A Core Question at COP27: Who Will Pay for Climate Change?
Elena Shao – November 7, 2022
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. Nearly 50 heads of states or governments on Monday will take the stage in the first day of “high-level” international climate talks in Egypt with more to come in the following days. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
When world leaders gather in Sharm el Sheikh this week for the annual United Nations climate summit, the debate over who bears financial responsibility for climate change will be center stage.
Poor nations, which have contributed the least to climate change but are among the most vulnerable to its effects today, are seeking more financial commitments from rich countries, many of which have grown their economies by burning fossil fuels.
The consequences of global warming are already unfolding, with developing countries often on the front lines of the devastation.
Pakistan experienced catastrophic floods this summer, which scientists said were made worse by climate change.
One-third of the country was left under water, leaving 1,700 people dead and causing at least $40 billion in economic losses.
Extreme flooding also submerged parts of Nigeria this month, and elsewhere in Africa, record drought has brought millions to the brink of starvation.
At this year’s climate conference, known as COP27, developing countries are expected to press wealthy nations — historically the world’s biggest emitters — to fulfill earlier promises of financial support and push them ever further.
Current Commitments Falling Short
More than a decade ago, the world’s rich, industrialized countries — including the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain and Japan — committed to giving $100 billion a year by 2020 (and through 2025) to poor nations for climate adaptation and mitigation projects.
But wealthy countries have failed to meet that goal.
Nations will need to agree on another financing goal of at least $100 billion a year before 2025, so negotiations at this year’s summit will begin shaping that goal. Most estimates have suggested that $100 billion is not nearly enough to help poor countries stave off the worst effects of climate change, let alone shift away from burning oil, gas and coal.
“All of the evidence suggests that we need trillions, not billions,” said Baysa Naran, a manager at Climate Policy Initiative, a research center.
The money has funded mitigation projects, which help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels, like building a zero-emissions transit system in Pakistan. Money has also gone toward adaptation projects, which help countries build resilience against climate risks, like restoring mangrove habitats in Guinea-Bissau to protect from rising seas.
Critics point out that funding has often come in the form of loans rather than grants. That has increased many poor countries’ already unsustainable burden of debt, said Alina Averchenkova, a climate policy fellow at the London School of Economics.
Some countries may also count certain types of projects toward their contributions that others do not, which can lead to inflated figures, said Sarah Colenbrander, director of the climate program at the Overseas Development Institute.
The $100 billion goal was “carefully crafted” to be deliberately vague — a result of highly politicized negotiations at COP15 in Copenhagen, said Preety Bhandari, a senior adviser at the World Resources Institute.
As a result, there’s no requirement that specific countries contribute a certain proportion of the funds. Multiple analyses have calculated that the United States, which contributed less than $3 billion of the $83.3 billion in 2020, is underdelivering by tens of billions of dollars when considering its relative emissions, population size and wealth.
In addition, mitigation projects have generally received twice as much funding as those focused on adaptation, although many experts and representatives from vulnerable nations say that the two should be more balanced. While mitigation addresses the root of the climate problem by curbing emissions, it doesn’t help communities adapt to current or future risks.
An agreement reached at the end of last year’s climate negotiations in Glasgow urged rich countries to “at least double” finance for adaptation by 2025 to $40 billion.
A Separate Fund for ‘Loss and Damage’
More recently, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have intensified calls for new funds from the world’s wealthiest economies to compensate for damages caused by climate change.
The issue is known in climate negotiations as “loss and damage” and proponents have described it as a form of climate reparations to pay for irreversible losses of income, culture, biodiversity and lives.
Wealthy countries have historically resisted calls for a loss and damage fund, largely out of fear that it could open them up to legal liability. In Glasgow last year, the United States opposed language that would set up such a fund.
This year, as Egypt has vowed to put loss and damage on the formal COP27 agenda, representatives from the United States and European countries have indicated that they might be open to discussing it.
A group of small island states first raised the issue of loss and damage in 1991, pointing to the irreparable destruction they faced from sea level rise. Since then, those countries have attempted to quantify the crushing costs. V20, or the Vulnerable Twenty group composed of finance ministers from 58 nations, estimated that its member states have lost $525 billion, or about one-fifth of their wealth, over the past two decades because of climate change.
“Countries are already paying for climate change now, and the burning question is: Can we let this go on?,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, a financial adviser to V20. “And the answer is: No, we can’t.”
Gates Foundation gives $1.4 billion climate help to smallholder farmers
Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness – November 7, 2022
FILE PHOTO: Paris hosts a global gender equality conference
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $1.4 billion to help smallholder farmers cope with the impacts of climate change, part of efforts at global climate talks in Egypt to scale up supply of so-called adaptation finance.
The world is currently not doing enough to help poorer nations withstand the effects of global warming, the United Nations said last week. By 2030, the annual financing need will be $340 billion, it added.
The Gates Foundation’s commitment, announced at the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, will help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia build resilience into their work practices and improve food security.
More than 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for food and income, yet currently less than 2% of global climate-related finance is devoted to helping them adapt to climate change, the foundation said.
“The climate crisis is causing enormous harm every day as it jeopardizes entire regions of people and economies,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a statement.
“More funding is necessary to ensure agricultural and technological innovations are widely available to vulnerable communities, helping them to adapt to climate change, save lives and increase economic growth.”
The foundation said its funding would go towards climate smart agriculture projects, new applications of digital technologies and other innovations, and to support women farmers.
Women account for 43% of the agricultural workforce in developing countries, but they tend to have far less access to finance, legal rights and education than men as a result of entrenched gender inequality.
“Women in rural Africa are the backbone of their food systems, but they have never had equal access to the resources they need to reach their full potential or build resilience to looming climate threats,” said foundation co-chair Melinda French Gates.
(Reporting by Virginia Furness; Editing by Mark Potter)
Rate of sea level rise ‘has doubled since 1993’ thanks to climate change, report finds
Ben Adler, SeniorEditor – November 7, 2022
The rate of global sea level rise is speeding up dramatically as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, a new report finds, and now poses “a major threat to many millions” of people living on ocean coastlines.
Sea levels have risen by an average of 10 millimeters since January 2020, reaching a new record high this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which issued a stark warning in its provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report, released Sunday. The WMO, a division of the United Nations, found a number of striking facts about climate change and its effects, including that “the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record.”
But the most alarming findings may be those related to sea level rise, as the encroaching ocean threatens major coastal population centers with stronger storms, higher storm surges and flooding. “The rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993,” the WMO noted. “The past two and a half years alone account for 10 percent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements started nearly 30 years ago.”
Meltwater flows from the Greenland ice sheet into the Baffin Bay in July. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the main causes of the accelerating pace of sea level rise is melting glaciers. According to the WMO, “2022 took an exceptionally heavy toll on glaciers in the European Alps, with initial indications of record-shattering melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost mass for the 26th consecutive year and it rained (rather than snowed) there for the first time in September.”
Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a report on endangered glaciers finding that one-third of the glaciers in UNESCO World Heritage sites are expected to disappear by 2050. The remaining two-thirds can be saved if greenhouse gas emissions are cut quickly and deeply enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report concluded.
The devastating effects of melting glaciers is already being witnessed in Pakistan, where an unusually warm spring caused glacial melt that contributed to the floods that have submerged one-third of the country, displacing millions of residents.
The report’s release coincided with the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Sharm-el Sheik, Egypt, also known as COP27, with the intent of bolstering support for more aggressive action to curb emissions. Political developments, however, have diminished hopes that major new commitments of reducing greenhouse gases will be announced during COP27.
People wade across a flooded street after heavy monsoon rainfall in Karachi, Pakistan, in July. (Asif Hassan /AFP via Getty Images)
“The greater the warming, the worse the impacts,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “We have such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now that the lower 1.5°C of the Paris Agreement is barely within reach. It’s already too late for many glaciers, and the melting will continue for hundreds if not thousands of years. … Although we still measure this in terms of millimeters per year, it adds up to half to 1 meter per century, and that is a long-term and a major threat to many millions of coastal dwellers and low-lying states.”
As the oceans rise from melting glaciers and polar ice caps, they also are getting warmer as they absorb more heat, causing their volume to expand further. Ocean temperatures reached record levels in 2021 (the latest year for which data was available). Hotter oceans lead to an array of effects on the ecosystem, including coral bleaching and declining fish populations. It also powers stronger storms like Hurricane Fiona, which recently devastated Puerto Rico with 30 inches of rain, causing landslides and overflowing rivers and widespread power outages.
In 2022, the average global temperature is estimated to be about 1.15 °C above the 1850-1900 average. This actually could have been worse. For the first time in a century, La Niña, a weather pattern that causes cool water to rise to the surface in the Pacific Ocean — leading to cooler-than-usual weather — occurred for the third year in a row. The WMO estimates that this means 2022 will be the fifth- or sixth-hottest year on record, rather than the hottest ever. But the trend toward ever-higher temperatures remains clear.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)
“The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in response to the report’s release. “As the World Meteorological Organization shows so clearly, change is happening with catastrophic speed, devastating lives and livelihoods on every continent. Glacier melt records are themselves melting away, jeopardizing water security for whole continents. We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action — ambitious, credible climate action. COP27 must be the place, and now must be the time.”
A recent Pew poll concluded nearly eight in 10 voters said the economy will be “very important” to their voting decisions. Another such poll, by ABC News and Ipsos, showed that almost half of respondents cited either the economy or inflation as the issue about which they were most concerned. The poll indicated that concerns about the economy and inflation are “much more likely to drive voters towards Republicans.”
But that impulse is not only ill-considered, every bit of available evidence makes clear that the GOP is the wrong party to which to turn if you seek better U.S. economic performance in the future.
In fact, it is not close. When it comes to the economy, the GOP is the problem and not the solution. If anything, it is a greater obstacle to our economic well-being today than it has ever been.
At the same time, the economic record of President Joe Biden and the Democrats is not just consistent—in creating jobs, reducing the deficit, and enhancing our competitiveness—during the past two years their record has been one of extraordinary, often record-breaking success.
History tells a very stark tale. Ten of the last 11 recessions began under Republicans. The one that started under former President Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership was the worst since the Great Depression–and while perhaps any president presiding over a pandemic might have seen the economy suffer, Trump’s gross mismanagement of COVID-19 clearly and greatly deepened the problems the U.S. economy faced. Meanwhile, historically, Democratic administrations have overseen recoveries from those Republican lows. During the seven decades before Trump, real GDP growth averaged just over 2.5 percent under Republicans and a little more than 4.3 percent under Democrats.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Republicans have also historically presided over huge expansions in the U.S. deficit, while Democrats (since Bill Clinton’s administration) have overseen dramatic deficit reduction. Ronald Reagan more than doubled the deficit from $70 billion to more than $175 billion. George H.W. Bush nearly doubled that to $290 billion. Clinton ended his administration with a $128.2 billion surplus.
George W. Bush inherited that… and left office with a record deficit of more than $1.4 trillion. Obama reduced that by very nearly $1 trillion. Each of Donald Trump’s last two years in office saw federal budgets with deficits of over $3 trillion. In fact, in total, the national debt rose almost $8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. According to ProPublica, it was the third biggest such increase in U.S. history—after George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War years.
What about job creation?
The U.S. lost jobs under Trump and created relatively few under George W. Bush. Of the 14 presidents since World War II, seven were Democrats and seven were Republican. Of the seven with the highest job creation rates, six were Democrats. Of the seven with the lowest job creation rates, six were Republicans.
What about now? Biden and the current Democratic Congress have created more jobs than the past three Republican administrations combined.
Saul Loeb/Getty
The job creation rate in 2021 was the most ever in a single year. GDP growth in 2021 was the highest since 1984. This year, the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, its lowest level in 50 years. As part of that, we are seeing record low unemployment for Blacks and Latinos.
Ok, you might say, but what about inflation?
Rising prices are a real problem for many Americans. But the origins of inflation have very little to do with the Biden administration or the Congress. Inflation is a global problem that is related, according to economists, primarily to supply chain problems associated with COVID, Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the war in Ukraine, and corporate profiteering.
What makes the Republican focus on this issue so shockingly hypocritical is that Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID crisis, his support for Putin, and Republicans’ protection of Big Oil (and big businesses) actually helped create the conditions that have driven prices up. Further, Republicans unanimously opposed every single measure by the Biden administration to reduce prices and help those hit by inflation—including the landmark Inflation Reduction Act’s efforts to lower drug costs and to help those hardest hit.
Meanwhile, the U.S. just reported stronger than expected growth in the last quarter and the price of gasoline, an oft-cited sign of inflation, has been falling for months.
At the same time, a substantial majority within the GOP have sought to block virtually every single new economic measure proposed or passed by Biden and the Democratic Congress. That includes the America Recovery Act that lifted millions out of poverty and drove job creation, the Chips and Science Act to enhance competitiveness, and even the so-called “Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill” which garnered the support of fewer than half of the GOP caucus in the Senate.
You might assume that if the GOP opposed these initiatives but were critical of what Biden was doing, that they had alternative plans that they have presented to the American people. But, you would be wrong. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has bragged that he would not even discuss his agenda until after the election. They have no inflation plan. And the plans they’ve said they admire—like that of the United Kingdom’s prime minister-for-a-second Liz Truss—have been a catastrophe.
The last time the Republicans were in charge, during the Trump years, they passed precisely one significant piece of economic legislation, a tax cut that benefited the very rich at the expense of everyone else and, as we have established, helped explode the federal budget deficit.
Republicans are just plain bad at managing the economy. They have been for as long as anyone who is alive can remember. And they continue to be—although they are achieving previously unattained new levels of cynicism and obstructionism that make the current crowd of Republicans look even worse than their very unsuccessful predecessors.
History and data make it clear that Democrats are good for the economy—while Republicans, especially the current Republicans in Congress, are not.
Up next for the Republicans are plans to cut Medicare and social security, plans to increase costs for average Americans on a wide variety of fronts, and they’re even contemplating reducing support for Ukraine—at a critical moment in its war to defend its democracy and stop the Russian aggression that threatens not only them, but the West.
Republicans have done a great job fooling voters into thinking that their simplistic economic philosophies of tax cuts and minimal regulation are “good for business.” But facts, history, and logic show otherwise.
If you care about the economy, want to fight inflation, want to create jobs, want a better life for your family, want to preserve democracy, and want to defend your fundamental rights, then you should vote for the Democrats.
Americans among dozens held hostage by Indigenous group in Amazon
CBSNews – November 4, 2022
A photo posted online by Angela Ramirez on November 3, 2022, shows a group of tourists, including Ramirez, being held on a boat in Peru’s Amazon region by an Indigenous group protesting what they say is the government’s failure to help after an oil spill. / Credit: Angela Ramirez/Facebook
A group of Indigenous people in Peru’s Amazon region has taken dozens of foreign and Peruvian tourists hostage as they made their way through the area on river tour boat. The Indigenous group says it took the action to protest the lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area, according to local media and members of the tour group.
“(We want) to call the government’s attention with this action, there are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo Acosta, the leader of the Cuninico community, told the country’s national RPP radio network.
The tourists include citizens from the United States, Spain, France, the U.K. and Switzerland.
Lon Haldeman, one of the Americans held captive, said in a statement shared with CBS News on Friday by his wife that the group had been held “for the past 26 hours.”
He said that the hostage-takers were demanding “medical help and clean water and food” after an oil spill in the area “contaminated the wells and river.”
“The villagers are peaceful toward us but they did take over the boat with spears and clubs,” Haldeman said in the statement. “No one had guns. We were parked near an island last night and the villagers took the battery from the boat motor. The captain and drivers are being held in a village jail. The village wants to keep the big boat for ransom. We might get some small rescue boats. There is new action every hour.”
Angela Ramirez, a Peruvian national who said she was among the hostages, said in a Facebook post on Thursday afternoon that there were children, pregnant women and disabled people among those seized on the boat.
Ramirez also said the Indigenous community was treating them with kindness and respect, adding that holding the tourists was “the only way they have found to look for solutions for their community” after oil spills that allegedly led to the deaths of two children and one woman.https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3Dpfbid02yScfATG6Qmr29TXQNkKMV8bBK6EV45qzSrrcmG8d2GrJkjjmJ791JQDJNJMqzR6Wl%26id%3D100005041500479&show_text=true&width=500
“The sooner they are heard, the sooner they will let us go,” said Ramirez in the online post. “Help me help them be heard.”
Acosta said his group had taken the “radical measure” in an effort to put pressure on the government to send a delegation to assess the environmental damage from a September 16 incident that spilled 2,500 tons of crude oil into the Cuninico River. He said the detainees would spend the night inside the vessel while awaiting a resolution to the situation.
Susan Notorangelo, Haldeman’s wife, told CBS News her husband had been sending sporadic updates to let her know he was OK, but not responding to many questions, which she suspected was an effort to conserve battery power on his iPad. Notorangelo said she had been told the U.S. State Department was sending a boat with food and water, but didn’t believe it had yet arrived at the remote location.
Haldeman is a tour guide, but was not running the tour that was detained. Notorangelo said her husband and the other tourists were supposed to have ended their boat ride at noon on Thursday and then ridden bikes to the nearby town of Iquitos. She said her husband has an airline ticket to leave Peru on Tuesday, and hopes he and the other hostages will be released in time for him to make the flight.
Ramirez told RPP that the Cuninico community had said it was prepared to hold the hostages for six to eight days, until it receives a response from the government.
She said they were “physically fine,” but in a new post on Friday morning she said the sun was strong, babies were crying and they were almost out of water.
Local media indicated no public comment from the Peruvian government or police on the incident, which took place on a tributary of the Maranon River.
Environmental activists protest outside the headquarters of the Peruvian Petroleum Company (Petroperu) in Lima, Peru, August 22, 2016. / Credit: Getty
Indigenous communities had already been blocking the transit of all vessels on the river in protest against the spill, which was caused by a rupture in the Norperuano oil pipeline.
On September 27, the government declared a 90-day state of emergency in the impacted region, which is home to about 2,500 members of the Cuninico and Urarinas communities.
The roughly 500-mile-long Norperuano pipeline, owned by the state-run Petroperu, was built four decades ago to transport crude oil from the Amazon region to the ports of Piura, on the coast.
According to Petroperu, the spill was the result of an eight-inch cut made deliberately in the pipeline, which the company said had suffered over a dozen similar attacks in the past.
CBS News’ Maddie Richards and April Alexander contributed to this report.
About 150 tourists are reportedly being held hostage in Peru. Locals are demanding a response to oil spills that have polluted their river.
Paola Rosa-Aquino, Natalie Musumeci – November 4, 2022
A man shows oil contamination inside Block 192, a dormant Amazon oil field in Peru.Reuters
Locals from a Peruvian area of the Amazon rainforest have reportedly taken up to 150 tourists hostage.
Those detained reportedly include citizens from the US, UK, Spain, France, and Switzerland.
Locals took the hostages in protest of repeated oil spills plaguing the region, RPP Noticias reported.
Locals from an Indigenous tribe in a Peruvian area of the Amazon rainforest have taken up to 150 tourists, including Americans, hostage in protest of repeated oil spills plaguing the region, according to a local report.
Ángela Ramírez, who was among those taken hostage on Thursday while traveling by boat near Cuninico in the Loreto province of Peru, told local media that those taken captive include elderly people, pregnant women, and a one-month-old baby.
“They told us that it was because they wanted attention from the state, in search of a solution for oil spills that have happened 46 times, which led to the death of two children and a woman,” Ramírez told RPP Noticias.
The people being held include Peruvian nationals as well as citizens from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Switzerland, Ramírez told the news outlet.
The woman said that it has been indicated that the hostages could be held for up to eight days. No one had been harmed.
Ramírez’s mother, Araceli Alva, told RPP Noticias that her daughter had been traveling with cyclists through the Peruvian jungle last week. Ramírez decided to leave by boat via the river on Thursday and was taken, Alva said.
Ramírez issued a plea on her Facebook story, saying, “The sooner they’re heard, the sooner they’ll let us go. Help me share, we are well physically. Help me help them be heard,” according to the news outlet.
Watson Trujillo Acosta, the leader of the Cuninico community behind the action, told RPP Noticias that the tourists were taken hostage “in a radical and indefinite manner” in order “to be able to attract the attention of the government.”
“They are in a safe place on the banks of the Marañón River gorge in front of the native community of Cuninico,” said Acosta, who claimed 70 tourists and nationals were taken, according to the news outlet.
Acosta said that his community is seeking “a state of emergency [to] be declared due to the constant [oil] spills that have been taking place in our territory.”
He also wants the Peruvian government to lead an investigation into the matter.
The US Department of State and Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the situation by Insider on Friday.
It’s an outrage that Saudis use Arizona’s water for free. I’ll work to stop it
Kris Mayes – November 4, 2022
Arizona should not be giving its water away to the Saudi Arabians, or anyone else for that matter. Yet, for the past seven years, the attorney general and governor have allowed a Saudi company to pump out more than $38 million worth of groundwater from La Paz County for free.
That’s right. Arizona is giving away its groundwater for nothing to one of the richest nations on Earth – and to the severe detriment of Arizonans.
It is an outrage and a scandal at a time when the Saudi government is deliberately raising the price of gasoline for U.S. citizens by cutting back OPEC oil supplies.
As attorney general, I will work to put an end to these sweetheart Saudi deals.
Below-market leases short Arizona schools
As first disclosed in The Arizona Republic last June, the State Land Department has leased state trust land to the Saudi-owned Fondomonte corporation for $25 per acre, so that the Saudi company could grow alfalfa and send it back to Saudi Arabia to feed that country’s cows.
More unbelievably, the state is allowing this company to pump groundwater for free. The $25/acre land lease is well below market rates, and the water being given away comes from the Butler Valley Basin and Vicksburg – areas that Arizona cities may very well need to rely on for their water needs in the near future.
To comply with the Gift Clause, a government expenditure must (1) serve a public purpose, and (2) the consideration the public has paid must not far exceed the value received.
As stated by the Arizona Supreme Court 38 years ago, the deal between the government and the private entity cannot be “so inequitable and unreasonable” that it amounts to providing a subsidy to the private party.
Giving away more than $38 million of groundwater for free is both inequitable and unreasonable. Agreeing to lease state land to a Saudi company for only one-sixth of the market price for similar land is probably inequitable and unreasonable as well. Pursuant to the Arizona Constitution, money that is generated from state trust land leases must go to benefit Arizona K-12 schools.
Wells are going dry, complaints unanswered
Ground water is used to irrigate an alfalfa field, April 7, 2022, at Fondomonte’s Butler Valley Ranch near Bouse.
Four months ago, the La Paz County supervisors filed a complaint with Attorney General Mark Brnovich concerning the below-market Fondomonte lease and the groundwater giveaway. To date, Brnovich has done nothing, not even respond to the county supervisors.
Moreover, several years ago, more than 500 La Paz County residents signed a petition that they hand-delivered to Gov. Doug Ducey’s advisers, voicing their outrage about the free groundwater giveaway.
Recently, I traveled to Vicksburg and met with La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin, who showed me the Fondomonte farm in that western Arizona community. Alfalfa fields stretch for miles, and commercial wells can be seen from the road gushing the state’s precious and irreplaceable water at thousands of gallons per minute.
Irwin also took me to a nearby Baptist church whose well has been dewatered. She told me that many of her constituents living around the Fondomonte farms have had their wells sucked dry by the Saudi-owned farms.
Records at the Department of Water Resources show that the Saudis are drilling deeper and deeper wells, which will likely cause residential wells to go dry.
During my first week as attorney general, I will request an auditor general’s audit of all industrial-scale leases of state trust land where water is being pumped to determine if the rates are below market and how much school funding has been lost as a result.
If such abuses have occurred, I will work to ensure that the companies are required to restore the proper funding to the state and our schools.
I will also proactively advise the Arizona State Land Department on an ongoing basis that leasing water at rates that are significantly below market rates could represent a violation of the state’s Gift Clause and that the leaseholders could face efforts to recover undercharges in the future.
Arizona’s water supplies have never been more threatened.
Lakes Mead and Powell are less than 150 feet from “dead pool” status and hydrologists believe they will hit dead pool sometime in 2023. It is time for Arizona’s leaders to act like they care about Arizona more than a country thousands of miles away that is trying to harm America.
I will do that as Arizona’s next attorney general.
Kris Mayes is the Democratic candidate for Arizona attorney general. She served two terms on the Arizona Corporation Commission.
Big agriculture warns farming must change or risk ‘destroying the planet’
Dominic Rushe – November 2, 2022
Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP
Food companies and governments must come together immediately to change the world’s agricultural practices or risk “destroying the planet”, according to the sponsors of a report by some of the largest food and farming businesses released on Thursday.
The report, from a taskforce within the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), a network of global CEOs focused on climate issues established by King Charles III, is being released days before the start of the United Nation’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.
Many of the world’s largest food and agricultural businesses have championed sustainable agricultural practices in recent years. Regenerative farming practices, which prioritize cutting greenhouse gas emissions, soil health and water conservation, now cover 15% of croplands.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
But the pace of change has been “far too slow”, the report finds, and must triple by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping temperature rises under 1.5C, a level that if breached, scientists argue, will unleash even more devastating climate change on the planet.
The report is signed by Bayer, Mars, McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Mondēlez, Olam, PepsiCo, Waitrose and others. They represent a potent political and corporate force, affecting the food supply chain around the world. They are also, according to critics, some of those most responsible for climate mismanagement with one calling the report “smoke and mirrors” and unlikely to address the real crisis.
Food production is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity and a number of the signatories have been accused of environmental misdeeds and “greenwashing”. Activist Greta Thunberg is boycotting Cop this year having called the global summit a PR stunt “for leaders and people in power to get attention”.
“We are at a critical tipping point where something must be done,” said the taskforce chair and outgoing Mars CEO, Grant Reid. “The interconnection between human health and planetary health is more evident than ever before.” Big food companies and agriculture must play a big part in changing that, said Reid. “It won’t be easy but we have got to make it work,” he said.
Agriculture is the world’s largest industry. Pasture and cropland occupy around 50% of the planet’s habitable land and uses about 70% of fresh water supplies. The climate crisis is challenging the industry across the world but the group’s call for change comes as the industry – which employs 1 billion people – is facing supply chain issues in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and soaring inflation. It also comes amid mounting skepticism about promises to change from companies that have contributed to climate change.
These current issues must not detract from the need for change, the report argues. “With the inflationary environment and widespread supply chain disruption, it would be easy to reduce our focus on the longer-term challenge of scaling regenerative farming. But we believe it’s vital we maintain a sense of urgency. We must take action now to avoid more acute crises in the future,” its authors write.
Sunny George Verghese, chief executive of Olam, one of the world’s largest suppliers of cocoa beans, coffee, cotton and rice, said: “We cannot continue to produce and consume food and feed and fiber in the way we are doing today unless we don’t mind destroying the planet.
“The only way out for us is how we transition to a more resilient food system that will allow us to meet the needs of a growing population without the resource intensity we have today.”
The report studied three food crops, potatoes, rice and wheat, and has made policy recommendations it will present at Cop27.
The taskforce’s members are working to make the short-term economic case for change more attractive to farmers. “It’s just not compelling enough for the average farmer,” said Reid. More widely the report argues industry and government must also work harder to address the knowledge gap and make sure farmers are following best practices. Third, all parties involved in the agriculture industry from farmers to food producers to government, banks and insurers need to align behind encouraging a shift to more sustainable practices.
“It involves change for all the players including the government, private, public companies and others. No one player can do this on their own, this has to be a collaboration of the willing. What needs to happen now is action and delivery,” said Reid.
Over the next six months, the group will assess how they can spread the taskforce’s work with the aim of establishing a common set of metrics for measuring environmental outcomes, establishing a credible system of payments for farmers for environmental outcomes, easing the cost of farmers transitioning to sustainable practices, ensuring government policy rewards farmers for greening their business and encouraging the sourcing of crops from particular areas converting to regenerative farming.
Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at Grain, a non-profit organization that works to support small farmers, said it was increasingly difficult for big agricultural and food companies to ignore climate change. “But I don’t think any of these companies – say a McDonald’s – has any commitment to curtail the sales of highly polluting products. I don’t think PepsiCo is going to say the world doesn’t need Pepsi.”
Kuyek pointed out that Yara, another signatory to the report, is the world’s largest supplier of nitrogen-based fertilizers, “which are responsible for one out of every 40 tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted annually”.
“It’s pretty disingenuous,” said Kuyek. “Small, local food systems still feed most of the people on the planet and the real threat is that the industrial system is expanding at the expense of the truly sustainable system. Corporations are creating a bit of smoke and mirrors here, suggesting they are part of the solution when inevitably they are part of the problem.”
Considering the controversial histories of some of the companies involved in the report, Verghese said he expected criticism and scrutiny. “All companies have to stand up to the scrutiny of being attacked if there is real greenwashing. There is no place to hide,” he said. “As far as Olam is concerned we are very clear on our targets, we have had the confidence to make these targets public. All of us have progressed along the sustainable journey. It is not that we have not made mistakes in the past but as we have become better at this we are willing to be subject to scrutiny.”
Both Reid and Verghese said the scale of the issues the world’s food supply is facing cannot be underplayed but that more governments and companies were becoming convinced of the need for urgent change. “I believe change can be made,” said Verghese. “I am optimistic. The fact that these kinds of coalitions are emerging is very positive. We are all otherwise very strong rivals and competitors. We hate each other’s guts, we don’t come together on anything unless there is a huge crisis. Everyone is recognizing there is a huge crisis. We need to come together.”
He was accused of stealing huge amounts of water over 23 years. Here’s why no one noticed
Dale Kasler, Ryan Sabalow – November 1, 2022
JOHN WALKER / jwalker@fresnobee.com
California’s water police struggle to track where water is flowing and whether someone is taking more than they’re supposed to.
A criminal case unfolding in the San Joaquin Valley underscores how the federal government seems to have similar problems.
Prosecutors say they uncovered a massive water theft that went on for 23 years without anyone noticing.
Earlier this year a federal grand jury indicted Dennis Falaschi, the former general manager of the Panoche Water District in the western San Joaquin Valley, on charges of conspiracy, theft of government property and filing false tax returns.
Falaschi’s alleged crime stemmed from the federal government’s operation of the Central Valley Project, the system of reservoirs and canals that dates to President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.
According to prosecutors, Falaschi engineered a brazen scheme to steal $25 million worth of water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, operator of the Central Valley Project. More specifically, Falaschi stands accused of having his underlings siphon water from the Delta-Mendota Canal, the main conduit for delivering federal water to farms along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and part of Silicon Valley.
He then billed Panoche customers for this stolen water and used the proceeds to pay “himself and other co-conspirators exorbitant salaries, fringe benefits and personal expense reimbursements,” the indictment says.
How Panoche Water District legal trouble started
Falaschi’s legal troubles began in 2017, when the state controller’s office released an audit showing that the financial controls at Panoche were too lax. Among other things, staffers were allowed to use district credit cards to buy Oakland A’s and Raiders season passes, and tickets to a Katy Perry concert.
A month later, Falaschi left Panoche. Then in 2018 the state attorney general’s office charged him and three other former district employees with embezzling $100,000 from Panoche and illegally burying toxic chemicals on district property. Prosecutors said Falaschi allegedly used the embezzled funds to buy a pair of slot machines and some kitchen appliances, among other things. That case is still pending.
The latest indictment covers a scheme that, according to prosecutors, began in 1992 and wasn’t discovered until April 2015 when a canal maintenance worker saw a whirlpool above the equipment that prosecutors say Falaschi had hidden in the canal to siphon off the water.
The theft lasted long enough to enable Falaschi to grab a total of 130,000 acre-feet of water — enough to fill about 13% of Folsom Lake, prosecutors said.
Last year district officials made a civil settlement over the missing water, agreeing to pay $7.5 million to the federal government and another $1 million to an umbrella agency, the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which buys water from the feds.
The indictment came months after the civil settlement. The grand jury says Falaschi had several of his employees install a valve mechanism in the canal — submerged below the water line — near the district’s headquarters in Firebaugh.
Falaschi, who now lives in Aptos, could receive up to 24 years in prison if convicted.
He has pleaded innocent to the criminal charges. In a statement, his Fresno lawyer Marc Days blasted the feds for prosecuting Falaschi “over a leak from the government’s rotted pipe which the government failed to repair,” and for relying on the statements of “unreliable and incompetent witnesses motivated by their own self-interest.”
Days said the amount of water the federal government accuses Falaschi of taking pales in comparison to some of the other leaks from the same canal.
He said area farm districts receive “massive amounts of unmetered water,” including one leak that Days alleges siphons off 200 cubic feet a second, an amount that in a year would surpass the water prosecutors allege Falaschi stole over those two decades. The federal government, Days claims, has known about the problems but fails to do anything to prevent them.
Mary Lee Knecht, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, declined comment because of the pending case.
Why missing water goes undetected
Falaschi’s successor at Panoche, Ara Azhderian, said it’s no secret that water goes missing throughout the Delta-Mendota system. Evaporation alone takes a significant toll, he said.
In fact, Azhderian said Falaschi’s alleged scheme likely went unnoticed for so long due to the sheer size of the Delta-Mendota Canal and the volume of water it delivers.
Two million acre-feet of water moves through the canal in a typical year, and the canal is nearly 117 miles long.
“When you think about the system and how long it is, how big it is,” he said, “… it was such a small amount in the scheme of things as to be undetectable.”
Others say the problems along the canal — whether through massive leaks or by alleged thefts — highlight just how difficult it is to keep tabs on the state’s most precious resource.
“We really don’t know where our water is going,” said Jeffrey Mount, a water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California. “Where it really breaks down for us now is in this ever-tightening water world where we’re having to deal with less. Major chunks of it, we don’t know where it goes and who’s using how much.”
Who we elect on Nov. 8 to send to Washington as the state’s first new U.S. senator in more than a decade will likely matter for generations to come.
Despite the muck that has been lobbed this election season, it is crystal clear to our board who between Congressman Tim Ryan and author and investor J.D. Vance is best suited to replace Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
With the U.S. Senate split 50-50 and few seats in play, Ohioans — many still feeling the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic — will help decide the Senate’s balance of power.
One thing is for sure, pocketbook issues will and should influence those decisions.
Culture wars may dominate most of the news out of the Ohio Statehouse, but Ohioans are far more concerned about putting food on the table and dealing with high prices than what bathroom a transgender child is allowed to use or whether or not a sixth grader can read Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eyes.”
Nearly a third of likely Ohio voters are primarily concerned about inflation and its effect on the economy than any other issue, according to a September USA TODAY Network Ohio/Suffolk University Political Research Center poll.
Columbus is seen as the state’s economic bright spot, but things do not shine even here for everyone.
More than 53% of likely voters who took part in that September poll said economic conditions here are “fair,” but 23% of voters called conditions “poor.”
Nearly 45% of those voters said their standard of living is worse now than four years ago. This comes as little surprise.
The things he has said about the economy are vague and out of a playbook that focuses on energy independence, bashing the Biden administration on spending and inflation and commending the Trump administration’s trade policy.
He’s been light on details and comprehension of what Ohioans need and want.
“I think this is largely a self-inflicted wound. Global commodity prices are always going to shift here and there in ways that you can’t control. But if you look at things like the Keystone pipeline, shutting down that on day one, if you look at the really low number of oil and gas permits the Biden administration has granted, I think that we’ve really shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to energy prices.”
Ryan has focused his economic message on finding bipartisan solutions, taking on China and stopping “stupid” political fights to end “decades of disinvestment, unfair trade and outsourcing, and policies that have boosted the wealthiest and the biggest corporations at the expense of working people.”
Ryan was asked how he would help Ohioans facing financial hardships during a joint meeting with members of our board and others in the USA TODAY Ohio Network.
Vance was invited but declined to participate in the meeting which included questions submitted by readers from around the state.
Ryan told our board that “political people” get themselves in trouble when they think that things are OK because fundamentals of the economy like wages and unemployment seem good.
Tax cuts are needed for individuals and small businesses because those fundamentals are not being felt by Americans, he said.
“We’ve been to all 88 counties. We are going everywhere. It can be a home health care worker, it can be a construction worker— the gas prices are crushing people (as well as) food and general supply chain stuff,” he said. “You have got to put money in people’s pockets right now.”
“Inflation is a global problem. It is a little bit better here than it is in other places, but that does not eliminate the fact that people are being hurt. (There should be) a straight tax cut. Do what we did with child tax credit, advance it. The earned income tax credit, advance it. And then a general tax cut.”
What about the culture wars and social issues?
J.D. Vance shakes hands with former President Donald Trump during a rally at the Delaware County Fairgrounds on April 23, 2022.
News out of Ohio’s Statehouse and words out of J.D. Vance’s mouth leave many with the impression that Ohio is more extreme on social issues than multiple polls indicate.
Ohio needs representation in Washington that appreciates and recognizes the richness and potential of all people — not just those of one particular party or the other.
The 38-year-old “Hillbilly Elegy” author once trashed Trump, but has bent over backwards to win favor with the Trump family. How deep is Vance’s devotion?
Vance, who has taken up for a host of extremists and been flippant about the Russia invasion of Ukraine, does not deserve to replace Portman, a fellow Republican, in the U.S. Senate.
He is no Howard Metzenbaum, George Voinovich, John Glenn, Sherrod Brown, Mike Dewine or Rob Portman.
As senators they worked across party lines in the name of Ohioans. They did not fling insults to win political points, peddle in the “great replacement theory” conspiracy that there is an immigrant invasion or imply a woman should stay with her abusive husband for the good of the kids.
Columbus and the rest of Ohio need a statesman who will stand up for the people of the state.
The 49-year-old, 10-term congressman ran against Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in 2017 for House minority leader. He has publicly criticized her for a list of issues that include so-called ‘congressional day trading,’ House members using their positions to get rich in the stock market.
“I love the president,” Ryan said at the time. “He’s done a lot for manufacturing. He’s helped us in Youngstown, and he understands the value of manufacturing. But on this particular issue, he is not fully seeing what we should be doing with the American economy.”
What’s important to Ohio?
Ryan supports issues many Ohioans say are important to them: including expanding the economy and supporting seniors, abortion access, affordable health care including mental health, affordable housing, upholding democracy, ending racial disparities and increasing equality for those in the LGBTQ community.
During that recent meeting with the editorial boards, he expressed understanding that Ohio’s future growth cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of Columbus, which is experiencing the challenges that come with rapid growth including an affordable housing shortage.
Representing forgotten Ohioans
When asked about the $20 billion Intelsemiconductor plant planned for Licking County, Ryan said he’d work with CEOs to make sure the prosperity spreads.
“We need you to locate these suppliers around the state. We have so many forgotten communities that have great people, great culture. Iconic cities,” he said.
He said he’d work with the governor and JobsOhio to help identify and secure the resources and infrastructure cities like Marietta and Portsmouth need to land big employers.
Ryan says he has met with people all over the state, including those in Republican leaning so-called red counties.
“We have to represent these people too … Go get their vote. Go tell them what you’re going to do for them. Go tell them you care about them. We’ve done that. That’s the kind of leader Ohio wants.”
A lot is at stake this election as Republicans and Democrats battle for control of the U.S. House and the Senate.
The person Ohio sends to Washington to replace Portman will help decide what we will become.
That person should be capable and willing to represent all of us.
That person should put the good of Ohioans above political aspirations and loyalty to party.
Endorsement editorials are our board’s fact-based assessment of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.
