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America’s Newest Diplomat Will Defend LGBT People Around the World

Mother Jones

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LGBT communities around the world will soon have a powerful advocate in the State Department whose sole job is to watch out for their interests. Later this month, the State Department will name a special envoy to focus on the rights of LGBT people globally, a department official tells Mother Jones. In an emailed statement, the official said that Secretary of State John Kerry and his staff are in the final stages of selecting an openly gay Foreign Service officer as the United States’ first-ever diplomat to focus on LGBT issues. The position will not require Senate confirmation.

Congress has attempted to push for a special envoy on LGBT issues in the past: In 2014, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act, which proposed establishing the position and taking steps to make the protection of LGBT individuals a foreign policy priority. Markey’s 2014 bill failed to become law. He reintroduced it last month, but the measure’s fate is uncertain—mostly because of opposition from congressional Republicans. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the chairman of the House subcommittee on human rights, said last week in a hearing that he does “not construe homosexual rights as human rights,” and suggested that the White House’s public support of LGBT rights negatively affected the United States’ ability to work with Nigeria to combat terrorism. On the same day Smith made these remarks, Nigerian police arrested a dozen people for attending a same-sex wedding.

The State Department official called Markey’s bill a “very helpful vote of confidence” but said, “We wouldn’t want to wait for passage to do something we’ve long thought was the right thing to do and which has been in process.” Appointing a special envoy for LGBT rights has long been a priority for Kerry, who has tried to make defense of LGBT rights a hallmark of his tenure as secretary and was vocal on LGBT issues as a senator. In recent years, some foreign governments have taken harsh action against LGBT people, provoking outrage among human rights advocates globally. In 2014 alone, Gambia passed a law punishing homosexuality with life in prison, Kyrgyzstan moved to pass a “gay propaganda” bill even harsher than Russia’s, and the Ugandan government fought to reinstate a law that would punish homosexuality with a life sentence. LGBT people are criminalized to some extent in 76 countries, a group that includes countries like Pakistan and Iran as well as Jamaica and Singapore.

As secretary of state, Kerry has attempted to push back against anti-LGBT sentiment and law: He has spoken with some African heads of state about their countries’ policies, and has supported legal and media networks that support LGBT communities in Africa and Eastern Europe. Now, the United States will have a full-time diplomat committed to doing that work. “It’s been long in the making,” the official wrote in an email, “because the Secretary insisted the envoy be a career Foreign Service officer from inside the institution, someone who is part of the fabric of the institution, a diplomat by training.”

Advocates for appointing a special LGBT envoy had expressed concern that any action the State Department takes could potentially be undone when a new administration takes over in 2016. But precedent suggests that LGBT-oriented diplomatic progress is unlikely to be rolled back. In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed the first openly gay US ambassador, James Hormel, as a recess appointment, bypassing deeply critical social conservatives in the US Senate.* President George W. Bush would go on to appoint an openly gay ambassador himself.

Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state at the time, was the first State Department head to allow domestic partners, including same-sex partners, to accompany overseas staff, and require that foreign governments officially accredit them. Selim Ariturk, president of GLIFAA, an organization that represents LGBT individuals in the foreign service, is optimistic about the State Department’s latest step. The envoy, he says “will be uniquely situated at the intersection of human rights and gender rights issues, and will allow the State Department to make progress combating the violence that plagues LGBT communities around the world.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Hormel’s current position.

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America’s Newest Diplomat Will Defend LGBT People Around the World

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How We Survived Two Years of Hell As Hostages in Tehran

Mother Jones

SHANE

The nightmare began on July 31, 2009. I was living in Damascus, covering the Middle East as a freelance journalist, with my girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, a teacher. Our friend Josh Fattal had come to see us, and to celebrate, we took a short trip to Iraqi Kurdistan. The autonomous region—isolated from the violence that wracked the rest of Iraq—was a budding Western tourist destination. After two days of visiting castles and museums, we headed to the Zagros Mountains, where locals directed us to a campground near a waterfall. After a breakfast of bread and cheese, we hiked up a trail we’d been told offered beautiful views. We walked for a few hours, up a winding valley between brown mountains mottled with patches of yellow grass that looked like lion’s fur. We didn’t know that we were headed toward the worst 26 months of our lives.

JOSH (July 31, 2009)

“You guys,” Sarah says with hesitancy. “I think we should head back.”

“Really?” Shane sounds surprised. “How could we not pop up to the ridge? We’re so close.”

Shane knows I want to reach the top. “Josh, what do you want to do?” he asks.

“I think we should just go to the ridge—it’s only a couple minutes away. Let’s take a quick peek, then come right back down.” Just as we’re setting out, Sarah stops in her tracks. “There’s a soldier on the ridge. He’s got a gun,” she says. “He’s waving us up the trail.” I pause and look at my friends. Maybe it’s an Iraqi army outpost. We stride silently uphill. I can feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

The soldier is young and nonchalant, and he beckons us to him with a wave. When we finally approach him, he asks, “Farsi?”

Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd hiking in the Zagros Mountains, shortly before their capture.

Faransi?” Shane asks, then continues in Arabic. “I don’t speak French. Do you speak Arabic?”

“Shane!” I whisper urgently. “He asked if we speak Farsi!” I notice the red, white, and green flag on the soldier’s lapel. This isn’t an Iraqi soldier. We’re in Iran.

The soldier signals us to follow him to a small, unmarked building. Around us, mountains unfold in all directions. A portly man in a pink shirt who looks like he just woke up starts barking orders. He stays with us as his soldiers dig through our bags. His eyes are on Sarah—scanning up and down. I can feel her tensing up.

I keep asking, “Iran? Iraq?” trying to figure out where the border lies and pleading with them to let us go. Sarah finds a guy who speaks a little English and seems trustworthy. He points to the ground under his feet and says, “Iran.” Then he points to the road we came on and says, “Iraq.” We start making a fuss, insisting we should be allowed to leave because they called us over their border. He agrees and says in awkward English, “You are true.” It’s a remote outpost and our arrival is probably the most interesting thing that has happened for years.

The English speaker approaches us again after talking to the commander. “You. Go,” he says. “You. Go. Iran.”

SHANE (August 2, 2009)

Beneath the night sky, the city is smearing slowly past our windows. Who are these two men in the front seats? Where are they taking us? They aren’t speaking. The pudgy man in the passenger seat is making the little movements that nervous people do: coughing fake coughs; adjusting his seating position compulsively. Everyone in the car is trying to prove to one another, and maybe to ourselves, that we aren’t afraid.

But Sarah’s hand is growing limp in mine. Something is very wrong.

“He’s got a gun,” Josh says, startled but calm. “He just put it on the dash.”

“Where are we going?” Sarah asks in a disarming, honey-sweet voice. “Sssssss!” the pudgy man hisses, turning around and putting his finger to his lips. The headlights of the car trailing us light up his face, revealing his cold, bored eyes. He picks up the gun in his right hand and cocks it.

Sarah’s eyes widen. She leans toward the man in front and, with a note of desperation, says, “Ahmadinejad good!” (thumbs up) “Obama bad!” (thumbs down). The pistol is resting in his lap. He turns to face us again and holds both his hands out with palms facing each other. “Iran,” he says, nodding toward one hand. “America,” he says, lifting the other. “Problem,” he says, stretching out the distance between them.

Sarah turns to me. “Do you think he is going to hurt us?” she asks. I don’t know whether to respond or just stare at her.

In my mind, I see us pulling over to the side of the road and leaving the car quietly. My tremulous legs will convey me mechanically over the rocky earth. I will be holding Sarah’s hand and maybe Josh’s too, but I will be mostly gone already, walking flesh with no spirit. We won’t kiss passionately in our final moments before the trigger pull. We won’t scream. We won’t run. We won’t utter fabulous words of defiance as we stare down the gun barrel. We will be like mice, paralyzed by fear, limp in the slack jaw of a cat.

Each of us will fall, one by one, hitting the gravelly earth with a thud.

Sarah pumps Josh’s and my hands. Her eyes have sudden strength in them, forced yet somehow genuine. “We’re going to be okay, you guys. They are just trying to scare us.”

JOSH (August 4, 2009)

My sandals clap loudly on the floor as I try to catch my momentum and keep my balance. After every few steps, they spin me in circles. My mind tries desperately to remember the way back.

The door shuts behind me. The clanging metal reverberates until silence resumes. I stand at the door, distraught and disoriented. Whatever script, whatever drama I thought I was in, ends now. Whatever stage I thought I was on is now empty. I dodder to the corner of my cell and take a seat on the carpet. There is nothing in my 8-by-12-foot cell: no mattress, no chair—just a room, empty except for three wool blankets. My prison uniform—blue pants, blue collared shirt—blends with the blue marble wall behind me and the tight blue carpet below.

Shane and Sarah are probably sulking in the corners of their cells too. We agreed we’d hunger strike if we were split up. Now I don’t feel defiant. I just feel lost.

Sarah’s glasses are in my breast pocket. She gave them to me to hold when they made us wear blindfolds. She didn’t have pockets in her prison uniform—they dressed her in heaps of dark clothes, including a brown hijab. I empty my other pockets: lip balm from the hike and a wafer wrapper—the remnant of my measly lunch.

I don’t know what I’ll do in here for the rest of the day. I sense the hovering blankness—a zone of mindlessness that looms over my psyche and lives in the silence of my cell.

SARAH (August 6, 2009)

“Sarah, eat this cookie.”

“Not until I see Josh and Shane.”

I’m sitting blindfolded in a classroom chair. A cookie is on the desk in front of me.

“Do you think we care if you eat, Sarah?”

They do care. I know that much. I’ve been on hunger strike since they split us up two days ago. At first it was difficult, but I’m learning how to conserve my energy. When I stand up, my heart beats furiously, so I lie on the floor most of the day. Terrible thoughts and images occupy my mind—my mom balled up on the floor screaming when she learns I’ve been captured, masked prison guards coming into my cell to rape me—but I’ve found ways to distract myself, like slowly going over multiplication tables in my head.

“Sarah, why did you come to the Middle East to live in Damascus?” the interrogator asks. “Don’t you miss your family? Your country?”

“Yes, of course I do. But it’s only for a couple of years. I can’t believe you’re asking me this—do you realize how scared and worried my family must be? Why can’t I make a phone call and tell them I’m alive?”

There are four or five interrogators. The one who seems like the boss is pacing and talking angrily in Farsi. They tell me if I eat their cookie, I can see Shane and Josh.

“Let me see them first—then I’ll eat.”

“Sarah, you say you are a teacher. Have you ever been to the Pentagon?”

“No, I’ve never even been to Washington, DC.”

“Please, Sarah, tell the truth. How can you be a teacher, an educated person, and never go to the Pentagon? Describe to us just the lobby.”

“I’ve never been to the Pentagon. Teachers don’t go to the Pentagon!” I almost have to stop myself from laughing, partly because I’m weak from not eating and partly because I can’t really convince myself this nightmare is real.

JOSH (August 18, 2009)

In my mind I am already running. My feet patter quickly on the brick floor. All day, my energy is dammed up, but in the courtyard, energy courses through me. They take me for two half-hour sessions per day. I’m allotted a single lane next to other blindfolded prisoners. It’s the only time I feel alive all day—when I’m out here and thinking about escaping.

Once, when I heard a helicopter whirring near the prison, I deluded myself into believing freedom was imminent. I decided US officials must be negotiating our release and that I’d be free within three days. Now I cling to the idea of being released on Day 30. In the corner of my cell, the corner most difficult to see from the entryway, there are a host of tally marks scratched into the wall. I check the mean, median, and mode of the data sample. The longest detentions last three or four months, but most markings are less than 30 days. I remember an Iranian American was recently detained and released from prison. How long was she held? Thirty days seems like a fair enough time for the political maneuvering to sort itself out.

JOSH (August 30, 2009)

Suddenly, the metal door rattles. A guard signals me to clean my room and gather my belongings. I am prepared for this. The floor is already immaculate—sweeping the floor with my hands is one of my favorite activities. I grab my book and three dried dates stuffed with pistachio nuts to share with Sarah and Shane. I wasn’t crazy. Day 30 is for real.

When we’re in the car, I can hardly control my joy. I turn to Shane and Sarah, and we start giggling—nervous laughter—at the comfort of our companionship. Now that we’re together again, the weeks of solitude I’ve just endured seem like a distant memory. Was it really a month? Somehow this is funny to us.

Sarah tells me that she and Shane spoke to each other through a vent. They what? Sarah says, “I promise we didn’t do it much.” I can’t believe they were near each other. They had each other! I had nothing.

These guys don’t have a clue what I experienced. I would have done anything for a voice to talk to. I push the idea of them talking as far from my mind as possible, trying to convince myself of what I’d always assumed—we are in this together.

In the rearview mirror, I make eye contact with the stoic driver.

He slows to a stop, then lifts the emergency brake. His gaze, knowing and pitiless, conveys the truth. Shades and bars cover every window of the dirty, gray building before us. This is another prison.

JOSH (September 2, 2009)

In this prison, guards don’t hide their faces like they did in the last one. Some even talk to me. One guard, who speaks a little English, taught me the Farsi word for the courtyard we go to, hava khori. He told me that it literally means “eating air.”

I’ve even grown friendly with a guard I call “Friend.” I treated him amiably and he has responded in kind. He speaks awkward English and tries out colloquial expressions on me. He makes small talk, which can be the most significant event of my day. Friend gave me a bed and mattress, pistachios, bottled water, and crackers. He even gave me a small personal fridge that he put in the hallway in front of my cell. With snacks in front of me, I allowed myself to feel how hungry I’ve been, and how my stomach shrank after 11 days of hunger striking and four weeks on a prison diet.

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How We Survived Two Years of Hell As Hostages in Tehran

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Marcel Dzama’s Artwork Is Totally Twisted (and I Totally Dig It)

Mother Jones

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The prolific Canadian artist Marcel Dzama is not yet 30, but he’s accumulated a body of paintings, collages, sculpture, dioramas, costumes, and film-design work that would be impressive from someone decades his senior. You can experience the breadth of his talent in a great new collection, Marcel Dzama: Sower of Discord, out recently from Abrams Books.

The coffee-table book, which showcases hundreds of Dzama’s works in various media, also includes a poster, writings from the artist Raymond Pettibon and the art historian Bradley Bailey, and three collaborative short stories by Dave Eggers—which I’ll admit I haven’t quite gotten to yet, even though I loved this and this.

Ah, but the artwork! Great artists are evocative, and Dzama’s work evokes all sorts of emotions: wistfulness, joy, fear, revulsion, wonder, arousal. Drawing inspiration from current events, revolutionary images, his esteemed predecessors (notably Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Oskar Schlemmer, and William Blake), and his own childhood fears and encounters, Dzama has developed a distinctive-yet-familiar style that’s at once playfully subversive, twisted, childlike, and disturbing.

Recurring themes and characters include anthropomorphic trees, real and fictional animals, flag-bearers, distinctively yonic octopi, hooded men and women with guns (Subcomandante Marcos meets Guantanamo Bay), and sensual dancers in two-tone, polka-dot catsuits. We see superheroes, bats and owls, hanging men, dismembered cowboys, snowmen, rabbits and bears, Pinocchios, surreal multi-species crime scenes, bestiality of a sort, children curled in grave-like underground dens, disembodied heads, and plenty of sex—some of it alluringly primal. The book explores Dzama’s intent with some of these elements, but you may want to simply experience them first, and discover what meanings they bring to the uninitiated.

Bold the beauty of New York City, 2009. Ink and watercolor on paper. Marcel Dzama

The great sacrifice was our only dog, such a tragic gesture, 2011.

Ink and gouache on paper. Marcel Dzama

Circle of Infidels (The 6th revolution), 2008. Ink and watercolor on paper. Marcel Dzama

Dzama grew up in Winnipeg, where he struggled somewhat in school, partly because he’s dyslexic. He was constantly drawing, though, and settled on art school not from any high aspirations, but because “art was the only thing I was good at,” he tells filmmaker Spike Jonze in an included Q&A that, while fun and informative, needed some trimming.

Untitled, 2000. Ink and gouache on paper. Marcel Dzama

In any case, Dzama was discovered by the New York City art aficionado and gallery owner David Zwirner, and he’s been on a tear ever since. His art has traversed the globe, appearing in esteemed spaces such as Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Le Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Sought after by celebs and collectors who can afford him, his work has graced album covers by the likes of Beck and They Might Be Giants. (I first encountered it in Bed Bed Bed, a charming TMBG side project consisting of a CD and accompanying lyrics book—which I highly recommend for anyone with kids under seven.)

Welcome to the land of the drone, 2011. Ink and gouache on paper. Marcel Dzama

I’ll leave you with a few more examples from the book, which is worth owning. You might, however, want to keep it where your kids can’t reach until they’re of age. For instance, I wouldn’t want my nine-year-old stumbling across Dzama’s My Weekend in Berlin, which looks like a pretty exciting weekend. I’ve not included it here. Guess you’ll just have to buy the book.

If you can’t bring good news, then don’t bring me any, 2012.

Ink, gouache, graphite, and collage on paper. Marcel Dzama

Turning into puppets (Volviendose marionetas), 2011 (details).

Steel, wood, aluminum, and motor. Marcel Dzama, photos by Sammlung Ottmann

My Ladies Revolution, 2008. Wood, sliding glass, acrylic, collage, and plaster.
Marcel Dzama, courtesy Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

Goodbye.

Untitled, 2000. Ink and gouache on paper. Marcel Dzama

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Marcel Dzama’s Artwork Is Totally Twisted (and I Totally Dig It)

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As climate change broils the Arctic, John Kerry apologizes

As climate change broils the Arctic, John Kerry apologizes

ShutterstockOops, it’s melting. Sorry ’bout that.

“Hello, world? Hey, John Kerry here. Just wanted to apologize for all those decades of America’s non-leadership on that crazy global warming thing. But now we’ve decided to start making some nice sounds about the issue. Hope you can hear me making them over the din of the Arctic ice breaking up behind me.”

OK, so the Secretary of State didn’t actually say that. But the leader of the department that will rule on the climate-changing Keystone XL pipeline proposal has begun apologizing for the nation’s lack of progress in tackling climate change.

“I regret that my own country – and President Obama knows this and is committed to changing it – needs to do more and we are committed to doing more,” Kerry said Tuesday, referring to climate change, in a press conference with Sweden’s prime minister.

Kerry is in Sweden to attend meetings in the country’s northernmost city of Kiruna of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum for governments that have a stake in the fate of the fast-melting region. As the Arctic melts, new shipping routes and oil fields are opening up, and the international community is going to need to coordinate and temper the scramble to cash in on these new opportunities.

“We come here to Kiruna with a great understanding of the challenge to the Arctic as the ice melts, as the ecosystem is challenged, the fisheries, and the possibilities of increased commercial traffic as a result of the lack of ice raises a whole set of other issues that we need to face up to,” Kerry said during the press conference. “So it’s not just an environmental issue and it’s not just an economic issue. It is a security issue, a fundamental security issue that affects life as we know it on the planet itself, and it demands urgent attention from all of us.”

The Obama administration on Friday released the National Strategy for the Arctic Region [PDF]. The strategy pledges to “enable our vessels and aircraft to operate … through, under, and over the airspace and waters of the Arctic, support lawful commerce … and intelligently evolve our Arctic infrastructure and capabilities.” All done sustainably and in harmony with other nations, of course. But the 11-page document is not so much a detailed strategy document as it is a vague wish-list for the future of the region, and no federal funds have been committed to turn the strategy’s goals into reality.

That said, the attention that the U.S. is affording the Arctic Council is politically significant. From the BBC:

Mr. Kerry, who held one of the first US Senate hearings on climate change as early as 1988 with then-Senator Al Gore, is hoping to put the spotlight on the issue of climate change again, after efforts to make concrete progress faltered during President Barack Obama’s first term.

Despite a multitude of international crises, Mr. Kerry insisted on attending the meeting of the once-obscure council.

Climate change has countries as far away as India also paying attention to the Arctic — and seeking observer status in the council.

What the Arctic most needs, of course, is a fast and deep cut in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Actions leading to that — like, say, rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline — will carry more weight than press-conference words.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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Yesterday Was 400 ppm Day

Mother Jones

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Well, we finally did it. We hit a new carbon dioxide milestone yesterday:

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

This is from NOAA. The reading from the Scripps instruments for yesterday was 399.73 because they use local time, not Greenwich time. This gives them a slightly different 24-hour window that defines a “day.”

But not to worry. They’ll hit 400 soon too. And by next year, pretty much every day will be above 400. Congratulations, homo sapiens!

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Yesterday Was 400 ppm Day

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This scientist needs your help to study air pollution from coal trains

This scientist needs your help to study air pollution from coal trains

Dan Jaffe

“Do coal and diesel trains make for unhealthy air?”

Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington-Bothell, thinks that’s a fair question to consider as Washington state grapples with whether to allow the construction of coal-export terminals that could triple the amount of daily coal-train traffic chugging through the state.

But Jaffe, whose lab has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on air pollution, hasn’t been able to scare up funding to research the potential air-quality impacts of those coal trains. In the absence of dollars from the usual government or corporate channels, he has turned to the internet to crowd-fund this vital research. Jaffe started a page on Microryza, a sort of Kickstarter for scientific research (a great idea with a name that unfortunately does not roll off the tongue). He writes:

Coal trains may … leave behind a trail of fine coal dust in the air that is hazardous to [breathe]. In Washington State, there are proposals to substantially increase the number of trains carrying coal through our region. Yet we know almost nothing about the impact these trains will have on air quality along the rail lines. Before these decisions are made, it is essential to gather high quality scientific data on the impacts trains currently have on air quality in the region so that we can accurately forecast the environmental impact the increased train traffic would have on our region. Ironically, while state and local agencies appear to support this type of work, they have been unable to identify a funding mechanism. Thus, we believe crowd-funding is an appropriate way to support this project.

As of this writing, the project had raised almost $16,000 of its $18,000 goal.

Jaffe is wading into one of the most contentious environmental battles in the country. At a series of public hearings in the state last fall intended to gather input on what an environmental review of proposed coal-export terminals should study, attendees — the vast majority in opposition to the terminals — pleaded with county, state, and federal representatives to consider all the myriad impacts of the plan: the coal mining in Montana and Wyoming, the coal trains traversing several states and slicing through busy cities, the increased shipping traffic through Puget Sound’s scenic waterways, and the climate impacts when all that coal is eventually burned. Terminal supporters, on the other hand, argued that the environmental impact statement should look only at the effects of the terminals themselves. The government still hasn’t decided what the review will include.

But no matter what the official environmental impact statement ends up covering, it looks likely that Jaffe’s research will be funded and, once completed, available online to anyone who cares to read it. The use of his crowd-funding strategy in such a high-profile, high-stakes environmental battle adds an interesting twist to the usual David-and-Goliath tale of grassroots activism vs. corporate interests.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat writes:

What’s fascinating about Jaffe’s experiment is that big industrial developments like coal terminals have long been able to limit official study of their projects. …

But the Web makes this framework moot. There’s now little stopping a determined scientist from going rogue — from studying whatever he or she wants and submitting the results straight to the court of public opinion.

If funded successfully, Jaffe’s research will take place this summer, with data analysis following over the fall and winter of 2013-2014. The government’s final environmental impact statement will not be issued until 2014 or 2015. Stay tuned.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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One of the awful things about a nuclear meltdown could be the traffic

One of the awful things about a nuclear meltdown could be the traffic

Shutterstock

Get me out of here!

It’s hard to imagine a worse traffic jam than the traffic jam that slows your escape from a nuclear meltdown.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office is warning other federal agencies that they need to be thinking about that scenario as they plan emergency responses to nuclear accidents.

Current planning focuses on evacuating or sheltering people living and working within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant. Such planning assumes that everybody living, say, 11 miles from an exploding nuclear reactor would sit on their asses watching the disaster unfold on CNN. And the GAO thinks that’s unlikely. Those people might instead rush into their cars and onto the streets in an understandably panicked bid to escape the area, worsening traffic congestion and making escape more difficult for those closer to the accident.

From a GAO report published last week:

Those in the 10-mile zone have been shown to be generally well informed about these emergency preparedness procedures and are likely to follow directions from local and state authorities in the event of a radiological emergency. In contrast, the agencies do not require similar information to be provided to the public outside of the 10-mile zone and have not studied public awareness in this area. Therefore, it is unknown to what extent the public in these areas is aware of these emergency preparedness procedures, and how they would respond in the event of a radiological emergency. Without better information on the public’s awareness and potential response in areas outside the 10-mile zone, [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission] may not be providing the best planning guidance to licensees and state and local authorities.

Four senators requested that the GAO conduct the study after the Associated Press published a series in 2011 on weaknesses in emergency planning around nuclear plants. From a new AP article:

Environmental and anti-nuclear groups have pressed federal regulators to expand planning to 25 miles for evacuation and 100 miles for contaminated food. They also want community exercises that postulate a simultaneous nuclear accident and natural disaster.

Nuclear sites were originally picked mainly in rural areas to lessen the impact of accidents. However, in its 2011 series, the AP reported population growth of up to 350 percent within 10 miles of nuclear sites between 1980 and 2010. About 120 million Americans — almost 40 percent — live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, according to the AP’s analysis of Census data. The series also reported shortcomings in readiness exercises for simulated accidents, including the failure to deploy emergency personnel around the community, reroute traffic, or practice any real evacuations.

The series further documented how federal regulators have relaxed safety standards inside aging plants to keep them within the rules and avoid the need for shutdowns.

Asked about the GAO study, Paul Blanch, a retired engineer who has worked on nuclear safety for the industry, questioned whether it’s even possible to plan for an effective, managed evacuation of residents in a very populated area. “I absolutely believe they would panic, and they’d clog the roads,” he said.

NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan apparently took some time out of his busy day to mull the report before emailing a thoughtful, thorough response to the AP: “We disagree with the view that evacuations cannot be safely carried out.”

OK then.

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One of the awful things about a nuclear meltdown could be the traffic

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Conservatives Part Ways on Sequester Cuts

Mother Jones

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The American Conservative Union thinks the federal government spends too much. Still, there are business lobbies out there that are unhappy with some of the sequester cuts, and that represents a fundraising opportunity. So to the dismay of tea partiers everywhere, the ACU is now pitching a new program to defense and transportation lobbyists, called the American Strength Program, to fight cuts in programs these lobbyists support. That’s not the official pitch, of course. The official pitch is that defense and roadbuilding are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, so constitutional conservatives should be happy to shovel as much money as possible into those areas.

Anything for a buck, I guess. Nick Confessore has the full story here. On the bright side, at least the ACU is planning to be discreet about the whole thing.

Originally from: 

Conservatives Part Ways on Sequester Cuts

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