Tag Archives: action

Dakota Access protesters reminded the nation they won’t be silenced.

by EAPDario0458 Posted on November 16, 2016

And it’s just in the nick of time, since President-elect Trump has promised to repeal all of President Obama’s climate regulations.

This rule, which will be gradually phased in, requires drilling operators to halve the natural gas that is flared off from new and existing wells, limit venting from storage tanks, inspect for leaks, and so on. DOI projects that the rule should cut methane emissions up to 35 percent.

Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping gas. With the the increase in natural gas and oil drilling that is the fracking boom, methane leakage from wells and pipelines has also skyrocketed. A crackdown on these leaks was part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.

The new rule doesn’t govern private land, where most drilling takes place. The Environmental Protection Agency developed rules limiting methane leakage from new wells on private land. Hillary Clinton proposed to follow up on that with a rule for existing wells on private land.

Trump will not do that. But, now that the public lands rule is finalized, undoing it would require a new rule-making process, subject to legal challenge.

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Dakota Access protesters reminded the nation they won’t be silenced.

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The US Wants to Send More Guns to Libya. No, Seriously.

by Justine61A Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2015, the United Nations Security Council expressed concern over the unchecked spread of weapons to militant groups plaguing Libya following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Fast-forward a year: The country has descended further into chaos, as dozens of militias, Al Qaeda and ISIS, and two rival governments backed by armed groups vie for power. So, naturally, the United States is ready to ease the UN arms embargo that was put in place in 2011.

The United States, along with many of its international partners, wants to be able to supply “necessary lethal arms” to Libya’s UN-backed interim Government of National Accord to fight ISIS and other terrorist organizations. “It’s a delicate balance. But we are, all of us here today, supportive of the fact that if you have a legitimate government and that legitimate government is fighting terrorism, that legitimate government should not be victimized by the embargo,” Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday.

The same day, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that our military doesn’t have a “great picture” of what is happening in Libya. And a day later, the chief of US Africa Command, Army Gen. David Rodriguez, told the Washington Post that it is difficult to determine which militia groups are aligned with the government that the United States hopes to arm. “We’re really dependent on the Government of National Accord to figure out who is with them and who is moving over toward them,” Rodriguez said. “They’ve only been there a month, and they’re still struggling to get established in Tripoli.”

The conditions in Libya are ripe for arms proliferation, and some observers are concerned that flooding the country with more small arms and ammunition, which is what Rodriguez said is most needed, will only fuel the conflict. “The West’s provision of arms into Libya has been devastating to the country for years,” Andrew Feinstein, the executive director of Corruption Watch, told the Washington-based Forum on the Arms Trade on Tuesday. “When NATO airstrikes were launched in support of rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi, they first had to target weapons, including ground to air missiles, that the West had supplied to Gaddafi. On the dictator’s overthrow, the huge number of surplus weapons provided to him soon found their way onto the black market. Will the West never learn that pouring weapons into an existing conflict only results in that conflict becoming bloodier and longer?”

At the same forum, Iain Overton, the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said, “We know that the Pentagon lost track of about 190,000 AK–type assault rifles and pistols in Iraq. We know that it lost track of more than 40 percent of the firearms provided to Afghanistan’s security forces. And we know that the Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in US military aid given to Yemen. What are the chances, then, of a headline in five years time stating that the Pentagon has lost millions of dollars worth of guns in Libya?”

The potential for losing control of American weapons has been highlighted in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has captured large quantities of US equipment—everything from M-16s and mortars to armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles. In June 2014 alone, ISIS captured enough weapons, ammunition, and vehicles to arm 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers, according to the UN Security Council. A year later, US-backed rebel forces entered Syria and handed over their arms to Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. In March, al-Nusra targeted another US-backed rebel group, detaining scores of fighters and stealing their weapons, including US-made anti-tank missiles.

“Controlling end users and end-use in a conflict setting, particularly the kind of chaotic, anarchic conflict that you have in states that are failed, is extraordinarily difficult, often impossible,” says Matt Schroeder, senior researcher at the Washington DC-based Small Arms Survey.

The announcement to ease the Libyan arms embargo drew skepticism not only from analysts, but from some lawmakers as well. House Armed Services member Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), expressed concern about “flooding Libya with American arms.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has proposed limiting weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, said, “This is an incredibly fragile government. I hope that we ask some very tough questions before we start arming a government that’s on ice that’s still pretty thin.”

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The US Wants to Send More Guns to Libya. No, Seriously.

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Cities and companies have pledged to fight climate change. Now what?

by MichaleClaudio Posted on May 10, 2016

Cities and companies have pledged to fight climate change. Now what?

By on May 10, 2016Share

Since the Paris Climate Conference wrapped up last December, 50 cities and companies have posted new climate initiatives in a United Nations-sanctioned registry called the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA). By spotlighting some 11,000 commitments cities, companies, regions, and investors have made since 2014, the U.N. hopes NAZCA becomes an essential tool in motivating more entries in the future.

But not everyone is so jazzed about it.

Angel Hsu, director of Yale’s Data-Driven Environmental Solutions Group, spends a lot of time thinking about how to use data transparency to ease the troubles of fighting climate change. And as the registry currently stands, it’s more laundry hamper than database.

In April, Hsu and her colleagues published an article in Nature laying out the risks of “unevenly or idiosyncratically” reporting climate action data. The gist: If there aren’t clear reporting requirements for cities and companies, we have no way of knowing what’s working, what isn’t, and who’s pulling their fair share.

Take carbon prices, for example. The authors write that less than one-sixth of the carbon-pricing initiatives registered with NAZCA actually cite a specific carbon price. When companies do name a price, it can range from $0.01 to $357.37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

The inconsistency matters because it implies a lack of accountability. Without a sense of what’s reasonable, freeloading becomes that much easier. NAZCA does not require companies or cities to report or track implementation data, so there’s no easy way of knowing whether or not they are actually following through on their commitments. Clear reporting standards can foster this kind of accountability, argue the researchers.

Hsu also cites consumer pressures in developed countries as motivating companies like Shell and BP to take action. But for cities, there’s no analogue of corporate social responsibility. City officials — and voters — just have to buy into climate action.

Selling that climate action can be easier said than done. In an analysis released last Thursday, C40 Cities — a coalition targeting urban climate action — details the barriers cities face when attempting to combat a changing climate. The group cites a lack of city-country coordination, a failure to make a convincing case for climate action, and, importantly, an inability to secure funding for green projects as among the hurdles facing efficient and effective climate action. For instance, write the authors, “only 1 in 5 C40 cities are able to borrow from the state, and only 1 in 4 to issue municipal bonds.”

Cracking this nut is important because cities are well-positioned to do things that national governments can’t. “Sub-national governments have more flexibility to experiment with potentially risky policy tools,” write Hsu and colleagues.

Cities are a “living laboratory for sustainable prosperity,” Samuel Adams, director of the U.S. climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, told press last week. The lab could just use a bit more rigor.

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Cities and companies have pledged to fight climate change. Now what?

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Top Gun Lobbyist Calls Hundreds of Child Gun Deaths "Occasional Mishaps"

by TameraGillis Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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In an in-depth investigation in 2013, Mother Jones found that guns kill hundreds of children per year in the United States. Many die in homicides, and many others die in accidents—mostly when children themselves pull the trigger. The kids shooting themselves or others have often been as young as two or three years old. Invariably these “tragedies” result from adults leaving unsecured firearms lying around in their homes or, in some cases, in their cars.

Since our investigation, the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety has collected additional data confirming the scope of the problem. As the New York Times reported on Thursday, during one week in April four toddlers around the country killed themselves with guns, and a mother was fatally shot by her two-year-old while driving, after the child apparently picked up a weapon that slid out from under the driver’s seat. The data remains stark: “In 2015, there were at least 278 unintentional shootings at the hands of young children and teenagers, according to Everytown’s database,” the Times reported. “A child who accidentally pulls the trigger is most likely to be 3 years old, the statistics show.”

Equally stark is the response from the gun lobby. There has been growing debate about laws aimed at reducing the problem, which, as our investigation showed, has long gone underreported. Larry Pratt, a leading figure among hardline pro-gun activists, argues that tighter gun regulations are not the answer. In comments to the Times, Pratt called the hundreds of child gun deaths that occur each year “occasional mishaps”:

“It’s clearly a tragedy, but it’s not something that’s widespread,” said Larry Pratt, a spokesman and former executive director of Gun Owners of America. “To base public policy on occasional mishaps would be a grave mistake.”

As the Times piece notes, 27 states now have laws that hold adults responsible for letting unsupervised children get their hands on guns. Gun safety advocates have increasingly pushed for tougher laws requiring owners to use trigger locks, gun safes, or other measures for safe storage and use. Another potential solution that’s been gaining new interest is smart-gun technology. But gun lobbying groups including Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association have long opposed these policies across the board, claiming that they threaten Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Even in states with laws on the books, the contentious politics tends to quash appetite among prosecutors for holding adults accountable when young children accidentally kill. Here, the data goes from stark to perhaps stunning: In 2013 we documented 52 cases where adults had left their guns unsecured—but we could only find four people who were held criminally liable for the children’s deaths.

The following year I covered this problem in more detail, in a story chronicling the rise of a new advocacy group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Particularly in more rural communities, a prevailing theme has been that parents—including a few who accidentally shot their own children—have already suffered enough and shouldn’t be punished:

Last Christmas Eve in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a man who’d been “messing with” a 9 mm handgun unintentionally shot and killed his two-month-old daughter as she slept in her glider. The coroner ruled the death a homicide, yet local law enforcement officials said they were undecided about pursuing criminal charges. Typically that might’ve been the end of it, but Moms Demand Action voiced outrage via social media and the local press. Within two weeks the DA announced plans to prosecute. (He said no outside group influenced his decision.)

“While we fully support the father being held accountable for this crime, we also acknowledge the horrific grief this family is experiencing,” Moms Demand Action said after the charges were announced. “We hope their tragedy can serve as an example that encourages others to be more responsible with their firearms.” The father later pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment, which could have brought up to 15 years in prison. He got six years’ probation and no jail time.

Moms also drew attention to a case in February in North Carolina, where a three-year-old boy wounded his 17-month-old sister after finding a handgun that their father—who wrote a parenting advice column in a local paper—had left unsecured. (The infant recovered.) “The parents have been punished more than any criminal justice system can do to them,” a captain from the county sheriff’s department said soon after the shooting. After Moms swung into action, the father was charged with failure to secure his firearm to protect a minor; his case is pending.

“All too often DAs are loath to get involved, saying a family has suffered enough,” Watts says, “especially in states where laws are inadequate…This idea of ‘accidental’ gun deaths, when something is truly negligence, has to be remedied.”

For its part, the gun lobby prefers to keep the focus on other fears. On Thursday, the NRA made no reference to the latest data on child gun deaths. On its blog, a post—topped by an image of a toddler biking—offered “10 Tips That Could Save Your Life.” The “home” segment of the list made no mention of safely storing firearms, but instead focused on the specter of a home invasion. “To deal with this possibility,” it said, “be prepared by making a home defense plan and setting up a safe room with your family.” The room should be equipped with a phone for calling 911, it said, and a “personal protection device” such as “mace, batons, Tasers, stun guns, or firearm.”

The NRA’s Twitter feed otherwise attended to politics, denouncing an apparent conspiracy by the Social Security Administration to conduct “the largest gun grab in American history,” and firing away at “Hillary Clinton’s 6-part plan to disarm citizens — and rip apart the #2A.”

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Top Gun Lobbyist Calls Hundreds of Child Gun Deaths "Occasional Mishaps"

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India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

by NikoleScrivener Posted on April 27, 2016

India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

By on Apr 27, 2016Share

India is suffering. In the midst of the worst drought it has seen in half a century, some 330 million people are currently affected, reports the government. The scarcity is so severe that schools, farms, and even hospitals cannot function — doctors don’t have enough water to wash their hands — and many people are leaving their homes in search of water.

To combat shortages, the government has started shipping water across the country via trains, but it’s not enough. In one of the most devastated states, 9 million farmers have little or no water for irrigation and at least 216 have committed suicide, reports the Guardian.

“The government says it is bringing water by train every day, but we are getting water once a week,” Haribhau Kamble, an unemployed laborer in the drought-struck district of Latur, told Reuters after waiting in line for three hours to fill up two pitchers. The situation for people like Kamble is expected to get worse as the summer temperatures rise and reservoirs dry up.

The current drought and other extreme weather events — including flooding that killed hundreds in South India last year — are linked to climate change. And while 190 countries met in Paris last year to come up with a plan to target climate change and its increasingly tragic effects, many critics argue that the accord failed to adequately address the needs of the developing nations like India, where over 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line — that is, on less than $1.90 a day.

“What we needed out of Paris was a deal that put the poorest people first.” Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for ActionAid, told the Guardian last year. “What we have been presented with doesn’t go far enough to improve the fragile existence of millions around the world.”

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India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

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Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

by LacyC35223213562 Posted on March 21, 2016

Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

By on 21 Mar 2016commentsShare

Louisiana’s Superdome has been a controversial setting for climate emergencies in the past, serving as the refuge for 30,000 people who were washed out of their homes during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now, it’s about to become a site for a battle between activists and a leading climate culprit: the oil and gas industry.

Federal regulators will be auctioning off 43 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in the central and eastern Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday. The proposed sale includes 7,919 federally owned oil and gas drilling tracts located three to 230 miles offshore, some of them at depths of more than 11,000 feet.

Several national environmental organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network and 350.org, community members, and indigenous rights groups plan a rally outside the site this Wednesday to oppose new leases for offshore drilling leases. Inside the arena, the real action will be happening: The reserves, which activists say contain the eighth-largest carbon reserve on Earth, could be snapped up by oil and gas companies looking to tap into the Gulf’s still-vast fossil fuel resources.

“We want the administration to stop treating the Gulf like an energy sacrifice zone,” Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth who was en route to New Orleans to lead the rally, told Grist. “Louisiana is already seeing the devastating impacts from changing climate, with relocation efforts already underway.”

In his final year in office, President Barack Obama has charged forward with sweeping environmental policies, including a moratorium on new coal leases and, just last week, a five-year plan that closes the door the on fossil fuel drilling off the Atlantic coast for the next five years. Drilling opponents hope that the late-term pro-climate president will continue his streak by reversing his plan to offer 10 new leases in the Gulf. He was the president who acknowledged that the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf was the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”

The rich deposits lying untapped under thousands of feet of ocean in the Gulf of Mexico are a driller’s dream: The Gulf’s 8,000 seeps, or natural springs where oil and gas leak out of the seafloor. Scientists estimate that the Gulf may contain as many as 42 billion barrels of crude oil, even with the drilling that began in the area in 1954.

There’s a large reserve in the Gulf that already contains infrastructure needed for drilling, like dozens of refineries located close by. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimated last September that the new leases could lead to the production of as many as 894 million barrels of oil and as much as 3.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Unlike Atlantic drilling, which faced relatively large opposition because offshore drilling had never taken hold in the area, the battle to closing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a bigger challenge, requiring the Gulf to turn away from a lucrative industry that has kept it afloat for decades. But given the effects of rapid climate change and rising sea levels in Gulf states, turning to renewables may be the only way they stay afloat, in a much more literal sense.

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Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

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Here are Big Oil’s favorite presidential candidates

by LucasBrune Posted on March 10, 2016

Here are Big Oil’s favorite presidential candidates

By on 10 Mar 2016commentsShare

Hillary Clinton is getting a ride on a roiling river of dirty fossil fuel money, but she’s not the biggest oil-industry recipient with presidential aspirations — not even close.

Oil and gas interests funneled $3.25 million into Priorities USA Action, the largest super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton, during this election cycle, according to new data from Federal Election Commission and compiled by Greenpeace. The funds make up one in every 15 dollars given to the PAC — a striking number for someone who once complained of being tired “of being at the mercy of these large oil companies.”

What’s more, Clinton is receiving fossil fuel funds directly into her campaign, as well. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, she’s received nearly $268,000 from PACs and individuals associated with the oil and gas sector.

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A spokesperson for Clinton told VICE News that she has “fought against fossil fuel interests for decades,” and the former secretary of state has repeatedly argued that her donors don’t hold sway over her decisions. Amid calls for her to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs employees earlier this year, Clinton responded: “Anybody who knows me, who thinks they can influence me, name anything they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing.”

But Clinton’s history isn’t quite that of a tireless campaigner against the interests of fossil fuel companies. While she surely understands climate science and supports Obama’s recent Clean Power Plan regulations, the Clinton Foundation, her family’s nonprofit, has a long record of accepting money from oil giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, as well as from oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia.

Fossil fuel donations received by Clinton’s biggest Democratic adversary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, pale in comparison. Sanders has received only $35,000 in campaign donations from fossil fuel interests this election cycle.But both Sanders and Clinton pale in comparison to the real oil money guzzler, Ted Cruz.

OpenSecrets.org

Throughout his simpering bid for the presidency, Cruz has been called many things: a troll, a jerk, and the zodiac killer. Now, the junior senator from Texas — who once boldly proclaimed, “Climate change is not science. It’s religion” — has officially earned the title of fossil fuel errand boy. Throughout the presidential race, super PACs supporting Cruz received more than $25 million from “megadonors,” or executives, board members, or major investors in the fossil fuel industry. In fact, more than half of the money given to the super PACs that support him — 57 percent — came from fossil fuel companies and stakeholders, according to that same data compiled by Greenpeace. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ numbers, Cruz’s own campaign received $887,451 from PACs and individuals associated with oil and gas. Personally, fossil fuel investments also make up 15.8 to 22.7 percent of Cruz’s own assets.

Simultaneously, Cruz has been doing everything he can to promise an easy road for Big Oil under a Cruz regime. This includes pushing to scale back restrictions on sending U.S. crude oil overseas, making public declarations of love for fracking, and reiterating his anti-science stance over and over again. But none of this should come as a surprise, given that, for years, Cruz has categorically denied the existence of climate change at every chance he can get. To hear Cruz talk about climate change is akin to hearing a Bigfoot hunter explain his latest simian sighting: his argument ignores science, rationale, and any semblance of sanity.

“If you line up the priorities of the hydrocarbons industry, they fit almost perfectly with Cruz’s positions,” Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, told Bloomberg last month. “It’s a natural policy fit.”

Cruz’s hands are covered in oil, and he’s getting dangerously close to smearing them all over the walls of the White House.

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Here are Big Oil’s favorite presidential candidates

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Surprise! A third of Congress members are climate change deniers

by AlmaFaircloth6 Posted on March 9, 2016

Surprise! A third of Congress members are climate change deniers

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

An annual tally of climate deniers in Congress just came out, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news: You’re smarter than 34 percent of Congress. The bad news: You’re smarter than 34 percent of Congress.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that there are 182 climate deniers in the current Congress: 144 in the House and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by people who think that climate change is a big ‘ol liberal hoax — including some leaders at the highest levels of government, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch “I Am Not a Scientist” McConnell and senator and presidential candidate Marco “I Am Not a Scientist” Rubio. (And those are just the members of Congress who are out-and-out deniers, so it doesn’t include the many more who kinda sorta admit that something might be going on with the climate but still don’t want to do anything about it.)

Not surprisingly, many of these same climate deniers have been handsomely rewarded by the fossil fuel industry. In total, these climate-denying congresspeople have received more than $73 million in contributions from oil, gas, and coal companies over the course of their careers. To get the specifics, check out this handy interactive map, which breaks down exactly who in each state is a climate change denier — and exactly how much cash they’ve gotten from dirty energy.

Take Oklahoma, for example, where five out of seven of the current crop of congresspeople are climate deniers. Sen. James Inhofe, who holds the dubious distinction of being the most infamous denier in Congress, has received more than $2 million from fossil fuel interests. He not only called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” he actually threw a snowball on the Senate floor last year in a hilarious attempt to disprove climate change. He did not disprove climate change, but perhaps the stunt earned him an extra check from Oklahoma’s natural gas industry.

Dylann Petrohilos / ThinkProgress

If there’s a silver lining to this dark news, it’s this: Even though a healthy portion our nation’s leaders continue to perpetuate the dangerous myth that climate change isn’t real, the people know better. Nearly 70 percent of Americans support climate change action, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund — and that includes many Republicans. Last year, a survey conducted by Republican pollsters found that even most conservative Republicans both believe climate change is real and support clean energy.

The problem is, not the ones in office.

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

by ZenaidaBecerra Posted on March 8, 2016

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

The death rattle of coal industry grew a little louder when JPMorgan Chase announced last week that the bank will no longer be directly financing new coal operations in the developed world. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change, and that the trends toward more sustainable, low-carbon economies represent growing business opportunities,” said the bank in a statement.

JPMorgan joins a growing list of banks that have pledge to cut ties with coal, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. But before you start to think big banks are closet progressives, it’s best to keep in mind that even if they do cut ties that they are still following the money: Coal is a poor investment right now. Demand for coal in the U.S. has dropped 10 percent in the last three years, and it will drop off even more in the next 15, since replacing the power sector’s favorite fuel with renewable energy and natural gas is a key component of  Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Right now, production is at a 30-year low, and coal companies are going bust left and right. At the State of the Union in January, the president called on the elimination federal subsidies for fossil fuels as well as an end to cheap leases on federal lands for oil and coal companies. So while JPMorgan’s plan to pull back from coal is good, it’s also smart.

The coal industry, of course, disagrees. Bloomberg Business reports that the the National Mining Association called JPMorgan’s changes “hardly a heroic gesture” given the market downturn. “The bank hedges its bets on financing projects in developing countries, because, not surprisingly, that’s where the growth is and will be,” said Luke Popovich in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

He’s got a point: JPMorgan isn’t divesting from fuel entirely. The bank will continue to finance coal projects in developing nations using ultra-supercritical technology, which have lower emissions and higher efficiency than conventional plants. So while this is a step in the right direction, it’s just that: A step.

“In order to have a chance at stabilizing the climate, we need financial institutions to follow these commitments on coal mining with further steps to end coal financing altogether,” said Ben Collins, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, an organization lobbying for coal divestment. “It’s time for the financial sector to step up and lead the just transition we need to a clean, renewable future.”

Clearly, we’re not there yet, but with JPMorgan’s announcement, the death of Big Coal looks even more inevitable.

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

by MilfordEdgell Posted on March 4, 2016

14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

By on 4 Mar 2016commentsShare

It’s not that expectations were very high for the Republican debate in Detroit on Thursday night. Even so, the debate hardly paid attention to the city’s troubles with lead poisoning. Aside for brief comments from Marco Rubio (in which he defended Republican Gov. Rick Snyder), the GOP brushed the issue aside, while standing a mere 70 miles from Flint. Instead, we heard about more pressing topics — like presidential penises.

Democrats have their own debate in Flint on Sunday, when environmental justice activists have higher hopes for a substantive discussion on both race and the environment.

“If Flint is not the place that this happens, it probably is not going to happen in a controlled format with two presidential candidates, ever,” Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy and organizing director of Environmental Action, told Grist.

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A coalition of groups partnering with Environmental Action delivered a petition with 85,000 signatures that calls on the Democratic National Committee to focus solely on racial and environmental justice. Sierra Club, the NAACP, and local community leaders are holding their own event Sunday to draw attention to other “Flints” around the country.

Both Environmental Action and Sierra Club gave Grist separate lists of sample questions they’d like to hear answers to — the topics include hydraulic fracturing, the future of fossil fuels, and equitable policy to help communities of color.

Here’s what Environmental Action wants answers on:

1. Robert Bullard, known as the “father” of environmental justice in America, has said that climate change impacts communities of color “first and worst.” As president, what specific steps would you take to make sure your policies to fight global warming better protect communities of color on the front lines of this global crisis?

2. Secretary Clinton, you just released a bulletin that calls for more use of natural gas as well as carbon capture and sequestration. But wouldn’t this plan mean increased fracking across the country and the potential for drinking water sources to be tainted as it is right here in Flint? Is there a safe way to frack, and if so, what steps would you take to ensure safety and minimize disproportionate impacts to communities of color?

3. Last December, nearly 200 world leaders signed an agreement you both support to cap global warming at 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. To accomplish that goal, scientists tell us we must leave 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. As president, what specific policies would you implement to limit new oil, gas, and coal development and keep America under this “carbon budget”? Secretary Clinton, will you support Sen. Sanders’ plan to ban drilling and mining on public lands and waters, the so-called “Keep It In The Ground” act?

4. Sen. Sanders, how will you enforce a ban on fossil fuel extraction without the support of Congress — which has voted in favor of the Keystone pipeline, oil exports, gas exports, and other fossil fuel extraction in the last six months?

5. Solutions to climate change such as electric cars and efficient lightbulbs are predicated on economic resources that are unavailable to many low-wealth communities of color. What climate change strategies would each of you implement to ensure that people of all income levels can take part in and benefit from living sustainably?

6. Policies like President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, created to address environmental racism, have been never been ratified or implemented as a national law. If elected, how would you overcome political obstacles that stand in the way of equitable and efficient environmental policy?

7. Secretary Clinton, your past statements, referring to men of color as “super-predators,” and past polices that you supported that resulted in the mass incarceration of largely Latino and African American [men] have caused some to question your commitment to racial justice. Do you regret your previous statement and support of that policy, and how would you correct it as president?

8. The GI Bill, New Deal, and favorable housing policies created generational wealth for white Americans. These programs were largely not made available to people of color, which in part contributes to the vast wealth disparity between white people and people of color. What are some specific policies you would implement to not only increase incomes for people of color, but also allow them to generate similar generational wealth as their white counterparts?

9. Native Americans who live on sovereign land have seen treaties broken time and time again, which has exposed them to toxic air and water as well as unequal protection and due process. As president, what commitment will you make to ensure tribal sovereignty and that treaties are respected and maintained?

10. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have not only contributed to increased carbon emissions, but they have also had significant impacts on jobs in communities like Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, and others. Some studies have shown that communities of color were hit the hardest from jobs shipped overseas as a result of these agreements. Where do each of you stand on free trade agreements, and if you advocate for them, how will you ensure they have environmental standards and do not result in the loss of American jobs essential to maintaining the middle class?

11. Should immigration enforcement should be suspended until the 1,000+ undocumented people in Flint get the services and help they need, should the Border Patrol should continue setting up in and around the city while this crisis is ongoing?

Sierra Club added three questions of its own that its members on the ground in Michigan want answered:

12. Do you think emergency manager laws, like the one in Michigan, are compatible with democratic ideals?

13. How should the government ensure that rebuilding after a disaster like Flint provides good paying local jobs that help lift up the community?

14. How should the federal government get involved when a crisis like Flint occurs?

Hold out some hope that CNN, which is moderating the debate, is listening. Rogers-Wright spoke to a network representative earlier this week about the questions the network should ask on Sunday, so a couple of these may indeed get prime-time attention.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hopefully won’t need too much prompting, though: Ahead of Michigan’s primary next week, Clinton has drawn attention to Flint’s problems as a main focus of her campaign, and Sanders has also called on Snyder to resign.

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

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