion of SNAP Employment and Training programs would lead to more SNAP beneficiaries entering the workforce.

“Legislators should think twice before creating a new opportunity to exacerbate our entitlement spending crisis,” Swift wrote.

On the other side of the political spectrum, House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) also criticized the call to build out SNAP E&T. “I think that people should work; I agree with that,” he said during a radio interview on Wednesday. “What I don’t agree with is this huge amount of money that’s being spent on a bureaucracy that is not going to accomplish anything. It’s not enough money to actually train anybody.”

The Minnesota Democrat, in a statement to POLITICO, cited “the gaggle of conservative groups lined up in opposition to this bill” as evidence that “the clear and present danger to the farm bill comes from Republicans, not from Democrats.” He also pointed to the fiscal 2019 budget blueprint that the 154-member conservative Republican Study Committee released recently that called for deep cuts to farm bill programs.

“I’ve suggested to my colleagues that we don’t offer any amendments,” Peterson added, referring to House Democrats. “We’re ready to take a step back, sit down and do this the right way, but the Republicans clearly have some deeper divisions to contend with.”

Helena Bottemiller Evich and Maya Parthasarathy contributed to this report.

A View From the Air: Carbon Sequestration, Midwestern Farms and Biodiversity.

Resilience

A View From the Air: Carbon Sequestration, Midwestern Farms and Biodiversity.

Adrian Ayres Fisher, orig. pub by Ecological Gardening May 2, 2018

One afternoon in early March I flew from Boston to Chicago, returning home from an Ecological Landscape Alliance conference. Cloud cover, white and lumpy as a rumpled hotel duvet, obscured the view, until over western Pennsylvania the plane crossed the edge of the weather system. Our country’s heartland unfurled below. The gently rolling terrain flattened as the plane headed west, divided by roads delineating a grid, with fields, towns, and even woodlots squared into the design.

This tidy, Grant Woods-esque arrangement is the relic of late 18th century surveying expeditions sent out to divide the Northwest Territory into 6-mile square townships, the better to sell off, settle and tame the nearly, at the time, unfathomable expanse. As they worked, the surveyors made detailed maps, including of vegetation; they used boulders, piles of rock or even notable trees as corner markers and confirmed corner placement with nearby “witness trees.” Today, restorationists use these maps to help figure out what kinds of ecosystems they should be restoring to, when embarking on conservation or rewilding projects.

We flew on. Farm building roofs shone in the sun among the fields; only the occasional meandering river gave a hint of how the land had looked in the early 19th century. Though there’d been snow out east, here everything was shades of brown: leafless woodlot trees and tens of millions of acres of empty fields, a mid to dark brown sea of bare earth.

Bare fields full of potential
For me that landscape was a palimpsest of loss, prosperity and the potential to help mitigate climate change. The ghosts of past cultures—the Adena, the Hopewell, more recently displaced nations such as the Potawatomi and Miami, and a later thriving network of small American family farms—lay below. These successive groups inhabited a now phantom post-glacial landscape comprised of Eastern deciduous forest punctuated by areas of savanna, prairie and wetland that, as a traveler journeyed west, expanded until the prairie dominated.

Today this landscape, tended by a very few farmers utilizing all that technology has on offer, signify an evanescent prosperity precariously balanced on an extremely limited number of commodity crops. This flourishing economy could be upended tomorrow not only by ill-conceived trade wars, or weather catastrophes such as drought, but also by the mounting environmental problems, including but not exclusive to climate change, that are nearly all of our culture’s own devising.

Years ago I might have seen those fields as completely normal, even desirable. But no longer. Because I’m a regenerative gardener and natural landscape manager, when I see a piece of land, no matter the size, I see an opportunity to nurture what biodiversity is there. To me, improving a parcel of land means working with it in such a way as to increase its ecosystem functionality. I highly respect the work conventional farmers do to wrest a living from the soil; I believe that industrial farming methods are not only outmoded, but also actively dangerous.

Those Midwestern fields are losing their fertility along with their world-class topsoil; many now lack the organic matter and important microbial life that not only maintain good soil structure and health but also allow water to percolate properly. Conventional farming practices, such as leaving the earth bare from harvest until planting season, can actively harm the living soil. Fertilizer run-off pollutes waterways and overuse of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides inflict far-reaching collateral damage on living organisms from bumblebees and monarch butterflies to birds to humans, while habitat destruction imperils them further.

But what could that landscape teach about climate change mitigation and environmental renewal? It’s become evident that to hold average planetary temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), global emissions should peak by 2020, and then decline by 10% or greater each year in order to reach zero emissions by 2050. Thereafter, the downward trend then must continue into negative emissions territory. Clearly, technology-based solutions such as ramping up renewable energy while leaving fossil fuels in the ground are fundamental to mitigation. Emissions reductions and increased energy efficiency are essential in every arena, from the global to the personal. For example, if the global top 10% of individual carbon emitters reduced their carbon footprints to that of the average European, greenhouse gas emissions would decline 30%. (This, of course, includes nearly all US residents.)

However, going further means figuring out how to actively remove carbon from the air. Most schemes are in the research stage; existing mechanical carbon capture and sequestration (CSS) is expensive and difficult and only halts emissions at industrial sites. So far, only seventeen facilities, including an ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, use the technology to achieve neutral production emissions. Proposed biomass-based CSS systems such as BECCS (Bio-mass carbon capture and storage), with their emphasis on monocultures, have the potential to further damage ecosystems.

Solving global warming requires increasing biodiversity
Global warming, with its effects of climate weirding, is just one element—a deadly symptom, if you will—of the ongoing, global crisis of ecological destruction that also includes extinction, water scarcity, pollution and desertification. Averting this human-inflicted catastrophe will require multiple, diverse strategies and it has become increasingly clear we cannot accomplish anything without the aid of our planet’s complex natural systems. Solving the greenhouse gas puzzle requires working to help biodiversity increase worldwide and helping the currently disrupted biogeochemical cycles stabilize and recover so that all life might thrive on our beautiful blue and green planet.

This is where large-scale regenerative land management comes into play: it is the most effective tool for carbon sequestration that presently exists. Carbon sequestration through natural means includes not only vitally important conservation and restoration, but necessitates incorporation into all landscape management, from regenerative organic farming and intensively managed holistic grazing to, on the one hand, backyard landscaping with native plants and on the other, toxic chemical cleanup. Managing land along principles that foster soil health and biodiversity not only can sequester carbon on a potentially massive scale (4-12 GtCO2e or even more), but can also help regulate local water cycles, thereby helping avoid both desertification and excessive flooding. It also reduces toxic chemical use and nutrient run-off, all the while promoting biodiversity in plant and animal life, from the microbes in the soil, to pollinators, birds and other animals, to charismatic megafauna and apex predators such as ourselves.

Agriculturalists and other land managers throughout the world are already changing their practices, though it’s been slow to take hold in the Midwest. Regenerative agriculture networks such as ReGenerate IL have sprung up; farmers and scientists have formed partnerships to explore and measure the soil health and carbon sequestration potential of agricultural practices both ancient and cutting edge; farmers are beginning to try methods such as cover crops and waterway buffer zones planted with native plants. In all this, the most innovative practices combine agriculture with landscape management for biodiversity. There’s even an economic case to be made. In this era of falling commodity prices, rising costs of materials and supplies, and potential economic woes, many conventional farmers are already struggling to make ends meet. Farmers are discovering that, while it requires more, different kinds of knowledge and work, regenerative farming can actually be more profitable owing to reduced production costs and higher selling prices. More might go the way of the Nebraska farmer I heard interviewed on the radio recently, who said he is considering moving at least part of his farm out of soy, corn and hogs, and into diversified organics.

A possible future landscape
What might air travelers traversing the Midwest see ten years in the future? Farms, of course. We can’t return the Midwest to the matrix of woods, prairie and savanna it was 150 years ago. But what if all that land was managed not only for food production but also for soil health, water management, biodiversity and carbon sequestration? There’d be very little bare soil. Instead, there’d be extensive cover crops blanketing fields whose crop production included diverse, multi-year rotations; wide bands of prairie and woods featuring native grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees bordering fields, waterways and roads; areas of intensively managed grazing; alley cropping, silvopasturing and other forms of agroecology; and even expanded natural areas: in short, carbon sequestering, diversified, fertile farmland that would be healthier for farmers as well as the planet.

On the western edge of Indiana, the land changed again. As we descended towards Midway airport, subdivisions, logistics terminals, golf courses and parks replaced fields. Remarkably, amidst the development reposed large, wild areas featuring irregular woods along creeks and streams and the shaggy tan carpet of dormant prairie grasses. We’d entered Cook County: home to the 5.25 million people of the Chicago metro area and the most biodiverse county in Illinois, thanks in part to the nearly seventy thousand acres of carbon-sequestering forest preserve land managed through a unique partnership of professionals and volunteers.

I fastened my seatbelt. I thought about Aldo Leopold, the Midwesterner who both worked with farmers to save and restore their land during the Great Depression and helped invent the art and science of ecological restoration. Leopold might not have known about global warming—very few at the time did—but he had a thorough understanding of the harm unthinking human activities can wreak. He wrote that most modern technologies and practices, “do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.” That has become our greatest, most significant challenge in the Midwest and worldwide. Are we up for it? Can we solve the puzzle?

References:

Ecological Landscape Alliance: https://www.ecolandscaping.org/

(4-12 GtCO2e or even more): “There’s a huge gap between the Paris climate change goals and reality Current pledges are about a third of what’s needed.”
By David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Updated Nov 6, 2017, 10:56am EST https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/31/16579844/climate-gap-unep-2017

“Decatur plant at forefront of push to pipe carbon emissions underground, but costs raise questions.”
By Tony Briscoe/ Chicago Tribune /November 23,

Oil bursts above $70, threatens economy

USA Today

Oil bursts above $70, threatens economy

Douglas A. McIntyre, May 7, 2018

U.S. oil and natural gas is on the verge of transforming the world’s energy markets for a second time, further undercutting Saudi Arabia and Russia Time

(Photo: JoyceMarrero / iStock)

The price of crude oil has not been above $70 a barrel since 2014. It reached that point today. The availability of Iran’s crude was among the most important reasons as the U.S. government decides the fate of sanctions related to a deal that prevents Iran from advancing its nuclear capability. Oil above $70 affects the price of gas, oil and petrochemical products, making a rapid rise a challenge to an American economy, which is growing less than 2.5%.

For several months, U.S. and Canadian shale oil have offset supplies from other nations. This has even been true as OPEC has indicated it would like to raise prices to enrich the treasuries of its members. And the disintegration of Venezuela’s economy also has been a concern. The country has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

Among the most evident effect of oil prices is the price of gasoline. The average price of a gallon of regular gas is $2.81, according to the AAA. This is up from $2.35 a year ago. As the heavy summer driving period approaches, prices almost certainly will be higher from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Tens of millions of Americans will be on the road, pushing demand even higher.

Among the worries is that lower- and middle-income families with members who must commute to work or drive long distances for other reasons will see their discretionary income shaved. Since the primary driver of gross domestic product is consumer spending, high gas prices mean people have fewer financial resources, which are taken up primarily by housing, clothing and food. The prices of heating oil can also harm consumer spending, although the end of the coldest part of the year should make that unimportant for the next several months.

The profits of a number of industries rely on low oil prices. Airlines, which consume a tremendous amount of jet fuel, are high on the list. It is not unusual for high oil prices to erode profits, or even cause financial losses.

Finally, there are products made from oil derivatives. This includes a broad list that runs from asphalt to lubricants.

Oil has risen above $70 a barrel. How long it is there will partially determine the fate of the U.S. economy.

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