Author Archives: CharoletteWilfo

Rainforests: The good, the bad, and the Trump trade war

In the time it takes you to read this story, a forest the size of nearly 100 football fields will be cleared. Farmers have been burning forests for decades — in part to grow soybeans for hungry animals. In fact, soy cultivation is one of the major drivers of deforestation, especially in South America.

In an effort to stop the burning, the Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the world’s largest food corporations, recently announced plans to start policing its soy suppliers. It’s the latest in a series of corporate commitments aimed at stopping deforestation. As Trump’s trade war pushes soy cultivation from the United States into South America, these corporate pledges may be the last barrier against a massive rise in deforestation.

“This is a breakthrough from one of the world’s largest traders with huge significance to the global meat industry,” said Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, an environmental activist group chaired by the former Democratic Representative from California, Henry Waxman.

Dreyfus is one of four behemoths running the international grain trade. These so-called“ABCDs” — Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfus — dominate 70 percent of the industry. Some activists see their clout as an opportunity. How do you get billions of consumers to change their eating habits or convince millions of farmers to change their techniques? You don’t. But if you get those four middlemen to demand an end to deforestation, it might actually happen.

The ABCDs have all pledged to stop their supply chains from causing deforestation. Yet fires continue to consume rainforests. The problem is that corporate commitments and other efforts amount to a “feather on the brake,” according to Frances Seymour, a distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. And the global hunger for grain and meat is like a brick on the gas pedal.

World Resources Institute

Trump’s trade war with China could swap out that brick for a boulder. China, the world’s largest buyer of soy, has already cancelled several shiploads of beans from the United States in response to Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium. Now they’ll likely turn to South America for soybeans, raising the incentive for farmers there to expand their fields into forest land.

Faced with this challenge, activists have pushed the companies harder — lavishing praise on companies like Dreyfus that make the strongest commitments, while attacking those they consider laggards. Though all four big companies have committed to stop deforestation, some go farther than others. Cargill, for instance, initially aimed to eliminate deforestation from it’s supply chain by 2020, then pushed that goal back t0 2030.

ADM and Dreyfus have strong commitments in place, according to Hurowitz, so he’s putting more pressure on the other two. “There’s now no reason for McDonald’s and other companies to continue doing business with deforesters like Cargill and Bunge,” Hurowitz said.

Both Cargill and Bunge say they are keeping pace. Cargill said it remains committed to the goal of zero deforestation “while balancing forest protection with inclusive growth and sustainable development,” April Nelson, a Cargill representative, wrote in an email.

Similarly, a representative from Bunge told Grist that it’s developing a monitoring program to halt deforestation, and also welcomed Dreyfus’s announcement.

It’s a monumental challenge for a sprawling multinational corporation to figure out how to avoid buying soybeans grown a recently burned rainforest. Companies say they’re making strides. But it’s hard to tell from the outside how significant those strides really are.

Cargill’s CEO, David MacLennan, underscored the difficulty of getting a large and complex organization to change course in an interview with the New York Times last year.

“I don’t think I or others appreciated the vast complexity of the task,” he said. “Let’s say that we are trading or buying and selling soybean meal. Where did the soybeans come from? And did they come from deforested land? Maybe we weren’t buying the soybeans directly. I don’t know.”

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Rainforests: The good, the bad, and the Trump trade war

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Ron Wyden Thinks We All Deserve the Truth About Russian Election Interference

Mother Jones

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This is a helluva tease:

That’s all the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee except Dianne Feinstein, who joined all the Republicans in apparently not wanting this to be made public. That’s quite a partisan divide in a mostly nonpartisan committee. I wonder what it’s all about?

The ball’s in your court, President Obama. To quote our president-elect: at this point, what the hell do you have to lose?

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Ron Wyden Thinks We All Deserve the Truth About Russian Election Interference

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3 Countries That Are Bailing on Climate Action

green4us

Japan isn’t the only country walking away from climate promises. When Japan dramatically slashed its plans last week for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, from 25 percent to just 3.8 percent compared to 2005 figures, the international reaction was swift and damning. Britain called it “deeply disappointing.” China’s climate negotiator, Su Wei, said, “I have no way of describing my dismay.” The Alliance of Small Island Nations, which represents islands most at risk of sea level rise, branded the move “a huge step backwards.” The decision was based on the fact that Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors—which had provided about 30 percent of the country’s electricity—are currently shuttered for safety checks after the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, despite the government trying to bring some of them back online. That nuclear energy is largely being replaced by fossil fuels. Japan’s announcement has cast a shadow on this week’s climate negotiations in Warsaw. Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics and a former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, described the mood as “a downward spiral of ambition” which is “undermining confidence in the process and the ability to move forward.” Elliot Diringer, the Executive Vice President of the DC-based think tank Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, says NGOs and policymakers are feeling frustrated: “There was a great deal of sympathy for Japan in the aftermath of Fukushima,” he says. “And that’s now converted to disappointment.” But Japan isn’t the only industrialized country at Warsaw walking away from previously stated climate goals and attracting criticism for throwing a spanner in the works, an issue also explored here in Grist. Australia and Canada are emerging as strong opponents of more aggressive climate action and are likely to come up short on their commitments to reduce their emissions. Australia guts carbon policy Sweeping to power on a carbon tax backlash in September this year, Australia’s new prime minister, Tony Abbott, has wasted no time in shifting the country’s policy course—and rhetoric—on climate action. The conservative government is dismantling the country’s market-based carbon pricing laws in the parliament as a matter of first priority, and replacing it with its own system, “Direct Action,” a $3 billion plan to fund projects that it says will help lower emissions. The problem is not many people believe it will work. Analysis by Climate Action Tracker, which assesses reduction programs around the world, shows that rather than cutting greenhouse gases by the promised 5 percent, the policy will actually increase emissions by 2020 by 12 percent compared to 2000 levels. Independent modeling shows that even if the government stuck to its 5 percent pledge, it couldn’t be met without coughing up an additional $3.7 billion. Australia’s new policies are ”registering shock,” in Warsaw, says Hare, who also helps run Climate Action Tracker. “It’s being met with disbelief.” At the Warsaw talks, Australia is contributing “to a sense that there’s some unfortunate backsliding among some countries,” Direnger says. Abbott asserted last week that the goal will be met, but he added that no further money would be spent on the program if it wasn’t: “We will achieve it with the Direct Action policy as we’ve announced it and that policy: it’s costed, it’s funded and it’s capped,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Australian Conservation Foundation accused the government of abandoning its promise to scale its original pledge up to 25 percent if there’s stronger global climate action, calling Abbott a “deal wrecker.” The opposition Labor party said the government was allowing ”big polluters open slather in the future.” There are plans to kill three key organs of the previous government’s climate policy entirely: the independent Climate Commission, the Climate Change Authority, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.A flurry of other developments Downunder have helped to cement the new government’s stance at home and abroad: The budget for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency will be slashed by $435 million over the next three years For the first time since the 1997 Kyoto agreement, Australia declined to send its environment minister, Greg Hunt, to this week’s international climate talks talks, saying the business of repealing the carbon legislation in the first two weeks of parliament was too important. Canada unlikely to meet its own targets Australia is among the developed world’s worst polluters in terms of of CO2 per capita. But Canada is not far behind its Commonwealth compatriot. Lately, they seem to be enjoying each other’s company. This week, both conservative governments opposed a push at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to establish a green capital fund for small island states and poor African countries to address climate change. Canada recently praised Australia’s decision to repeal its carbon tax: “The Australian prime minister’s decision will be noticed around the world and sends an important message.” Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. James Park/Xinhua/ZUMA When Canada signed the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, the country committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 (bringing it in line with US goals). But last month, the Harper government admitted it’s going to blow past that target by a wide margin. Environment Canada, the federal ministry that looks after climate policy, issued a report that said that without new government action, the country’s emissions will be 20 percent (or 122 megatons) higher than the country committed to at Copenhagen. This amount is barely below 2005 figures. It’s this trajectory that, in part, led the Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch to list Canada as the worst performing country among all industrialized nations in their annual performance index—unchanged from last year’s ranking: “Canada still shows no intention of moving forward with climate policy and therefore remains the worst performer,” the report states. (In December 2011, Canada was the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol). Reading the tea leaves doesn’t inspire much optimism: All of this is happening against the background of expanding tar sands development. The report from Environment Canada predicts that without a change in policy, CO2-equivalent emissions from oil sands are projected to increase by nearly 200 percent by 2020 over 2005 levels. And on tar sands, the Harper government shows no sign shifting policy direction. The combined effect has an “ultimately corrosive effect on the ability to secure a strong international agreement if the major players aren’t playing,” Hare says.

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3 Countries That Are Bailing on Climate Action

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3 Countries That Are Bailing on Climate Action

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At the University of Chicago, Elevators Are Finally for Everyone

Mother Jones

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After five months of agitation, the leaders of the University of Chicago have finally agreed that their sensibilities will not be too badly offended if they occasionally end up sharing an elevator car with a blue-collar maintenance worker. Corey Robin has the story here.

Remind me again which century we live in?

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At the University of Chicago, Elevators Are Finally for Everyone

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Texas Store Gives New Meaning to ‘Reusable Shopping Bags’

Reusing shopping bags from other stores has helped Patina Green Home and Market cut back on waste. Photo: MorgueFile/clarita

When shoppers leave Patina Green Home and Market, they’re never sure exactly what bag they’ll get to tote their purchases home. That’s because owner Kaci Lyford is a firm believer in reusing and recycling — and she saw eliminating shopping bags from her store as an immediate way to cut back on waste.

“Our store is all about being green and finding ways to use what is already out there,” says Lyford, who opened the store in McKinney, Texas, with her mother and husband three years ago. “So instead of buying shopping bags for our store, we reuse bags from other stores.”

Patina Green, which started as a place for Lyford and her mother to sell antiques, has evolved into a “modern general store” that also carries an unexpected mix of handmade home décor, soaps, gifts and  linens along with fresh, locally harvested market items like eggs, bread and produce.

Initially, they used their personal stash of reusable shopping bags from other stores, but now customers regularly drop off bags that otherwise would have been tossed or recycled.

“We have people who bring in piles of bags and are so grateful because they didn’t know what else to do with them, but didn’t want to just throw them away,” Lyford says.

Each of the reused shopping bags bears a tag explaining that the bag has been recycled and asks customers to consider dropping their old shopping bags off at the store instead of tossing them in the trash. And the unique approach has made for some memorable moments for customers.

“We had one lady who bought some groceries and we sent them home with her in a Victoria’s Secret bag,” Lyford recalls. “She said her husband was just dying when he saw the bag — until she started pulling out bread and eggs.”

earth911

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Texas Store Gives New Meaning to ‘Reusable Shopping Bags’

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