People Before Profit blog

Science news roundup: Water on Mars, Arctic drilling ends

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:48:00 +0000

It's a rare thing when a week is filled with good environmental news, but that is precisely what happened. From scientific discoveries to the construction of wildlife corridors, something is definitely in the air, and it's not carbon.

Shell stops drilling in the Arctic

After intense opposition from environmentalists, including kayaktivists who blocked oil rigs in Seattle and Portland, Shell has announced it is suspending its oil exploration in the Arctic. The corporation cited "disappointing results" in the Chukchi Sea - specifically, insufficient amounts of oil and gas to warrant further activity there.

The oil giant has wasted over $7 billion there since the drilling endeavor began. Notably, Shell also mentioned "the unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska," which activists believe is a subtle reference to the environmental, anti-oil drilling movement that emerged there. Shell likely feared that the opposition could create enough pressure to encourage the federal government to implement new regulations on offshore oil drilling, further curtailing the company's already blunder-ridden efforts.

The demise of Shell's plans marks a demonstrable victory for the activists who spent so much time and effort on this fight, intercepting oil rigs aboard kayaks and assailing the corporatists with fierce cries like "Shell No!" and "we don't need an oil spill in the Arctic!"

In an interview on MSNBC, one such activist on the Puget Sound reacted to Shell's announcement. He summarized the people's victory thusly: "First they ignore you, then they make fun of you, then they fight you, then you win."

Evidence of water on Mars

"Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars." These were the words of NASA planetary science director Jim Green, as the space agency revealed this information to the public on Sept. 28. "Mars," he said, "is not the dry, arid planet we thought of in the past." NASA kept the discovery a secret for at least a week before going public with it via live-streamed announcement. It has since driven speculation that there could have been life on Mars, as the presence of water would seem to indicate. An even more fascinating possibility, albeit unlikely, is that there is currently some form of life on Mars, even if microbial.

"Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water' in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we've long suspected," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who is associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water, albeit briny, is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

Though scientists have long thought that Martian water existed only in the form of trapped ice, findings from an imaging spectrometer on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been roving the planet since 2006, proved that actual patches of fresh hydrated salts were there. Those salts are formed by flowing water that has evaporated off Mars' surface, and from afar, they look like dark streaks on the planet.

NASA added that the streaks "appear to ebb and flow, and darken, over time," and "appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons."

World's largest wildlife corridor will be built in California

While the Arctic may prosper in the wake of Shell's retreat, the Golden State was dealing with its own oil problems, after a devastating spill of crude earlier this year darkened Santa Barbara's Gaviota Coast. Birds and dolphins were found coated in oil or dead, and other wildlife was affected, with the overall ecosystem sure to take a hit from the disaster. But if conservationists were looking for a silver lining in this black plume, they might have found it this week, because good news came for at least one species on Sept. 27.

The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a Los Angeles area regional public lands agency, announced a five-year plan to construct the largest wildlife corridor in the world. The project involves creating a bridge that will help a small mountain lion population in the Santa Monica mountains gain access to larger public lands up north. It would also allow such felines from up north to come down south, replenishing and diversifying the currently largely inbred and endangered Santa Monica cougars.

The bridge is to be built at Liberty Canyon, near a nature preserve, and when finished will be 200 feet in length and 165 feet wide. It will have a natural look and be designed to blend in with the hills and brush, while also blocking traffic noise and other manmade sounds to make the crossing more conducive to wildlife. The estimated cost of the project is $57 million, $1 million of which has been donated by the State Coastal Conservancy. The National Wildlife Federation also plans to begin a fundraising drive for the project, asking contributors to match that $1 million bestowal.

"The future of pumas [aka mountain lions] in the Santa Monica mountains got a little bit brighter today," said National Park Service spokesperson Kate Kuykendall. "Hopefully this funding will lay the groundwork for a safe wildlife crossing that will connect populations that are currently separated by [an obstructing] freeway."

Obama administration, China determined to reach climate agreement

On Sept. 25, President Obama and China president Xi Jinping said they are committed to reaching an international agreement on climate change this year. The talk of such comes at a time when China is implementing new policies to address greenhouse gas emissions, including a cap-and-trade system that will go into effect by 2017. Obama equated that development to his own administration's emission reduction for power plants, particularly the electricity sector.

This development comes not only as good news, but a roadblock for Republican anti-environment rhetoric. Several GOP presidential hopefuls have ceased the previous strategy of outright climate change denial, and tried instead to dismiss concerns over carbon emissions and the need for clean energy, by pointing to other countries - like China - that are worse off, pollution-wise, and not doing anything about it.

"China's doing nothing," said Donald Trump during a CNN interview. Now, as China seeks to tackle its own environmental problems, many hope it will set a good example for stateside efforts to do the same, and will curb some of the misleading remarks Republican politicians have made.

Endangered sea turtles are returning - in record numbers

And finally, there's one more victory this week for conservationists. Sea turtles are making quite the comeback. The endangered reptiles are nesting in record numbers in the southeast U.S. from North Carolina to Florida, showing that efforts to protect them have been successful. Researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF) declared that sea turtles have broken records for the second time in the past three years - they counted 12,026 nests this year.

These turtles have long been put in harm's way by everything from predators to man-made problems, particularly artificial lights and sea pollution. The lights, in particular, cause them trouble. Hatchlings rely on the natural light of the ocean horizon when they begin their nighttime treks out to sea, with the important signs along the way being "the slope of the beach and the white crests of the waves," according to SEE Turtles, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sea conservation through ecotourism. The artificial light humans produce can throw those baby turtles off course, interrupting this process and steering them in the opposite direction, often stranding them and leading to their deaths.

But clearly, something has changed now. Though conservation efforts have largely paid off, it is not yet known what other factors have led to the resurgence.

"This is really a comeback story," said Kate Mansfield, assistant professor of biology at UCF and head of the Marine Turtle Research Group. "It is really a remarkable recovery and reflects a 'perfect storm' of conservation successes, from the establishment of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, to implementing the Endangered Species Act, among many other conservation initiatives. It will be very exciting to see what happens over the next 20 plus years."

Photo: A female mountain lion explores the Santa Monica mountains. These cougars will be further protected by, and will benefit from, a planned 200-foot-long wildlife corridor connecting one portion of the population to the other. This is just one of the many positive environmental, scientific, and ecological developments in the news this week. | National Park Service/AP

Today in history: The first intercontinental radio transmission, 1915

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:03:00 +0000

Exactly a century ago, on Sept. 29, 1915, a transcontinental radio telephone demonstration was transmitted from the U.S. naval radio station at Arlington, Va. to the naval radio station at Mare Island in San Francisco, Calif. (2500 miles), then a few hours later relayed to Honolulu, for a total of 4900 miles. The conversation took place between naval officers based at either end. The world of global communications had been transformed.

With the First World War already in progress in Europe, the success of this experiment was expected to have a revolutionary effect on communication between American naval vessels at sea and shore stations. By means of the perfected apparatus, which had been in the research stage for some time, applications could also be projected for civilian use, between officers, or even just friends, on transoceanic liners equipped with the necessary equipment.

The experiments had been carried out by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T) and the Western Electric Co. in cooperation with radio stations under Navy jurisdiction.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, appointed by Pres. Woodrow Wilson, made a formal announcement of the achievement in which he expressed pride at the Navy's cooperation with the experiment. "The use of such long distance wireless telephone communications in naval or military operations is still in an undeveloped state," he said, "but it is expected valuable use can be made of the wonderful demonstration."

The space through which the oral message was sent to Hawaii was greater than that between New York and anywhere in Western or Central Europe, and greater than the distance from New York to the North Pole.

James D. Ellsworth of AT&T gave this account, in part:

"That transatlantic wireless telephone communication is assured as soon as the disturbed condition in Europe will permit of tests from this country to there, is obvious when it is remembered that all scientists agree on the fact that it is much more difficult to send wireless telephone communications across land than across water. This wireless message from Washington to Hawaii had to pass over the whole of the United States...before it encountered better wireless conditions which exist when sending over large bodies of water....

"Another interesting feature of the tests was that, in a practical way, the ability to connect wireless telephone systems with wire telephone systems was shown. You have no doubt noted that Mr. Vail [president of AT&T] in his talk used a wire circuit from New York to Washington. At Washington, by the special means invented and developed by the engineers of this company, the wires are connected to our special wireless apparatus and to the navy's mighty wireless tower, where the message went wirelessly to its destination."

At the time, the exact apparatus used in this historic test of the wireless telephone was being kept secret owing to patent reasons.

Just think, as you Skype to your friends abroad, there are people alive today who were alive on this day 100 years ago!

Adapted from The Electrical Experimenter, November 1915.

Photo: In the 1920s, the United States government publication, "Construction and Operation of a Simple Homemade Radio Receiving Outfit," showed how almost any person handy with simple tools could a build an effective crystal radio receiver. "NBS 120 Set" by Davidson - Scanned image from NBS Circular 120 dated 1922, cleaned it up with Photoshop. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia.

Today in history: A Chinese poem for autumn

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:34:00 +0000

On this first day of autumn, we offer a quiet moment of reflection penned 80 years ago by Lu Hsün (1881-1936), a Chinese writer (real name: Chou Shu-jen) born in Shaoh-sing, Chekiang province. He studied medicine in Japan. Though not a communist himself he was sympathetic to the Chinese communist movement in the last ten years of his life. He was often approvingly quoted by Mao Tse-tung, and his Selected Works have been issued in English translation by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing.

Autumn 1935

Startled by the awe of autumn that reigns over the earth,

Dare I instill the warmth of spring into the tip of my pen?
In this vast sea of dust a hundred feelings have sunk;
In the rustling wind a thousand officials have fled.
In old age, I return to the lake, only to find no reeds on which to rest;
On vacant clouds, my dreams fall; a chill numbs hair and teeth.
My longings for cockcrow in the wilderness encounter only silence.
I rise to watch the setting constellations.

From The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, 1970.

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)

Discrimination affects health for lifetime: Weekly science round up

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 16:45:00 +0000

Below you will find links to some of the most interesting science stories reported this week relating to both political and social affairs and health news from which everyone may benefit. You can comment on these reports at the end of the round up.

Vitamin C: The exercise replacement?

New scientific research indicates that taking 500 mg of time released Vitamin C will have the same heart healthy results as physical EXERCISE for overweight and obese people. Ok, so you won't look so svelte but for the "gymnophobic" taking a vitamin pill instead of working up a sweat has got to be a great scientific advance and, since Republicans and the right in general don't believe in science, progressives and socialists will benefit the most.

Current school start times damaging learning and health of students

Scientists have found that children learn better and are more healthy over all at different times of the day depending on their ages. Presently schools start and end at times that have been standardized in such a way that the learning and health of millions of children are negatively affected. Parents will have to become politically active, I think, and ally with teacher unions if they want to protect their children and get the school times changed.

'Unethical' targets in India's private hospitals

Widespread abuse of patients discovered in Indian private hospitals which force doctors to order unnecessary tests and operations simply to run up the bills and make more profits for the capitalist investors. Indian government appears complicit? Could the same practices be happening in the U.S.?

Study finds high prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes in U.S.

A new study shows that about 50 percent of the U.S. population either already has or is on the road to having diabetes. As usual the suggested remedy is education for individuals to change their eating habits and life styles. This approach alone won't work unless Congress quits kowtowing to the lobbyists for the junk food purveyors, the processed food industries, and the sugar and soda companies that resist regulation and continue to flood the market place with unhealthy food products in the search for greater profits at the expense of the health and welfare of the American people. They should also be stopped from pushing their products on children through ads on TV and the internet.

Discrimination during adolescence has lasting effect on body

Cortisol is a stress hormone that is released into the blood stream to help us keep calm, cool and collected during the exigencies of daily life. Too much of it is not good for us and our bodies usually start the day with a high charge that will last us until bedtime when the charge has worn down and will build up again while we sleep. However, after a twenty year research project, scientists have discovered that young people (adolescence to 32 years old) who are subjected to discrimination, racism. and the daily insults and affronts dished out to minority people (consciously or unconsciously) especially African American youth, experience the effects of cortisol differently than do the youth not subjected to the racism of everyday life in the U.S.

The stress of racial discrimination causes the cortisol to build up in the blood stream during the day so that it peaks at bedtime and wears off during the night so that it is very low in the morning. The cycle is reversed. This causes these youth to have sleep problems, sex problems, mental fatigue, heart problems, problems in concentration and memory and other health dysfunctions. In other words, racism makes them sick and less functional compared to the general population and this is then used as an excuse to justify racist practices.

Photo: Children eating at school. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Nutrition Service (FNS).

Drought turning Golden State's redwoods brown

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:35:00 +0000

From dried lawns to water shortages to wildfires, California's drought continues to wreak havoc, and now the state's sequoias - those ancient trees better known as redwoods - could be the next casualty. For the first time, there are signs of foliage die-back on sequoia seedlings, a rare and worrying prospect.

The truth is that many redwood trees are dying of thirst, according to data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency's ecologist Nate Stephenson hiked into Sequoia National Park's Giant Forest and found that not only do the younger trees show traces of decay, but some of their older, towering counterparts are browning at the leaves as well. "I've been studying sequoias for 35 years or so and have never seen anything like this," he said. He deployed a research team to traverse the park and the neighboring Kings Canyon to do a more thorough examination, and documented a startling pattern.

About half of the 4,300 trees they studied had lost ten to 50 percent of their foliage, and one in 100 lost more than 50 percent. They are still collecting further data on the trees' water, sugar, and nitrogen levels to get a better idea of how they will be affected by climate change in the long run.

"One of the big questions is, how much drought can giant sequoias survive?" said Koren Nydick, ecologist and science coordinator for Kings Canyon. "The good news is there were lots of trees that still seem healthy, but there was this smaller amount that seemed to be stressed - and stressed in ways that we haven't seen documented before in the parks. [It's] the kind of stress that could eventually kill a tree."

As experts continue to research how the redwoods are holding up, they are increasingly using technology to do it. Stanford University professor Greg Asner, lead scientist for the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, has flown planes over California's wooded areas, including Giant Forest, this year to assess the damage done. "The only time I've seen it this bad was in the Amazon in 2010, when I mapped millions and millions of dead trees," he remarked. "Worst off are the forests of the Sierra Nevada, almost all of which are in huge trouble."

The plane was outfitted with instruments that capture the chemistry of individual trees and generate a collective 3D map that identifies hotspots of stress, showing which specimens are the most vulnerable. Asner mapped particularly high mortality in woods south of the Sierra Nevada, and found that the least-stressed forests were those near the Oregon border and at the highest altitudes of the Sierras.

The thing about redwoods is that "they require enormous amounts of water," according to Anthony Ambrose, a tree biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied sequoias for nearly 20 years. "The big, old trees, they can use more than 2,000 liters of water per day during the summer. Redwoods are an iconic key species. They're the tallest, oldest, and largest trees in the world. Everyone around the world knows about them. And one of our concerns is that temperatures are definitely going up. It will drive more evaporation from the soil and more transpiration from the trees."

And while sequoias "are incredibly resistant to disturbance, every species has a limit. They start to suffer. Now that we are in this drought, it's really important that we get a better idea of how these trees are responding to these conditions so we can understand how they might respond to future drought."

However, one cannot count these old trees out just yet. "I continue to be amazed by how resilient the redwoods are," said Ambrose.

Emily Burns, director of science for the Save the Redwoods League, said, "The worst thing that would happen is we would see these trees dying. But the trees wouldn't be this big if they hadn't figured out a way to get water during dry periods before."

Photo: Redwood forest. | blogs.baruch.cuny.edu

Exciting hominid fossil find in South Africa

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 11:56:00 +0000

An exciting new hominid fossil has been found in the deepest recesses of the Rising Star Cave, about 20 miles Northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The fossil remains include nearly complete skeletons of several individuals, and remains of at least 15 separate individuals, which is unusual because the more usual discovery is of isolated broken up crania only, with occasional other bits and pieces. Though the find will not revolutionize science's ideas of how our species evolved, it gives a more complete picture of the basic pattern and raises interesting questions about the cognitive abilities of these possible ancestors of modern human beings.

The findings from the initial 2013 discovery and subsequent research were just announced by Dr. Lee Berger, Research Professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute and the Center of Excellence in Paleoscience at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. Berger has had a distinguished career in physical anthropology and human paleontology, having discovered, among other things, a new species of Australopithecine, Australopithecus sediba, in another South African cave in 2008.

The remains were found in a very deep recesses of Rising Star Cave, so far in that Berger had to employ especially thin people to reach them. The positioning of the skeletons suggests that they may have been put there deliberately, but gives no clue as to why, when or by whom. The remains, with their advanced degree of fossilization, probably will not lend themselves to carbon 14 dating, so it might be a while before we know what approximate dates to assign to them.

The remains themselves show a mixture of very ancient and more modern features. The hands appear to be adapted for using tools, but the fingers also show curvature that suggests that they were capable tree-climbers. The feet are very similar to those of modern human beings rather than apes. The teeth include molars with smaller, human-like front teeth. The skulls look very much like those of the well-known Homo erectus, which lived in this part of Africa and also in Europe and Asia between 1.9 million and 200,000 years before the present. African variants of early Homo are sometimes called Homo ergaster, but many scientists now think that this is just a sub variety of Homo erectus.

However, the cranial capacity, meaning brain size, of the individuals is considerably smaller than the average for other Homo erectus populations. This and other factors led Lee and his team to propose that this is actually a different Homo species, which they are calling Homo naledi. But this set off a controversy. In recent years, some scientists have been complaining that the way fossil hominid remains have been classified and named underplays the degree of anatomical variety found in any one species. So the designation of the skeletons as Homo naledi and not just as a subgroup of the old familiar Homo erectus, is being met with some skepticism. Unfortunately, with remains that have reached an advanced state of fossilization, it is impossible to do DNA analysis which might resolve this question. However, Berger's team will try.

Some reports express surprise at the placing of the remains in the furthest recesses of the cave. It looks deliberate, but did small brained beings like these have the capacity to carry out deliberate burials with some sort of symbolic meaning?

Well, why not? Even the species generally acknowledged to have preceded Homo erectus, the smaller-brained Homo habilis, is known to have made and used simple tools, and others of the Homo erectus/Homo ergaster complex made more sophisticated ones. Also, there are indications that the erectus/ergaster knew the use of fire and may even have had the beginnings of speech and language capacity. So it seems no big to stretch to think that they may have had some deliberate way of disposing of their dead. Yet the idea has been suggested that the skeletons were those of individuals killed by more modern human types who then stashed the bodies in the cave. To me, this seems very speculative.

Anyway, the find is stunning because of the number of individuals and the completeness of their remains. It does not radically change the overall understanding of how and where human beings evolved: This probable progression still holds: A split from the line that evolved into chimpanzees and bonobos perhaps ten million years ago, Sahelanthropus in what is now Chad dated at about 7 million years ago; then varieties of the genus Ardepithecus in East Africa about 4 ½ million years ago, and Australopithecus (several species) in East and Southern Africa about four million years ago. The first member of the genus Homo, Homo habilis, our first known tool making ancestor, appears on the scene in Eastern and Southern Africa perhaps 2.8 to 1.5 million years ago, followed by the Homo erectus/Homo ergaster complex. Anatomically modern human beings appeared in East Africa around 200,000 years ago. Both erectus/ergaster and modern Homo sapiens had African origins from which they spread to Asia and Europe, and then Homo sapiens all over the globe.

The overall pattern since the split from the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos has involved the development of erect bipedal posture, tool making, beginnings of language and increased cranial capacity. In all likelihood, increased sociality-the ability to function as an organized social group-developed along with all this, and the full development of modern brain capacity followed behind the rest, as postulated long ago by Friedrich Engels, Marx's collaborator.

So the development of human sociality was the force driving the development of the modern human being, anatomically, cognitively and emotionally.

Or to quote a familiar Zulu saying from another area of South Africa: "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu". "A person becomes a person through (other) people". This originally referred to how we are socialized, but turns out to be applicable to how we evolved as well.

Photo: Homo naledi hand. cc John Hawks_Wits University, University of Witwatersrand homo naledi image gallery.

Navy jets, electronic warfare stir outrage

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 11:47:00 +0000

SEQUIM, Wash. - Residents of Whidbey Island and the Olympic Peninsula are mobilizing against the U.S. Navy's plan to turn this peaceful region into an Electronic Warfare Range (EWR) with deafening, low-level overflights by squadrons of Growler jets.

The jets, stationed at the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, will take off and fly west over the Olympic Peninsula and engage in target practice over National Forest Service lands in the west end of Clallam County. The Navy plans to schedule these flights as long as 16 hours daily, 260 days annually. The will fly as low as 1,200 feet altitude.

Outrage has been stirred by disclosure that the Navy plans to invade the airspace above the Olympic National Park, a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve, home to wildlife that will be put at risk by the Navy's war preparations.

Also in the flight path of the jets will be the reservations of Pacific Northwest Indian tribes---the Quileute's mile-square reservation at Lapush, the Hoh Reservation and the Quinalt Indian Reservation.

A grassroots organization, Save the Olympic Peninsula, charges in a fact sheet, "Growlers are the noisiest jets ever made, up to 113 decibels at 1000 feet. Exposure to that noise, even for a short duration, can permanently damage human hearing. Children's ears are especially vulnerable."

The Navy has requested permission from the U.S. Forest Service to place radar-emitting trucks on Forest Service roads beaming electromagnetic signals to the squadrons of warplanes. The pilots will train to home in on these targets and knock them out with highly focused electronic beams. Defenders of wildlife charge that the noise and the electronic radiation pose a dire threat to animals and plants that now thrive in the wilderness regions of the Peninsula. Already, the Navy's submarine sonar is blamed for threatening whales and other marine mammals.

"A Huge Environmental Mistake Coming to the Peninsula" is the main headline in the spring edition of Voice of the Wild Olympics, the newsletter of the Olympic Park Associates (OPA). OPA President, Donna Osseward, writes, "The Olympics urgently need your help. We need to convince our Congressional representatives, Forest Service administrators, and the Navy, that the Navy's shocking plan to create a Permanent Electromagnetic Warfare Training Range on the Olympic Peninsula is ill-advised."

An urgent petition to the Forest Service has been started: Don't Turn the Olympic Peninsula into a War Zone! Block the Navy's Jets!

Photo: The Petition Site

Environment a hot topic at Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 13:13:00 +0000

WASHINGTON -- Participating in a panel here yesterday at the 45th Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. (CBCF), Aaron Mair said: "The fight to save the environment is being transformed into a fight for environmental justice." Mair is the first African American to be elected president of the Sierra Club.

The 45th Annual Legislative of the CBCF opened yesterday and will end Sunday morning, Sept. 20. Mair said that "years ago, the leaders of what was then called the 'ecology' movement acted as if it had concerns different from those of low-income communities. But today there is growing understanding that poor people disproportionately live in areas most burdened by health hazards caused by environmental damage."

A professional epidemiologist, he described how he discovered that there was an epidemic of cancer in his own Albany, N.Y., neighborhood caused by fumes from a sewage treatment plant. He sued the State of New York and won.

Jacqui Patterson, director of the NAACP Environment and Climate Justice Program, cited the damage to the African American community of New Orleans that was caused by Hurricane Katrina to show that natural disasters hit minority and poor communities harder than they do affluent areas.

"I asked the Army Corps of Engineers why the levee supposedly protecting Plaquemines Parish collapsed more completely than other levees," she said. "I was told that the levees were financed on the basis of the economic worth of the area each one protected. The value of people had nothing to do with it. An area with big homes gets stronger levees than an area where people live in shacks."

Another panelist, Majora Carter, explained that "the fight for environmental sustainability is the same as the fight for a better quality of life, social justice and beneficial economic development. They cannot be separated, and the environmental movement now recognizes this fact."

Carter had led a successful campaign to create useable parks and green spaces in her South Bronx neighborhood, an area previously plagued by air pollution from a waste dump and sewage treatment plant.

"Today," she said, "we have a jewel called the Waterfront Park." Building and maintaining the park has created jobs and given young people educational experiences that helped them enter college. The Park has also helped lessen the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the neighborhood because residents now have an outdoor place to exercise.

Rep. Alcee Hastings, D.-Fla., said that "the world must recognize that even climate warming disproportionately hurts poor people and is creating economic chaos worldwide.

"For example," he said, "a drought helped bring on the war in Syria. Now the entire world is faced with addressing the crisis caused by Syrians fleeing the devastation of war."

Also part of the legislative conference this year will be more than 70 sessions devoted to identifying what planners describe as "practical, forward-looking solutions that move us toward realizing" a "yes" answer to the question planners chose as the theme of the conference: With Liberty and Justice for All?

In addition to experts discussing the environmental movement, planners say that the conference will include "diverse individuals who have come from across the country and around the world to discuss public policies that impact the global black community."

Conference participants will tackle immigration policy, homelessness, and police brutality. They will discuss proposals to end the school-to-prison pipeline and to improve the education of minority students and the health of black men and women.

Fourteen sessions are planned to discuss the history of the civil rights movement and today's Black Lives Matter campaign.

There will be workshops to help develop future leaders to spearhead movements that are aimed at ending racial profiling and mass incarcerations and at defending voting rights and other gains that are now under attack.

Thirteen sessions will address "Business, Economic Development, and Wealth Creation." They include several workshops to instruct young people in how to become successful business entrepreneurs.

Noticeably absent from the agenda is a discussion of the role of the labor movement, or a workshop in how to defend workers against measures destroying their collective bargaining rights.

In fact, the only union representatives leading workshops at the conference are from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. They will offer professional education skills training.

Photo: cbcfinc.org

How Big Oil ate California’s future

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 12:58:00 +0000

I hope the oil lobbyists in Sacramento broke out some high-priced champagne this weekend. They deserve it. They just scuttled the biggest and most likely-to-succeed effort in the history of California to save the planet.

Senate Bills 350 and 32 had already passed in the upper house. As my Capital & Main colleague Bill Raden summarized, SB 32, authored by state Senator Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, would "extend the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions" achieved a few years back through Assembly Bill 32. SB 350, introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles - named after the threshold of carbon particles per million that our planetary life cannot surpass - aimed to set standards for California that would "double the energy efficiency of its older buildings, generate half of its electricity from renewable sources and cut its petroleum use in half by the by 2030."

Instead the oil lobby killed both bills in the Assembly. SB 32 was tabled to next year and SB 350 passed only after the oil provision was gutted. How did Big Oil do this? Mostly the old-fashioned way: It contributed to the campaigns of middle-of-the-road Democrats, then called in the chits. (story continues after video)

A small group of Assembly members from marginally Democratic districts hold the balance of power in the lower house because the Republicans already solidly oppose any legislation that would curtail the unmitigated power of the fossil fuel industry. The oil lobby, led by the Western States Petroleum Association, focused on Democrats who represent heavily Latino and African-American constituents - a population it perceives as vulnerable to gas price hikes, even though, as the Los Angeles Times wrote, in some of those districts the pollution is so thick it makes people sick. These electeds represent such districts as West Covina and Rialto in Southern California, and Elk Grove and Fresno in the north.

The leader of the pack is Assemblyman Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno. He raises lots of money to elect other so-called moderates, and a chunk of it comes from Big Oil. The Times says 30 percent of the $6 million Perea has raised since 2012 came from oil interests and utility companies (which have a stake in fossil fuels' energy generation).

Here's the sadness: Perea says he believes in climate change. He just thinks that struggling middle-class and poor people in the districts that Big Oil has targeted are not the same as those living in the affluent coastal zones, where people can afford higher gas prices. That's the oil lobby's scare message: People who can least afford it will have to pay more for gas and, scarier, there may not be enough fuel to buy at any price. Then they always trot out scenarios of impending disaster for people already pressed to find decent jobs. They pit health and the earth against the costs and availability of fuel, plus the implied loss of jobs. They predict immediate economic catastrophe against a vague, distant hope for environmental healing.

These are hard and frightening choices, and too often fear tips the scales. But the Earth is where all the people live. If we are going to survive and thrive, the California economy, the world's seventh or eighth largest depending on what day it is, must do it without using all that oil. Using fewer fossil fuels will also make the air healthier - reducing the cases of asthma and respiratory diseases that plague intense transportation corridors. And the job-killer predictions have seldom if ever come true.

Just to make sure they stopped any legislated reduction in oil use, the lobbyists not only threw all their weight into the Capitol during the last weeks of this session, they also bought television ads and radio spots in the media markets that included the districts where they had spent money to elect these Assembly people in the first place. One ad shows a family - including a diapered toddler - pushing the family van because they can't buy gas.

Big Oil also bought full-page ads in newspapers across the state and enlisted their natural allies to do the same. An ad in the Los Angeles Times was bought by the California Trucking Association. It argued that all those companies and drivers that just invested in new carbon-lowering emission trucks would now have to lose everything because of these new efforts in Sacramento. From the ad you would think that every truck on the road was now required to be a new, low-emission vehicle. They are not. Only a small percentage of trucks that actually go to-and-from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach meet healthier standards - and those trucks were part of a program that made them financially feasible. Reducing fuel usage is not necessarily an added burden.

The good news is that Governor Jerry Brown has vowed to come back swinging next year. We can count on Senator Pavley because she has put this kind of legislation into the hopper ever since she arrived in Sacramento. And the Senate's leader, Kevin de León, promises to do so again. What the Assembly will do, no one knows, because next year it will have new leadership, but the same gang of "oilists" will still hold their seats.

Meanwhile the days and months and years get closer to that magic 350 tipping-point number, when the Earth won't support life as we've come to enjoy it. I can't help but think that the children of the folks popping the corks today will wish that their parents had been celebrating something very different.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Video: Oil industry ad decrying what it called the "California Gas Restriction Act of 2015"

Photo: An oil refinery in Long Beach, California. | Neil Kremer/Flickr

Powerful quake hits Chile, tsunami floods coast

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 12:38:00 +0000

A powerful magnitude-8.3 earthquake hit off Chile's northern coast Wednesday night, causing buildings to sway in the capital of Santiago and bringing flooding from small tsunami waves in some shore towns.

Officials reported three deaths. There were no reports of serious damage hours after the quake, but officials were still checking the region late into the night.

Authorities had issued a tsunami alert for Chile's entire Pacific coast, and the tremor was so strong that people on the other side of the continent, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, reported feeling it.

Numerous strong aftershocks, including one measuring 7.0 magnitude and three above six, rattled the region after the first major tremor since a powerful quake and tsunami killed hundreds in 2010 and leveled part of the city of Concepcion in south-central Chile.

"Once again we must confront a powerful blow from nature," President Michelle Bachelet said, addressing the nation late Wednesday.

Bachelet said three people had been killed in the quake but gave no details. She urged people who had been evacuated from coastal areas to stay on high ground until authorities could fully evaluate the situation early Thursday.

Sirens alerted residents of the Chilean city of Iquique after the earthquake struck off the country's northern coast Wednesday night.

Late Wednesday, authorities lifted the tsunami warning for Chile's far southern regions. The warnings remained in effect everywhere else, and authorities said school classes would be canceled in most of the country Thursday.

Jorge Medina, a Santiago resident, said he was in an aerobics class when the quake hit.

"People started screaming that everything was shaking," he said.

Officials ordered people to evacuate low-lying areas along the 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) of Chile's Pacific shore, from Puerto Aysen in the south to Arica in the north. Fishing boats headed out to sea and cars streamed inland carrying people to higher ground. Santiago's main airport was evacuated as a precaution and authorities announced classes would be suspended in the port city of Valparaiso on Thursday.

Chile state TV showed water flowing in streets of Concon, a coastal town known for its beautiful beaches that is close to Valparaiso. Higher water was also seen in other cities but no destructive high waves had been reported.

Authorities said some adobe houses collapsed in the inland city of Illapel, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) north of Santiago. Illapel is about 34 miles (55 kilometers) east of the quake's epicenter.

Illapel's mayor, Denis Cortes, told a local television station that a woman had been killed in the city but declined to give any details.

Electricity was knocked out, leaving the city in darkness. "We are very scared. Our city panicked," Cortes said.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported the quake at a preliminary magnitude of 7.9 but quickly revised the reading upward to 8.3. Chilean authorities put the magnitude at 8.4.

U.S. officials said the quake struck just offshore in the Pacific at 7:54 p.m. (6:54 p.m. EDT, 1154 GMT) and was centered about 141 miles (228 kilometers) north-northwest of Santiago. It said the quake was 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) below the surface.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially issued a tsunami watch for Hawaii, but later downgraded its advisory and said no major tsunami was expected.

A magnitude-8.8 quake and ensuing tsunami in south-central Chile in 2010 killed more than 500 people, destroyed 220,000 homes, and washed away docks, riverfronts and seaside resorts. That quake released so much energy, it actually it shortened the Earth's day by a fraction of a second by changing the planet's rotation.

The quake had huge ramifications, both political and practical, prompting the Andean nation to improve its alert systems for both quakes and tsunamis.

While Wednesday's tremor was strong by any estimation, the 2010 quake was 5.6 times more powerful in terms of energy released, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The tsunami potential may be the biggest issue," said USGS seismologist Paul Earle.

Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because just off the coast, the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes.

The strongest earthquake ever recorded on Earth happened in Chile - a magnitude-9.5 tremor in 1960 that killed more than 5,000 people.

Associated Press writers Eva Vergara and Patricia Luna in Santiago, Debora Rey in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

Photo: Residents witness a collapsed building in Chile. | AP

They put what in my food? TPP and food safety threats

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 13:46:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (PAI and Workday Minnesota) -- What does the Minnesota State Fair bring to mind? Food! So, what better place to alert people to the food safety threats posed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the latest "free trade" deal the administration is negotiating?

That's what the Communications Workers and the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition thought when they seized the opportunity on Sept. 1 to hand out fliers to fairgoers passing by the AFL-CIO Labor Pavilion and unfurling a banner reading, "They put WHAT in my food?"

Americans, particularly workers, have many reasons to be alarmed about the impact of the TPP if Congress approves it. The trade deal would cost jobs, extend patents that would raise the cost of medical care and degrade labor conditions and the environment, says to the Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition of labor, farm and community groups.

At the "Great Minnesota Get Together," where visitors were searching out their favorite snacks, Richard Shorter, CWA staff representative and co-organizer of the event, distributed information and struck up conversations to "get people in the mindset to start questioning free trade and where their food actually comes from...because everyone wants to have safe food. That's our message to all of the people walking around."

As CWA Local 7200 member Tom Laabs passed out fliers, he posed a question about the TPP: "If it's so good, why is it secret? It could affect our food standards and labeling in the future, so it's a big concern of mine and I'm sure a lot of people would be concerned if they knew what was going on."

There's a reason most people don't know much about the TPP.

Representatives of corporations, including big agribusiness firms, and the governments of the 12 participating countries have hammered out the trade deal behind closed doors, while the text of the agreement has not been released to the public. Even lawmakers have only been permitted to read a heavily redacted version, with a third of the text reportedly blanked out.

But portions of the agreement that have been leaked and gleaned from reports to corporate organizations do not bode well for workers or consumers. "If the TPP becomes law, it would require us to import meat and poultry that do not meet U.S. safety standards," said Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition Interim Director Kaela Berg.

In a survey, "73 percent of us said there should be more oversight of food safety, not less. And nearly all of us, 93 percent, say the federal government should require labels on food saying whether it has been genetically modified or bio-engineered. The TPP will consider food labeling a trade barrier and the labels will disappear. We won't know where our food comes from...Will more of us get sick?" Berg added.

Berg noted consumer concerns about health and the environment have significantly changed American food buying habits and the way groceries stock their shelves. "However, the TPP would allow corporations to challenge laws, essentially setting their own standards for food inspections. The long history of food safety standards here in the U.S. would wither."

As secret international negotiations continue and a congressional vote on the trade deal approaches, activists are stepping up efforts to tell the public that the relatively underreported TPP is "a really big deal" and motivate them to contact their lawmakers about their concerns.

As a mother and grandmother, CWA Local 7200 member Christina Hollie was so disturbed about the TPP's health implications that she volunteered to leaflet at the state fair.

"Right now, we know that less than 1 percent of our seafood is checked for safety. Yet, we are looking at having more food come through the country without any additional safety standards," further overwhelming inspectors with more products, some such as Malaysian shellfish, with known health issues, she explained.

"It's an important issue that's going to affect everyone. We've been talking about this issue for over three years now...we are feeling like there is still groundwork that needs to be done" in educating consumers about the TPP's implications on our food, Hollie said.

Workday Minnesota video:

Photo: Fair Trade Now

John McCain's "midnight riders" put borderlands at risk

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:23:00 +0000

Ever heard of "Sneaky John and the Midnight Riders"?

No, it's not the name of a rock band, not some outlaw gang from the 1800s. What it refers to is the surreptitious way in which Arizona's Republican Sen. John McCain has introduced or tried to introduce legislation that exempts pet projects from environmental protection laws.

The latest example is S750, a border militarization bill that, if passed, would exclude new surveillance installations and other border patrol activities from environmental protection laws. The bill would apply to federal lands within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and parts of California.

McCain has already been trying to attach S750 to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Chuck Kaufman of the Alliance for Global Justice explains, "The best way we can defeat this bill is to bring it out into the light of day. If we expose McCain's underhanded tactics, S750 will likely die just like a vampire in the sun. But if he can sneak it by as an amendment on a larger bill, that's how it will get passed." A companion bill, HR1412, has been introduced in the House by Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, also a Republican.

This is not the first time McCain has tried to sneak something by on a "midnight rider," a term for these last minute, "off the radar" amendments. It's a process he has used on laws that on their own would probably not get passed.

He attaches them to what is considered "must pass" legislation. He set the precedent back in 1988 by adding a rider to that year's NDAA exempting the University of Arizona's Mount Graham Astronomical Complex from environmental regulations. The observatory was funded with a $5.44 million grant from the Air Force and was built in the middle of land sacred to the Apache. The site is home to 18 different animal and plant species found nowhere else on Earth.

McCain used the same maneuver again last year with an amendment that traded public land known as Oak Flat to the Rio Tinto corporation, a United Kingdom and Australia-based corporation that wants to mine Oak Flat for copper. The site is also considered sacred to the Apache and lies at the bottom of an important watershed.

Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, ranking member of the House's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulations, has introduced legislation to repeal the Oak Flat swap.

Sen. McCain claims S750 is needed for new security installations and to give the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unimpeded access to federal lands. However, Dan Millis, Director of the Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign, noted at a recent community forum at the Global Justice Center in Tucson, Arizona, "It's a very effective argument because you think, 'They don't have access to federal lands? Of course they have access to federal lands! They have more access than anyone else to federal, private, all the lands along the border....So he is spreading the notion that Border Patrol is somehow not granted access to these areas....Well, that's completely false."

José Matús, director of the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, talked about the regular impositions border agents make on people living in indigenous lands crossed by the border: "They always have had the authority to patrol....They come in their trucks, bikes, waking people up at all hours of the night, asking people for their documents....They've always had that power 100 miles north of the border, but now they want to give them everything, waving all our rights."

Millis puts S750 in further context by pointing out that "37 federal laws were waived by the Dept. of Homeland Security under George Bush, the largest waiver of laws in U.S. history. And that's how border walls are able to be built quickly through protected natural areas and that's why we have so many problems with border walls blocking wildlife migration, breaking up wildlife habitat and most notoriously causing floods.....Today because nothing stood in the way of the Bush administration...we have 652 miles of barriers....OK, so that brings us to Senator McCain's proposal....What his bill does is it draws a line 100 miles north of the border in the Tucson and Yuma sectors-the Yuma sector goes into California....It goes into the Yuma sector 100 miles up, close to Joshua Tree National Park, through the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, just south of Phoenix, all the Saguaro National Parks, East and West. Of course the Tohono 'O'odham nation, several other Native American reservations are totally encompassed in this area because it applies to federal public lands and tribal lands. So, if 37 laws being tossed out the window results in 652 miles of border walls, imagine what all laws tossed out the window could mean for Arizona."

Rep. Grijalva also spoke at the forum, which was co-sponsored by the Arizona Peace Council, Alliance for Global Justice and Salt of the Earth Labor College. He was confident regarding the ability to defeat S750 provided people stay aware of it and speak out against it. Grijalva gives much credit to the Oak Flats struggle:

"I think, based on what the Apache nation has done on this issue...it's going to be much more difficult politically...to do that same kind of sneaky process....And for that we should be very grateful to the Oak Flat advocates and the Apache nation for raising this issue...[to] the embarrassment of McCain and the political travesty of doing something in that way and not allowing it to be fully digested and discussed...."

Rep. Grijalva spoke of the dangerous agendas behind S750 in regards to immigration reform and environmental protection:

"It's a two pronged agenda.... Part of the agenda...[is] to end any legislative hope... that we would end up with something semi-rational in terms of comprehensive immigration reform because this bill is about enforcement only-only enforcement....So this bill...suspends any possibility in this cycle of doing anything rational and right. It shifts the debate into...enforcement as opposed to dealing with family unification and all the other aspects of immigration that need to be dealt with.

"The other agenda is about attacking bedrock environmental laws that have been on the books for 50, 40, 45 years.... When we suspend not only 37 laws but all the laws along that 100 mile cut off we're also suspending sacred sites, cultural resources, historic...protections, all part of a Native American legacy in the Southwest that despite colonization has existed and survived....It's both about immigration and the environment and citizen accountability and participation in decision making....Suspending laws sets a dangerous precedent....Mark my word, once these basic fundamental laws that are part of a legal legacy for this county are suspended we have opened a can of worms for that to become a practice."

Immigrant rights activist and founder of Tucson's Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Coalition), Isabel Garcia, sees an ominous link between bills like S750 and ecological and climate injustice. According to Garcia, "We have the neoliberal monster and we have the other monster of the military...and we are creating refugees. Then there's the denial on the part of so many people in this country but especially in DC of the impact that we have on climate. We see nothing yet. When the world begins to warm, we will see massive migration. We're already seeing massive migration, but we will see it get huge....Is it any surprise that we have begun to militarize [the border]? Did you see...the military has plans of how we're going to safeguard the United States in case there are mass riots, a mass influx of people? Eventually we created Homeland Security....Do you see how it begins to normalize? We say, 'Well, the military should be involved in borders, why aren't they involved in policing our borders? And what's the difference between the military and Homeland Security, anyway?' And before you know it, we don't know the difference."

Garcia sees this militarization happening in many places and at many levels. She observes, "There was a bill in the [Arizona] legislature...to keep secret the names of police officers who have killed. Border Patrol already does this. They've been hiding the names-who does that? Who does that? The military. The military has no accountability. Nobody has to say who killed whom. And we're moving more and more to this militarized form, and of course the environment is part of it, too. We're all connected, all of this is all totally connected...."

For people living along the border that would be affected by S750, the impacts of border militarization on communities and ecosystems have already been devastating. Border agents act with impunity for crimes against both people and nature, and installments for so-called border "security" have already scarred and imperiled the land.

If John McCain and his Midnight Riders succeed, it's because they will have attacked in the shadows and circumvented public input and democratic process. But if word gets out about S750 - if it is exposed to the light of day - it can and will be defeated.

Photo: José Matús of Alianza Indigena says "Enough!" to S750, McCain's new border militarization bill. Also pictured are Isabel Garcia, Dan Millis and Rep. Raul Grijalva. James Jordan/PW.

California landscape scorched as wildfires blaze on

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:39:00 +0000

As the country continues to endure the effects of climate change, wildfires are hardly a new phenomenon on the West Coast. For drought-ridden California, however, the blazes have now caused massive destruction and at least one death. And with 700,000 acres burned so far this year, there's no end in sight for the inferno.

For firefighters and victims, the numbers behind the blazes represent an uphill battle. The largest of the disasters are the Valley fire and the Butte fire, which have burned 67,000 and 71,660 acres, respectively. The former is 15 percent contained, the latter 37 percent, and at least 23,000 people have been displaced by both combined. In total, at least 751 homes have been destroyed. It was the Valley fire that caused one death - Barbara McWilliams, a 72 year-old woman with multiple sclerosis who couldn't get out of her home, according to fire officials.

The Valley fire, located in Lake County, began on Sept. 12, while the Butte fire, in Jackson and Amador County, started Sept. 9. And these, while the largest and most fearsome, are only two of a dozen currently ripping through the Golden State. Workers fighting the fires hope that rain today might bring some relief. Though an end to the state's ongoing drought is not yet in the cards, the cool weather system could play a part in further containing some of the blazes.

Veteran firefighter Bob Cummensky, part of the initial team that fought the Valley fire in Middletown, remarked, "It's such a beautiful area, and it's changed forever. This [town] is my best friend's home." Though he has fought fires for nearly five decades, he said he's never seen anything of this magnitude. The fire's expansion in every direction, and the challenging topography across which it has spread, have not made matters easier. "It's a 100-year fire in a 100-year drought. It goes against everything I've ever learned about fire behavior."

The fire is certainly abnormal; its smoke has even created a rare type of cloud called a pyrocumulus, which was photographed Sept. 11 by climate scientist Peter Gleick and tweeted as he flew past it at 30,000 feet. These clouds also create a new problem, because they can trigger firestorms, which may produce lightning that can, in turn, start another fire. It's an unpredictable situation that has kept officials on the defensive.

"We've had wildfires in California since the beginning of time," said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state Office of Emergency Services. "But what we're seeing now that's different is the extreme rapid spread of the fires, and extreme volatility."

Middletown was amongst the hardest-hit areas in Lake County, with phrases like "completely devastated" and "everything's gone" reverberating throughout the community. And the fire, which has burned far more than just forest land, has a decidedly urban bent: an apartment complex with more than 100 units was reduced to ash; flames licked at power lines and melted street signs; and shells of burned out cars conjured up images of apocalyptic disaster films.

California Gov. Jerry Brown once again tied the problem to climate change, stating, "There is no doubt that we need to de-carbonize our modern economy. We have sharpened what the debate is because there are vast amounts of officials who say it isn't true. This will smoke it out. Fires are not political. Climate change is not political. It is real. This is serious stuff. Firefighters need to be careful, but so do people. It's going to get worse."

Specifically, however, the wildfires were exacerbated by the drought, which in turn was caused by the output of greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming. The trees killed so far by the drought - of which there were at least 12 million - were more prone to ignite, and a heavy presence of bark beetles, which further decimate trees, helped make conditions that much worse.

Scott Stephens, a fire science professor at UC Berkeley, said forests have also grown denser over the last 100 years, forcing trees to compete for increasingly limited amounts of water and rendering them more susceptible to bark beetle infestations. It also means that when a small fire starts, it spreads from one tree to another more quickly and rapidly spins out of control. "If this drought continues for another two years or longer, I expect this mortality to move throughout the state," he remarked. "Forests that once burned frequently with low to moderate intensity fires are the most susceptible."

Joe Casola, deputy director of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group, explained that on the West Coast, this year's combination of warm winter weather, low snowpack, hot summer, and outbreak of relentless brushfires is "a good preview of what climate models tell us will soon be commonplace. These are the conditions we're likely to be facing several decades from now and going forward."

Photo: Firefighters look on as the Valley fire spreads in California. | AP

On Katrina and lessons from Cuba

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 13:26:00 +0000

Ten years after Katrina the racial disparities in New Orleans, in the richest country in the world, have actually widened, the class ones as well.

The Obama administration argues that the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Havana will give it more effective means for reintroducing capitalism in Cuba as well as teaching Cubans about democracy and human rights. The 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its tragic aftermath also offers a teaching opportunity. But in this instance, I argue, for Cuba's working class - an opportunity to teach their American counterparts in all their skin colors that natural phenomena like hurricanes need not result in social catastrophes.

The hurricane season of 2005 was particularly harsh, and not just along the Gulf Coast. Two Category 5 hurricanes - two grades above Katrina - assaulted Cuba earlier in the summer; one of them, Dennis, hit twice because it recircled the island. The devastation was enormous in terms of the number of homes and farmlands destroyed. But, almost miraculously, only 15 Cubans lost their lives in the assault. That outcome stands in stark contrast to what happened 400 miles away later that summer when a Category 3 hurricane resulted in the loss of life of at least 1,800 U.S. citizens. What explains why a country without the trappings of liberal democracy and alleged to be bereft of human rights could do a better job of protecting its citizens than the one that now presumes to teach the other about democracy and human rights?

Castro in '63: "Never again"

Prior to Jan. 1, 1959, it was not unusual for hurricanes to exact a devastating human toll on Cubans, as was also true elsewhere for countries in the paths of these natural phenomena. In September 1963, Hurricane Flora took a particularly tragic toll, with approximately 3,000 losing their lives, mainly in the largely black-populated region of eastern Cuba. What was different this time is that a new government was in place, issued from a revolution - what I call a new operating system and not just a new app. Fidel Castro responded, "Never again." Practices were put in place, lauded by the United Nations, to make that promise a reality.

Two years later Hurricane Betsy assaulted the Gulf Coast with a near hit on New Orleans. Almost 70 residents in the area lost their lives. President Lyndon Johnson visited the region and also said, "Never again" - or, at least, something similar. But the aftermath of Katrina, unlike Dennis, says otherwise. Why the difference?

The working class in Cuba since January 1959 has what its U.S. counterpart doesn't - a government that prioritizes its interests and not the interests of the most privileged. It does what was so sorely lacking in New Orleans - organizes its citizens to provide human solidarity - the sharing of limited resources, especially with the most vulnerable. Cuba's governments of the rich, for the rich and by the rich before 1959 had no interest in protecting their citizens, especially the most vulnerable, from hurricanes. The revolution dramatically changed that. Working-class Cubans for the first time had a government that they could rightly call their own.

A stark contrast

Especially telling is that when Dennis struck Cuba in 2005, 2 million of its citizens, about 20 percent of the population, were voluntarily evacuated, with the assistance of the government - 80 percent to the homes of other Cubans. In New Orleans, in stark and sad contrast, the city government, without support from the state or national government, required citizens to resort to their own means for evacuation. Those who lacked those resources were on their own; many lost their lives or were subjected to the unforgettable indignities in the Superdome and the Convention Center. Those of us who had family members who were able to successfully evacuate are only thankful to friends and neighbors and not to any level of government.

Cuba's sharing ethic extends beyond its borders. Witness the extraordinary contribution the Cuban government made in helping to fight the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, unique among world governments. As this is being written a Cuban medical brigade is on its way to the Caribbean island of Dominica to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Erika. That same sense of solidarity surged when the post-Katrina catastrophe became known. Without fanfare, Cuba, a country with a well-known record of providing relief in such disasters, offered to send 1,600 of its citizens to assist in the recovery; the offer was rejected by the Bush administration.

Post-Katrina New Orleans: disparities widened

Post-Katrina exposed the social crisis already in place in New Orleans: racialized inequalities in health care, education and housing - and other areas. The disproportionate number of blacks among the 1,800 who lost their lives is grim testimony to that reality. While Cuba, which also has roots in racial slavery, faces continuing challenges to overcome that legacy, the progress it has made in certainly the first two areas surpasses anything accomplished in New Orleans - gains made in a still poor, underdeveloped country, the baggage of Spanish colonial and U.S. neo-colonial rule. Ten years after Katrina the racial disparities in New Orleans, in the richest country in the world, have actually widened, the class ones as well. Why the difference? Having or not having a government that represents working people.

A few days ago in New Orleans President Obama asked, How could something so tragic have happened, in America of all places? Cubans asked the same. For many, the images coming from New Orleans and environs were incredible. How could the richest country in the world treat its citizens this way?

For the Americans, a little humility might be warranted. More democracy and human rights were on display in the summer of 2005 in Cuba than, regrettably, in the United States.

Reposted by kind permission of the author, August H. Nimtz Jr., Ph.D. Nimtz is a professor of political science and African American and African studies, University of Minnesota, and co-coordinator of the Minnesota Cuba Committee. He is co-editor of "Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality" (2013). Nimtz is a native of New Orleans, and he evacuated his parents to Minnesota after Katrina. This commentary was originally published here.

Photo: Residents make their way through flood waters toward the Superdome as Katrina hits New Orleans. | Eric Gay/AP

Along Oregon’s Rogue River, opposition to gas pipeline grows

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:20:00 +0000

MEDFORD, Ore. - There is a certain quality to the air in the Cascades in Oregon that defies attempts to put it into words.

To know it, you have to experience its freshness and goodness first-hand, as on a sparkling day in high summer running the rapids on the Rogue River.

The Rogue is a handsome river, happily streaming along, fed by the 10 thousand streams that issue from the mountains and volcanoes everywhere around it.

It sits in the area of Oregon known affectionately as the Big Squeegee, because the Cascade Mountains squeegee the moisture out of the air and dump it into the Rogue, in the process unfortunately turning eastern Oregon into a desert by casting a large rain shadow over it.

The Big Squeegee of the Cascades is a paradise of a sort. The original settlers who drove their wagons along the Oregon Trail certainly thought so.

Their descendants live here still, on huge vineyards and ranches. In their ranch houses, they still have the leather-bound journals of their great-great-grandparents, with entries such as, "Chased a mtn lion till I lost him in the hills, I left for dead two injuns [sic] awalking through the meadows, the which took two good bullets to shoot, can't wait till I get that fine-looking filly inter the pasture, I swear she is a fine horse to give to my daughter."

That's how the West was won hereabouts. You just cut out a couple hundred acres of land and if the First People objected the least bit, you went on an "injun-shoot" and shot them and that's how you got your land.

Everywhere you look in the Rogue Valley are bees, peaches, pears, grapes, and dairy cows. This is the land of Umqua milk and ice cream - the last a match for the very best ice cream in the world - and Tilamook cheese, as good as Wisconsin's. The soil is volcanic and fertile, the climate is temperate and the rainfall is plentiful. It is verdant and green. If you push a stick in the ground, a tree will grow.

And this is where the frackers want to put a pipeline, to feed a liquified natural gas (LNG) port, which will require a 4.2 megawatt, coal-fired power plant feeding a frack-gas liquidizing factory at the port.

The United States is awash in frack-gas, from the ruptured innards of Colorado, Utah and Arizona, to the point where production is dangerously close to overproduction. In other words, close to the point where energy prices for the consumer might drop. But of course, the market being a generalized-monopoly market, a drop in prices will not and cannot be allowed to happen. Instead, another market must be found for the gas.

An Asian market. And the contracts need to be signed and locked in before Russia can underbid and outperform the United States.

Thus the "'need" for another LNG terminal on the West Coast. Coos Bay, more or less in the middle of the southern Oregon coast, has been picked. Why the frack-gas cannot be left in the ground, since the United States does not need it, so as not to pose a threat to the climate, is a question that is not asked. To even pose such a question would not accord with the logic of capitalism. Growth without regard to consequence is the logic of capital, and cancer cells.

As for the coast of Oregon where Coos Bay is located, it is everything you would expect from a novel - a wind-tossed shoreline, the abode of whales, more wild than tame, the route of scenic trains. It is not untouched: the salmon are mostly gone, as are the beaver and the wild things, hunted since the first Native Americans paddled down from Beringia and Alaska. But it is a place of natural beauty. It deserves to not to be spoiled.

LNG, liquified natural gas, is bitterly cold and will kill at the touch. It is heavier than air but will float on water, even while freezing the water below it. A single spark will set it off. In fact, exactly that happened in March of this year, at an LNG facility in Washington, along the Columbia River. Authorities were so frightened of the the consequences that they evacuated all residents within two miles of the facility.

They had good reason to. There is a history of horrific LNG explosions. The first such explosion was in 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. The liquid got loose from an apparently well-designed tank and ran into the storm sewers. No one was even aware that a leak had occurred, much less that it went beneath and beside homes and businesses. The explosive gas suddenly erupted in a giant fireball that nearly vaporized 130 people and required a day to be put out by every fire unit in the city of Cleveland. Industry reports afterward stress that the causes were found and remedied, and perhaps they were, in terms of engineering. But strangely enough, industry sources never said who should be arrested and put on trial for the negligent homicide of 130 innocent people.

Who could possibly imagine that a liquid might run down storm sewers?

It is against this background that a local movement has grown up here to oppose the pipeline, oppose the LNG terminal and oppose the coal-fired power plant that would power the facility.

One such opposition march occurred on Sept. 5, 2015. The day sparkled with color and sunshine, a 72-degree, clear, bright, Oregon day by the Rogue River. Music was provided by Off the Wall Music - a country folk group. Hikers from Hike the Pike have been following the line of the proposed route of the pipeline through Oregon. That day they floated on rafts down the river to a park in Shady Grove, where they were met by a picnic and a demonstration. The route they follow marks an approximately 230-mile extension from an existing pipeline through Oregon, which, if completed, would run from the Rockies to Coos Bay. The Rogue River is normally ice-cold from the melting of the snowpack, but this year, with no snow pack due to the drought here, the water was warmer. No fools they, the hikers climbed out of the water and headed straight for the food to a round of applause.

Several people spoke at the meeting. One local man said not to trust the LNG people when they promised jobs. He had talked to the surveyors for the project and not one was an Oregon surveyor. They were all hired out of state. Indeed, most pipelines are built like the Alaska pipeline; they are built by out-of-state companies who bring in out-of-state specialists who direct-deposit their paychecks back in their home states. They have no interest in spending the money in-state, unless they are buying what the company does not supply - liquor, drugs and prostitutes.

Another man stood to point out that renewable energy, rather than fossil-fuel energy, creates more jobs and that they are local and permanent. The jobs promises by fossil-fuels industries are rarely kept, he said. They are the "bait" in a "bait and switch" scheme.

A woman said she was informed by the company that the pipeline running through her property would be done on a schedule of 24 hours a day, for at least three weeks, and that during construction, the noise would be "totally deafening."

She replied that she didn't have the money to go to a hotel for three weeks. The company wasn't interested. If she didn't sign on the dotted line, the state would institute eminent domain proceedings on her property, she was told.

She found out later that lower safety standards apply to almost the whole pipeline, including the part 120 feet from her house, since it is crossing rural property practically its entire length.

A spokesperson from SOCAN.info based in Ashland (the "Buddhist Belt" of southern Oregon) said that if the terminal were built, it would be the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in Oregon after 2020. If the U.S. is trying to cut back on greenhouse gas, then why is it trying to increase its exports of it?

For the project, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a draft environmental impact report. It was found by the State of Oregon and by federal agencies, also, to be so poorly done that it was incompetent. For one thing, it covered only the pipeline itself, leaving out the impacts of the fracking, transporting and liquefying of the gas. The Portland newspaper the Oregonian labeled it so badly thought out as to be "incoherent."

As the day came to an end, a short demonstration marched to a bridge over the Rogue and hung a banner. The hikers will continue their journey to Coos Bay.

Photo: J. E. Johnson

Obama's Alaska visit highlights climate already changed

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 13:54:00 +0000

As President Obama visits Arctic Alaska, the first president to do so, he is speaking about the many impacts that climate change is already causing there, from rising seas to melting permafrost collapsing homes. Because the arctic is heating faster than the rest of the planet, climate change is a bigger issue for Alaska, for residents of towns close to the water, for tribes dependent on traditional fishing for their livelihood, for rapidly melting glaciers.

As part of his trip, Obama gave an opening address to the GLACIER Conference in Anchorage, Alaska. He stated that the U.S. recognizes its role in creating the problem and responsibility to take part in solving it. He noted that no nation is moving fast enough, and condemned leaders who gamble by taking no action on the dire future due to climate change are "not fit to lead."

Obama faces severe criticism during the trip from environmental groups who accuse him of hypocrisy, since at the same time he is calling for action to address climate change, his administration has just given final permission to Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic. During his trip, native groups and allies rallied to demand no drilling in the Arctic.

Shell's plans have been confronted by many activists, the kayaktivists in Seattle to bridge danglers in Portland, both trying to stop Shell ships and rigs from being able to leave port to go to the Arctic. Groups are mounting petition campaigns and public relations efforts to organize opposition to Shell's plans (sign one petition here.)

The record of the Obama administration on environmental issues, while mixed, stands in contrast to the previous, George W. Bush administration. Obama's positive steps include major support for developing renewable energy in the stimulus bill, efforts by the EPA to regulate new and existing power plant carbon emissions, increased mileage standards for cars and trucks, the agreement with China on projected reductions in emissions, and many more. Negative actions include support for major increases in fracking, in offshore oil drilling, and refusing to kill the Keystone XL pipeline (which has also not been approved).

The administration faces opposition from the right, in Congress and elsewhere, for the plan of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions as pollution harmful to human health. Republicans in Congress continue efforts to defund the EPA, to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, to undercut any climate agreements, to deny the basic science of climate change, and more.

Obama's current tour is part of the run-up to UN-sponsored climate negotiations to take place in December in Paris. The agreement signed between the US and China on carbon reductions has increased expectations that this conference will have more concrete results than many previous UN conferences on climate. In addition to these government-to-government negotiations, there is a growing movement to divest from fossil fuel corporations, which just had a big victory in California.

A growing factor on the world stage is the efforts of Pope Francis and other important religious leaders to add a moral dimension to how the issue is framed, and to bring their not inconsiderable political capital to bear on the negotiations.

Each particular battle is but one part of the longer struggle to transform our energy economy, our economy as a whole, how things are produced, packaged, and distributed. The direction of these struggles is ultimately to challenge the system, but in the meantime, we need all the allies, temporary or partial though they are, to make changes right now. These current battles lay the basis for future, more basic victories. Obama has moved U.S. policy into the column of those tackling climate change, though in an uneven and partial way. But winning smaller victories now is key to winning more later.

Photo: President Barack Obama looks at Bear Glacier, which has receded 1.8 miles in approximately 100 years, while on a boat tour to see the effects of global warming in Resurrection Cove, Sept. 1, in Seward, Alaska. Obama is on a historic three-day trip to Alaska using its glorious but changing landscape as an urgent call to action on climate change. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)