Author Archives: MalissaHitchcoc

Team Pope to Team Trump: Please Just Stay in the Paris Climate Deal

Mother Jones

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Pope Francis used the opportunity of President Donald Trump’s Vatican visit on Wednesday to urge the United States to stay in the landmark Paris climate accord. It’s a decision the new president has been kicking down the road ever since assuming office, despite a campaign pledge to withdraw from, or “cancel,” US involvement in the deal.

According to CNN:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, briefing reporters on Air Force One after the meeting, said terrorism and climate change came up. He said the Vatican’s secretary of state raised climate change and encouraged Trump to remain in the Paris agreement.

Tillerson said the President “hasn’t made a final decision,” and likely will not until “after we get home.”

My colleague Rebecca Leber has been tracking the White House’s public hemming and hawing over the deal—and the administration factions competing to influence the president’s thinking.

From earlier this month:

We’ve heard for months that Trump’s Cabinet is split on what to do about both climate change policy and the Paris agreement. Ivanka Trump, now in her official role at the White House, represents those who want to stay. We’re told that she’s “passionate about climate change,” and she is joined by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and economic adviser Gary Cohn, who are also in favor of staying in the Paris agreement. Energy Secretary Rick Perry wants to “renegotiate.” Secretary of Defense James Mattis sees climate change as a national security threat and likely favors staying involved, as does Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

On the other side of the debate, Scott Pruitt is leading the “leave” team, echoing the president in calling the accord a “bad deal.” Team Pruitt also includes senior adviser Steve Bannon and White House Counsel Don McGahn. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has not publicly weighed in, but he opposed the deal as a senator.

During the Vatican meeting on Wednesday, the Pope gave Trump a copy of his influential 2015 “encyclical” on climate change, in which Francis warned that “the Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

According to pool reports, Trump promised the leader of the world’s Catholics, “Well, I’ll be reading them.” But the official White House readout of the president’s meeting sent to reporters made no mention of climate change.

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Team Pope to Team Trump: Please Just Stay in the Paris Climate Deal

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Police are finally catching cars that veer too close to bicyclists

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Police are finally catching cars that veer too close to bicyclists

By on Aug 22, 2016Share

There’s nothing quite as alarming as an SUV veering into your personal space as you bike down a busy street. Enter a handy device called C3FT: a sonar gadget that measures the distance between a bike’s handlebars and the car that’s driving too close for comfort.

Police departments are using C3FT, short for “see three feet,” to warn off and even ticket drivers who fail to give bikers enough space. Since its launch last year in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 11 cities have adopted the device, from Las Vegas to Ottawa.

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Though 28 states have laws requiring a three-foot gap between bikers and vehicles, such laws can be tough to enforce. In Florida, for example, 500 tickets were handed out in 2014 to drivers who veered too close to cyclists, but only eight were found guilty. It’s a suspiciously low number considering the nearly 50,000 cyclists injured in bicycle-vehicle crashes each year.

To truly pedal our way out of this mess, we need more than a handy gadget: Improved road design, like adding bike lanes, would add a bigger buffer between bikes and semis. 

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Police are finally catching cars that veer too close to bicyclists

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