The argument against natural gas got a boost this week, when a congressional investigation turned up evidence that oil and gas companies were using diesel gas to extract gas from the ground.
Natural gas companies have insisted that their newly popular hydraulic fracturing (known as "fracking") techniques are safe, but as Care2's Kristina Chew reports, "environmentalists and regulators have become increasingly concerned that the fracking chemicals-including toluene, xylene and benzene, a carcinogen, which are all from diesel gas---are seeping out into underground sources of drinking water, in violation of the Safe Water Drinking Act."
The mix-up
The Environmental Protection Agency is conducting an inquiry into the environmental impacts of fracking, and some states are considering more stringent regulations of the practice, including disclosure of the chemicals that go into fracking fluid. Gas companies have argued that the blend of chemicals is a trade secret and must be kept private, but the findings of the congressional investigation suggest otherwise. Eartha Jane Melzer reports at The Michigan Messenger, "In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson... Reps. Henry Waxman, Edward Markey and Diana DeGette reported that although the EPA requires permits for hydraulic fracturing that involves diesel none of the companies that admitted using diesel have sought or received permits."
And, as Melzer reports, diesel is the only chemical used in fracking that's currently regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. That companies have been sneaking it into the ground does not strengthen the industry's case for independence.
Ensuring that natural gas companies do their work without threatening water supplies is becoming ever more crucial, as the fuel becomes one of the go-to replacements for coal. In Massachusetts, for instance, some legislators are pushing for a coal plant in Holyoke to start using natural gas or renewable energy, rather than being shut down, as Nikki Gloudeman reports at Change.org.
Supporting renewables
And although renewables are thrown in there as an option, right now the clearest way to replace the amount of energy generated by coal is natural gas. This year's line on energy policy from Washington, however, is that the country should support innovations in clean energy.
Will Obama's new direction on this issue go anywhere? Grist's David Roberts has been arguing that any energy policy that leaves out climate change is missing the point.
However, Teryn Norris and Daniel Goldfarb (also at Grist), of Americans for Energy Leadership, a California-based non-profit, have a smart rebuttal. They argue that clean energy needs the boost in research and development that Obama is promising. Ultimately, they, write, "these investments will drive down the price of low-carbon energy and pave the way for stronger deployment efforts - perhaps even including a strong carbon price at some point - both here and in the developing world, where the vast majority of future emissions will originate."
But, about climate change!
And to be fair, the federal government is trying to lead the way on investing in renewables. As Beth Buczynski reports at Care2, the Department of Energy is working on a $2.3 million solar energy project that would power its Germantown, Md., location.
Not every one is willing to wait for investments to take hold, however. On the National Radio Project's show, "Making Contact", Andrew Stelzer examines what climate activists are doing, post-Cancun, to push forward debates on climate change. Ananda Lee Tan, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alterantives argues, for instance, "Community-led climate justice in the U.S. has been winning. The largest amount of industrial carbon that has been prevented in this country has been prevented by community-led groups, grassroots groups fighting coal, oil and incinerators."
Cause and effect
Whether the solution comes from industry, government, or grassroots groups, the country's energy policy will change over the next few decades. And what's troubling is that it's not clear what the impact will be. Take natural gas: Washington favors it right now because it's thought to have lower carbon emission than coal. But any time humans introduce new factors into the environment, they can have unexpected consequences.
That's not only true for the energy industry, too. In Texas, for instance, the government is trying to eradicate an invasive plant species, a type of giant cane called Arundo that is growing all over the Rio Grande Valley. As Saul Elbein reports for The Texas Observer, it's been hard to eradicate:
There are three primary ways to control invasive plant species: Kill them with herbicides, clear them with bulldozers and machetes, or attempt to introduce a new predator. The least controversial approach, clearing the cane, is not going to work. There are thousands of square miles of the stuff, and Arundo cane is nearly impossible to cut out. Each stalk has a thick taproot that sends shoots in every direction. You can bulldoze or chop the cane down, and it will grow right back. Worse, any stress on the plant-say a machete blow-causes it to send out more root stalks. Every chopped-up joint of cane that floats downstream can sprout another stand.
But, Elbein reports, scientists have come up with a different solution: They've bred wasps that originate in the same region as the cane to come in and eat it. They've also taken precautions that the wasps won't have their own adverse impact on the environment by ensuring that they can only survive on this particular type of plant. But even then, it's a tricky business.
"The wasps have to survive," John Adamczyk, an entomologist running the project, told Elbein. "They have to not all get eaten. Then it becomes a question of whether they can keep the cane in check."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao touched on energy issues in the bilateral summit between the two countries this week.
"I believe that as the two largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouses gases, the United States and China have a responsibility to combat climate change by building on the progress at Copenhagen and Cancun, and showing the way to a clean energy future. And President Hu indicated that he agrees with me on this issue," President Obama said during a Wednesday press conference.
But can the United States step up as a leader on clean energy? The proliferation of politicians whom The Nation's Mark Hertsgaard calls "climate cranks" suggests otherwise.
The biggest consumers
In international climate negotiations, the United State and China are the two key players, and if the world as a whole is to move forward on combating climate change, agreement between Presidents Obama and Hu would be a huge breakthrough. Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard notes that Hu also said the United States and China would work together on climate changes, but, she writes, "I can imagine, though, that the conversation on this subject wasn't entirely as chummy as the remarks would imply, however. The US last month lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization about China's subsidies for clean energy, arguing that the country is unfairly stacking the deck in favor of their products."
At AlterNet, Tina Gerhardt and Lucia Green-Weiskel explain the background to those tensions and to the U.S.'s protectionist bent on clean energy projects. They write, "Energy Secretary Chu recently framed the new relationship between the U.S. and China as a 'Sputnik Moment.' Referencing the first satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, which demonstrated its technological advantage and led to the Cold War-era space race, Chu warned that the U.S. risks falling behind China in the clean technology race."
Stumbling blocks
China's motivations for growing its clean energy sector may not be leafy green; new energy sources feed the country's rapidly growing economy. But at least the country is committed to green energy sources, unlike our climate change-denying Congress. As Mark Hertsgaard argues at The Nation, this brand of American has become so pernicious, it's time to stop adhering to the protocol that dubs them "climate deniers" and start calling them "climate cranks." He explains:
True skepticism is invaluable to the scientific method, but an honest skeptic can be persuaded by facts, if they are sound. The cranks are impervious to facts, at least facts that contradict their wacky worldview. When virtually every national science academy in the developed world, including our own, and every major scientific organization (e.g., the American Geophysical Union, the American Physics Society) has affirmed that climate change is real and extremely dangerous, only a crank continues to insist that it's all a left-wing plot.
Climate cranks attack
Unfortunately, climate cranks continue to interfere with both climate scientists and forward-thinking energy policy. At Change.org, Nikki Gloudeman writes about the ongoing saga of climate scientist Michael Mann, one of the climatologists embroiled in the Climategate brouhaha, who is still being attacked by climate-denying groups for his work. Gloudeman reports that although Mann has been investigated and found innocent of any misdeeds several times over, a group with a bias against climate change, the American Tradition Institute, is trying to obtain access to his work.
And in New Mexico, the state's new conservative governor, Susana Martinez, "has attempted to subvert her own state constitution in order to stop [a] plan to begin reducing her state's carbon emissions," reports Dahr Jamail for Truthout. The plan, executed through state rules, would have reduced the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 3%, from 2010 levels, each year. The rules should have been made public, but Gov. Martinez kept them from being published, according to Truthout's report. A local group, New Energy Economy, is fighting to implement them.
Bright spots
In some states, however, the clean energy economy is moving forward. As Care2's Beth Buczynski reports, Clean Edge, a clean-tech advisory group, has identified the top ten states for clean energy leadership. They include California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.
"Rankings were derived from over 80 metrics including total electricity produced by clean-energy sources, hybrid vehicles on the road, and clean-energy venture and patent activity," Buczynski reports.
And, as David Roberts writes at Grist, there is important work to be done at the local and regional level to both prepare for and prevent climate change. His preferred term for this challenge is "ruggedizing"-strengthening a community's ability to respond to challenges brought on by climate change, such as flooding, droughts, or food shortages. The solutions to these problem, Roberts writes, often have the welcome side effect of decreasing carbon emissions, as well:
For instance, the residents of Brisbane are discovering that when disaster strikes, it's not very handy to have everyone spread out all over the place and utterly dependent on cars to get anywhere. It's more resilient to have people closer together, more able to walk or take shared transportation. It just so happens that also reduces vehicle emissions.
The advantage of this type of work-building the clean energy economy, ruggedizing communities-is that leaders don't necessarily have to agree on the reality of climate change to move forward. But these are only partial solutions, and to address climate change on an international scale, the cranks will need to be quieted.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
For the environmental community, this coming year offers a chance to regroup, rethink and regrow. Two years ago, it seemed possible that politicians would make progress on climate change issues-that a Democratic Congress would pass a cap-and-trade bill, that a Democratic president would lead the international community toward agreement on emissions standards. And so for two years environmentalists cultivated plans that ultimately came to naught.
What comes next? What comes now? It's clear that looking to Washington for environmental leadership is futile. But looking elsewhere might lead to more fertile ground.
Our new leaders
On Wednesday, the 112th Congress began, and Republicans took over the House. They are not going to tackle environmental legislation. This past election launched a host of climate deniers into office, and even members of Congress inclined to more reasonable environmental views, like Rep. Fred Upton, now chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, have tacked towards the right. Whereas once Upton recognized the need for action on climate change and reducing carbon emissions, recently he has been pushing back against the Environmental Protection Agency's impending carbon regulations and questioning whether carbon emissions are a problem at all.
"It's worth remembering that Upton was once considered among the most moderate members of the GOP on the issue," writes Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. "No longer."
Good riddance
The climate bill is really, truly, dead, and it's not coming back. But as Dave Roberts and Thomas Pitilli illustrate in Grist's graphic account of the bill's demise recalls, by the time it reached the Senate, the bill was already riddled with compromises.
And so perhaps it's not such bad news that there's space now to rethink how progressives should approach environmental and energy issues.
"It's refreshing to shake the Etch-a-Sketch. You get to draw a new picture. The energy debate needs a new picture," policy analyst Jason Grumet said last month, as Grist reports.
Already, in The Washington Monthly, Jeffrey Leonard, the CEO of the Global Environmental Fund, is pitching an idea that played no part in the discussions of the past two years. He writes:
If President Obama wants to set us on a path to a sustainable energy future-and a green one, too-he should propose a very simple solution to the current mess: eliminate all energy subsidies. Yes, eliminate them all-for oil, coal, gas, nuclear, ethanol, even for wind and solar. ... Because wind, solar, and other green energy sources get only the tiniest sliver of the overall subsidy pie, they'll have a competitive advantage in the long term if all subsidies, including the huge ones for fossil fuels, are eliminated.
No impact? No sweat
Federal policies aren't the only part of the picture that can be re-drawn. Even as Congress failed to act on climate change, an ever-increasing number of Americans decided to make changes to decrease their impact on the environment.
Colin Beavan committed more dramatically than most: his No Impact Man project required that he switch to a zero-waste life style. This year, he partnered with Yes! Magazine for No Impact Week, which asks participants to engage in an 8-day "carbon cleanse," in which they try out low-impact living. Yes! is publishing the chronicles of participants' ups and downs with the experiment: Deb Seymour found it empowering to give up her right to shop; Grace Porter missed her bus stop and had to walk two miles to school; Aran Seaman found a local site where he could compost food scraps.
The long view
Perhaps, for some of the participants, No Impact Week will continue on after eight days. After Seaman participated last year, he gave up his car in favor of biking and public transportation.
On the surface, giving up a convenience like that can seem like a sacrifice. But it needn't be. Janisse Ray writes in Orion Magazine about her decision to give up plane travel for environmental reasons. Instead, she now travels long distances by train, and that comes with its own pleasures:
Through the long night the train rocks down the rails, stopping in Charleston, Rocky Mount, Richmond, and other marvelous southern places. People get on and off. Across the aisle a woman is traveling with two children I learn are her son, aged twelve, and her granddaughter, ten months. In South Carolina we pick up a woman come from burying her father. He had wanted to go home, she says. She drinks periodically from a small bottle of wine buried in the pocket of her black overcoat. The train is not crowded, and I have two seats to myself.
Our true leaders
Ultimately, though, sweeping environmental changes will require leadership and societal changes. American politicians may have abdicated that responsibility for now, but others are still fighting. In In These Times, Robert Hirschfield writes of Subhas Dutta, who's building a green movement in India.
"The environmental issue is the issue of today. The political parties, all of them, have let us down," Dutta says. "We want to be part of the decision-making process on the state and national levels. The struggle for the environment has to be fought politically."
One person who understood that was Judy Bonds, the anti-mountaintop removal mining activist, who died this week of cancer. Grist, Change.org, and Mother Jones all have remembrances; at Change.org, Phil Aroneanu shared "a beautiful elegy to Judy from her friend and colleague Vernon Haltom:"
I can't count the number of times someone told me they got involved because they heard Judy speak, either at their university, at a rally, or in a documentary. Years ago she envisioned a "thousand hillbilly march" in Washington, DC. In 2010, that dream became a reality as thousands marched on the White House for Appalachia Rising....While we grieve, let's remember what she said, "Fight harder."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote to overturn health care reform on January 12. The bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and set the nation's health care laws back to the way they were last March, has no chance of becoming law. The GOP controls the House, but Democrats control the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate Democrats will block the bill.
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones reports that the 2-page House bill carries no price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA would save $143 billion dollars over the next decade. The GOP repeal bill contains no alternative plan. So, repealing the ACA would be tantamount to adding $143 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.
Why are the Republicans rushing to vote on a doomed bill without even bothering to hold hearings, or formulate a counter-proposal for the Congressional Budget Office to score? Kevin Drum of Mother Joneshazards a guess:
[Speaker John] Boehner [(R-OH)] knows two things: (a) he has to schedule a repeal vote because the tea partiers will go into open revolt if he doesn't, and (b) it's a dead letter with nothing more than symbolic value. So he's scheduling a quick vote with no hearings and no CBO scoring just so he can say he's done it, after which he can move on to other business he actually cares about.
An opportunity?
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that all this political theater around repealing the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for Democrats to remind the public about all the popular aspects of the bill that the GOP is trying to strip away.
Last weekend several key provisions of the ACA took effect, including help for middle income seniors who are running up against the prescription drug "donut hole." Until last Saturday, their drugs were covered up to a relatively low threshold, then they were on their own until they spent enough on prescriptions for the catastrophic coverage to kick in again. Those seniors will be reluctant to give up their brand new 50% discount on drugs in the donut hole.
Another crack at turning eggs into persons
A Colorado ballot initiative to bestow full human rights on fertilized ova was resoundingly defeated for the second time in the last midterm elections. Attempts to reclassify fertilized ova as people are an attempt to ban abortion, stem cell research, and some forms of birth control. Patrick Caldwell of the American Independent reports that new egg-as-person campaigns are stirring in other states where activists hope to take advantage of new Republican majorities.
Personhood USA, the group behind the failed Colorado ballot initiatives, claims that there is "action" (of some description) on personhood legislation in 30 states. Caldwell says Florida may be the next battleground. Personhood USA needs 676,000 signatures to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Right now, they have zero, but they promise a "big push" in 2011.
Ronald McDonald = Joe the Camel
In AlterNet, Kelle Louaillier calls for more regulation of fast food industry advertising to children. New research shows that children are being exposed to significantly more fast food ads than they were just a few years ago. Other studies demonstrate that children give higher marks to food products when they are paired with a cartoon character. Louaillier writes of her organization's campaign to prevent fast food companies from using cartoons to market fast food to kids:
For our part, my organization launched a campaign in March to convince McDonald's to retire Ronald McDonald, its iconic advertising character, and the suite of predatory marketing practices of which the clown is at the heart. A study we commissioned by Lake Research Partners found that more than half of those polled say they "favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children's characters to sell harmful products to children."
Local elected officials are joining the cause, too. Los Angeles recently voted to make permanent a ban on the construction of new fast food restaurants in parts of the city. San Francisco has limited toy giveaway promotions to children's meals that meet basic health criteria. The idea is spreading to other cities.
2011 trendspotting: Baby food
The hot new snack trend for 2011 is mush, as Bonnie Azab Powell reports in Grist. In an attempt to burnish its portfolio of "healthier" snack options for kids Tropicana (a PepsiCo company) is introducing a new line of pureed fruit and vegetable slurries. The products, sold under the brand name Tropolis, feature ground up fruits and veggies, vitamin C, and fiber in a portable plastic pouch. These "drinkified snacks" or "snackified drinks" will be priced at $2.49 to $3.49 for a four-pack, making them more expensive than fresh fruit.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Editor's Note: We're posting the Weekly Mulch on Thursday this week because of the holidays. It'll return to its regular Friday morning posting next week. Until then, Happy New Year!
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
2010 was a disappointing year for environmentalists.
This was the year Congress was supposed to pass climate change legislation, but each and every time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seemed on the verge of pushing the bill forward, the effort fell short. In April, off the coast of Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon explosion led to one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history, and in the aftermath, neither President Barack Obama nor Congress has pushed for the sort of strong regulations that would rein in the oil industry and the risk it poses to coastal ecosystems.
Meanwhile, a newly invigorated natural gas industry has been plowing forward with a controversial drilling technique called hydrofracking. Although the Environmental Protection Agency has committed to studying the environmental impacts of the practice, it's unclear at this point how much leeway the industry will be given to use techniques that have contaminated water and air across the country. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben had trouble convincing the president to take the small symbolic act of reinstalling a solar panel on the White House roof. And in November, the country elected a group of lawmakers who are skeptical that climate change even exists.
Hope springs eternal
But the news was not all bad, as Change.org's Jess Leber reports. In California, green-minded voters defeated a proposition that would have rolled back the state's ambitious climate law. Coal-fired power plants are closing in states like Oregon and Colorado, and mountaintop removal coal mining is losing its funding. And cities like New York, Washington D.C., Denver and Minneapolis made it easier for their inhabitants to use bikes as a primary mode of transportation.
"All over the world, activists are fighting in their states, towns and cities to do right by the environment," Leber writes. "They are also moving to pressure the corporate world. So while, given the results of Election Day in the U.S., progress in Congress will be an uphill battle, I'm confident there will be even more victories to report this time next year."
A year can be a long time. Consider, for instance, Steph Larsen's reflections on her farm's first year. "I feel like I've lived a decade in the last 12 months," Larsen writes in Grist. Last year, her pasture did not exist, and the farm buildings on her land had sat unused for years. But in the past 12 months, she's grown cherries and tomatoes and squash, kept chickens and hunted for their eggs, and raised livestock that later became her dinner.
Larsen's goals for her farm are modest: "to grow food for her household and community." It can be hard sometimes to see how individual choices like hers can make a difference while global leaders cannot agree on how to reduce carbon emissions and industry continues to exploit and pollute the environment. But as Winslow Myers, the author of Living Beyond War, writes at Truthout, "the cause-and-effect relationship between what I do personally in my daily life and those planet-wide challenges has become infinitely clearer" over the past 50 years:
Now we can see how the two are connected - between my diet and the effect of industrial agriculture on the land, between my energy consumption and global climate change, between the chemicals in my laundry detergent and the health of the oceans - and between my political commitments and the world-destroying weapons built with my tax dollars....the reality is that I am so deeply connected to the whole entity that I am responsible for it, answerable to it.
Local leaders step into the breach
It's true that individual decisions to turn down the heat, or eat local food, or bike instead of drive cannot turn back global warming. But in aggregate, they do make an impact. And although nationally and internationally, politicians are finding it difficult to create strong policies on climate change, that would reduce emissions, not all lawmakers are avoiding the issues. Franke James' visual essay on climate change at Yes! Magazine puts it like this: "Don't be fooled by the global leaders loafing. Local leaders and cities are making plans to adapt to climate change (because it's affecting them NOW!) "
And ultimately, these sorts of decisions on local and individual levels do send a signal to leaders that their constituents care about keeping the planet healthy, care about preserving our environmental resources. To that end, check out these ideas for individual action from the staff and readers of Mother Jones.
And next year? Leaders like Bill McKibben are working to create a global movement around climate change, a people-driven movement that will convince legislators and negotiators that it is incumbent upon them to act. Look for them to start making lots of noise in 2011.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
It's a Christmas-week miracle! The Senate, in a vote that astonished everyone, brought the Food Safety and Modernization Act back from the dead on Monday, as Siddhartha Mahanta reports in Mother Jones. The bill, which will enact tougher consumer protections against E. coli and other deadly contaminants in staples like eggs and peanut butter, died in the Senate last week when the omnibus spending bill it had been folded into kicked the bucket.
At Grist, Tom Philpott explains the initial demise, and the basis for the ultimate resurrection of the bill. The House passed the bill on Tuesday, having already passed it twice before.
President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law, which will usher in the first major overhaul of the country's food safety system in more than 70 years. Food poisoning strikes 48 million Americans (1 in 6), lands 128,000 in the hospital, and kills 3,000 ever year, according to CDC figures released last week. Now that's something to talk about with your relatives around the holiday dinner table.
Wisconsin clinic backs off 2nd trimester abortion care
A clinic in Wisconsin has reneged on its commitment to provide second trimester abortion care, as Judy Shackelford reports in The Progressive. Shackelford is outraged that the Madison Surgery Center walked back on its promise to patients. She knows first hand how important later term abortion access can be.
Shackelford found herself in need of a second trimester abortion when she developed a blood clot in her arm during her second, much-wanted pregnancy. She decided to terminate rather than risk leaving her 7-year-old son motherless. It was hard enough to find an abortion provider when she needed one, but if she needed the procedure today, she would have nowhere to turn.
Teen birth rate at record low
The birth rate for women ages 15-19 fell to 39.1 per 1000 between 2008 and 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics announced Tuesday. Many commentators, including Goddessjaz of feministing attribute the drop to the recession. The economy seems to be an important factor because birth rates dropped in all age groups, not just among teens.
Predictably, proponents of abstinence-only-until-hetero-marriage are trying to take credit for the falling birth rate. It's not clear why they think ab-only is finally starting to work after years ofunrelenting failure. Perhaps it was Bristol Palin's electrifying performance on "Dancing With the Stars"?
Get the government out of my Medicare
We've become accustomed to the ironic spectacle of senior citizens on Medicare-funded scooters decrying the "government takeover of health care." Medicare is wildly popular, even among those who decry "socialized medicine." When the Affordable Care Act is finally implemented, it won't feel like a government program, either. Paul Waldman of The American Prospect wonders if this "private sector" feel will undermine support for the program:
The Republican officials challenging the ACA in court have characterized its individual insurance mandate as an act of tyranny ranking somewhere between the Stalinist purges and Mao's Cultural Revolution. But in the "government takeover" of health care (recently declared the 2010 "Lie of the Year" by the fact-checking site PolitiFact), Americans will continue to visit their private doctors to receive care paid for by their private insurance companies. The irony is that if the ACA actually were a "government takeover," people would end up feeling much better about government's involvement in health care. But since it maintains the private system, conservatives can continue to decry government health care safe in the knowledge that most people under 65 won't know what they're missing, or in another sense, what they're getting.
If people don't realize that they're benefiting from government programs, they are less likely to support those programs. In an attempt to deflect Republican criticism, the Democrats assiduously scrubbed as much of the aura of government off of health reform as they could. This could prove to be a disastrously short-sighted strategy. If health reform works, the government won't get the credit, but rest assured that if it fails, it will take the full measure of blame.
Funding for community health centers at risk
One of the lesser-known provisions of the Affordable Care Act was to expand the capacity of community health centers (CHCs) from 20 million to 40 million patients by 2015. This extra capacity will be key for absorbing the millions of previously uninsured Americans who are slated to get health insurance under the ACA.
CHCs have been praised by Democrats and Republicans as an affordable way to provide quality health care. However, state budget crises are threatening to derail the plan, as Dan Peterson reports for Change.org. States must contribute to the program in order to qualify for federal funding. However, state funding for CHCs has plummeted by 42% since 2007. So far this year, 23 states have cut funding for CHCs and eight have slashed their budgets by 20% or more.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Dr. Kenneth Katz recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Health Hazards of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell." This week, he penned an op/ed for RH Reality Check about his experiences treating U.S. military at an STD clinic in San Diego. Dr. Katz sees the Pentagon's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" rule for LGB members of the military as a huge roadblock to good medical care. He's pretty confident that his military patients feel safe divulging their sexual histories to a civilian doctor like himself. But when those troops go overseas, they are cared for by military doctors. Technically, doctor-patient communication is exempt from DADT, but many patients don't realize that they can tell their military doctors about gay sex without fear of reprisals (at least in theory). Dr. Katz's patients have told him that they won't go for recommended follow-up STD screening after they ship out because they're afraid to be honest with their doctors. He worries about how many troops are suffering from treatable infections in war zones because they aren't allowed to serve openly.
Food stamp use skyrockets, swordfish sales unaccountably flat
Monica Potts of TAPPED points to the alarming statistic that in the last month alone an additional 500,000 Americans went on food stamps. She notes that the right wing website Daily Calleris alarmed not by the fact that fellow citizens can't afford food, but rather that there's no gruel-only foodstamp program available:
Meanwhile, the conservative news site The Daily Calleris shocked, shocked, to learn that you can use food stamps to buy all manner of food. The government, apparently, doesn't restrict you from purchasing an $18-per-pound swordfish steak from Whole Foods. But that kind of discovery, like almost everything else in the "debate" over food stamp use, is the sort of ridiculous one that comes from a person who's never been hungry.
The Hyde Amendment
In Campus Progress, Jessica Arons and Madina Agénor call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment for being an assault on the reproductive rights of poor women and women of color. The Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right in 1973, yet nearly 40 years later, the Hyde Amendment still prohibits nearly all federal funding for abortions. In practice, the women most affected by the Hyde Amendment are those who depend on government health care programs like Medicaid and the Indian Health Service:
Former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the law's sponsor, admitted during debate of his proposal that he was targeting poor women because they were the only ones vulnerable enough for him to reach. "I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman," he said. "Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the ... Medicaid bill."
Meanwhile, ultra-conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is calling on Congress to de-fund the reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood, Andy Birkey reports in the Minnesota Independent. In an interview with a conservative news site, Bachmann doubled down on that idea, suggesting that all of health care reform be de-funded because it funds abortions. This is not true. The aforementioned Hyde Amendment guarantees as much. Furthermore, even though health reform never would have funded abortions, President Obama signed an eleventh-hour executive order guaranteeing that health care reform would not fund abortions.
Brooklyn bees gorge on maraschino cherry run-off
Home beekeeping is the hottest new trend for health-conscious locavores. New York City recently changed the law to accommodate beekeepers in the five boroughs. Just because you live in an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn is no reason to miss out on this sweet action, right? Well, actually, there is a catch. That nice honey at the farmers' market tastes like lavender because that's what those rural bees ate. What do bees in Red Hook, Brooklyn eat? Run-off from a maraschino cherry factory. The overindulgent bees "look like vampires" according to one local keeper and their honey runs bright red. Maraschino honey sounds like a delicious mash-up of high and low culture. Unfortunately, Sarah Goodyear reports in Grist that the end product doesn't taste nearly as good as it looks. Arthur Mondella, the owner of Dell's Maraschino Cherries, wants to do right by the beekeepers. He initially suggested putting out vats of different colored syrup to "help" the bees make rainbow honey. His proposal was not well-received by the crunchy set. Instead, he has agreed to work with the beekeepers to keep the bees out of the vats next year.
Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren't stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We'll return to our normal schedule next week.
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Wednesday is the heaviest travel day of the year in the United States, as millions of Americans head home to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some of you are probably reading this dispatch on PDAs as you wait in an interminable line at airport security. Here's some food for thought.
At Grist, food writer Michael Pollan officially declares himself a Rules Guy. Don't worry, that doesn't mean he won't accept a Friday dinner invitation offered after noon on Wednesday. Pollan thinks that our healthy eating skills are passed down to us as part of food culture. In this era of drive-through windows and meal replacement bars, a lot of the old wisdom is falling by the wayside and Americans are finding themselves adrift in a sea of calories. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Pollan provides some helpful guidelines for avoiding the food coma:
[M]any ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry."
But wait, there's more!
Unions representing airline pilots and flight attendants are advising their members to avoid the the TSA's new backscatter x-ray scans because of concerns about the long-term health effects of x-ray radiation. Crew members who refused scans have been subjected to new "enhanced" pat-down searches. This week, the TSA granted an exception to pilots, but not to flight attendants. As I reported for Working In These Times, all crew members go through the same FBI background check and fingerprinting process. "Don't touch my junk!" has become a rallying cry for passengers, particularly white men, who are not accustomed to being asked to give up any part of their body's autonomy for the greater good. Is it a coincidence that 95% of pilots are men and three-quarters of flight attendants are women? [Update: The TSA has relented. The agency announced Tuesday that flight attendants will now get the same exemption as pilots.
Adam Serwer argues in The American Prospect that it's easy to demand tough security measures when the presumed targets are faceless Muslims in a distant country. When air travelers are asked to compromise their own privacy in the name of security, the tradeoff suddenly seems very different.
Employee health insurance deductibles are skyrocketing at Whole Foods and CEO John Mackey is trying to blame the increase on health care reform. "This is very important for everyone to understand: 100% of the increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums in 2011 compared to 2010 are due to new federal mandates and regulations," Mackey wrote in a corporate memo. In fact, as Josh Harkinson reports in Mother Jones, Mackey's memo is pure, organic BS. The provisions in the Affordable Care Act that might increase costs won't go into effect until 2014, so it's hard to figure out how federal policies could be responsible. Health insurance costs were rising by about 5% per year, year after year, before the Affordable Care Act passed. The truth is that health insurance is getting more expensive because health care is getting more expensive. As Harkinson points out, one of the reasons that health care is getting more expensive is because corporations like Whole Foods are pushing more of their employees into part-time work to avoid covering them. Of course, when those workers get sick, someone has to pick up the cost of their care. So those who have insurance, including some of Whole Foods' own employees, have to pay more to make up the difference.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
It won't be long before the world has to confront its diminishing supply of clean water.
"We've had the same amount of water on our planet since the beginning of time, " Susan Leal, co-author of Running Out of Water, told GritTV's Laura Flanders. "We are on a collision course of a very finite supply and 7.6 billion people."
What's worse, private industries-and energy companies in particular-are using waterways as dumping grounds for hazardous substances. With the coal industry, it's an old story; with the natural gas industry, it's a practice that can be nipped in the bud.
In many cases, dumping pollutants into water is a government-sanctioned activity, although there are limits to how much contamination can be approved. But companies often overshoot their pollution allowances, and for some businesses, like a nuclear energy plant, even a little bit of contamination can be a problem.
Business as usual
Here's one troubling scenario. At Grist, Sue Sturgis reports that "a river downstream of a privately-owned nuclear fuel processing plant in East Tennessee is contaminated with enriched uranium." The concentrations are low, and the water affected is still potable. The issue, however, is that the plant was not supposed to be discharging any of this sort of uranium at all. One researcher explained that the study had "only scratched the surface of what's out there and found widely dispersed enriched uranium in the environment." In other words, the contamination could be more widespread than is now known.
Nuclear energy facilities must take particular care to keep the waste products of their work separate from the environment around them. But in some industries, like coal, polluting water supplies is routine practice.
The dirtiest energy
In West Virginia, more than 700 people are suing infamous coal company Massey Energy for defiling their tap water, Charles Corra reports at Change.org. In Mingo County, tap water comes out as "a smooth flow of black and orange liquid." Country residents are arguing that the contamination is a result of water from coal slurries, a byproduct of mining that contains arsenic and other contaminants, leaking into the water table. Residents believe the slurries also cause health problems like learning disabilities and hormone imbalances, as Corra reports.
Newfangled notions
Even so-called "clean coal," which would inject less carbon into the atmosphere, is worrisome when it comes to water. The carbon siphoned from clean coal doesn't disappear; it's sequestered under ground. For a new clean coal project in Linden, NJ, Change.org's Austin Billings reports, that chamber would be 70 miles out to sea. As Billings writes:
The plant would be the first of its kind in the world, so it should come as no surprise that the proposal is a major cause for concern among New Jersey environmentalists, fishermen, and lawmakers. According to Dr. Heather Saffert of Clean Ocean America, "We don't really have a good understanding of how the CO2 is going to react with other minerals... The PurGen project is based on one company's models. What if they're wrong?"
In this case, it wouldn't only be human communities at risk ("Polluted Jersey Shore," anyone?), but the ocean's ecosystem.
Frack no!
Coal communities in West Virginia have been dealing with water pollution for decades. But a another source of energy extraction-hydrofracking for natural gas-has only just begun to threaten water supplies. Care2's Jennifer Mueller points to a recent "60 Minutes" segment that explores the attendant issues: it's a must-watch for anyone unfamiliar with what's at stake.
Fortunately, some of the communities at risk have been working to head off the damage before it hits. In Pittsburgh this week, leaders banned hydrofracking within the city, according to Mari Margil and Ben Price inYes! Magazine. They write:
As Councilman [Doug] Shields stated after the vote, "This ordinance recognizes and secures expanded civil rights for the people of Pittsburgh, and it prohibits activities which would violate those rights. It protects the authority of the people of Pittsburgh to pass this ordinance by undoing corporate privileges that place the rights of the people of Pittsburgh at the mercy of gas corporations."
Environmentalists in other municipalities, in state government, and in Congress would do well to follow Pittsburgh's lead.
Mutant fish
Of course, you can't believe every tale of water contamination you hear. At RhRealityCheck, Kimberly Inez McGuire takes on the persistent myth that estrogen from birth control is making its way in large concentrations into the water supply and leading to mutations in fish.
This simply isn't true. As McGuire explains, "The estrogen found in birth control pills, patches, and rings (known as EE2) is only one of thousands of synthetic estrogens that may be found in our water, and the contribution of EE2 to the total presence of estrogen in water is relatively small." Where does the rest of the estrogen come from? Factory farms, industrial chemicals like BPA, and synthetic estrogen used in crop fertilizer. So, yes, the water is contaminated, but, no, your birth control is not to blame.
Greening the US
Stories like these, of environmental pollution by corporations, seem to come up again and again. They're barely news anymore and so easy to ignore. But it's more important than ever for environmentalists to fight back against these challenges and push for a green economy that minimizes pollution. The American Prospect's Monica Potts recently sat down with The Media Consortium to explain the roadblocks to a green economy. If green-minded people want to stop hearing tales like the ones above, these are the obstacles they'll need to overcome: watch the video.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
A year ago, it seemed possible-likely, even-that President Barack Obama would sweep into the international negotiations on climate change at Copenhagen and make serious progress on the tangle of issues at stake. The reality was quite different. This year, the expectations for the United Nations Climate Conference in Cancun are less wild.
The conference will be held from Nov 29 to Dec 10 and the same issues from 2009 are up for debate. Countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany are still contributing an outsize share of carbon to the atmosphere. Countries like India and China are still rapidly increasing their own carbon output. And countries like Bangladesh, Tuvalu, and Bolivia are still bearing an unfair share of the environmental impacts brought on by climate change.
A very different set of expectations are building in the climate movement this year. If last year was about moving forward as fast as possible, this year, climate activists seem resigned to the idea that politicians just aren't getting it. Change, when it comes, will have to be be built on a popular movement, not a political negotiation.
Climate change from the bottom up
Last year, climate activists put their faith in international leaders to make progress. This year, they believe that it's up to them, as outside actors, to marshal a grassroots movement and pressure their leaders towards decreased carbon emissions.
"There's a recognition that the insider strategy to push from inside the Beltway to impact what will happen in DC, or what will happen in Cancun has really not succeeded," Rose Braz, climate campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Making Contact's Andrew Stelzer. "What we're doing in conjunction with a number of groups across the country and across the world is really build the type of movement that will change what happens in Cancun, what changes what happens in DC from the bottom up." (This entire episode of Making Contact is dedicated to new approaches to climate change, at Cancun and beyond, and is worth a listen.)
Fighting the indolence of capitalists
Here's one example of this new strategy. As Zachary Shahan writes at Change.org, La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement, is coordinating a march that will begin in San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Acapulco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, then converge on Cancun. The march will include "thousands of farmers, indigenous people, rural villagers, urbanites, and more," Shahan reports.
After they arrive in Cancun, the organizers are planning an "Alternative Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice" for the final days of the negotiations, which they say will be a mass mobilisation of peasants, indigenous and social movements. The action extends far beyond Cancun, though. Actually, they are organizing thousands of Cancuns around the world on this day to denounce what they see as false climate solutions.
These actions echo the strategy that environmentalist and author Bill McKibben and other climate leaders are promoting to push for climate change policies in the U.S. All this talk about building momentum from the bottom up, from populations, means that anyone looking for change is now looking years into the future.
The U.S. is not leading the way
Of course, ultimately, politicians will need to agree on a couple of standards. In particular, how much carbon each country should be emitting and how fast each country should power down its current emission levels. The U.S. is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to agreement on these questions, especially due to the recent mid-term elections. As Claudia Salerno, Venezuela's lead climate change negotiator wrote at AlterNet:
Unlike what many suggest, China is not the problem. China, along with India and others, have made considerable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are already working to realize them. Other developing countries have done the same, although we only generate a virtual drop in the bucket of global carbon emissions. The key player missing here is the U.S.
China, the U.S. and Clean Coal
The most interesting collaborations on clean energy, however, aren't happening around the negotiating table. This week, The Atlantic's James Fallows wrote a long piece about the work that the U.S. and China are doing together on clean coal technology, the magic cure-all to the world's energy ills.
In the piece, Fallows recognizes what environmentalists have long argued: coal is bad for the environment and for coal-mining communities. But, unlike clean energy advocates who want to phase coal out of the energy equation, Fallows argues that coal must play a part in the world's energy future. Therefore, we must find a way to burn it without releasing clouds of carbon into the atmosphere. That's where clean coal technology comes in. So far, however, researchers have had little luck minimizing coal's carbon output.
A few progressive writers weighed in on Fallows' piece: Grist's David Roberts thought Fallows was too hard on the anti-coal camp, while Campus Progress' Sara Rubin argued that the piece did a good job of grappling with the reality of clean energy economics. And Mother Jones' Kevin Drum had one very clear criticism-that the piece skated over the question of progress on carbon capture, the one real way to dramatically reduce carbon pollution from coal. He wrote:
All the collaboration sounds wonderful, and even a 20% or 30% improvement in coal technology would be welcome. But that said, sequestration is the holy grail and I still don't know if the Chinese are doing anything more on that front than the rest of us.
On every front, then, the view on climate change is now a long one.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Republicans don't have the votes to repeal health care reform, but they are determined to use their newly-won control of the House to fight it every step of the way. Marilyn Werber Serafini gives Truthout readers a sneak-peek at the GOP playbook to attack healthcare reform in 2011.
Who are some of the top contenders in this coming battle? Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is a leading candidate to chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton is vowing, if elected chairman, to use the oversight powers of the committee to hold a flurry of hearings on alleged misconduct in the crafting of the Affordable Care Act. Barton plans to show that budget experts "covered up" the true projected costs of health care reform. In Barton's world, the fact that there's no evidence to support this allegation is all the more reason to investigate.
Other key players include James Gelfand, the director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has already compiled a wishlist of 31 investigations that he wants the newly Republican-controlled House to undertake. The Chamber spent millions to elect Republicans this cycle. Barton's hearings will have to compete for political oxygen with those of Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), the chair apparent of the Investigations Committee, who is promising to gum up the works of government with at least to seven hearings a week for 40 weeks, a projected rate nearly triple that of his predecessor Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca).
Health care freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
If they can't undo health reform in the corridors of Washington, conservatives are looking to the states and the federal courts. In The Nation, Nicholas Kusnetz reports on how a coalition of hard right groups are organizing against health care reform at the state level.
A group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is at the forefront of the drive to pass so-called "health care freedom acts" in the states to preemptively outlaw federal health reform before it can be implemented. ALEC claims to have filed or pre-filed bills in 38 states and passed 6 so far. Few expect these laws to stand up in court, if challenged, but they are part of ALEC's long term strategy to fight health reform itself in the federal courts. A Virginia judge recently ruled that an ALEC-sponsored "freedom" law gave the state standing to challenge federal reform.
Kusnetz shows the close ties between ALEC officials and Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and other Koch-Industries-funded conservative activist groups that are campaigning against health care reform in various capacities.
What about Medicare?
At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes that many Republicans, including Senator-Elect Rand Paul (R-KY) successfully campaigned on a platform of repealing health care reform to save Medicare. Benen explains that repealing the Affordable Care Act would actually put Medicare in worse financial straights than staying the course. The Republican rhetoric of defending Medicare and railing against socialized medicine is a flagrant self-contradiction. It's not hard to see which of these two projects they are more committed to.
As Brie Cadman points out at Change.org, the self-proclaimed "Young Guns" of the Republican Party are keen to privatize Medicare all together.
Government cheese: Corporate welfare edition
The USDA is scheming to make you eat more cheese. Tom Philpott of Grist explains how it works. Big Dairy produces more milk than Americans care to drink. Plus, consumers are increasingly demanding reduced-fat milk. That leaves a lot of milk left over to make cheese, but Americans aren't eating enough cheese to make a dent in the national milk fat surplus.
Unsold milk fat could become a toxic asset on the books of Big Dairy. So, the USDA created a non-profit corporation called Dairy Management (DM) to convince fast food companies to spike their products with millions of tons more cheese every year. With the help of DM, Domino's Pizza created a line of "Legend" pizzas with 40% more cheese. Who can forget the epic 2002 "Summer of Cheese" when DM teamed up with Pizza Hut to boost cheese consumption by an astonishing 102 million pounds? The average American now eats 33 pounds of cheese per year, three times as much as in 1970.
Officially, the USDA is supposed to help Americans eat better and support the agriculture industry. Cheese can be part of a healthy diet, but not in ever-increasing quantities. In practice, supporting the profits of Big Agra should not take precedence over preventing obesity or reducing the incidence of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
CPCs: Incubators for anti-choice violence
In Ms. Magazine, Kathryn Joyce explores the shadowy world of "crisis pregnancy centers," anti-choice ministries that pose as full-service reproductive health clinics, but offer no real health services. CPCs have a business model built on deceit. They seek to prevent abortions by tricking women seeking comprehensive reproductive health care, which might include abortion.
Activism rooted in such deceit and contempt for women's autonomy can flare into violence. Joyce reveals that CPCs also serve as incubators for radical anti-choice activism. Radical groups like Operation Rescue encourage their supporters to volunteer. Scott Roeder, the assassin of Dr. George Tiller, got his start accosting women on the street outside abortion clinics as a volunteer "sidewalk counselor" for a crisis pregnancy center.
Just the presence of a CPC near an abortion clinic is correlated with increased violence against the clinic, as Joyce reports:
A recent survey by the Feminist Majority Foundation of women's reproductive-health clinics nationwide found 32.7 percent of clinics located near a CPC experienced one or more incidents of severe violence, compared to only 11.3 percent of clinics not near a CPC. (Severe violence includes clinic blockades and invasions, bombings, arson, bombing and arson threats, death threats, chemical attacks, stalking, physical violence and gunfire.)
Doctors on the front line see the overlap between CPCs and more virulent forms of anti-choice activism every day. "[CPCs and violent anti-choice activists] have two different spheres," OB-GYN Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the nation's last remaining specialists in late-term abortions, told Joyce. "The underlying theory of both is never let the truth stand in the way of getting your point across. If you distort facts to women, there is no difference."
Flip Benham's slap on the wrist
One of the activists Joyce interviews in her piece is Rev. "Flip" Benham, director of Operation Save America/Operation Rescue. Robin Marty of RH Reality Check reports that Benham was found guilty of stalking an abortion provider and posting "Wanted" posters with the doctor's picture on them, accusing him of being a baby killer. Benham was sentenced to 24 months probation.
In his defense, Benham claimed that this was a harmless gesture that never killed anyone. In fact, "wanted" posters for abortion doctors are a time-honored intimidation tactic that has been used repeatedly before the murders of abortion providers. Benham is deliberately cultivating a climate of fear and rage is conducive to violence.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
A chill is coming to Washington. A wave of climate change deniers were elected to office this week, and come January, we can expect a freeze in all reasonable and productive discussion about the fate of the planet.
Last year, the political discussion about climate change and carbon regulation was complicated and bogged down, but at least it was happening.
Who are the deniers?
Grist has pulled together a list of the climate deniers headed into power in the Senate. "Overall, the Senate next year will be more hostile to climate action than ever before," the site's staff says.
If these climate-denying legislators came from deeply red states, Tuesday's results might not be so shocking. But many of them represent swing states, or states that might be red in presidential contests, but that have previously elected Democrats to Congress.
Farewell, moderation
These latter states include North Dakota, whose new senator, John Hoeven, made Grist's list, and Indiana. Also on the list are Marco Rubio, from Florida, Kelly Ayotte, from New Hampshire, and Pat Toomey, from Pennsylvania.
Perhaps most disheartening is the replacement of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) with Senator-Elect Ron Johnson. Johnson is to the right of the independent-minded Feingold on a host of issues, but as Mother Jones' Andy Kroll writes, "What landed Johnson in headlines earlier this year was his claim that climate change wasn't created by humans but instead was the result of 'sunspot activity.'"
The new climate "science"
Sunspot activity is just one explanation that newly elected Republicans have grabbed onto to explain the very real phenomenon of climate change. Care2's Beth Buczynski has rounded up a few choice quotes from these new leaders:
"With the possible exception of Tiger Woods, nothing has had a worse year than global warming. We have discovered that a good portion of the science used to justify "climate change" was a hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologues with an agenda." -Todd Young, new congressperson from Indiana
"There isn't any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth." -Roy Blunt, new senator from Missouri
What does this shift mean? In short, that the United States and our environmental policies will be limping forward and falling behind the rest of the world as international communities try to deal with climate change. As Brian Merchant writes at AlterNet:
...the current crop of GOP politicians have adopted a somewhat united ideological front opposing not only climate legislation, but the general notion of climate science itself. Nowhere else in the world has a leading political party availed itself of a position so directly in opposition to science -- indeed, today's GOP is the only party in the world that incorporates climate change denial as part of its political platform.
On the domestic front, writes The Washington Independent's Andrew Restuccia, that means that even unambitious legislation, like the renewable energy standard, stands little chance of passing. As it's currently written, the renewable energy standard would require a certain percentage of the country's electricity to come from renewable sources. In reality, it would not even push clean energy production to grow faster than market forces alone would. The main purpose of passing a standard would be to signal to clean energy investors that the government supports their work.
In other words, in the current legislative climate, our leaders wouldn't even get behind legislation that is just a sign of support for clean energy and the jobs it would create.
Zombie Climategate
Instead, the House's leadership plans on spending its time staging a show trial of climate science. The chief executor of this strategy will be Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is set to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Change.org's Jess Leber explains:
From his new position, the former car-alarm company owner plans to raise false alarm about climate conspiracy theories. As Nikki Gloudeman wrote, just a few weeks ago Issa vowed to make investigating "Climategate"-the climate pseudo-scandal that's already died 1,000 deaths-a top oversight priority should he win the committee.
In theory, Issa would be investigating a series of emails, sent by British climate scientists. Climate skeptics argue the emails prove that scientists are falsifying evidence of climate change. Extensive investigations have already debunked those claims.
In short, environmental leader Bill McKibben had the right idea back in September. Anyone who's interested in advocating for climate change action in this country would do well to stop trying to convince Congress to do its job. Our leaders won't be listening.
The best path forward may be to start convincing the American people, in the hope that, t
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
A chill is coming to Washington. A wave of climate change deniers were elected to office this week, and come January, we can expect a freeze in all reasonable and productive discussion about the fate of the planet.
Last year, the political discussion about climate change and carbon regulation was complicated and bogged down, but at least it was happening.
Who are the deniers?
Grist has pulled together a list of the climate deniers headed into power in the Senate. "Overall, the Senate next year will be more hostile to climate action than ever before," the site's staff says.
If these climate-denying legislators came from deeply red states, Tuesday's results might not be so shocking. But many of them represent swing states, or states that might be red in presidential contests, but that have previously elected Democrats to Congress.
Farewell, moderation
These latter states include North Dakota, whose new senator, John Hoeven, made Grist's list, and Indiana. Also on the list are Marco Rubio, from Florida, Kelly Ayotte, from New Hampshire, and Pat Toomey, from Pennsylvania.
Perhaps most disheartening is the replacement of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) with Senator-Elect Ron Johnson. Johnson is to the right of the independent-minded Feingold on a host of issues, but as Mother Jones' Andy Kroll writes, "What landed Johnson in headlines earlier this year was his claim that climate change wasn't created by humans but instead was the result of 'sunspot activity.'"
The new climate "science"
Sunspot activity is just one explanation that newly elected Republicans have grabbed onto to explain the very real phenomenon of climate change. Care2's Beth Buczynski has rounded up a few choice quotes from these new leaders:
"With the possible exception of Tiger Woods, nothing has had a worse year than global warming. We have discovered that a good portion of the science used to justify "climate change" was a hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologues with an agenda." -Todd Young, new congressperson from Indiana
"There isn't any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth." -Roy Blunt, new senator from Missouri
What does this shift mean? In short, that the United States and our environmental policies will be limping forward and falling behind the rest of the world as international communities try to deal with climate change. As Brian Merchant writes at AlterNet:
...the current crop of GOP politicians have adopted a somewhat united ideological front opposing not only climate legislation, but the general notion of climate science itself. Nowhere else in the world has a leading political party availed itself of a position so directly in opposition to science -- indeed, today's GOP is the only party in the world that incorporates climate change denial as part of its political platform.
On the domestic front, writes The Washington Independent's Andrew Restuccia, that means that even unambitious legislation, like the renewable energy standard, stands little chance of passing. As it's currently written, the renewable energy standard would require a certain percentage of the country's electricity to come from renewable sources. In reality, it would not even push clean energy production to grow faster than market forces alone would. The main purpose of passing a standard would be to signal to clean energy investors that the government supports their work.
In other words, in the current legislative climate, our leaders wouldn't even get behind legislation that is just a sign of support for clean energy and the jobs it would create.
Zombie Climategate
Instead, the House's leadership plans on spending its time staging a show trial of climate science. The chief executor of this strategy will be Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is set to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Change.org's Jess Leber explains:
From his new position, the former car-alarm company owner plans to raise false alarm about climate conspiracy theories. As Nikki Gloudeman wrote, just a few weeks ago Issa vowed to make investigating "Climategate"-the climate pseudo-scandal that's already died 1,000 deaths-a top oversight priority should he win the committee.
In theory, Issa would be investigating a series of emails, sent by British climate scientists. Climate skeptics argue the emails prove that scientists are falsifying evidence of climate change. Extensive investigations have already debunked those claims.
In short, environmental leader Bill McKibben had the right idea back in September. Anyone who's interested in advocating for climate change action in this country would do well to stop trying to convince Congress to do its job. Our leaders won't be listening.
The best path forward may be to start convincing the American people, in the hope that, two years from now, they'll vote for candidates who have a clue.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
wo years from now, they'll vote for candidates who have a clue.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The Obama administration finally agreed to assemble solar panels on the roof of the White House. It's encouraging news, considering that Congress was unable to pass climate change legislation this year.
While Congress may not get it, citizens across the country have committed to building green using energy-efficient guidelines such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a rating system set out by the U.S. Green Building Council. Green buildings are no longer reserved for the wealthy or the province of distant countries. They are becoming a well-traveled path to a sustainable future.
Consideration of inward, rather than outward, urban development encourages major cities to be more self-contained and sustainable in the realms of energy and water usage. Inclusion of building features such as solar panels and energy-efficient window and wall insulation insure that energy is self-produced and not wasted.
The White House panels
Activist Bill McKibben and 350.org led the campaign to reinstall solar panels on the White House. McKibben and several college students began their road trip in Maine and delivered the panels on Sept. 10. The the solar panels were rejected at first because the administration did not want to "give the right another talking point comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter," writes Salon. But the Obama administration changed its stance and accepted the two panels Oct. 5. Beth Buczynski of Care2 has the story.
Setbacks
Although the installation of the solar panels is encouraging, it doesn't change the fact that Congress has not passed any substantial climate legislation this year. Furthermore, President Barack Obama faces an uphill battle with Congress regarding the regulation of carbon emissions, according to Agence France Presse in AlterNet.
At Grist, David Roberts claims that many senators have opposed climate legislation not only to align with their party, but because of ignorance. Roberts quotes a senate staffer:
"That fact is, he said, most senators, even the ones directly involved in the fight over climate policy, don't know the rudimentary facts about climate change or clean energy. They understand very little about the policies in question or how those policies will affect their constituents."
Green buildings
Yet sustainable development has gained momentum, despite a lack of congressional backing. Cities such as Portland and Seattle have championed self-sustaining, inward development, while Chicago is building its first pre-fab home this fall. LEED is a common, third-party evaluation of a building's environmental sustainability. The rating system measures carbon emissions, water conservation, energy efficiency and consciousness about materials and resources used for the project.
Additional building standards have also emerged. Architect Jason McLennan has created the "Living Building Challenge", which requires new structures be self-sustaining in regards to energy and water usage. Jonathon Hiskes of Grist writes that although the rating system is more strict than LEED, around 70 buildings have striven to meet the challenge.
"The point of our whole movement is to create abundance of life, and a healthy ecosystem for all future generations," McLennan told Hiskes. "We have a current industrial system where nobody knows what's in our materials, and there's no plan for where they go with those chemicals when their lifespan is over."
The rise of the eco-city
Congressional members and ecologically concerned citizens should look abroad for the best examples of sustainable building initiatives. Tianjin, China, the country's third largest industrial city, began construction of one of the country's first eco-cities. The proposed city, which would be 11.6 square miles, would house a population of 350,000 and include contributions of sustainable building material from Japanese company Hitachi and Dutch company Philips.
Tianjin's developers say the city "will serve as an ultra-efficient alternative to ill-planned and heavily polluting mega-cities not only elsewhere in the country, but around the world."
Siben Linden, a well-known German eco-village, is composed of straw buildings that serve as multi-family homes for around 80 adults and 30 children, according to Athena and Bill Steen of Chelsea Green. The village is agriculturally self-sustaining and is powered by photovoltaic systems. As a result, the total carbon emissions equal about 10 percent of the average German energy usage.
The future may seem far away, but with regards to sustainable development, it's closer than we think. Congress just needs to realize it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The Iowa chapter of the
Sierra Club is pushing state
regulators to investigate two factory farms and a feed mill linked to
this summer's massive recall of salmonella-tainted eggs, Lynda Waddington
reports in the Iowa Independent. The Sierra Club sent a strongly-worded
letter to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller urging him to investigate
Wright County Egg, Hillandale Farms and the Quality Egg LLC feed mill. All
three firms were linked to the salmonella outbreak that sickened an
estimated 1200 people; and all three firms are linked to agro-baron Austin
"Jack" DeCoster.
Tom Philpott of Grist calls DeCoster a "habitual" environmental
offender and "one of the most reviled names in industrial agriculture." In
1996, the Department of Labor fined DeCoster Eggs $3.6 million for what
the then-Secretary of Labor described as "running an agricultural
sweatshop" and "treating its employees like animals." Over the years,
DeCoster enterprises racked up additional fines in other states. A
previous Attorney General of Iowa dubbed DeCoster a habitual offender for
water pollution. In 2002, five female employees at the DeCoster's Wright
County egg operation alleged that their supervisors had raped them and
threatened to kill them if they reported the crime. The company paid $1.5
million to settle the lawsuit.
Drowsy doctors
A coalition of public health activists is pushing the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to regulate the work hours of
doctors in training. New proposed guidelines would limit the shifts of
first-year residents to 16 hours, but more senior trainees could be forced
to work shifts up to 28 hours. The group, which includes the Committee of
Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare, the American Medical Student
Association, and Public Citizen, says that's not good enough to protect
doctors or the public. As I explain in Working In These Times, research
shows that sleep deprivation is a major
preventable cause of medical errors, which is why the coalition wants to
see shifts for all residents capped at 16 hours.
Insurance
premiums soar
A new report from the Kaiser Foundation
Family shows that health insurance premiums continued to climb with
employers shifting an ever-greater share of the burden onto employees. A
family health insurance policy costs about $14,000 a year, with employees
shouldering 30% of that cost. Michelle Chen reports in ColorLines that
families that manage to hang onto their health insurance can't expect relief through health care
reform any time soon. The major reforms don't go into effect until 2014
and the biggest early beneficiaries will be those who are currently
uninsured rather than those who are already paying through the nose for
lousy coverage. The ultimate goal of comprehensive health care reform is
to reshape the health care and health insurance systems to bring costs
down across the board, but that's small consolation to workers who are
struggling to stay on top of their premiums right now.
Weekly Mulch: Kicking Our Addiction to AC-Why DC Needs to Step Up
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
This summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country's carbon emissions, America's share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.
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