Category: Sustainable World -Farm Environmental

Butter Is Booming, Whole Milk Is Back and Dairy Is Surviving

Butter Is Booming, Whole Milk Is Back and Dairy Is Surviving

Justin Fox                  November 15, 2020

 

(Bloomberg Opinion) — With Americans staying home more than usual because of the pandemic, and doing lots of baking and cooking to pass the time, this has been a banner year for butter.

Land O’Lakes, the Minnesota-based dairy cooperative, expects to sell 275 million to 300 million pounds of the stuff this year — a 20% increase — as rising retail demand more than makes up for lost restaurant business. Nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, butter production is up 6% over the first nine months of the year and is on track to top two billion pounds for the first time since 1943.

This year’s boom is, as is apparent from the chart, part of a longer-term comeback. On a per-capita basis, Americans eat far less butter than they did in the early decades of the 20th century. But they eat more than they did in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

After staving off competition from margarine with nearly a century of lobbying for margarine bans, taxes and color restrictions, butter producers lost their regulatory advantages in the 1940’s and 1950’s and ceded a lot of market share to the cheaper spread — which had originally been derived from beef fat but was by then mainly made out of vegetable oil. As medical researchers began to link consumption of animal fats with heart disease in the 1950’s and 1960’s, margarine gained even more ground as a purportedly healthier alternative.

Those health claims were later mostly debunked, and the price difference between butter and margarine began to matter less as incomes rose and families shrank (food purchased for off-premises consumption accounted for more than 18% of consumer spending in the early 1950’s and just 6% in 2019).

Butter also benefited from the emphasis on genuine ingredients accompanying the good-food revival that began in the 1960’s (Julia Child certainly wasn’t going to use margarine). And let’s be honest, it tastes better. Corn oil, olive oil and other vegetable oils now play a much bigger role in American diets than they used to, so butter will probably never regain its central status of a century ago. But it’s not going away.

“It’s a survivor story,” says Peter Vitaliano, vice president of economic policy and market research at the National Milk Producers Federation.

The same goes for the dairy industry in general. It can seem awfully embattled from time to time, and for good reason. Giant, highly productive dairies have been driving lots of smaller farmers out of business. Competition from “milks” made of almonds, oats, soybeans and other plants has taken market share from the real thing and led to a dairy industry lobbying campaign reminiscent of the margarine wars of yore. President Donald Trump’s trade policies have caused problems too. Two big milk marketers, Borden Dairy Co. and Dean Foods Inc., have filed for bankruptcy in the past 12 months.

But the big picture for the industry since 1980 or so is of declining demand for its core product (milk, that is) being more than offset by rising sales of almost everything that can be made out of milk.

Even within milk sales there’s been an interesting shift lately, with whole milk outselling 2% milk for the first time in 15 years in 2018 and building on its lead in 2019, and skim milk sales drifting downward. If you’re going to drink milk, and not smashed-up almonds mixed with water, then you might as well drink the milkiest kind of milk.

Whole milk happens to be the most profitable product for dairy farmers, as it’s basically just what comes out of the cow and thus doesn’t require them to share much revenue with processors. It also has benefited from the new eat-at-home normal of the pandemic, with sales up 4.1% through August (2% milk sales are up too, with skim and 1% down).

But on the whole, it is products made of milk that have kept the industry going. The butter revival is one aspect of this. The rise of yogurt, which was close to nonexistent in the U.S. before the 1970’s, is another, even though it has faded a bit lately.

The main driver of the dairy industry’s resilience, though, has been cheese. Americans consume almost three times as much of it per-person as they did in 1970.

Not all of this is the result of what you’d call organic consumer demand. Yes, the big gains in Italian cheese consumption seem to reflect the fact that we eat a lot more pizza than we used to. One can also see hints in the data of the rising popularity of Mexican food (which in its north-of-the-border incarnation contains lots of Cheddar and Jack cheese), bagels’ emergence from regional-food status (cream cheese!) and other fun food trends.

But as cheese can be stored for longer than milk or butter or yogurt, it’s also something the dairy industry makes when it has more milk than it knows what to do with, resulting in the infamous “cheese mountain” that is occasionally reduced in size by big government purchases. Those have been especially big this year, with the Agriculture Department so far delivering more than 118 million food boxes — each containing several pounds of dairy products, mainly cheese — to food banks and other charities as part of pandemic-relief efforts.

The industry has also found new things to sell beyond milk, butter, yogurt and cheese, and new places to sell them. Forty years ago the U.S. hardly exported any dairy products. Now it exports a fair amount of cheese, mainly to Mexico, South Korea and Japan, and even bigger quantities of cheese-making byproducts such as whey powder, whey protein isolate and lactose, all of which are used in manufacturing foods and dietary supplements.

The main byproduct of modern butter-making is skim milk powder, most of which is exported to Mexico and Southeast Asia to be reconstituted, often in combination with vegetable oils, into various milk-like drinks. Overall, says Vitaliano, the U.S. exports about 4% of the milk fat it produces and 19% of the skim solids.

To bring things back to butter, the U.S. actually imports more of the stuff than it exports, with Ireland’s Kerrygold the No. 2 butter brand in the U.S. after Land O’Lakes. But the import quantities are still small relative to domestic production. So this year of high butter demand has been good for U.S. dairy cooperatives that specialize in the stuff, such as Land O’Lakes and No. 1 producer California Dairies Inc., which makes Challenge and Danish Creamery butter. (Both Land O’Lakes and California Dairies also produce private-label butter for retailers, so their role in supplying the country with butter goes way beyond their own brands.)

It has also been a good year for California dairies in general, given that the state accounts for just over 30% of U.S. butter production, with Land O’Lakes a big presence there too. Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland,” focuses more on cheese, with a quarter of U.S. production. New York is tops in yogurt, with about 15% of production.

In terms of milk output for all purposes, California is No. 1 at more than 18% of the national total. It has held the top spot since passing Wisconsin in 1993, but the latter has been narrowing the gap lately. Idaho recently overtook New York for third place, and Texas may be nipping at its heels soon. For an ancient, not exactly fast-growing industry, dairy has a lot more drama than you might expect.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

‘What a mess’: Billionaire Charles Koch says he regrets fueling partisanship

‘What a mess’: Billionaire Charles Koch says he regrets fueling partisanship

Josh Marcus                          November 13, 2020
Charles Koch (Bo Rader/AP)
Charles Koch (Bo Rader/AP)

 

Charles Koch, the libertarian tycoon who helped funnel billions of dollars to conservative causes and politicians around the country, says the era of hyper-partisanship he helped create was a “mess.”

“Boy, did we screw up!” he writes in a forthcoming book, according to the Wall Street Journal. “What a mess!”

He also wrote that backing the Tea Party, a grassroots conservative movement advocating for low taxes and small government that challenged both Democrats and mainstream Republicans during the Obama years, did not pan out either.

“It seems to me the tea party was largely unsuccessful long-term, given that we’re coming off a Republican administration with the largest government spending in history,” he told the paper.

They are stunning admissions—or perhaps just canny post-Trump messaging—from an individual who is arguably the most influential person in US politics outside of the politicians themselves.

The Koch network of donors and organizations has funded numerous Republican political campaigns; helped nurture the Tea Party; backed advocacy groups and think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and Americans for Prosperity; bankrolled climate change denialism across the country; and helped fund roughly 1000 faculty members at 200 universities.

They acted, in the words of one writer, as “a private political bank capable of bestowing unlimited amounts of money on favored candidates, and doing it with virtually no disclosure of its source,” thanks to the Citizens United decision and other rulings rolling back political spending limits from individuals and corporations.

In recent years, the Koch network has increasingly diverged from the Republican party of Donald Trump. It didn’t support his campaigns in 2016 or 2020, and Mr. Koch once compared the president’s Muslim ban to Nazi Germany.

And the president has no love lost for them either, thanks to public spats on issues like trade

In 2018, the Koch network announced it would begin supporting certain Democrats who aligned with their priorities, and the billionaire executive, 85, says he hopes to spend his final act in politics working on bipartisan solutions to issues like immigration and criminal-justice reform.

Despite the change in rhetoric, Koch Industries, the conglomerate responsible for Mr. Koch’s fortune, donated $2.8 million in 2020 to Republicans via its political action committee and employee donations, compared to $221,000 to Democrats.

A third of our food contains a cocktail of pesticides, report finds due to fruit and veg imports

The Telegraph

A third of our food contains a cocktail of pesticides, report finds due to fruit and veg imports

Helena Horton, The Telegraph         November 12, 2020

Imported fruit and vegetables were found to contain pesticides which are banned for use in the UK - Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Imported fruit and vegetables were found to contain pesticides which are banned for use in the UK – Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

 

A third of our food products contain multiple harmful pesticides, a new report has found, with imported fruit and vegetables frequently containing chemicals banned for use in the UK.

More fresh produce than ever now features a  ‘cocktail’ of more than one types of pesticide, the Pesticide Action Network revealed.

Using government testing data, the campaign group ranks the fruit and vegetables that are most likely to contain multiple pesticide residues.

Strawberries top the list, with 89.92 per cent containing multiple pesticide residues, and they are closely followed by lemons, of which 83.72 per cent feature a ‘cocktail’ of pesticides.

A spokesperson for PAN said that the rise could be because of a rise in pesticide use in the UK.

He explained: “This could be due to the rise in UK pesticide use. For example, the area of UK land treated with pesticides rose by 63 per cent from 1990 to 2016 (the latest figures from the Government).

“Many crops are sprayed with pesticides far more times in a growing season than they used to be. As an example, in 1990 only 30 per cent of cereals were treated more than 4 times in a growing season. By 2016, that figure had almost doubled to 55 per cent.”

Almost a third (32 per cent) of all food tested by the government in 2019 (including meat, fish, grains and dairy) contained multiple pesticides, up from 23.5 per cent the previous year.

Fruit and vegetables contain even more; 48 per cent of those tested contained a mixture of pesticides, up from 36 per cent. Fruit is one of the worst offenders, with 67 per cent containing multiple pesticides, and with 94 per cent of oats and 27 per cent of bread contained the cocktail of chemicals.

 

Campaigning groups including the Soil Association and the Wildlife Trusts have asked the government to force farmers to curb their use of pesticides and herbicides, as they are harmful for biodiversity

The government is due to publish its National Action Plan on the Sustainable Use of Pesticide, which will introduce a pesticide reduction target and increase financial and other support to British farmers to adopt non-chemical alternatives.

The PAN has said that consumers find it difficult to avoid these chemicals, as they are not mentioned on food labels.

Nick Mole, policy officer at the group, said: “Pesticide residues aren’t listed anywhere on food labels so the Dirty Dozen is the only way for British consumers to get a sense of which pesticides appear in their food.

“Most of us can’t access a fully organic diet so we hope this information will help people work out which produce to prioritise”.

Pesticides found on the produce include the insecticide Chlorpyrifos, which is banned for use in the EU but was found on produce imported into the UK. In multiple epidemiological studies, chlorpyrifos exposure during pregnancy or childhood has been linked with lower birth weight and neurological changes such as slower motor development and attention problems.

Possible human carcinogen Difenconazole is a fungicide used to control a variety of problems including blight and seed rot. It appears as a residue on the majority of the Dirty Dozen, and herbicide Glyphosate is one of the most widely used chemicals. It has been banned in countries around the world, but not yet in the UK.

A government spokesperson said part of the reason the pesticide data was going up is better testing.

They explained that it “uses the latest technology for analysis, which is constantly improving, and means that each year we can look for more pesticides at lower levels. For these reasons we expect to see a rise in the number of samples with residues detected”.

Farmers are depleting the Ogallala Aquifer because the government pays them to do it

Farmers are depleting the Ogallala Aquifer because the government pays them to do it

Matthew R Sanderson, Professor of Sociology and Professor of Geography and Geospatial Sciences, Kansas State University, Jacob A. Miller, PhD Student in Sociology, Kansas State University, and Burke Griggs, Associate Professor of Law, Washburn University

<span class="caption">A center-pivot sprinkler with precision application drop nozzles irrigates cotton in Texas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="link rapid-noclick-resp" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Center_pivot_sprinkler_with_low_energy_precision_application_drop_nozzles_irrigates_cotton_growing_in_wheat_residue_used_as_a_cover_crop._(24486394864).jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:USDA NRCS/Wikipedia">USDA NRCS/Wikipedia</a></span>
A center-pivot sprinkler with precision application drop nozzles irrigates cotton in Texas. USDA NRCS/Wipedia

 

A slow-moving crisis threatens the U.S. Central Plains, which grow a quarter of the nation’s crops. Underground, the region’s lifeblood – water – is disappearing, placing one of the world’s major food-producing regions at risk.

The Ogallala-High Plains Aquifer is one of the world’s largest groundwater sources, extending from South Dakota down through the Texas Panhandle across portions of eight states. Its water supports US$35 billion in crop production each year.

But farmers are pulling water out of the Ogallala faster than rain and snow can recharge it. Between 1900 and 2008 they drained some 89 trillion gallons from the aquifer – equivalent to two-thirds of Lake Erie. Depletion is threatening drinking water supplies and undermining local communities already struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis, hospital closures, soaring farm loses and rising suicide rates.

Map showing changing Ogallala Aquifer water levels over the past century
Map showing changing Ogallala Aquifer water levels over the past century

In Kansas, “Day Zero” – the day wells run dry – has arrived for about 30% of the aquifer. Within 50 years, the entire aquifer is expected be 70% depleted.

Some observers blame this situation on periodic drought. Others point to farmers, since irrigation accounts for 90% of Ogallala groundwater withdrawals. But our research, which focuses on social and legal aspects of water use in agricultural communities, shows that farmers are draining the Ogallala because state and federal policies encourage them to do it.

A production treadmill

At first glance, farmers on the Plains appear to be doing well in 2020. Crop production increased this year. Corn, the largest crop in the U.S., had a near-record year, and farm incomes increased by 5.7% over 2019.

But those figures hide massive government payments to farmers. Federal subsidies increased by a remarkable 65% this year, totaling $37.2 billion. This sum includes money for lost exports from escalating trade wars, as well as COVID-19-related relief payments. Corn prices were too low to cover the cost of growing it this year, with federal subsidies making up the difference.

Our research finds that subsidies put farmers on a treadmill, working harder to produce more while draining the resource that supports their livelihood. Government payments create a vicious cycle of overproduction that intensifies water use. Subsidies encourage farmers to expand and buy expensive equipment to irrigate larger areas.

Irrigation pump in field
Irrigation pump in field

 

With low market prices for many crops, production does not cover expenses on most farms. To stay afloat, many farmers buy or lease more acres. Growing larger amounts floods the market, further reducing crop prices and farm incomes. Subsidies support this cycle.

Few benefit, especially small and midsized operations. In a 2019 study of the region’s 234 counties from 1980 to 2010, we found that larger irrigated acreage failed to increase incomes or improve education or health outcomes for residents.

Focus on policy, not farmers

Four decades of federal, state and local conservation efforts have mainly targeted individual farmers, providing ways for them to voluntarily reduce water use or adopt more water-efficient technologies.

While these initiatives are important, they haven’t stemmed the aquifer’s decline. In our view, what the Ogallala Aquifer region really needs is policy change.

A lot can be done at the federal level, but the first principle should be “do no harm.” Whenever federal agencies have tried to regulate groundwater, the backlash has been swift and intense, with farm states’ congressional representatives repudiating federal jurisdiction over groundwater.

Nor should Congress propose to eliminate agricultural subsidies, as some environmental organizations and free-market advocates have proposed. Given the thin margins of farming and longstanding political realities, federal support is simply part of modern production agriculture.

With these cautions in mind, three initiatives could help ease pressure on farmers to keep expanding production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to allow environmentally sensitive farmland to lie fallow for at least 10 years. With new provisions, the program could reduce water use by prohibiting expansion of irrigated acreage, permanently retiring marginal lands and linking subsidies to production of less water-intensive crops.

These initiatives could be implemented through the federal farm bill, which also sets funding levels for nonfarm subsidies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. SNAP payments, which increase needy families’ food budgets, are an important tool for addressing poverty. Increasing these payments and adding financial assistance to local communities could offset lower tax revenues that result from from farming less acreage.

Amending federal farm credit rates could also slow the treadmill. Generous terms promote borrowing for irrigation equipment; to pay that debt, borrowers farm more land. Offering lower rates for equipment that reduces water use and withholding loans for standard, wasteful equipment could nudge farmers toward conservation.

The most powerful tool is the tax code. Currently, farmers receive deductions for declining groundwater levels and can write off depreciation on irrigation equipment. Replacing these perks with a tax credit for stabilizing groundwater and substituting a depreciation schedule favoring more efficient irrigation equipment could provide strong incentives to conserve water.

Rewriting state water laws

Water rights are mostly determined by state law, so reforming state water policies is crucial. Case law demonstrates that simply owning water rights does not grant the legal right to waste water. For more than a century courts have upheld state restrictions on waste, with rulings that allow for adaptation by modifying the definitions of “beneficial use” and “waste” over time.

Using these precedents, state water agencies could designate thirsty crops, such as rice, cotton or corn, as wasteful in certain regions. Regulations preventing unreasonable water use are not unconstitutional.

Allowing farmers some flexibility will maximize profits, as long as they stabilize overall water use. If they irrigate less – or not at all – in years with low market prices, rules could allow more irrigation in better years. Ultimately, many farmers – and their bankers – are willing to exchange lower annual yields for a longer water supply.

As our research has shown, the vast majority of farmers in the region want to save groundwater. They will need help from policymakers to do it. Forty years is long enough to learn that the Ogallala Aquifer’s decline is not driven by weather or by individual farmers’ preferences. Depletion is a structural problem embedded in agricultural policies. Groundwater depletion is a policy choice made by federal, state and local officials.

Stephen Lauer and Vivian Aranda-Hughes, former doctoral students at Kansas State University, contributed to several of the studies cited in this article.

‘Crossroads of the climate crisis’: swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

The Guardian

‘Crossroads of the climate crisis’: swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

Maanvi Singh and Lauren Gambino in Phoenix.  November 1, 2020
&#39;Crossroads of the climate crisis&#39;: swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

 

Even now, Ivan Moore can’t think why his father didn’t didn’t tell anyone that the air conditioning in their house was busted. “I honestly don’t know what was going through his mind,” he said.

That week three years ago, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona were forecasted to top 115F (46C). Moore, his wife and two children went to the mountains for a camping trip, and his dad Gene, stayed behind. A few days later, Gene died.

The air conditioning had been blowing hot air. “He’d opened a window but it was too hot,” Moore said. “My dad’s heart basically gave out on him.”

Phoenix – America’s hottest city – is getting hotter and hotter, and Moore’s father is one of the hundreds of Arizonans who have succumbed to the desert heat in recent years.

In August this year, Maricopa county, which encompasses Phoenix, recorded 1,000 Covid-19 deaths. That same month, the county was investigating more than 260 heat-related deaths.

This summer, temperatures here stayed above 90F (32C), even at night, for 28 days straight, with the scorching weather in July and August breaking records. It was so hot and dry that towering saguaro cactuses that dot the landscape began to topple over and die.

At the same time, wildfires across the western US this year cast a foreboding orange glow over the region and clouded Phoenix communities, already breathing some of the highest concentrations of toxic pollution in the nation, with even more smoke.

“I grew up in the desert, in the heat,” Moore said. “But I think about what it’s going to be like in another five years, in 10 years.”

The thought has been weighing on him – and many other Arizonans – as they cast their ballots ahead of next week’s elections. Even amid a global pandemic, and the economic catastrophe it has triggered, polls find that Americans increasingly cite the climate emergency as a major concern. That’s especially true in regions like Maricopa, where the crisis is already having deadly effects.

Once a stronghold of western conservatism, Maricopa county has been slowly undergoing a political transformation – and has become one of the fiercely contested election battlegrounds in the nation.

Asked to choose between a Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, who recognizes global heating as an emergency, and a Republican, Donald Trump, who has called it a “hoax”, a growing number of voters in the Valley of the Sun say they are seeking leadership that will address climate and help their desert home survive an increasingly precarious future.

‘The crossroads of the climate crisis’

“We are a desert community,” said Laura Jimena Dent, the executive director of the Arizona-based environmental justice non-profit Chispa. “We are literally at the crossroads of the climate crisis.”

Since 1865, the temperatures in Maricopa have risen by nearly 2C. And since the 1950s, the water level in the region’s well has dropped by 125ft. Even in a politically divided swing state, that’s hard for anyone to ignore. A recent survey found that nearly three-quarters of Arizonans “agree” or “strongly agree” that the federal government “needs to do more to combat climate change”.

Even after the coronavirus pandemic hit this year, when researchers at Yale university conducted an annual survey of voters across the country, climate change went up on a list of voter priorities.

For the first time in American history, climate change has reached the very top echelons of voting issues

Anthony Leiserowitz, Yale University

“You see that reflected in how much political leaders – especially Democrats – have been talking about climate change this election,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert on public opinion of climate change at Yale University.

Whereas liberal Democrats ranked climate change as their second most important issue out of 30, moderate Democrats rank it 8th, and moderate Republicans rank it somewhere in the middle.

But in the US, and in Maricopa county, most voters agree climate change is happening, and they want lawmakers to do something about it.

“For the first time in American history, climate change has reached the very top echelons of voting issues,” Leiserowitz said.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Americans heard Trump and Biden respond to the first question about the climate crisis at a presidential debate in 20 years. While Trump flatly refused to acknowledge that climate change was fueling wildfires across the west, Biden touted a $2tn plan to invest in green infrastructure, emphasizing the “millions of good-paying jobs” that his climate proposals could create.

Responding to the wildfires ripping across California in a speech earlier this summer, Biden also cast the climate crisis as a threat to the safety and security of America’s suburbs, flipping an attack the president has leveled against him to appeal to voters in regions like Maricopa – a sprawling suburban oasis in the desert.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?” he asked.

Similarly, in a heated debate between the state’s US Senate candidates, the incumbent Republican Martha McSally, who serves on the Senate energy and natural resources committee and is a close ally of the president, acknowledged “the climate is changing”, but derided any “heavy-handed approach” to addressing it.

Meanwhile, the Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, mused about how fragile the planet looks from low-Earth orbit. “There is no planet B,” he said. “We have to do a better job taking care of this planet.”

The stark contrast between the parties’ stances can help explain why voters in Maricopa have been increasingly repelled by the Republicans, said Josh Ulibarri, a Democratic pollster based in Phoenix.

Conservatives here have been slowly leaving a Republican party that has grown increasingly extreme and rightwing. “Climate is part of that,” Ulibarri said.

Fifteen years ago, Arizona was one of the first states to develop a climate action plan, and climate change – at least in this region – was a bipartisan issue. John McCain, the state’s late senior senator, was one of the few Republican lawmakers in Washington DC to support climate change legislation. But as national and local politics became more polarized, Republican politicians moved right.

As a result, “college-educated voters and women voters have moved away from Republicans because they don’t believe in science”, Ulibarri said.Many independents recoiled, as well.

Moore falls in that category. “Normally I go through, and I don’t care if candidates are Republicans or Democrats – I do my research on whose viewpoints I agree with,” he said. “But right now, the GOP – not Republicans but the party itself – has gone too far, too far right. They’ve been ridiculous with the choices they’re making – the party needs a reset.”

Among other things, “we need our leaders figuring out: how do we live in a world that’s going to get even hotter?” he added. This year, he picked Democrats up and down the ballot.

Ultimately, Republicans’ resistance to acknowledging and addressing climate change will hurt them politically, said Jeff Flake, a former Arizona senator. “I do think over time it really makes it difficult to attract, particularly, the younger generation, millennials, Gen Xers, and whoever else, when we don’t have rational policies on climate change,” said Flake, a Republican who has been critical of Trump’s politics.

With so much else going on, he said that while he doesn’t see climate change playing a big role in this election, he imagines it will be hard to ignore in future ones.

‘We’re building the political power’

Like many areas of the country, in Maricopa, poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods where Latino and Black families live are worst affected by both the heat and the bad air. Across the US, young voters and Latino voters are especially likely to prioritize climate action, polling shows.

“Latinos are more convinced climate change is real and that it’s human caused, more worried about it, and more supportive of action than any other voting bloc,” said Leiserowitz of Yale.

In Maricopa, where about one third of the county’s 4.5 million residents identify as Latino, environmental justice activists are at the forefront of efforts to galvanize voters to elect environmentally minded candidates.

“Our focus is on getting young people, Latino people, people of color across our state who have traditionally been less engaged in the political process,” Dent said. “We are making calls, we are sending mail and digital ads, text messages and handwritten postcards.”

Translating concern about climate change into votes has proved challenging in the past, but as the region grows hotter, and more polluted, “we’re building the political power”, she said.

The county earned an “F” rating this year from the American Lung Association. The cars and trucks that congest the city’s sprawling highways have made Phoenix the seventh-most ozone-polluted metropolitan area in the country. Here, the heat speeds up production of the toxic ozone particles, which can damage the lungs and lead to serious, even deadly respiratory issues.

“For a decade, we in our communities have been raising our voices about these issues,” said Blanca Abarca, 54, a community activist.

Abarca lives in a largely Latino neighborhood in south Phoenix located downwind of an industrial dump the EPA has found is leeching “low levels” of toxic compounds and heavy metals including arsenic, barium, mercury, and nickel. She, her husband and their teenage daughter have MacGyvered their whole house to cope with the heat.

They rely on a swamp cooler, ventilators on their roof and ceiling, and the trees they planted all around their house. They’ve got an AC unit – but they hardly use it. The high electricity bills could send them into debt.

“I tell people who can vote to do it for the community – to elect leaders who are going to better this great country, and for the future of our children,” she said while on a break from gardening at Spaces of Opportunity, a community farm in south Phoenix where she and many others in the neighborhood come for a respite from heat.

To be clear, she added, that is not how she would characterize the current president.

Her efforts – and those of other progressive Latino activists – have been paying off. Young Latino voters have been casting ballots in record numbers in recent years, helping elect Democratic lawmakers in local and statewide elections.

In 2019, the Democrat Kate Gallego was elected mayor of Phoenix – in part thanks to a wave of young, progressive Latino voters. Gallego has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science.

“I grew up with asthma. And as you spend time wheezing by the track, it gives you an opportunity to reflect on air quality,” she said. Since taking office, Gallego has focused on developing better public transportation infrastructure to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. She’s also overseeing the development of a network of “cool corridors” – to ensure that no resident is more than five minutes from water and shade.

In another sign of progress, Arizona utility regulators this week approved a plan to transition to 100% carbon-free energy sources – such as solar and nuclear energy – by 2050. Two Republicans on the utilities board voted with a Democrat to get the measure passed.

In the desert, “we just have to take climate change very seriously”, Gallego said.

“And, you know, I have a father who fancies himself a political consultant,” she added. “And he told me if I can just do something about the summer heat, I will definitely be re-elected.”

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules

Susannah Scott                                          

Professor of Chemistry, University of California Santa Barbara

<span class="caption">Bales of plastic waste destined for recycling.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="link rapid-noclick-resp" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/recycling-pattern-waste-recovery-royalty-free-image/1153505120?adppopup=true" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Koron/Getty Images">Koron/Getty Images</a></span>
Bales of plastic waste destined for recycling. Koron/Get.
If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long.

 

In the six decades that plastic has been manufactured for commercial uses, more than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced. Plastics are light, versatile, cheap and nearly indestructible (as long as they don’t get too hot). These properties make them incredibly useful in an enormous range of applications that includes sterile food packaging, energy-efficient transportation, textiles and medical protective gear. But their indestructible nature comes at a cost. Most of them decompose extremely slowly in the environment – on the order of several hundred years – where they are creating a global epidemic of plastic trash. Its consequences for human and ecosystem health are still incompletely known, but are potentially momentous.

I’m a chemist with experience in designing processes for making plastics, and I became interested in using plastic as a large, untapped resource for energy and materials. I wondered if we could turn plastic waste into something more valuable to keep it out of landfills and the natural environment.

A new way to use plastic waste

Plastics are made by stringing together a large number of small, carbon-based molecules in an almost infinite variety of ways to create polymer chains.

To reuse these polymers, recycling facilities could, in principle, melt and reshape them, but plastics’ properties tend to deteriorate. The resulting materials are almost never suitable for their original use, although they can be used to make lower-value stuff like plastic lumber. The result is a very low effective rate of recycling.

A new approach involves breaking the long chains down into small molecules again. The challenge is how to do this in a precise way.

Since the process of making the chains in the first place releases a lot of energy, reversing it requires adding a large amount of energy back in. Generally this means heating up the material to a high temperature – but heating up plastic causes the stuff to turn into a nasty mess. It also wastes a lot of energy, meaning more greenhouse gas emissions.

My team at UC Santa Barbara, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell, discovered a clean way to turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules.

Polyethylene is one of the world’s most useful and most used plastic types. It is also one of the largest contributors to plastic waste. It represents a third of the nearly 400 million metric tons of plastic the world makes every year, for purposes ranging from sterile food and medical packaging, waterproof films and coatings, cable and wire insulation, construction materials and water pipes, to wear-resistant hip and knee replacements and even bulletproof vests.

How the new process works

The process we have developed does not require high temperatures, but instead depends on tiny amounts of a catalyst containing a metal that removes a little hydrogen from the polymer chain. The catalyst then uses this hydrogen to cut the bonds that hold the carbon chain together, making smaller pieces.

The key is using the hydrogen as soon as it forms so that the chain-cutting provides the energy for making more hydrogen. This process is repeated many times for each chain, turning the solid polymer into a liquid.

The chopping slows down naturally when the molecules reach a certain size, so it’s easy to prevent the molecules from becoming too small. We’re able to recover the valuable liquid before it turns into less useful gases.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

A majority of the molecules in the recovered liquid are alkylbenzenes, which are useful as solvents and can easily be turned into detergents. The global market for this type of molecule is about US$9 billion annually.

Turning waste plastic into valuable molecules is called upcycling. Although our study represented a small-scale demonstration, a preliminary economic analysis suggests that it could easily be adapted to become a much larger-scale process in the next few years. Keeping plastic out of the environment by reusing it in a way that makes good economic sense is a win-win.

Read more:

Susannah Scott receives funding from the US Department of Energy, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Dow Chemical, for her work in polymer upcycling. She is a coinventor on a US patent application related to this discovery, filed by the University of California.

Our Oceans Have Gotten Much More Stable, Which Sounds Great. It Isn’t.

Our Oceans Have Gotten Much More Stable, Which Sounds Great. It Isn’t.

Caroline Delbert                    October 23, 2020
Photo credit: Diane Keough - Getty Images
Photo credit: Diane Keough – Getty Images. From Popular Mechanics

 

  • The oceans are growing more stable—and stagnant—as a consequence of climate change.
  • Oceans are finely balanced and vulnerable to the most severe climate change effects.
  • When water stops pushing up and down within the entire water column, it’s bad news.

As the oceans warm, they become more stable in a way scientists say will worsen climate change. If this sounds counterintuitive, remember that instability of some kinds is essential to how both wind and air circulate around the planet and affect the yearly cycles for agriculture, animal migration, and more.

In The Guardian, researcher John Abraham explains what stability is in this context:

“In oceans, water tends to stratify, with warmer, less dense water sitting atop colder, more dense water. We refer to this as a ‘stable’ configuration. Sometimes the waters are not stable. For example, the upper waters of the ocean can suddenly become heavier. This causes the water to fall from the surface towards the ocean floor. Not only does water move up and down in the ocean, but currents flow around the world horizontally as well. It turns out these water currents have major effects on the entire ocean, as well as the weather.”

So, when the ocean is stable, that means it has settled into identifiable layers like the different colors in a Tequila Sunrise, or like the oil layer in a bottle of salad dressing. The layers have names and are studied in a couple of different ways depending on the scientists involved, whether in three or five layers or something else.

The abyssal zone, for example, is what lies against the deep (but not irregularly deep trenches) ocean floor, which in turn is called the abyssal plain.

Currents and animal populations can circulate effectively within just certain zones, in a way that seems like a miracle until you remember that humans only live in one band that basically touches the Earth’s surface only. Rainforest animals might live their entire lives in the layer above, the canopy, while birds prefer to occupy their own bands of low altitude. And we’ve all seen those days when wind is blowing one layer of clouds at a very different speed and even direction than a layer farther away.

Abraham highlights a new paper he coauthored about the warmer, more stagnant surfaces of the world’s oceans as a result of higher stability. The researchers explain:

“We find that stratification globally has increased by a substantial 5.3 [percent] in recent decades; a rate of 0.90 [percent] per decade. Most of the increase occurred in the upper 200 m of the ocean and resulted largely from temperature changes, although salinity changes play an important role locally.”

That, Abraham says, has a lot of ramifications. The less “fresh” (in the novel sense) water circulates top to bottom, the warmer the top layer grows, which in turn means it’s less nutritious, less able to absorb carbon, and more. And gravest of all, the warmer top layer accelerates its own warming.

“There is hope that we can navigate the challenges resulting from a more stable ocean—but we must start immediately,” Abraham concludes.

It’s Official: Solar Is the Cheapest Electricity in History

It’s Official: Solar Is the Cheapest Electricity in History

Caroline Delbert                         October 22, 2020

Popular Mechanics

In a new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says solar is now the cheapest form of electricity for utility companies to build. That’s thanks to risk-reducing financial policies around the world, the agency says, and it applies to locations with both the most favorable policies and the easiest access to financing. The report underlines how important these policies are to encouraging development of renewables and other environmentally forward technologies.

Carbon Brief (CB) summarizes the annual report with a lot of key details. The World Energy Outlook 2020 “offers four ‘pathways’ to 2040, all of which see a major rise in renewables,” CB says. “The IEA’s main scenario has 43 [percent] more solar output by 2040 than it expected in 2018, partly due to detailed new analysis showing that solar power is 20 [to] 50 [percent] cheaper than thought.”

The calculation depends on financing figures compared with the amount of output for solar projects. That means that at the same time panel technology gets more efficient and prices for basic panels continue to fall, investors are getting better and better financing deals. CB explains:

“Previously the IEA assumed a range of 7 [to] 8 [percent] for all technologies, varying according to each country’s stage of development. Now, the IEA has reviewed the evidence internationally and finds that for solar, the cost of capital is much lower, at 2.6 [to] 5.0 [percent] in Europe and the US, 4.4 [to] 5.5 [percent] in China and 8.8 [to] 10.0 [percent] in India.”

So the statistic “20 to 50 percent cheaper” is based on a calculus of companies building solar projects, not something that has throughput for consumers or even solar homeowners. But it’s still a big deal, because the cost to build power plants is a major part of why so much of the world has stuck with coal and gas power. With the new, lowered cost of capital, solar’s cost per megawatt has fallen almost completely below both gas and coal worldwide. (These statistical models get into some detail, but very local results are different, of course.)

Buy the Best Solar Panels

What causes cost of capital to lower? It depends on a bunch of things, but for renewable energy, there are a few low-hanging factors. As people and companies see more successful projects like Elon Musk’s South Australia solar battery farm, their investment confidence grows.

The better the technology’s batting average, the more you look forward to its at-bats. And the cost of the technology itself continues to fall, meaning investors are asked to swallow at least a little smaller pill. Then, policies like tax incentives and low-cost financing sweeten the deal.

IEA’s recommendations include similar projections and calculations for all renewables as well as nuclear. Solar is well positioned to blow up in the next 10 years, the IEA says, because right now it’s in the sweet spot of low cost and increasing availability. All the pathways listed include a mix of renewables, nuclear, and shrinking coal and gas power. And while the news is very good for solar, it’s still pretty good for all the other renewables as well as nuclear, the IEA says.

End Our National Crisis !

The New York Times

Opinion: End Our National Crisis !

Corruption – Anger – Chaos – Incompetence – Lies – Decay

The Case Against Donald Trump: By The Editorial Board 

The Editorial Board is a group of opinion journalists
whose views are informed by expertise,
research, debate and certain longstanding values.
It is separate from the newsroom.

Kathleen Kingsbury, acting editorial page editor, wrote about the editorial board’s verdict on Donald Trump’s presidency in a special edition of our Opinion Today newsletter. You can read it here.

Donald J. Trump, Goner - Mark Rubin

The Verdict: Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate  refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

The resilience of American democracy has been sorely tested by Mr. Trump’s first term. Four more years would be worse.

But even as Americans wait to vote in lines that stretch for blocks through their towns and cities, Mr. Trump is engaged in a full-throated assault on the integrity of that essential democratic process. Breaking with all of his modern predecessors, he has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting that his victory is the only legitimate outcome, and that if he does not win, he is ready to contest the judgment of the American people in the courts or even on the streets.

The enormity and variety of Mr. Trump’s misdeeds can feel overwhelming. Repetition has dulled the sense of outrage, and the accumulation of new outrages leaves little time to dwell on the particulars. This is the moment when Americans must recover that sense of outrage.

It is the purpose of this special section of the Sunday Review to remind readers why Mr. Trump is unfit to lead the nation. It includes a series of essays focused on the Trump administration’s rampant corruption, celebrations of violence, gross negligence with the public’s health and incompetent statecraft. A selection of iconic images highlights the president’s record on issues like climate, immigration, women’s rights and race.

The urgency of these essays speaks for itself. The repudiation of Mr. Trump is the first step in repairing the damage he has done. But even as we write these words, Mr. Trump is salting the field — and even if he loses, reconstruction will require many years and tears.

Mr. Trump stands without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history. In 2016, his bitter account of the nation’s ailments struck a chord with many voters. But the lesson of the last four years is that he cannot solve the nation’s pressing problems because he is the nation’s most pressing problem.

He is a racist demagogue presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.

He has shown no aptitude for building, but he has managed to do a great deal of damage. He is just the man for knocking things down.

As the world runs out of time to confront climate change, Mr. Trump has denied the need for action, abandoned international cooperation and attacked efforts to limit emissions.

He has mounted a cruel crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration without proposing a sensible policy for determining who should be allowed to come to the United States.

Obsessed with reversing the achievements of his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, he has sought to persuade both Congress and the courts to get rid of the Affordable Care Act without proposing any substitute policy to provide Americans with access to affordable health care. During the first three years of his administration, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 2.3 million — a number that has surely grown again as millions of Americans have lost their jobs this year.

He campaigned as a champion of ordinary workers, but he has governed on behalf of the wealthy. He promised an increase in the federal minimum wage and fresh investment in infrastructure; he delivered a round of tax cuts that mostly benefited rich people. He has indiscriminately erased regulations, and answered the prayers of corporations by suspending enforcement of rules he could not easily erase. Under his leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped trying to protect consumers and the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped trying to protect the environment.

He has strained longstanding alliances while embracing dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Trump treats with a degree of warmth and deference that defies explanation. He walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a strategic agreement among China’s neighbors intended to pressure China to conform to international standards. In its place, Mr. Trump has conducted a tit-for-tat trade war, imposing billions of dollars in tariffs — taxes that are actually paid by Americans — without extracting significant concessions from China.

Mr. Trump’s inadequacies as a leader have been on particularly painful display during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of working to save lives, Mr. Trump has treated the pandemic as a public relations problem. He lied about the danger, challenged the expertise of public health officials and resisted the implementation of necessary precautions; he is still trying to force the resumption of economic activity without bringing the virus under control.

As the economy pancaked, he signed an initial round of aid for Americans who lost their jobs. Then the stock market rebounded and, even though millions remained out of work, Mr. Trump lost interest in their plight.

In September, he declared that the virus “affects virtually nobody” the day before the death toll from the disease in the United States topped 200,000.

Nine days later, Mr. Trump fell ill.

The foundations of American civil society were crumbling before Mr. Trump rode down the escalator of Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his presidential campaign. But he has intensified the worst tendencies in American politics: Under his leadership, the nation has grown more polarized, more paranoid and meaner.

He has pitted Americans against each other, mastering new broadcast media like Twitter and Facebook to rally his supporters around a virtual bonfire of grievances and to flood the public square with lies, disinformation and propaganda. He is relentless in his denigration of opponents and reluctant to condemn violence by those he regards as allies. At the first presidential debate in September, Mr. Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists. He responded by instructing one violent gang, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by.”

He has undermined faith in government as a vehicle for mediating differences and arriving at compromises. He demands absolute loyalty from government officials, without regard to the public interest. He is openly contemptuous of expertise.

And he has mounted an assault on the rule of law, wielding his authority as an instrument to secure his own power and to punish political opponents. In June, his administration tear-gassed and cleared peaceful protesters from a street in front of the White House so Mr. Trump could pose with a book he does not read in front of a church he does not attend.

The full scope of his misconduct may take decades to come to light. But what is already known is sufficiently shocking:

He has resisted lawful oversight by the other branches of the federal government. The administration routinely defies court orders, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly directed administration officials not to testify before Congress or to provide documents, notably including Mr. Trump’s tax returns.

With the help of Attorney General William Barr, he has shielded loyal aides from justice. In May, the Justice Department said it would drop the prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn even though Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. In July, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of another former aide, Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a federal investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, rightly condemned the commutation as an act of “unprecedented, historic corruption.”

Last year, Mr. Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of his main political rival, Joe Biden, and then directed administration officials to obstruct a congressional inquiry of his actions. In December 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Mr. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. But Senate Republicans, excepting Mr. Romney, voted to acquit the president, ignoring Mr. Trump’s corruption to press ahead with the project of filling the benches of the federal judiciary with young, conservative lawyers as a firewall against majority rule.

Now, with other Republican leaders, Mr. Trump is mounting an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of Americans who vote and the number of ballots that are counted.

The president, who has long spread baseless charges of widespread voter fraud, has intensified his rhetorical attacks in recent months, especially on ballots submitted by mail. “The Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” he tweeted. The president himself has voted by mail, and there is no evidence to support his claims. But the disinformation campaign serves as a rationale for purging voter rolls, closing polling places, tossing absentee ballots and otherwise impeding Americans from exercising the right to vote.

It is an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.

Other modern presidents have behaved illegally or made catastrophic decisions. Richard Nixon used the power of the state against his political opponents. Ronald Reagan ignored the spread of AIDS. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush took the nation to war under false pretenses.

Mr. Trump has outstripped decades of presidential wrongdoing in a single term.

Frederick Douglass lamented during another of the nation’s dark hours, the presidency of Andrew Johnson, “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe.” But that is not the nature of our democracy. The implicit optimism of American democracy is that the health of the Republic rests on the judgment of the electorate and the integrity of those voters choose.

Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people — even those who would prefer a Republican president — to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.

Opinion: The Self-Dealing Administration

This article is part of a special Sunday Review: End Our National Crisis.

 

By Michelle Cottle        October 16, 2020

Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times.

 

For anyone attempting to understand Donald Trump’s presidency — to really grasp its essence — the place to look isn’t the White House or the federal agencies or even the Supreme Court, with its expanded conservative majority. The lurid heart of Trumpist Washington lies within the grand, Romanesque-revival building at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, Northwest: the Trump International Hotel.

Built at the close of the 19th century, the structure originally served as the city’s main post office, a towering tribute to public service. Under Mr. Trump, it now stands as both a monument to and a tool for advancing the endless spectacle of self-dealing and corruption that has come to define this president, his family and much of his administration.

On any given day, a glut of lobbyists, lawmakers, foreign agents and other favor-seekers come through the Trump International, schmoozing with administration bigwigs — on occasion the president himself — and spending gobs of cash. This ritual not only strokes the president’s ego — What a swank place you have here, sir! — it enriches his family business, ownership of which Mr. Trump has refused to divest himself.

We aren’t talking about a few overpriced martinis or breakfast meetings but, rather, some serious, high-dollar hobnobbing. In the six months ending in March 2017, the government of Saudi Arabia spent at least $270,000 at the hotel. The National Shooting Sports Foundation dropped at least $62,000 there in 2018, according to a Times report last weekend, which also noted that the National Automobile Dealers Association has used it as a base for meetings with policymakers, spending close to $80,000. Groups hosting posh events there range from the Philippine Embassy to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to the FLC Group, a Vietnamese conglomerate. (Those who responded to The Time’s inquiries denied inappropriate motives.)

The appearance of impropriety is not confined to the family’s Washington hotel. From Scotland to New Jersey to Florida and beyond, Trump properties have raked in tens of millions of dollars from those seeking to curry favor with, or at least express their appreciation for, the president.

“An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration,” the paper reported, concluding that the president has “built a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s more egregious self-enrichment projects have failed. Most notably, his plan to host this year’s Group of 7 meeting at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami met with so much political blowback that he quickly abandoned the idea. But at this stage, his clan’s routine self-dealing barely raises an eyebrow.

The president’s campaign contributors, large and small, also do their share to support the first family. This cycle, Trump businesses have received more than $4 million from the president’s campaign-related committees and the Republican Party, according to the latest numbers from the Center for Responsive Politics. This includes $380,000 that the campaign spent on a “donor retreat” at Mar-a Lago. The campaign also has been paying around $37,000 a month for space in Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Even Americans who don’t support Mr. Trump are filling his coffers. Each time the president, a family member or certain top administration officials visit a Trump property, taxpayers foot the bill for the security details that must tag along.

On a 2019 trip to Ireland, Vice President Mike Pence stayed at a Trump resort located on the far side of the country from where his official meetings were being held. (In addition to whatever taxpayers spent on lodging, the additional ground transportation cost nearly $600,000.)

The Washington Post has estimated that the U.S. government had paid well over $1 million to the president’s company since he took office in costs associated with the Secret Service. This includes at least 530 nights at Mar-a-Lago and 950 nights at the president’s club in Bedminster, N.J.

Taxpayers are also footing part of the bill for business trips by the Trump kids. In January 2017, Eric Trump jetted down to Uruguay to check on one of the Trump Organization’s condo projects, costing Americans around $98,000 in hotel rooms for the Secret Service and embassy staff members. Two trips the following month, one by Eric to the Dominican Republic and one by Eric and Don Jr. to Dubai, ran taxpayers nearly $250,000 for Secret Service expenses such as airfare, lodging and ground transportation.

In May of 2018, China awarded Mr. Trump’s golden child, Ivanka, seven trademarks for her now-defunct lifestyle brand, right around the same time her father was pledging to save a major Chinese telecommunications company, ZTE, from going belly up. Ivanka’s office said there was no special treatment involved.

What’s good for the Trump family is, apparently, also good for the family of Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, and their business interests. In May 2017, Mr. Kushner’s sister played up her brother’s position as senior adviser to the president when pitching some of Kushner Companies’ real estate developments to prospective Chinese investors through a federal program that provides fast-track visas to wealthy foreign investors. The project “means a lot to me and my entire family,” she told them. The company denied any impropriety.

Also in 2017, both Citigroup and Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, made large loans to Kushner Companies after White House meetings between Mr. Kushner and top executives from those firms. The involved parties insisted that the loans had nothing to do with Mr. Kushner’s position — that, in fact, his family’s business had not even come up in the discussions. The $184 million loan from Apollo came through in November. The next month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an investigation into Apollo. While there was no indication that the two episodes were related, the timing was a tad unseemly.

Foreign entities know a soft target when they see one. In early 2018, The Washington Post reported that officials in at least four countries — China, Israel, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates — “have privately discussed ways they can manipulate” Mr. Kushner “by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience,” according to U.S. officials familiar with the related intelligence reports.

In politics, as in life, the fish rots from the head. And many members of the administration seem to have embraced the first family’s ethical flexibility. Among the top officials to depart under allegations of self-dealing or other misuse of taxpayer money were the secretary of the interior, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the secretary of health and human services and the secretary of veterans affairs. Impressively, Wilbur Ross remains the commerce secretary, despite reports of multiple sketchy financial dealings.

Forget Abraham Lincoln’s Team of Rivals. Mr. Trump will be remembered for assembling a world-class Team of Grifters.

The Trump campaign world presents its own opportunities for self-enrichment. Before being ousted as campaign manager this summer, Brad Parscale had been facing scrutiny both for the campaign’s profligate spending and for the lavish lifestyle he had adopted since joining Team Trump. Following Mr. Parscale’s demotion, the campaign began an audit of spending during his tenure, according to Business Insider. (The campaign has denied that Mr. Parscale is being targeted by the review.)

Mr. Parscale features prominently in recent allegations that the Trump re-election effort has been violating campaign finance laws. In late July, a nonpartisan watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the campaign and a related fund-raising committee of masking $170 million in spending to vendors and Trump family members by funneling the payments through companies run by Mr. Parscale and others formed by the campaign’s lawyers. Among the outlays in question are fat salaries for Eric Trump’s wife, Lara, and Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle. The campaign has denied any wrongdoing.

But I bet you could have guessed that by now.

With so much grift and graft and self-enrichment swirling about, it’s amusing — and yet horrifying — to recall that Mr. Trump ran in 2016 as a tough, independent outsider who would bring in the “best people” to help him clean up political corruption. Today, as election night looms, the president’s campaign has reportedly booked the Trump International Hotel in D.C. for a victory party. Rooms sold out months ago.

Forget draining the swamp; the president slapped his name on it and began charging admission.

 

Opinion: When Science is Pushed Aside

This article is part of a special Sunday Review: End Our National Crisis.

By Jeneen Interlandi       October 16, 2020

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times.

 

From his first days in office, President Trump has waged a relentless and cynical campaign against the institutions most responsible for turning science into sound policy.

These institutions — the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency — are as essential to democracy as any high court or legislative body. They have set standards that the rest of the world still aspires to, for safe food and medicine, for clean air and water and, until recently, for effective disease control. At their best, they stand as a bulwark against the apathy that can attend such difficult problems and as a beacon for human society’s highest ideals: intelligence, discernment and moral action in the face of grave threats.

In the past four years, however, they have been imperiled like never before by a president who places no value on science. Or data. Or facts. Or truth.

He’s a president who muzzles credible scientists and amplifies charlatans. One who suggested on live television that UV light and bleach injections might cure people of the coronavirus. One who has refused to promote or consistently wear face masks, even as the virus has spread through his inner circle and assaulted his immune system. He’s a president who has lied, again and again, about the severity of threats the country is now facing — be they from climate change or the pandemic — even as reams of evidence make those threats plain.

Mr. Trump’s disdain for science is so terrifying that two of the nation’s oldest scientific publications — Scientific American and the New England Journal of Medicine — have waded into the morass of electoral politics for the first time in their more-than-100-year histories. The Journal implored voters to fire the president come November, while Scientific American went a step further and endorsed Joe Biden. “The evidence and science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science,” the editors there wrote.

That rejection began at the Environmental Protection Agency, where Mr. Trump appointed an administrator whose greatest ambition had been to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. After a string of scandals, Mr. Trump replaced him with a former coal industry lobbyist. The agency has effectively prohibited any study involving human participants and any scientist who receives federal grants from informing its environmental policies. It has deliberately downplayed climate change, going so far as to purge the term from its website. It has also weakened or dismantled scores of environmental protections, including curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, rules meant to keep toxic chemicals in check and protections for national wetlands and wildlife.

The Trump administration has billed each of these rollbacks as a win for the economy — a tired argument that’s easily debunked, in some cases by the government’s own research. The E.P.A.’s own lies have been even more brazen. A spokeswoman recently told The Times that by undoing so many environmental protections the agency was returning to its “core mission,” which is to protect the environment.

The story has been similar at the F.D.A., where officials have repeatedly appeared to bend to the president’s will, for instance by authorizing unproven coronavirus treatments that he champions but that scientists advise against. The first of those authorizations — for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine — was rescinded after the treatment was linked to potentially deadly side effects in Covid-19 patients. The second — for convalescent plasma — triggered a crisis of confidence in the F.D.A., when its commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, grossly overstated the treatment’s potential in public remarks that he was then forced to walk back.

That spectacle has left both scientists and ordinary citizens deeply anxious about the coming coronavirus vaccines. The president has all but promised one before Election Day; scientists insist that such a timeline cannot possibly be met without compromising safety. The F.D.A. recently tried to assure the public that it will come down unequivocally on the side of safety. But in early October Mr. Trump dismissed the agency’s newly tightened vaccine standards as a “political hit job” and indicated that he would somehow overrule officials there.

The most shameful of all Mr. Trump’s meddling has been at the C.D.C., an agency designed to confront exactly the kind of pandemic America is now facing. Political appointees have prevented scientists at the agency from publishing a range of crucial guidelines and edicts meant to shepherd the nation through the pandemic. As a result, decisions across the country about school openings and closings, testing and mask-wearing have been muddy and confused, too often determined by political calculus instead of evidence.

The C.D.C.’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield, has repeatedly walked back statements that counter the president’s own sunny assessment of the pandemic. Other scientists at the agency have been muzzled altogether — holding few news conferences and giving almost no talks or interviews in the nine months since the coronavirus first reached American shores. Morale at the agency has reached a low point, with many career civil servants there telling The Times that they might resign if Mr. Trump wins re-election, and others speculating that the C.D.C.’s ability to function at all, in this pandemic or the next, is in serious jeopardy.

The most immediate impacts of these machinations are plain to see. Pollution is up, fines for polluters are down, carbon emissions have risen and are poised to rise further. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and millions of livelihoods destroyed, by a pandemic that could have been contained. The nation’s standing in the wider world, and public trust here at home, have been eroded almost beyond recognition.

The longer-term impacts will be equally dire. Consider a future in which the empirical truths ferreted out by doctors, scientists and engineers no longer have currency because there is no one left to act on them. Real medicine and snake oil are sold on the same shelf, with no good way to tell the two apart. Vaccines are developed, but even the most pro-science families don’t trust them enough to make use of them. We resign ourselves to the lead in our water, the pesticides in our food and the toxins in our baby bottles because we know that no one will resolve these crises in our favor. Lies and shrugs become the official response to any disease that threatens us.

Some of these things are already beginning to happen. Agencies that use science to protect human health have long been plagued by a lack of funding and too much political interference. But a world in which these agencies become fully ornamental would be dangerously different than the world we currently inhabit.

It’s hard to say what chance science or civics have against so foolish and self-serving a commander in chief. But for now, at least, there is still cause for hope. Earlier this month, the F.D.A. updated its criteria for emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine, against Mr. Trump’s stated wishes. After a brief standoff, the administration quietly backed off its opposition to the new guidelines, which should make it all but impossible for the president to rush a product through in the next few weeks.

Career civil servants at the C.D.C., the E.P.A. and elsewhere are engaged in similar battles to preserve these institutions and the embers of what they stand for. Anyone who wants to ensure that Americans’ food and medicine nourish rather than poisons them, or who worries about the relentless march of climate change, or who hopes that the next deadly disease outbreak will be prevented from morphing into a global pandemic, should root for those civil servants to succeed — and vote accordingly.

The Radicalizer in Chief

By Jesse Wegman              October 16, 2020

 

This article is part of a special Sunday Review: End Our National Crisis.

Christopher Lee for The New York Times

By Jesse Wegnan                              Oct. 16, 2020      

Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.          

This month, federal and state authorities arrested 13 Michigan men on terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges. Six of the men are alleged to have been plotting to kidnap the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, with whom they were furious for imposing shutdowns, as most other governors did, in the early weeks of the pandemic.

Ms. Whitmer’s actions most likely saved thousands of lives. The arrested men, along with hundreds of other anti-shutdown protesters who swarmed the State Capitol in Lansing, considered her a tyrant.

As the protests grew in April, President Trump could have supported a governor navigating a tough situation and reminded Americans about the importance of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Instead, he tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” — a message that has to date received nearly 200,000 likes and almost 39,000 retweets. He tweeted the same of other states with Democratic governors and said the Second Amendment was “under siege.” It was as though Mr. Trump saw himself as another anti-government insurgent.

The message seems to have come through loud and clear. Protesters became bolder, and some marched into the Michigan statehouse brandishing semiautomatic rifles and long guns, forcing a shutdown of the State Legislature. Many political leaders rightly condemned the armed display. Mr. Trump defended the protesters. “These are very good people, but they are angry,” he wrote on Twitter.

As Ms. Whitmer said after this month’s arrests: “Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry. As a call to action. When our leaders speak, their words matter. They carry weight. When our leaders meet with, encourage or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions, and they are complicit. When they stoke and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit.”

Even after the arrests and charges, Mr. Trump has refused to rebuke violent agitators. Instead, he keeps feeding the fire. Speaking on Fox Business on Thursday, he said of Ms. Whitmer: “She wants to be a dictator in Michigan. And the people can’t stand her.”

A president’s words are among his most powerful, and potentially dangerous, tools. They can rally the American public to work together toward a common cause. They can soothe the jangled nerves of a frightened nation, or provide a healing balm at a time of mourning. They can move global financial markets, start wars — and embolden violent individuals.

From the start of his campaign for president in 2015, Mr. Trump has gleefully upturned every expectation Americans had about how their presidents speak. He revels in crude insults, trivial gripes and constant mockery of those who disagree with him.

This is harmful on many levels. “The president isn’t just the chief of the executive branch, but the head of state,” said Ian Bassin, who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office during the Obama administration and now runs the nonprofit group Protect Democracy. “That means part of what the presidency is about is norm-setting. When a president establishes that it’s OK to make fun of people with disabilities, or to be racist, or to lie, or to assault women, you see that replicated in society. That’s not a surprise.”

Mr. Trump doesn’t just mock his enemies. He demonizes and dehumanizes them. His attacks have resulted in his targets — whether a lawmaker like Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a television personality like the former Fox News anchor Megan Kelly, a government scientist like Dr. Anthony Fauci, or a regular American citizen — getting swamped with death threats, and in some cases requiring personal protection.

The violent rhetoric, and its consequences, began almost as soon as Mr. Trump’s campaign for the White House did.

In August 2015, barely two months after Mr. Trump announced his presidential bid by accusing Mexican immigrants of being “rapists,” two Boston men beat a homeless man with a metal pipe and then urinated on him. “Donald Trump was right,” one of the men said, according to the police. “All these illegals need to be deported.”

Mr. Trump tweeted out a condemnation of the attack, calling it “terrible” and saying, “I would never condone violence.” But repeatedly on the campaign trail, he did just that.

At a February 2016 campaign rally, he told his supporters: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.”

A few weeks later he said of one protester, “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”

At another rally, a protester being escorted out by the police was sucker-punched. Mr. Trump called the attack “very, very appropriate” and the kind of action “we need a little bit more of.”

In August 2016, he warned that if Hillary Clinton was elected, she would appoint Supreme Court justices who would rule in favor of gun control laws. “Nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, before adding, “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

This language was dangerous enough coming from a candidate. With Mr. Trump’s ascension to the most powerful job in the country, the stakes got only higher, and his reach broader.

A few months after his inauguration, he told a gathering of police officers that they should rough up the people they arrest. “Please don’t be too nice,” Mr. Trump said, to laughter and cheers.

When a Republican representative from Montana physically assaulted a reporter who had asked a question, Mr. Trump praised the lawmaker. “Any guy that can do a body-slam,” Mr. Trump said, “he’s my guy.”

In May, Mr. Trump responded to protests against police brutality by saying, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” When the shooting did start, he defended one person accused of gunfire: a 17-year-old boy who drove 20 miles to a Wisconsin protest armed with a semiautomatic rifle, which he allegedly used to shoot three people, killing two of them. It was self-defense, Mr. Trump suggested days after the teenager was charged with murder.

At the presidential debate last month, Mr. Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists without equivocation. He would not. Instead, he instructed the violent right-wing group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

Mr. Trump and his defenders regularly claim that he is being misunderstood and say that he has condemned violence and white supremacy more than any president in history. The president is asked to condemn violence so often because violence is so often committed in his name. The Proud Boys, for one, did not take his words as a condemnation. “I think he was saying I appreciate you and appreciate your support,” the group’s founder said after the debate.

Trump supporters are not the only people who commit acts of political violence. But Mr. Trump has been invoked in dozens of acts of violence, threats of violence or allegations of assault, according to a review of five years of criminal cases by ABC News.

The victims of some of the worst attacks have been from the minority groups that Mr. Trump so often targets with his words. In addition to the 2015 attack on the homeless man in Boston, there was the terror campaign involving more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to prominent journalists and critics of Mr. Trump by a Trump supporter. There was the massacre in an El Paso Walmart that left 23 dead; minutes before the attack, the 21-year-old suspect said he was doing it as a response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” And there was the slaughter of 51 people during prayer in two New Zealand mosques by a right-wing zealot who said he saw Mr. Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

In 2017, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that Mr. Trump could be sued by protesters who had been assaulted at a 2016 rally where he had said, “Get ’em out of here!” That statement was “an order, an instruction, a command,” the judge said, and the protesters’ injuries were “a direct and proximate result” of Mr. Trump’s words. The case was dismissed on appeal, but the judge was right: Mr. Trump’s supporters know that his first response is the truest expression of his beliefs, and Mr. Trump, for all his dissembling, knows exactly what he is saying.

This harm won’t end with Mr. Trump’s presidency. His toxic rhetoric has filtered down to elementary and secondary schools around the country, where children have been repeating the president’s most vile language for the past five years. In hundreds of cases, children have reported being mocked, harassed or attacked for being Hispanic, Black or Muslim, according to a survey by The Washington Post. Many of the incidents have made reference to Mr. Trump’s border wall, including one case last year in which a 13-year-old New Jersey boy told a Mexican-American classmate that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” Soon after, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and knocked his mother unconscious.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, a Mexican-American high school student who endured so much ridicule from classmates that she changed schools. “They hear it. They think it’s OK. The president says it. … Why can’t they?”

More from the Series: End Our National Crisis

Why They Loved Him !

Farah Stockman      October 16, 2020
This article is part of a special Sunday Review: End Our National Crisis.
Opinion | Why They Loved Him
The president tricked working-class voters. But the problems he railed about are real.         nytimes.com

 

The Foreign Policy That Wasn’t

By Serge Schmemann, The New York Times     October 16, 2020

This article is part of a special Sunday Review: End Our National Crisis.

Rudy Giuliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Vanity Fair

Rudy Giuliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.

By Caroline Rose Giuliani                             October 15, 2020

Image may contain Human Person Clothing Apparel Bar Counter and Pub
COURTESY OF CAROLINE ROSE GIULIANI.

 

I have a difficult confession—something I usually save for at least the second date. My father is Rudy Giuliani. We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a “Giuliani” feels counter-intuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now. The stakes are too high. I accept that most people will start reading this piece because you saw the headline with my father’s name. But now that you’re here, I’d like to tell you how urgent I think this moment is.

To anyone who feels overwhelmed or apathetic about this election, there is nothing I relate to more than desperation to escape corrosive political discourse. As a child, I saw firsthand the kind of cruel, selfish politics that Donald Trump has now inflicted on our country. It made me want to run as far away from them as possible. But trust me when I tell you: Running away does not solve the problem. We have to stand and fight. The only way to end this nightmare is to vote. There is hope on the horizon, but we’ll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Around the age of 12, I would occasionally get into debates with my father, probably before I was emotionally equipped to handle such carnage. It was disheartening to feel how little power I had to change his mind, no matter how logical and above-my-pay-grade my arguments were. He always found a way to justify his party line, whatever it was at the time. Even though he was considered socially moderate for a Republican back in the day, we still often butted heads. When I tried to explain my belief that you don’t get to be considered benevolent on LGBTQ+ rights just because you have gay friends but don’t support gay marriage, I distinctly remember him firing back with an intensity fit for an opposing politician rather than one’s child. To be clear, I’m not sharing this anecdote to complain or criticize. I had an extremely privileged childhood and am grateful for everything I was given, including real-world lessons and complicated experiences like these. The point is to illustrate one of the many reasons I have a fraught relationship with politics, like so many of us do.

Image may contain Rudy Giuliani Tie Accessories Accessory Human Person Suit Coat Clothing Overcoat and Apparel
Rudy Giuliani with Caroline.   BY CARMEN VALDES/GETTY IMAGES.

 

Even when there was an occasional flash of connection in these disagreements with my dad, it felt like nothing changed for the better, so I would retreat again until another issue I couldn’t stay silent on surfaced. Over the years other subjects like racial sensitivity (or lack thereof), sexism, policing, and the social safety net have all risen to this boiling point in me. It felt important to speak my mind, and I’m glad we at least managed to communicate at all. But the chasm was painful nonetheless, and has gotten exponentially more so in Trump’s era of chest-thumping partisan tribalism. I imagine many Americans can relate to the helpless feeling this confrontation cycle created in me, but we are not helpless. I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.

Trump and his enablers have used his presidency to stoke the injustice that already permeated our society, taking it to dramatically new, Bond-villain heights. I am a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community who tells stories about mental health, sexuality, and other stigmatized issues, and my goal is to humanize people and foster empathy. So I hope you’ll believe me when I say that another Trump term (a term, itself, that makes me cringe) will irrevocably harm the LGBTQ+ community, among many others. His administration asked the Supreme Court to let businesses fire people for being gay or trans, pushed a regulation to let health care providers refuse services to people who are LGTBQ+, and banned trans people from serving their country in the military.

Women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and people of color are all also under attack by Trump’s inhumane policies—and by his judicial appointments, including, probably, Amy Coney Barrett. Trump’s administration has torn families apart in more ways than I even imagined were possible, from ripping children from their parents at the border to mishandling the coronavirus, which has resulted in over 215,000 in the U.S. dying, many thousands of them without their loved ones near. Faced with preventable deaths during a pandemic that Trump downplayed and ignored, rhetoric that has fed deep-seated, systemic racism, and chaos in the White House, it’s no surprise that so many Americans feel as hopeless and overwhelmed as I did growing up. But if we refuse to face our political reality, we don’t stand a chance of changing it.

  • Amy Coney Barrett, Mother of Seven, Not Sure If Separating Migrant Children From Their Parents Is Bad.

In 2016, I realized I needed to speak out in a more substantial way than just debating my dad in private (especially since I wasn’t getting anywhere with that), so I publicly supported Hillary Clinton and began canvassing for congressional candidates. If the unrelenting deluge of devastating news makes you think I’m crazy for having hope, please remember that making us feel powerless is a tactic politicians use to make us think our voices and votes don’t matter. But they do. It’s taken persistence and nerve to find my voice in politics, and I’m using it now to ask you to stand with me in the fight to end Donald Trump’s reign of terror.

If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor who became the president’s personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with “yes-men” and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power. We’ve seen this ad-nauseam with Trump and his cadre of high-level sycophants (the ones who weren’t convicted, anyway).

What inspires me most about Vice President Biden is that he is not afraid to surround himself with people who disagree with him. Choosing Senator Harris, who challenged him in the primary, speaks volumes about what an inclusive president he will be. Biden is willing to incorporate the views of progressive-movement leaders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on issues like universal health care, student debt relief, prison reform, and police reform. And he is capable of reaching across the aisle to find moments of bipartisanship. The very notion of “bipartisanship” may seem painfully ludicrous right now, but we need a path out of impenetrable gridlock and vicious sniping. In Joe Biden, we’ll have a leader who prioritizes common ground and civility over alienation, bullying, and scorched-earth tactics.

Speaking of scorched earth, I know many people feel paralyzed by climate despair. I do too, but something still can and must be done. As climate change begins to encroach on our everyday lives, it is clear that our planet cannot survive four more years of this administration’s environmental assault. This monumental challenge requires scientifically literate leadership and immediate action. Joe Biden has laid out an aggressive series of plans to restore the environmental regulations that Trump gutted on behalf of his corporate polluting friends. Biden has a trans-formational clean-energy policy that he will bring to Congress within his first 100 days in office, and perhaps most crucially, he brings a desire and capability to reunite the major nations of the world in forging a path toward a global green future.

I fully understand that some of you want a nominee who is more progressive. For others the idea of voting for a Democrat of any kind may be a hurdle. Now I have another confession to make. Biden wasn’t my first choice when the primaries started. But I know what is at stake, and Joe Biden will be everyone’s president if elected. If you are planning to cast a symbolic vote or abstain from voting altogether, please reconsider. It is more important than ever to avoid complacency. This election is far from over, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen.

We are hanging by a single, slipping finger on a cliff’s edge, and the fall will be fatal. If we remove ourselves from the fight, our country will be in free-fall. Alternatively, we can hang on, elect a compassionate and decent president, and claw our way back onto the ledge. If I, after decades of despair over politics, can engage in our democracy to meet this critical moment, I know you can too.