Mother Jones
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US Army soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas pose for a photo with the Prime Minister of Estonia as a part of Operation Atlantic Resolve. (US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Ray Boyington)
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Mother Jones
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This story originally appeared in The Atlantic and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
I’ve been offline for many hours and am just now seeing the announcements from Beijing. The United States and China have apparently agreed to do what anyone who has thought seriously about climate has been hoping for, for years. As the No. 1 (now China) and No. 2 carbon emitters in the world, and as the No. 1 (still the US) and No. 2 economies, they’ve agreed to new carbon-reduction targets that are more ambitious than most people would have expected.
More coverage of the historic US-China climate deal.
The US and China Just Announced a Huge Deal on Climate—and It’s a Game Changer
Is the US-China Climate Pact as Big a Deal as It Seems?
Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal
Awkward: Watch a Supercut of Republicans Using China As an Excuse to Do Nothing About Climate Change
Deep Inside the Wild World of China’s Fracking Boom
Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts
We’ll wait to see the details—including how an American president can make good on commitments for 2025, when that is two and possibly three presidencies into the future, and when in the here-and-now he faces congressional majorities that seem dead-set against recognizing this issue. It’s quaint to think back on an America that could set ambitious long-term goals—creating Land-Grant universities, developing the Interstate Highway System, going to the moon—even though the president who proposed them realized that they could not be completed on his watch. But let’s not waste time on nostalgia.
Before we have all the details, here is the simple guide to why this could be very important.
1) To have spent any time in China is to recognize that environmental damage of all kinds is the greatest threat to its sustainability—even more than the political corruption and repression to which its pollution problems are related. (I’ll say more about the link some other time, but you could think of last week’s reports that visiting groups of senior Chinese officials have bought so much illegal ivory in Tanzania that they’ve driven the black market price to new highs.)
You can go on for quite a while with a political system like China’s, as it keeps demonstrating now in its 65th year. But when children are developing lung cancer, when people in the capital city are on average dying five years too early because of air pollution, when water and agricultural soil and food supplies are increasingly poisoned, a system just won’t last. The Chinese Communist Party itself has recognized this, in shifting in the past three years from pollution denialism to a “we’re on your side to clean things up!” official stance.
Analytically these pollution emergencies are distinct from carbon-emission issues. But in practical terms pro-environmental steps by China are likely to help with both.
2) To have looked at either the numbers or the politics of global climate issues is to recognize that unless China and the US cooperate, there is no hope for anyone else. Numbers: These are far and away the two biggest sources of carbon emissions, and China is the fastest-growing. As John Kerry points out in an op-ed in tomorrow’s NYT, reductions either of them made on its own could just be wiped out unless the other cooperates. Politics: As the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks five years ago showed, the rest of the world is likely to say, “To hell with it” if the two countries at the heart of this problem can’t be bothered to do anything.
We see our own domestic version of this response when people say, “Why go through the hassle of a carbon tax, when the Chinese are just going to smoke us to death anyway?” This new agreement does not mean that next year’s global climate negotiations in Paris will succeed. But it means they are no longer guaranteed to fail.
3) China is a big, diverse, churning, and contradictory place, as anyone who’s been there can detail for hours. But for the past year-plus, the news out of China has been consistent, and bad.
Many people thought, hoped, or dreamt that Xi Jinping would be some kind of reformer. Two years into his watch, his has been a time of cracking down rather than loosening up. Political enemies and advocates of civil society are in jail or in trouble. Reporters from the rest of the world have problems even getting into China, and reporters from China itself face even worse repression than before. The gratuitous recent showdown with Hong Kong exemplifies the new “No More Mr. Nice Guy” approach.
A nationalistic, spoiling-for-a-fight tone has spilled over into China’s “diplomatic” dealings too. So to have this leader of China making an important deal with an American president at this stage of his political fortune is the first news that even seems positive in a long while.
We’ll wait to see the details. But at face value, this is better news—about China, about China and America, and about the globe—than we’ve gotten for a while.
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Mother Jones
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On August 9, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Brown, an African American, was unarmed. The killing sparked a wave of protests, some of them violent, and calls to formally charge Wilson. With a grand jury decision on the shooting investigation expected imminently, residents and law enforcement agencies in Ferguson and across St. Louis are bracing for a new round of protests and possible violence.
More MoJo coverage of the Michael Brown police shooting
10 Hours in Ferguson: A Visual Timeline of Michael Brown’s Death and Its Aftermath
Michael Brown’s Mom Laid Flowers Where He Was Shot—and Police Crushed Them
Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?
The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns
How Many Ways Can the City of Ferguson Slap You With Court Fees? We Counted
Here’s Why the Feds Are Investigating Ferguson
Meet the St. Louis Alderman Who’s Keeping an Eye on Ferguson’s Cops
Here are some of the latest developments:
Michael Brown’s parents testify before U.N. committee
Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden flew to Geneva this week where they spoke before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to present a report suggesting police tactics in Ferguson were a key factor in Brown’s death.
“Whatever the grand jury decides in Missouri will not bring Michael back,” Brown’s father told members of the U.N. “We also understand that what you decide here may save lives. If I could have stood between the officer, his gun, and my son, I would have.”
The Ferguson Police Department is currently under federal investigation to review its police tactics and determine if they meet federal standards.
Police get additional training
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said that 1,000 officers from multiple agencies went through 5,000 hours of additional training in preparation for possible reactions to the upcoming grand jury announcement. According to Officer Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department, “Our training consisted of tactics and response to civil disturbance, as well as a review of the 1st, 4th, and 14th amendments.” To help ensure the rights of protesters and the media, Schellman told Mother Jones, “each officer will carry a laminated card with these amendments listed.”
Police stock up on riot gear
Should protests turn violent again, the St. Louis County PD has been stocking up on riot gear. “If the police face assaults that could cause injury or worse, they will have riot gear at their disposal,” Schellman said, adding that law enforcement efforts will be run by “a unified command that consists of commanders from the St. Louis County Police, St. Louis City Police, and MO State Highway Patrol.”
Police tactics used in August were widely condemned for being overly aggressive and callous toward the local community.
Uptick in gun sales
Ahead of the grand jury announcement, guns shops in the Ferguson area have reported an increase in purchases by both black and white residents.
Brown autopsy report leaked
The autopsy, which was leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, revealed Brown had been shot in the hand at close range with Wilson, putting into question whether Brown had had his hands up in the air, as some witnesses claimed. The St. Louis medical examiner, however, cautioned about jumping to conclusions over the leaked report. “As you look at this report, people are grabbing onto one thing, trying to make a whole case on this one finding,” Graham told PBS. “You can’t do that.”
Supporters rally for Wilson
Soon after Brown’s death, supporters emerged in defense of the embattled Ferguson police officer, whose whereabouts since the killing have been unknown to the public. In one instance during a rally for Brown, police were forced to remove one Wilson supporter holding a sign that read, “Justice is for everybody even P.O. Wilson.”
Weeks later at a Cardinals game, Ferguson protesters got into an argument with Wilson supporters, one of whom had a sign “I am Darren Wilson” attached to his jersey.
From the game tonight..lol pic.twitter.com/WX8RCg2gFQ
— Kathi Burch (@PossumAndPintos)
Lesley McSpadden investigated
Ferguson police are investigating claims of a reported fight between members of Brown’s family over the selling of “Justice for Michael Brown” t-shirts. Pearlie Gordon, Brown’s paternal grandmother, told police she was in a parking lot trying to sell the items, when McSpadden and a group of about 20 people “jumped out of their vehicles and rushed them,” allegedly telling Gordon “You can’t sell this s**t.” Gordon says she and the other vendors were beaten.
Reports of media access blocked
The Associated Press uncovered audio recordings suggesting efforts by Ferguson authorities to limit media coverage by calling for “no-fly zones” to block news helicopters from documenting the protests in August. Ferguson police denied the allegations. Attorney General Eric Holder said he had no knowledge of the purported media restrictions and indicated his support for transparency. “Anything that would artificially inhibit the ability of news gatherers to do what they do I think is something that needs to be avoided,” he said.
This article:
Here’s What’s Been Happening in Ferguson as Tensions Rise Again
Mother Jones
In a surprise announcement Tuesday night, the world’s two biggest economies and greenhouse gas emitters, United States and China, said they will partner closely on a broad-ranging package of plans to fight climate change, including new targets to reduce carbon pollution, according to a statement from the White House.
The announcement comes after President Obama met in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and includes headline-grabbing undertakings from both countries which are sure to breathe new life into negotiations to reach a new climate treaty in Paris next year.
According to the plan, the United States will reduce carbon emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, nearly twice the existing target—without imposing new restrictions on power plants or vehicles.
Tuesday’s announcement is equally remarkable for China’s commitment. For the first time, China has set a date at which it expects its emissions will “peak,” or finally begin to taper downwards: around 2030. China is currently the world’s biggest emitter of carbon pollution, largely because of its coal-dependent economy, and reining in emissions while continuing to grow has been the paramount challenge for China’s leaders.
The White House said in a statement that China could reach the target, even sooner than 2030. It “expects that China will succeed in peaking its emissions before 2030 based on its broad economic reform program, plans to address air pollution, and implementation of President Xi’s call for an energy revolution.”
This is also the first time such a policy has come from the very top, President Xi Jinping. Previously, the first and only mention of “peaking” came from Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli at the UN climate talks in New York in September.
“This is clearly a sign of the seriousness and the importance the Chinese government is giving to this issue,” said Barbara Finamore, Asia director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental advocacy group, in an interview from Hong Kong. “The relationship between the US and China is tricky, but climate has been one of the areas where the two sides can and are finding common ground.”
The US also called China’s goal of reaching the goal of 20 percent total energy consumption from zero-emission sources by 2030 “notable,” but painted a picture of the challenges ahead for the energy-hungry giant: “It will require China to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero emission generation capacity by 2030 – more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States.”
The announcement also sets the stage for conflict with the Senate’s new Republican leadership, which just today signaled that attacking Obama’s climate initiatives will be a top priority in 2015.
The plan does not entail using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, as the bulk of Obama’s existing climate strategy does. Instead, it involves a series of initiatives to be undertaken in partnership between the two countries, including:
Expanding funding for clean energy technology research at the US-China Clean Energy Research Center, a think tank Obama created in 2009 with Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao.
Launching a large-scale pilot project in China to study carbon capture and sequestration.
A push to further limit the use of hydroflourocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas found in refrigerants.
A federal framework for cities in both countries to share experiences and best practices for low-carbon economic growth and adaptation to the impacts of climate change at the municipal level.
A call to boost trade in “green” goods, including energy efficiency technology and resilient infrastructure, kicked off by a tour of China next spring by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
NRDC’s Finamore said the magnitude of the agreement—which was made well in advance of expectations—will provide fresh impetus to the drive for a new global climate agreement in Paris next year. “Hopefully this will give new ambition to other countries as well to move forward quickly,” she said. The agreement “sends a powerful signal to every other country that they are serious and are willing to come to the table to reach a global agreement.”
“Even if the targets aren’t as ambitious as many might hope, the world’s two largest carbon emitters are stepping up together with serious commitments,” said Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a Washington policy group. “This will help get other countries on board and greatly improves the odds for a solid global deal next year in Paris.”
“For too long it’s been too easy for both the US and China to hide behind one another,” he said.
Original source:
BREAKING: The US and China Just Announced a Huge Deal on Climate—and it’s a Gamechanger
Mother Jones
While a complex web of factors have contributed to the rise in income inequality in America, a new research paper says most of the blame can be largely placed in the immense growth experienced by the top tenth of the richest 1 percent of Americans in recent years. From the report:
The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality.
So, who are the 0.1 percent among us? According to Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the paper’s researchers, the elite group is a small one, roughly composed of 160,000 families with assets exceeding $20 million, but their grip on America’s wealth distribution is about to surpass the bottom 90 percent for the first time in more than half a century. Today’s 0.1 percent also tend to be younger than the top incomers of the 1960’s, despite the fact the country as a whole has been living longer—proving once again, that there has truly never been a more opportune time to be rich in America:
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The Richest 0.1 Percent Is About to Control More Wealth Than the Bottom 90 Percent
Mother Jones
Yesterday was the United States Marine Corps’ 239th birthday. Jarheads and leathernecks celebrated as they long have—with big-ass cakes like the one above, which commemorated the Corps’ 233rd birthday in 2008.
The Marines’ big birthday cake bashes date back to at least 1935. They’re such a part of Marine tradition that there’s even a protocol for cake serving, including the ceremonial use of the Mameluke sword (below) and who gets the first slices (the guest of honor, followed by the eldest and youngest Marines present).
And it’s not just Marines who love their cake. The entire military appears to be preparing for the day when the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale. That means plenty of sheet cake with white frosting—but also some more elaborate creations like the ones collected here.
(How much of the Pentagon’s $600 billion budget goes to cakes? It’s not clear, though this 2010 Marines memo notes that there are strict rules for pastry funding: Only three to four slices of each cake may be paid for with appropriated funds.)
Now, 10 delicious deployments of military cake:
1. For the Army’s 237th birthday in 2013, a cupcake tank rolled into the Pentagon. The confection included 5,000 cupcakes, more than 200 pounds of camouflage fondant, and a functioning “cupcake cannon.” It also came in massively over budget at a total cost of $1.2 billion. (Not really.)
2. The 40th anniversary of the Air Force Defense Support Program is observed with a cake shaped like a missile-detecting satellite. (According to the after-action report, “an anomaly prevented the cake from entering the ballroom as planned.”)
3. To welcome the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March 2002, the commissary at the Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Virginia, baked this 750-pound, 12-foot cake, complete with “an edible aircraft carrier layer on top.”
4. Last year, three Marines spent five days making this 500-pound cake to commemorate the Marine Corps’ 238th birthday.
5. The 150,000th safe arrested landing on the aircraft carrier George Washington was celebrated with a cake shaped like an aircraft carrier.
6. In 2007, the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes wheeled out an M-1 Abrams cake for the Army’s 232nd birthday.
7. A cake resembling the painted rocks at the Fort Irwin National Training Center, California, made for the Army’s 239th birthday in June.
8. An enormous, creepy George Washington hovered behind Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno (third from left) as he engaged in a show of symbolic bureaucratic redundancy at the Army’s 239th birthday party.
9. Two Air Force service members slice an otherwise ho-hum cake with an airplane propeller to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Special Operations Command Europe (whose acronym, SOCEUR, is clearly meant to test the loyalty of our European allies).
10. If a propeller isn’t handy to make your cake ceremony more exciting, there’s always a guest appearance by Vice President Joe Biden, who popped up at Camp Liberty in Baghdad in January 2010 just to make Dick Cheney jealous that he’d found the missing Iraqi yellow cake.
Source:
You Probably Had No Idea the US Military Is Obsessed With Giant Cakes
Mother Jones
After last week’s midterm elections, the Senate is set to be packed with a brand new crop of Republican climate change deniers. They’ll supplement the GOP’s old guard of science skeptics, including Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and James Inhofe (Okla.), who will likely become chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
One of the major repercussions of the GOP’s Senate takeover could actually play out overseas, at next winter’s United Nations climate summit in Paris. The Paris meeting is meant to be a forum for countries—especially big polluters such as the United States, the European Union, China, and India—to hammer out an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help poorer countries adapt to global warming.
President Obama has already signaled that his team in Paris will push for an agreement that is not legally binding—unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate treaty, which the US never ratified—so as to bypass the need for congressional approval. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be other opportunities for the Senate’s new climate denial caucus to shake up the negotiating process—specifically, by attempting to block Obama’s plan to use the Environmental Protection Agency to slash carbon emissions.
The highest hurdle in negotiations like this is something David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council calls “a vicious cycle of finger-pointing,” wherein no country wants to commit to something that the other big polluters can’t, or won’t, commit to. After all, because climate change is a global problem, a climate treaty makes sense only if all the biggest carbon polluters are on board. That means that unless the international community is confident the US will follow through on aggressive climate policies, other countries will be unlikely take meaningful actions to fight global warming.
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How the GOP’s Senate Takeover Could Derail Global Climate Action
Mother Jones
Without active leadership from China and the United States—the world’s biggest economies and carbon emitters—there’s little hope of reaching a global deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at next year’s big climate summit in Paris. That’s why President Barack Obama’s visit to Beijing this week for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is shaping up to be a big deal for the fight against global warming.
Climate change is, of course, just one part of Obama’s complex agenda in China. But policy experts say his one-on-one meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Wednesday could provide much-needed momentum, potentially signaling to the world the extent to which both countries are willing to slash their carbon pollution.
“It is key we get the Chinese on board before Paris,” said Tim Boersma, an energy security analyst with the Brookings Institution. “And whomever comes up with the formula will have produced a brilliant policy move.”
Obama is hoping it’s his team that comes up with the goods. This week’s talks will build on a series of efforts by the two countries to cooperate on climate policy, says Elliot Diringer, the executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a former White House senior environmental policy adviser.
“The success of Paris rests very heavily on US and Chinese participation, there’s no question,” he said, adding that Obama’s team “has worked hard to be a consistent partner” to the Chinese. According to Diringer, the hard work has “helped pay off in some renewed trust.”
That trust—basically telling each other “we’re serious, if you are”—seems to be growing. In 2013, US and Chinese leaders leaders signed a bilateral agreement to reduce HFCs, a family of powerful greenhouse gases used in heavy industry. There has also been cooperation on energy security at the highest levels of both governments. The US-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum, sponsored the two countries’ governments, has been meeting for the last 13 years. In 2009, Obama and then-President Hu Jintao announced an agreement to develop China’s immense shale gas resources, conceived in part as a way to help break China’s coal addiction and reduce emissions.
Now, world leaders are hoping to replace the expired Kyoto agreement to curb greenhouse gases with a new treaty that will be negotiated in Paris. Much is unknown about what form the final agreement will take, but a key first step is for individual countries to make declarations about how much they are willing to cut their emissions. The European Union has already come forward with its proposal: Last moth, EU members agreed to slash emissions by 40 percent by 2030, a figure that environmental groups criticized as not being ambitious enough.
Analysts don’t expect any similarly big announcements to come out of Obama’s meetings in Beijing this week. But Diringer anticipates the countries will privately exchange important information on their intended targets and wait until the end of March to publicly announce how much they intend to cut. “I’d expect a bit of show and tell, but no direct negotiation or deal or target levels,” he added.
Even small maneuvers at such a high-profile meeting can send big signals to the international community, especially if Washington and Beijing publicly commit to getting their emissions targets on the table well in advance of the Paris meeting. Simply putting out a statement outlining a timetable would be be a big deal. “A joint declaration by the world’s two largest carbon emitters that they will put ambitious numbers on the table would inject additional momentum heading into Paris,” Diringer said.
As part of its argument for closer climate ties and stronger action, Obama’s team is highlighting an issue the Chinese are already extremely sensitive to: air pollution. Smog routinely blankets Chinese cities, and the environmental crisis has become a political emergency as Chinese officials worry about the potential for escalating social unrest. The issue has already spurred action: China has begun pushing coal-fired power plants out of major cities and is working on plans for a massive, nationwide cap-and-trade program that is slated to start in 2016.
Pushing China to use cleaner energy is a no-brainer for the US administration. Secretary of State John Kerry told a group of business leaders in Beijing ahead of the summit: “This is a win-win-win-win-win, because in every aspect, you gain in health of your population, you gain in environmental protection, long-term responsibility. You gain in security; you gain in energy independence, energy capacity. You gain in health, where you have air that’s cleaner.”
Heavy smog blanketed Liaocheng, a city in Shandong, last month. US officials are highlighting the impact of pollution as a reason for China to take climate action. Imaginechina/ZUMA
Still, some experts worry that this week’s meetings could actually end up undermining the Paris negotiations. Kyle Ash, a climate policy analyst with Greenpeace, warns that any bilateral arrangements reached between China and the United States over the next year might reinforce the idea that the Paris agreement should be voluntary, since the two biggest emitters would have already signed a their own deal. “We hope that the leaders are not going to be using the bilateral relationships to slow progress on multilateral talks,” he said. “It’s a worry because we’re on a tight timeline.”
Regardless of the risks, Diringer says successful climate talks this week will benefit both countries. China wants to be seen as a powerful leader on the world stage, and an engaged global citizen. Meanwhile, “stronger US action has always run up against the claim that China and India aren’t doing anything. An ambitious number from China will make it easier to sell the Obama climate agenda at home.”
And Obama will need all the help he can get. The GOP takeover of the Senate threatens to undermine international confidence in America’s ability to tackle the climate issue at home, a development that could make progress in Paris even harder.
For both the United States and China, says Ash, “success in Paris will be convincing the world that they’re acting at home.”
Continued:
Mother Jones
For years, as lawmakers in other conservative states passed onerous restrictions designed to limit abortion access, deep-red Tennessee stood out as an exception—because the state’s constitution forbade many of the harshest anti-abortion measures.
But that changed on Election Day. Last week, 53 percent of Tennessee voters approved Amendment 1—a change to the state’s constitution that will allow lawmakers to pass a slew of new abortion restrictions. And Republicans, led by Beth Harwell, the speaker of the state house of representatives, are already working on three abortion restrictions to debate in 2015: One measure would set up a mandatory waiting period between a woman’s first visit to an abortion clinic and the time of the procedure. A second would force women to undergo mandatory counseling, known as informed consent, before an abortion. And a third would add new, unspecified inspection requirements for abortion facilities.
As I reported in September, Amendment 1 was aimed at overturning a 2000 court decision that struck down a 48-hour waiting period, an “informed consent” law, and a requirement that all second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital. Amendment 1 reads: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” including for pregnancies “resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”
Supporters of Amendment 1 argued that the new language was necessary because Tennessee was barred from inspecting abortion clinics. (In fact, the Tennessee Department of Health inspected several of the state’s clinics within the past year before renewing their licenses.)
Amendment 1 detractors, on the other hand, warned that the measure was actually aimed at using strict new regulations to close some of Tennessee’s seven abortion clinics. This tactic is popular with Tennessee’s neighbors. It’s part of why nearly 1 in 4 women who receive an abortion in Tennessee live in another state, such as Alabama and Mississippi, where highly restrictive abortion laws have closed all but a handful of abortion providers.
Abortion rights advocates also worried that the amendment would allow abortion opponents to spread misinformation about abortion through an informed consent law; South Dakota, for example, compels doctors to tell women that abortion can lead to an increased risk of suicide—an assertion that mainstream medical organizations say is false. All told, both camps poured $5.5 million into the fight over Amendment 1.
It’s not as though Tennessee was abortion-friendly to begin with. Before Amendment 1 came along, Tennessee passed anti-abortion laws that limited insurance coverage for abortion, outlawed the abortion pill, and caused two abortion clinics to close because they could not gain admitting privileges with local hospitals.
The real danger of Amendment 1 is that the measure “will basically just open the floodgates for the General Assembly to pass any kind of restriction if the amendment passes,” Jeff Teague, the president of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, said in the run-up to the election. “We think they probably have a long list of things they’re going to pass.”
Turns out he was spot-on.
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Tennessee Voters Just Made It Easier to Restrict Abortion—And the GOP Isn’t Wasting Any Time.
Mother Jones
This story originally appeared in CityLab and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The ever-thought-provoking David Levinson posed a question at his Transportationist blog earlier this week that’s worth a longer look: Are you more likely to die from being in a car crash or from breathing in car emissions? If your gut reaction is like mine, then you’ve already answered in favor of crashes. But when you really crunch the numbers, the question not only becomes tougher to answer, it raises important new questions of its own.
First, let’s look at US traffic fatalities at the national level. For consistency with the pollution statistics (more on that in a moment), we’ll focus on 2005. That year, there were 43,510 traffic crash fatalities in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That’s a fatality rate of roughly 14.7 per 100,000 Americans.
Now we turn to deaths attributable to air pollution—more specifically, to particulate matter produced by cars. A research team led by Fabio Caiazzo of MIT, who appears from his university profile to be an actual rocket scientist, recently quantified the impact of air pollution and premature death in the United States for the year 2005. They reported that about 52,800 deaths were attributable to particulate matter from road transportation alone. (Road pollution had the largest share of any individual pollution sector, at around a quarter of all emissions-related deaths.) That’s a mortality rate of roughly 17.9 per 100,000 Americans.
Straight fatality figures make a strong case that car emissions are deadlier than car crashes.
By that estimate, road-related particulate matter was responsible for about 19 percent more deaths, nationwide, than car crashes were in 2005. And keep in mind that particulate matter isn’t the only air pollutant produced by cars (though it is the most significant type). Caiazzo and company attribute another 5,250 annual deaths to road-related ozone concentrations, for instance. In other words, the true health impact of auto emissions may be much greater.
At the city level, this broad conclusion remains the same. Here are the mortality totals and rates attributable to road-related particulate matter in five major metro areas tracked by Caiazzo and colleagues: New York (3,615 / 28.5), Los Angeles (2,092 / 23.3), Chicago (1,379 / 28.4), Dallas (374 / 23.2), Washington, D.C. (533 / 28.6). The rates are well over 20 per 100,000 people in all five places.
Now here are the fatality totals and rates from car crashes in the same five metros, via the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Granted, these figures are from 2009 instead of 2005, but even taking that inconsistency into account, the difference is striking: New York (986 / 5.1), Los Angeles (848 / 6.6), Chicago (565 / 5.9), Dallas (611 / 9.8), Washington, D.C. (408 / 7.5). In no case does the fatality rate even reach double digits.
These straight fatality figures make a strong case that car emissions are deadlier than car crashes at both the national and major metro levels. But death is only one measure of these health impacts. Age of death matters, too, especially since younger people tend to be involved in fatal car crashes. In 2012, for instance, about 55 percent of the people who suffered motor fatalities were under age 45. Caiazzo et al. report that emissions tend to cut lives short about 12 years, whereas crashes cut them short about 35 years.
Levinson tries to adjust for age through the Global Burden of Disease database, which includes a measure called Years of Life Lost. In 2010, there were 1,641,050 years of life lost attributable to particulate matter, against 1,873,160 years of life lost to road injuries.
That might seem like a near wash, but in fact the gap is much wider, because the these data reflect all air pollution, not just road-related air pollution. If we figure (based on Caiazzo*) that 25 percent of all deaths attributable to air pollution come via car emissions, then road injuries account for more than four times as many years of life lost as particulate matter from cars—1,873,160 to 410,288.
The absence of a clear single answer is a revelation in itself, suggesting that the problems are more on par than we typically treat them.
Circling back to the original question, whether car crashes or auto emissions is deadlier, we find any answer requires additional parameters. Strictly speaking, Americans appear more likely to die from auto emissions. In terms of wasted life potential, crashes seem the bigger danger. If anything, the absence of a clear single answer is a revelation in itself, suggesting that the problems are more on par than we typically treat them.
So why don’t elected leaders pay as much attention to emissions-attributable deaths as they do to car fatalities? The answer no doubt has a lot to do with something Levinson’s University of Minnesota colleague, Julian Marshall, said during their discussion of the topic: “no death certificate says ‘air pollution’ as cause of death.” Rather, emissions are yet another risk factor and invisible killer in a world full of risk factors and invisible killers. As such they’re convenient (and perhaps even comforting) to ignore. A road death, meanwhile, is stark and tragic and undeniable—in political terms, a much stronger platform.
But what should cities do about it? Well, they can start by drawing more attention to the problem. A true Vision Zero campaign, for instance, would acknowledge that even a New York without road fatalities wouldn’t be a New York without car-related deaths and illnesses. (That’s not to criticize this initiative; just to make a point.) As a stronger step, cities can follow the likes of London, which recently announced an additional tax on emissions-heavy cars, and start charging these drivers the true cost of their social impact (or something closer to it). A few drivers can pay now, or general public health can pay later, but everyone pays eventually.
* It’s worth pointing out that the Caiazzo study and the GBD reach vastly different conclusions about how deaths are attributable to total emissions in a given year: roughly 200,000 for the former to roughly 103,000 to the latter.
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