Author Archives: NataliaBrunning

The Green New Deal is quickly becoming a test for 2020 Democrats

by NataliaBrunning Posted on February 7, 2019

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New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey released their non-binding Green New Deal resolution Thursday morning; it outlines a vision of the future that’s a lot different from the one we’re in.

We’re talkin’ universal healthcare, a federal jobs guarantee, a transition to clean energy in a matter of decades, and more, much more. It’s a lot — and would have a tough slog becoming law in this Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already labeled the ambitious proposal “a suggestion.”

But the vague scope of the deal is intended to be a feature, not a bug. Believe it or not, the policies that would make up a Green New Deal aren’t actually meant to pass Congress just yet. Gasp! No really, welcome to politics. The resolution serves up two big questions: The less central one is, can House Democrats rally behind this ambitious climate proposal?

Remember, Pelosi isn’t running for president, and if this deal ever comes to the table, its proponents are banking on a new president in the White House and Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress. Which brings us to the main question: Can 2020 Democrats throw their support behind this level of bold climate action?

What’s included in Thursday’s proposal is just as important as what’s left out, particularly when it comes to getting presidential candidates on board. The resolution doesn’t exclude a price on carbon — an emissions-reducing mechanism favored by liberals and some conservatives — nor is there a strict definition of what “100 percent renewable energy” means. So someone like Cory Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate who happens to support nuclear energy, can comfortably put his name down as a cosigner of the new resolution.

Including Booker, five presidential candidates have cosigned AOC and Markey’s resolution: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro hasn’t explicitly said he backs this proposal, but he has expressed support for a Green New Deal in the past. Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Hawaii Senator Tulsi Gabbard, and former Maryland Representative John Delaney haven’t indicated if they support the proposed resolution yet.

With heavyweights like Warren and Harris on board, it’s becoming clear that a progressive Green New Deal will likely be a central tenet of any Democrat’s 2020 agenda. “We’re going to press all elected officials, especially 2020 contenders, to support this resolution. Where they stand on the resolution will make it clear who is using the Green New Deal as a buzzword and who is serious about transforming our economy in line with what science and justice demand,” Stephen O’Hanlon, communications director of the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement said in an emailed statement.

For the likes of Gillibrand and Booker, signing on now is a quick way to make inroads with parts of the Democratic base. For Warren and Sanders, this proposal is catnip for their supporters.

So what all are these candidates putting their names on? Even taking vague language into account, there are a lot of ambitious elements in the resolution:

A job for every American: “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and disability leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
A right to unionize: “strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment.”
Death to monopolies: “ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies.”
Healthcare for everyone! And … housing for everyone? “[P]roviding all members of society with high-quality health care, affordable, safe and adequate housing, economic security, and access to clean water, air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”

As you can see, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill resolution. We’ll see how many of these ambitious plot points survive the journey through the Washington machine.

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The Green New Deal is quickly becoming a test for 2020 Democrats

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

by NataliaBrunning Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Elanco, the animal-health division of the pharma giant Eli Lilly, makes one of the world’s most controversial growth-promoting chemicals for meat production: ractopamine, marketed as Optaflexx for cattle, Paylean for pigs, and Topmax for turkeys.

A member of the class of medicines known as beta-agonists, which are also given to asthmatic people to help relax their airway muscles, ractopamine makes animals rapidly put on lean weight—but it also mimics stress hormones and makes their hearts beat faster. Studies suggest that it makes livestock more vulnerable to heat. Ractopamine is banned in the European Union, China, and more than 100 other countries, and it faces mounting criticism here in the United States.

To clean up his company’s image, Elanco’s president, Jeff Simmons, has launched a “counteroffensive,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Andrew Martin. In addition to his responsibilities operating a $2.3 billion-dollar global animal-drug business, Simmons runs an initiative called ENOUGH Movement, which calls itself a “global community working together to ensure everyone has access to nutritious, affordable food—today and in the coming decades.” Combating global hunger is one of ENOUGH’S major themes. Simmons uses a “grainy photo of himself carrying a small African child on his back” as his Twitter avatar, Martin reports.

Elanco served as the primary underwriter of The Atlantic magazine’s 2015 Food Summit, held last week in Washington, D.C. Simmons delivered a sponsored presentation at the event. In it, he complained that a group he labeled the “fringe 1 percent,” agitating for increased regulation on meat producers, is driving the national debate around food. Simmons also regaled the crowd with ENOUGH’s core messages: The world needs to produce 60 percent more meat, eggs, and dairy by 2050; doing so will require “innovative farming techniques that increase efficiency;” and organic methods—which forbid growth-boosting chemicals for animals—aren’t going to cut it. Instead, ENOUGH insists, “we must leverage the innovations and technological advances that will allow us to produce more food without using more resources.”

One can see why an exec operating in the meat industry might be feeling defensive. Industrial-scale meat production has been linked to the rise of antibiotic resistance in human medicine (which claims at least 700,000 lives per year globally); ecological ruin; increased risk of cancer; and the hollowing out of communities where it alights. Insult to injury, US consumers have been cutting back on meat consumption overall, and turning increasingly to drug-free, pasture-raised product.

And Simmons has rushed into the fray. In short, Martin shows, Simmons is taking a page from the agrichemical/GMO industry playbook: present your industry as crucial to “feeding the world” as global population grows to 9 billion by 2050, and paint your critics as out-of-touch elitists who are indifferent to hunger and poverty.

“Simmons doesn’t directly pitch Elanco products during his speeches on hunger, saying he has a higher purpose: alleviating world hunger and changing a conversation that’s been hijacked by a vocal fringe of activists,” Businessweek’s Martin writes. “If the arguments sound familiar, it’s because Monsanto and other proponents of genetically modified foods made similar claims.”

One key part of the strategy to avoid discussion of existing products, and point instead to future innovation. Generally speaking, Monsanto execs prefer to talk about still-in-development crops rather than current offerings, which are riddled by weeds and insects that have evolved to resist them. Likewise, Simmons doesn’t say much on the stump about the company’s best-known product, ractopamine.

A 2014 study from Texas Tech and Kansas State researchers found that it nearly doubled the mortality rate of cows fed on it in the weeks before slaughter. As for pigs, the drug has “triggered more adverse reports in pigs than any other animal drug on the market,” a 2012 investigation by journalist Helena Bottemiller found. “Pigs suffered from hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk, and death, according to FDA reports released under a Freedom of Information Act request.”

Rather than ponder such troubles, Simmons urges us to imagine a future where meat is abundant and the scourge of malnutrition has been defeated, all driven by “innovation” and “science.” Whether or not that vision comes to pass, this much seems clear: We’re on the verge of a loud campaign by the meat industry, particularly its pharma sector, to portray its critics as a privileged fringe, untroubled by global hunger.

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

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