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African Americans will pay a steep price for Trump’s new solar tariff

by DMPTarenvkm Posted on February 13, 2018

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last week, a 30 percent tariff that President Donald Trump tacked onto imported solar panels kicked in. Industry experts are predicting it will end up costing the U.S. 23,000 solar jobs in 2018 alone. There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how precisely the new tariff will impact domestic solar panel sales and jobs, but GTM Research expects it to slow the residential solar market by nearly 10 percent between now and 2022. That could affect the number of solar jobs in the future, especially where the power drill hits the rooftop — more than three-fourths of solar jobs in the U.S. are in demand-side sectors such as installation.

The United States was enjoying a 168 percent growth rate in solar jobs since 2010, according to the 2017 Solar Jobs Census report released last week. African Americans in particular have seen a burst in solar workforce participation over the past few years, constituting 7.4 percent of the workforce in 2017, compared to 6.6 percent the year before and 5.2 percent in 2015.

This, of course, is hardly proportional to the general working-age black population, but African Americans were the only racial group to see their share of the solar workforce significantly expand between 2016 and 2017 — every other group, save for whites, saw a drop.

In fact, the entire solar industry saw a decline in jobs last year, losing an estimated 9,800 jobs from 2016. This was the first year the solar census recorded a drop-off since it began tracking job numbers in 2010. The anomalous solar jobs increase found among African Americans is driven in part by the widening list of jurisdictions with large black populations that have adopted new solar policies — states like New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., according to the report.

The National Solar Foundation

The depression found otherwise across the industry can be attributed to the cool-down in solar projects in states like California and Massachusetts, where solar already had a stronghold. There was a surge in solar power development in 2016, when there was something of a panic about federal solar tax credits expiring that year (Congress later extended those tax credits).

However, the solar market was rattled once again in 2017 when two solar power manufacturing companies, the bankruptcy-headed Suniva and SolarWorld Americas, petitioned the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to adjust the prices of imported solar panels via tariff because they claimed they couldn’t compete. This is what triggered Trump’s decision in January to levy the tariff, based on an ITC ruling in September that sided with the two companies.

The Solar Energy Industries Association took umbrage, saying that such tariffs would not save those two solar companies from bankruptcy, but would “create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving.” The trade group was joined in opposition by organizations that tilt conservative and promote free-market policies, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose International Relations and Federalism Task Force director Karla Jones wrote before the ITC decision:

Over 38,000 solar workers are employed in manufacturing positions at firms domestically making solar components like inverters, racking systems and more. Guess what happens if one doubles the price of solar panels in America? This thriving industry will quickly succumb to tough competition from natural gas, coal and other forms of energy. Those 38,000 manufacturing jobs might disappear if artificially high input costs price the entire industry out of existence. Just ask the domestic steel industry, which blends tens of thousands of domestic jobs after the last successful Section 201 petition slapped tariffs on imported steel.

Since Trump followed through on the tariff, one major question has been whether it would impact urban-scale projects, especially with the spread of solar power developments for low-income households and community-shared distribution. Also, will the steady growth in employment for African Americans in urban centers now be blunted due to the expected rise in solar panel costs?

As the NAACP recently noted in the launch of its new Solar Equity Initiative, low-income households spend more than twice as much of their take-home wages on lighting and heating their homes than do middle-class and wealthy households, and nearly 70 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. Which means they live with those plants’ air pollution. Scaling up and pricing down solar costs could help alleviate those problems.

It’s too early to tell what impact this will have on city-located solar jobs with the tariff just kicking in this week. The bulk of the cost of solar projects is mostly in labor, permitting, and installation, even for systems in low-income areas. The cost of panels is usually less than 15 percent of the total cost of these kinds of projects. Still, the future is somewhat uncertain for some organizations that have committed to spreading solar to poor families.

One organization grappling with this issue is Civic Works, a Baltimore nonprofit. It just completed the pilot phase of a new solar initiative that installed solar panels on the rooftops of 10 houses in several low-income communities, including Sandtown-Winchester, the neighborhood where Freddie Gray, who had asthma, was arrested before he was later found dead in police custody.

A loan from the City of Baltimore’s Energy Initiative Loan Program gave the nonprofit the capital to cover all the upfront costs of solar installation on the houses it’s serving. Civic Works will receive additional help from the 30 percent federal solar tax credit to recoup some of those costs, which is generally how low-income solar is financed. Many of the nonprofit’s workers are people who’ve been incarcerated and unemployed. However, nonprofits usually are working on very thin-margin budgets in this game, and can’t afford anything even a little financially surprising.

“Our suppliers have told us, ‘Don’t worry, we have tons of solar panels already,’ so it’s not something that’s going to affect us immediately, but it will down the line,” said Earl Millett, Civic Works’ chief operating officer. “To get the project done that we just did at the end of 2017, we needed everything to pull together perfectly, and we still had just a little wiggle room in the economics.”

Millett continued: “The economics are tough to work out with any solar project, though, and doing it on low-income homes adds an extra complexity. But it’s something people are working to overcome, because having a large segment of our population miss out on the benefits of solar just because they’re low-income residents shouldn’t be acceptable.”

Anya Schoolman, executive director of Solar United Neighbors of D.C., said the the real impact of the tariff will be felt on large utility-scale solar projects, like the fields of panels you might find on undeveloped land or in a desert. Solar United Neighbors has been working to spread community solar and also embarked on a project to rest solar panels on the roofs of 220 low-income households in D.C., at no cost to the homeowners.

“The tariffs are going to be an issue, but it’s one of the smaller variables,” said Schoolman. “We have many other variables to consider such as permitting costs [and] interconnection costs, which are what the utility companies charge, and those things end up making a bigger difference.”

However, the blow to the larger utility-scale solar projects is not insignificant. According to Schoolman, those projects, some of which are now on hold because of the tariff, were just beginning to compete with coal and natural gas. The 2017 Solar Jobs Census found that 86 percent of surveyed solar businesses said the tariff would negatively impact their company. The census also reported that 78 percent of project developers and 70 percent of companies that do installations would decrease their solar activities under new trade restrictions. This was all before Trump imposed the tariff. Since then, one major solar project in Texas has been stalled, according to Utility Dive.

The tariff directly affects only jobs in the manufacturing industry, which account for roughly 15 percent of the solar industry. The installation sector, by comparison, accounts for roughly 52 percent of the industry. Neither Millett nor Schoolman thought the tariff would have any real impact on installation jobs in their programs, at least not immediately, despite the prospect of panel prices slightly rising. Both the installation and manufacturing sectors experienced job losses in 2017, according to the Solar Jobs Census.

Stacey Danner, who ran a company that financed solar panels for low-income households in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, said he didn’t understand why Trump would kick the solar industry while it was down with this tariff.

“If you’re talking about jobs and building the industry, then this isn’t the way to do it because you’re throwing workers from thriving businesses in a nascent industry out,” he said. “Now they are back at square one, which puts them back on unemployment and back on welfare rolls. And I thought that what this was what Trump’s policies were supposed to prevent?”

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African Americans will pay a steep price for Trump’s new solar tariff

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BREAKING: Donald Trump Avoids Imploding For Two Days!

by Mickie6771 Posted on August 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here’s the front page of the LA Times this morning. I have to say I’m impressed. Donald Trump gets a huge headline in the lead spot for spending—what? Two days? Maybe three? Anyway, two or three days without doing anything egregiously idiotic. It’s like the way we lavish praise on a two-year-old for not throwing his food all over the kitchen.

According to the story itself, Trump gave a good speech! He ran some TV ads! He visited Baton Rouge for 49 seconds! The first was plainly aimed at his white base, not at the African-Americans it was putatively meant for. The second is the bare minimum that any presidential campaign is expected to do. And the third was transparent hucksterism. Still, he managed to avoid imploding the entire time. Good boy, Donald!

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BREAKING: Donald Trump Avoids Imploding For Two Days!

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Are the US Dietary Guidelines on Milk Racist?

by RollandCockerill Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The federal government’s dietary guidelines urge adults to consume at least three cups of milk a day to guard against osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become brittle and weak. People who are lactose intolerant—a group that includes 75 percent of African Americans—”can choose low-lactose and lactose-free dairy products,” the guidelines say. But a new study has called into question this one-size-fits-all approach. It suggests that most African American adults might not need milk at all.

Read: The Scary New Science That Shows Milk Is Bad for You

Scientists have known for some time that people who live in Africa have some of the world’s lowest rates of osteoporosis. Researchers long assumed that the difference was due to Africans’ lower life expectancy (since the condition usually shows up later in life), more active lifestyles, and a lack of doctors to diagnose and treat the condition. Yet a study published in June in BoneKEy, an offshoot of the journal Nature, offers a compelling alternative explanation: Many Africans are genetically adapted to low-calcium diets.

Study author Constance Hilliard, an evolutionary historian at the University of North Texas, examined osteoporosis rates in Nigeria and Cameroon, two African countries that fall within an area known as the tsetse belt. Dairy farming is impossible in this equatorial region because of the presence of the tsetse fly, a tropical pest that transmits parasites that kill cattle. Despite a nearly complete lack of dairy consumption in the two countries, their osteoporosis rates are among the lowest in the world—just two to three cases out of every 100,000 people.

In an effort to figure out why, Hilliard looked at Kenya, a country outside the tsetse belt where milk consumption is common yet life expectancies and socioeconomic conditions remain essentially the same. Kenya’s rate of osteoporosis is dramatically higher—245 cases out of 100,000 people. That’s also much closer to levels in the United States, where the rate is 595 per 100,000 people.

So what’s going on here? One possibility is that milk consumption actually increases the risk for osteoporosis. As I mentioned in a magazine piece last year, a 2014 Swedish study found women who drank more than two and a half glasses of milk a day had a higher fracture risk than their counterparts who drank less than one glass a day. Though other studies have come to the opposite conclusion, researchers have found, on balance, that calcium intake does not significantly reduce the risk of hip fracture in women or men.

Hilliard finds a more compelling explanation in genetics. The tsetse belt is largely inhabited by the Niger-Kordofanian ethnicity (also the predominant ethnicity among African Americans), which is known to be lactose intolerant. Niger-Kordofanians make up for the lack of milk in their diets by better absorbing calcium. In the United States, studies have shown that black children and adults excrete less calcium than whites on essentially the same diets, thereby retaining more calcium in their bones. “This is why certain populations can maintain strong bones and are at low risk of osteoporosis even though they consume 200 mg of calcium day”—a fifth of what the federal government recommends, Hilliard says. It could also be why the rate of osteoporosis and related fractures in African American women is half that of Caucasian women.

“This is a very interesting paper,” says Connie Weaver, the director of the Women’s Global Health Institute at Purdue University and an expert on osteoporosis. “We know that genetics determine 60 to 80 percent of bone mass and lifestyle choices the rest. This paper offers one genetic difference that is likely more controlling of bone mass than diet or other lifestyle choices.”

Still, Weaver doesn’t think African Americans should consume less dairy. Though they may have less of a genetic disposition for osteoporosis, she argues that “there still would be a range of risk within that genotype that would be improved by adequate dairy or the nutrients provided by dairy.”

Hilliard makes no dietary recommendations—after all, she is a historian, not a nutritionist. Still, she points out that African Americans may be uniquely susceptible to some of milk’s side effects. Multiple studies have correlated high levels of dairy consumption to prostate cancer; African Americans are 2.4 times as likely to die from the disease as the population at large. Though other genetic and socioeconomic factors may explain their higher risk, some studies have pointed to dairy. The California Collaborative Prostate Cancer Study, published in 2012, found that calcium consumption was closely related to an increased risk of prostate cancer, particularly in black men who carry a genotype common in populations of African origin.

Yet the federal government’s dietary recommendations don’t account for such distinctions. And that omission, she says, amounts to something like discrimination. “What has happened is the medical community has universalized the particular biology of Caucasians,” Hilliard says. “And the medical community has yet to frame its questions in ways that investigate whether foods that have been culturally labeled as ‘good for you’ have deleterious consequences for minorities.”

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Are the US Dietary Guidelines on Milk Racist?

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Circuit Court: North Carolina Law Targeted African-Americans "With Surgical Precision"

by HyeMarshall Posted on July 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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I wrote my post yesterday about the North Carolina voting law before I had a chance to read the 4th Circuit Court opinion that struck it down. It turns out to be even more amazing than I thought. The court wrote that various provisions of North Carolina’s law “target African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and they weren’t kidding:

The original version of SL 2013-381 provided that all government-issued IDs, even many that had been expired, would satisfy the requirement as an alternative to DMV-issued photo IDs….With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.

….Legislators also requested data as to the racial breakdown of early voting usage….The racial data provided to the legislators revealed that African Americans disproportionately used early voting in both 2008 and 2012….After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting.

….Legislators similarly requested data as to the racial makeup of same-day registrants….SL 2013-381 eliminated same-day registration….Legislators additionally requested a racial breakdown of provisional voting….With SL 2013-381, the General Assembly altogether eliminated out-of-precinct voting….African Americans also disproportionately used preregistration…. Although preregistration increased turnout among young adult voters, SL 2013-381 eliminated it.

….As “evidence of justifications” for the changes to early voting, the State offered purported inconsistencies in voting hours across counties, including the fact that only some counties had decided to offer Sunday voting. The State then elaborated on its justification, explaining that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic.”

It’s not just that every provision coincidentally happens to affect blacks disproportionately. In at least a couple of cases, provisions were added only after the legislature had racial breakdowns in hand so they could make sure they weren’t accidentally targeting whites too.

Remarkably, even with this evidence before it, the district court upheld the law. This prompts a longtime question of mine: how far do courts have to go in believing the justification that a legislature provides for its actions? Obviously you want to be careful with this, but there’s a point at which, literally, everyone knows what’s really going on. And yet courts have to pretend to believe something else. This sure seems like a destruction test of this concept.

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Circuit Court: North Carolina Law Targeted African-Americans "With Surgical Precision"

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New Study: Racism Can Make Kids Sick—for the Rest of Their Lives

by OliverPowlett Posted on September 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Racism is still one of America’s greatest social ills—and it might actually be making people sick. According to a new study out of Northwestern University, racial discrimination experienced in adolescence can have a profound impact on health later in life.

Controlling for other factors that might cause stress, including socioeconomic status, health behaviors, and depression, researchers found that adults who had reported higher levels of discrimination when they were young had disrupted stress hormone levels 20 years later—and that African Americans experienced the effects at greater levels than their white counterparts.

“There’s sometimes a tendency to say, ‘Oh, they are just kids—they will get over it,'” says developmental psychologist and head researcher Emma Adam. “But it turns out there can be lasting impact.”

Using participants from the Maryland Adolescent Development Context Study—a large-scale, 20-year survey that included adolescents from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds—the researchers were able to compare levels of the stress hormone cortisol in adults to the responses they gave as 12-year-olds.

Normal cortisol levels are high when you wake up, increase about 30 minutes later, and then slowly decline throughout the day, winding you down until it’s time for bed. “The high morning levels are there to activate you for the day, giving you the energy and focus, and stimulate your appetite to basically rev you up to face the demands of your day,” Adam says.

But, the researchers found, those who reported they had experienced discrimination when they were 12 years old now have much flatter cortisol ranges. “Under stress you lose some of that important cycle,” Adam says. “You get a drop of those morning levels, you wake up groggier, and it is harder to sleep at night.”

While the effects on daily functioning are troublesome, the long-term effects are far worse: These flat rhythms are associated with higher risk for life-threatening health problems like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and also can cause depression and chronic fatigue.

African Americans reported experiencing discrimination at much higher levels over the course of the study, and Adam believes that likely triggered chronic stress. “The stress hormones I study respond to not just the presence of discrimination but even the anticipation that it might happen,” she says. “That is why discrimination is such a pervasive negative influence and really harmful to biology and health.”

While the study did not look into ways to mitigate the effects, Adam says previous research indicates increased emotional support and getting enough sleep can help improve hormone levels.

“I think the message is: For folks who would like to say that this is a thing of the past—it is not,” she says. “These are concerns that are affecting the daily functioning, the health, and the well-being of African Americans, and it should be of concern to the whole country.”

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New Study: Racism Can Make Kids Sick—for the Rest of Their Lives

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This Silicon Valley Giant Is Actually Hiring Women and Minorities

by Laurind7100 Posted on August 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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In January, Intel raised the bar in Silicon Valley by setting concrete targets for hiring women and minorities. While other major tech firms had cut big checks to groups that promote workplace diversity, Intel was the only one to commit to measurable change, pledging to make its workforce reflect the diversity of the tech talent pool by 2020. Some saw the goal as overly optimistic, but Intel’s midyear diversity report, released today, shows that it is largely on track to meet its goals.

Overall, more than 43 percent of the company’s new hires since January have been women or racial minorities such as African-Americans and Hispanics:

These numbers may not seem particularly high—African-Americans, after all, make up 13 percent of the American workforce but just 3.5 percent of Intel’s. But they do compare favorably with the talent pipeline for technical jobs. (Just 4.5 percent of computer science degrees last year went to African-Americans). And the overall demographics in the tech sector are pretty skewed to white dudes:

Compared to those industry-wide numbers, Intel is still falling behind in hiring African-Americans. Yet a comparison of workplace demographics in December and July shows that it’s making progress on several fronts:

Though these shifts aren’t huge in percentage terms, they are notable for a company with tens of thousands of employees. The biggest jumps in minority representation have come within the company’s leadership ranks—which still remain heavily white and male:

Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow PUSH Coalition has played a major behind-the-scenes role in Intel’s efforts to diversify, issued a press release praising the company. “Rainbow PUSH argues that companies must set measurable diversity and inclusion goals, targets, and timetables,” he said. “Due to CEO Brian Krzanich’s steady and visionary leadership, Intel is doing that and more.”

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This Silicon Valley Giant Is Actually Hiring Women and Minorities

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The Combined Black Workforces of Google, Facebook, and Twitter Could Fit on a Single Jumbo Jet

by WhitneyClogstoun Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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We already knew that Google, Facebook, and Twitter employed relatively few African Americans, but new details show that the gap is truly striking. All three companies have disclosed their full EEO1 reports, detailed accounts of their employees’ race and gender demographics that the law requires them to submit to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The reports show that out of a combined 41,000 Twitter, Facebook, and Google employees, only 758, or 1.8 percent, are black. To put this in perspective, all of those workers could fit onto a single Airbus A380. Have a look:

African Americans comprise 13 percent of the overall workforce, which means they are underrepresented at Google, Facebook, and Twitter by a factor of 7. Here’s a visual comparison of the black employees…

versus all other employees:

Race and gender gaps in tech hiring have been hot-button issues as of late. Since last May, when Rev. Jesse Jackson showed up at Google’s shareholder meeting, he has won some serious diversity concessions from major tech companies—but the pace of minority hiring remains slow. As the Guardian noted yesterday, Facebook hired 1,216 new people last year, and only 36 were black. Since last year, the percentage of black Google workers has not changed.

It should be easier to shift workplace demographics at smaller companies. Twitter, with fewer than 3,000 employees in 2014, has a huge black user base that is sometimes referred to as “Black Twitter.” Jackson wants the company to do more to move the needle. “I am very disappointed,” he told the Guardian. “We are becoming intolerant with these numbers. There’s a big gap between their talk and their implementation.”

Airplane image: Anthony Lui/Noun Project

Correction: An early version of this story misstated the number of black employees at Google and incorrectly suggested that Twitter had released its 2015 EEO1 report. Mother Jones regrets the errors.

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The Combined Black Workforces of Google, Facebook, and Twitter Could Fit on a Single Jumbo Jet

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More Evidence of Paul Ryan’s "Inner Cities" Problem

by KourtneLoughman Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, was still defending his recent comments about inner-cities culture this week, when he appeared on Fox News and told host Bill O’Reilly, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” Ryan was responding to criticism he drew after saying earlier this month, during an interview with conservative radio host Bill Bennett, “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” Some accused Ryan of using racist—or racially-loaded—rhetoric. Ryan replied that he had been “inarticulate” but was not “implicating the culture of one community”—that is, African Americans. Yet his interview with Bennett was not the first time that Ryan, a potential 2016 presidential contender, had given the impression that inner city poverty was linked to the supposed cultural deficiencies of minority Americans.

In 2005, Ryan spoke to the Atlas Society, a libertarian outfit devoted to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. “I grew up reading Ayn Rand,” he noted, “and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.” And he observed that all political battles “usually” come down “to one conflict: individualism vs. collectivism.” Asked to describe the best Randian argument to advance libertarian notions on Capitol Hill and beat back the welfare state, Ryan replied,

I think the victimization argument. I think that the fact that collectivists speak down to people as victims is not only an arrogant thing to do, but it produces poor results. So backing up, this victimization class that collectivists try to produce, and showing the folks you’re trying to convince that this is not only in their best interests—in their worst interests—that it’s not dignifying, and it’s arrogant. That seems to work. We’re trying to recruit a lot of minority legislators to work with us on personal savings and health accounts because, of all things, it’s in their best interest to fight party bosses from the Democrats, who are really insisting on everybody toeing the line… But I always try to show how victimhood has gotten them nothing.

You can listen to Ryan’s full answer here:

In these remarks, Ryan appeared to be associating the “victimization class” with “minority legislators,” and suggesting that this group of people have gained nothing by accepting “victimhood.” It’s a message close to Mitt Romney’s 47-percent remarks and Ryan’s own takers-verus-makers line. But there is a racial cast to the comment.

In a 2012 interview, Ryan contended that inner city crime was a cultural matter. Speaking to a reporter with the ABC television affiliate in Flint, Michigan, Ryan remarked,

the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity in the inner cities, is to help people get out of poverty in the inner cities, is to help teach people good discipline, good character. That is civil society. That’s what charities, and civic groups, and churches do to help one another make sure that they can realize the value in one another.

A key problem, he appeared to be saying, was with the character of poor people within the inner cities. Given the high percentage of African Americans in such areas, this remark, too, could be seen as racially charged.

It’s no shocker when Ryan—or other libertarians—denounce government assistance programs for breeding dependency and preventing recipients from developing a robust work ethic. But Ryan contends all this assistance leads to a cultural problem. In 2012, he told conservative host Star Parker that the best way to undo the harm caused by a “welfare state that lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency” is to bring “cultural antibodies back in.” And by tying this depraved culture to inner-city Americans, Ryan presents an analysis that can be read to include a racial component. What he said on Bennett’s radio show was not out of sync with his usual rhetoric. It was not inarticulate. It was a view he has expressed before and presumably believes fully.

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More Evidence of Paul Ryan’s "Inner Cities" Problem

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