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Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

by ToshaMuirz Posted on March 3, 2015

Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

By on 3 Mar 2015commentsShare

Europe isn’t doing enough to fight climate change, according to a report out today from the European Environment Agency — and that’s bad news for all of the less ambitious nations out there.

While the European Union is on track to meet its 2020 climate goals, it’s not in a good position to continue on after that to meet its 2050 goals, the report found. The E.U. is also falling short on many other sustainability goals. From Reuters:

The Copenhagen-based EEA said Europe — backed by some of the toughest environmental legislation in the world — had improved air and water quality, cut greenhouse gas emissions and raised waste recycling in recent years.

“Despite these gains, Europe still faces a range of persistent and growing environmental challenges,” including global warming, chemical pollution and extinctions of species of animals and plants, the report said.

Europe is not on track to realise by 2050 its vision of “living well, within the limits of our planet”, as agreed in 2013, it added.

The report indicated that most Europeans were using more than four hectares (10 acres) of the planet’s resources each year — more than double what it rated a sustainable ecological footprint.

The E.U. aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050. The report concludes that “although full implementation of existing policies will be essential, neither the environmental policies currently in place, nor economic and technology-driven efficiency gains, will be sufficient to achieve Europe’s 2050 vision.”

Of particular challenge to Europe is transportation, which accounts for a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. The E.U. hopes to cut that figure by 60 percent, but it isn’t making enough progress toward that goal.

This all comes a week after the European Commission released its vision for a U.N. climate pact to be hammered out in Paris in December. But though the E.U. was first to outline its ambitions for the hoped-for pact — something other countries have yet to formally do — its plan drew criticism for not doing enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and for being too vague. “This does not look like a 2C compatible agreement,” Nick Mabey of the European nonprofit Third Generation Environmentalism told Responding to Climate Change. “It’s only a starting point but it’s a pretty poor starting point … Europe has a better story to tell.”

Both bits of news are particularly notable bummers because Europe has been leading the charge for sustainability and has gone further than other major polluters like the U.S., China, and India in factoring climate mitigation into economic planning. If even the E.U. is falling far short, that doesn’t bode well for global efforts to fight off climate catastrophe.

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Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

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How Hillary Clinton May Have Violated Government Rules on Emails

by GiaSteffanoni Posted on March 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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The New York Times set off a Clinton bomb when it revealed Monday night that Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, used a personal email account instead of a government account for all of her official business. The newspaper reported that Clinton had turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department—yet only after her aides had vetted the massive collection of emails and decided which ones to give to the agency. And it noted that the probable 2016 candidate “may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.”

Ka-boom. Another round in the Hillary wars. Her Republican antagonists pointed to this as a sign of Clinton antipathy toward transparency. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza quickly penned a piece headlined, “Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Address at State Reinforces Everything People Don’t Like About Her.” Clintonistas rushed to her defense. Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton outfit, zapped out talking points: She had followed State Department precedent with regard to the use of email; she knew her emails sent to State Department officials at their official accounts would be retained; she has fully cooperated with State Department requests to produce her emails; and Colin Powell used his personal email account when he was secretary of state. Some pro-Clinton observers pointed out that the federal regulation instructing government employees to “not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business” was not issued until September 2013, months after Clinton had left Foggy Bottom.

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How Hillary Clinton May Have Violated Government Rules on Emails

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill

by ElisaStrack Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

We knew this was coming: About a month after the Senate narrowly passed a bill to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the president vetoed the bill Tuesday afternoon, hours after the White House said he would do so “without drama or fanfare or delay.”

From the AP:

The contentious legislation arrived at the White House on Tuesday morning from Capitol Hill, where Republicans pushed the bill quickly through both chambers in their first burst of activity since taking full control of Congress….

The move sends the politically charged issue back to Congress, where Republicans have yet to show they can muster the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to override Obama’s veto. Sen. John Hoeven, the bill’s chief GOP sponsor, said Republicans are about four votes short in the Senate and need about 11 more in the House.

The veto, which the White House has long promised on this or any other Keystone-approval bill, is the first one in the last five years. It essentially blocks what Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have called a top priority of this congressional session.

Obama’s beef with the bill isn’t necessarily with the pipeline itself. Instead, the president wants the approval process to go through the State Department, which normally has jurisdiction over international infrastructure projects.

In his memo to the Senate, the president said: “Because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest—including our security, safety, and environment—it has earned my veto.”

The administration still hasn’t indicated whether it will approve the pipeline, even though there aren’t any more bureaucratic hurdles to clear. Early this month, the window for government agencies to weigh in closed. The most significant comment came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which said that if oil prices go much lower than they are, moving oil from Canada by truck or train could become too expensive. So a green-light for the pipeline would lead to greater greenhouse gas emissions than if it were not approved.

The final question now is whether the president agrees.

This post has been updated.

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

by TobiasKethel Posted on February 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The surveillance state, it turns out, is even bigger and badder than we thought. Previously, the story from the NSA has been: yes, we have access to petabytes of telephone metadata (who you called, what time you called, etc.), but we don’t have routine access to your actual conversations. And this even made a kind of sense: telephone companies store bulk metadata and can make it available to the NSA. They don’t record phone conversations. Besides, on cell phones those conversations are encrypted anyway.

But guess what? That encryption depends on a key stored on the SIM card inside your cell phone. If you have access to the key, you can listen in to all the conversations you want.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Here is Jeremy Scahill at the Intercept:

American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

….The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world.

….According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access….Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and was working through the vast quantity of product.”

The folks at Gemalto say they had no idea any of this had happened. Apparently it was a very stealthy hack indeed. As you might expect, there is much, much more at the link.

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

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How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out

by XiomaraElisha Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

More Coverage of Homelessness


The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness


Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless


How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out


This Massive Project Is Great News for Homeless Vets in Los Angeles


Here’s What It’s Like to Be a Homeless Techie in Silicon Valley


Hanging Out With the Tech Have-Nots at a Silicon Valley Shantytown

Early in the evening on January 29, hundreds of people filed into a small assembly room at the San Francisco Health Department, psyched for the night’s adventure: They were volunteers for the city’s annual “point in time” homeless count, which was taking place simultaneously in cities across the United States.

Cities are required to participate in the count, which is based on criteria provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The data is used by legislators, government agencies, city officials, nonprofits—anyone who is interested, really—to evaluate strategies intended to curb homelessness. With deadlines approaching for the Obama Administration’s goal of ending chronic and veteran homelessness by the end of 2015—this year’s results would be particularly important.

The administration even dispatched officials to rally the troops—San Francisco got White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “Tonight in Orlando, Tucson, Los Angeles—everybody is going out to do exactly the same thing you are,” he told the volunteers. “It is a huge service to the country because you are going to give us the data that policymakers, academics, the president, and the first lady are going to use to hold us to account.”

McDonough chose San Francisco, he said, in part because it has embraced the president’s initiatives and done a good job at reducing its chronic, child, and veteran homeless populations. It would be up to this crowd to find out how much work was still needed.

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How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Signals Support for Nuclear Deal

by ThorsteDailey Posted on February 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hmmm:

Iran’s supreme leader offered a new signal of support Sunday for a deal to scale back his country’s controversial nuclear program as negotiators race to meet an upcoming deadline.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose recent public pronouncements have usually been skeptical about the talks, promised in a speech to Iranian air force officials that “I would go along with the agreement in the making,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

It is not for nothing that they call him the Supreme Leader. If Khamenei really is suggesting publicly that he might be willing to approve a nuclear agreement with the West, that’s a potentially big deal. It’s never really mattered much what anyone else thinks about the negotiations, after all.

So does this mean I should raise my expectation of a deal from 50-50 to, say, 60-40? Maybe. But I’m not sure I’m there yet.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Signals Support for Nuclear Deal

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EPA: Low Oil Prices Will Make Keystone XL A Climate Nightmare

by Benny Roye Posted on February 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier today the Environmental Protection Agency released a letter that one of its top officials sent yesterday to the State Department, weighing in on the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. The letter is part of a last round of comments from federal agencies before the Obama administration makes a final decision about whether to approve the pipeline, and environmentalists had hoped that it would spell out the threat the project could pose to the climate.

They weren’t disappointed. The EPA letter argues that the recent drop in oil prices means that Keystone XL could come with a major carbon footprint. This is an argument environmentalists like Bill McKibben have been pushing for years. And it’s a big deal—President Barack Obama has said that the pipeline will be approved only if it won’t increase overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s the logic: A pipeline is the cheapest way to move oil; trucks and trains are much more expensive. Canadian tar sands oil is especially expensive to produce. When the price of oil is high, it makes economic sense to export it with trucks and trains. This is the line of reasoning the State Dept. has used to argue that approving the pipeline won’t contribute to climate change: The oil is going to get burned with or without Keystone XL, because producers will just send it out some other way. Republicans in Congress have cited that same State Dept. analysis as evidence that Keystone XL isn’t the climate-killing monster environmentalists make it out to be.

But when the price of oil is so low, that calculus gets turned upside down. According to State’s own analysis, the economic rationale for using trucks and trains starts to erode once the price of oil dips much below $75 per barrel. Right now, oil is hovering around $50 a barrel. So if prices stay low and the if the pipeline isn’t built, that oil might actually stay buried—where many climate scientists have said it needs to stay if we’re to avoid disastrous levels of global warming.

Here’s the key line from the EPA letter:

“At sustained oil prices within this range, construction of the pipeline is projected to change the economics of oil sands development and result in increased oil sands production, and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, over what would otherwise occur.”

Some energy analysts disagree, arguing that oil prices would have to drop much further than current levels to have an impact on tar sands production. And even though there’s reason to think oil could be cheap for a while, energy companies don’t tend to make big expensive decisions about where and how to drill based on short-term market trends. So there’s still room for debate on the EPA’s take here.

The EPA letter is likely to become a centerpiece of the pipeline debate as Congress continues to wrangle over the issue. (A bill to approve the pipeline passed the Senate last week, and next week the House is expected to take it up once again. President Obama has promised to veto the bill.) But the more important thing to watch is whether it changes any minds in the Obama administration, which is nearing a final decision on whether the pipeline will be built.

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EPA: Low Oil Prices Will Make Keystone XL A Climate Nightmare

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

by MAQReginavpus Posted on February 3, 2015

EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

By on 3 Feb 2015commentsShare

Extracting tar-sands oil from Canada would lead to “a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” says the U.S. EPA.

Since the Keystone XL pipeline would facilitate tar-sands extraction, and President Obama said he would only approve the proposed pipeline if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the EPA is in effect saying to the president, “Reject it!”

Right now the pipeline project is being reviewed by the State Department, which will make a recommendation to Obama on whether to give it an OK or a KO. State asked eight other federal agencies, including EPA, to offer their views on the project by yesterday. EPA did so, arguing as it has before that the pipeline would have major environmental and climate impacts. The EPA’s use of the word “significant” is, well, significant, as that’s the same word Obama used in laying out his criteria for making a decision.

Says climate activist (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben, “In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment.”

The EPA has been unenthusiastic about Keystone for years, but it’s even more skeptical now that oil prices are so low. Fuel Fix explains:

In a letter to the State Department released Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency said plummeting crude prices could make the proposed pipeline vital to Canadian oil sands developers who face higher costs to ship their crude by rail.

An earlier State Department analysis of the project found that Alberta, Canada’s oil sands likely would be developed with or without Keystone XL. But the EPA noted that “this conclusion was based in large part on projections of the global price of oil.”

With domestic West Texas Intermediate crude hovering around $50, it’s important to revisit that analysis, said EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement Cynthia Giles.

Says the Natural Resources Defense Council, “There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all.”

Now we just have to wait to see if Obama agrees.

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

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Pesticides just got a whole lot smaller. Is that a good thing?

by FrancesBenoit Posted on January 22, 2015

Pesticides just got a whole lot smaller. Is that a good thing?

By on 22 Jan 2015commentsShare

Nanoparticles are basically the X-Men of the molecular world, in that they are unpredictable, elusive, and come in a dizzying array of forms.

So it should come as no surprise that scientists are now researching a new type of nanotechnology that could revolutionize modern farming: nanopesticides. (Cue: Ooo, ahh) Recent studies have suggested that the nano-scale pesticide droplets could offer a range of benefits including raising crop durability and persistence, while decreasing the amount of pesticide needed to cover the same amount of ground. But they’re also looking at the hefty potential for trouble: No one knows if the nanopesticide particles will seep into water systems, and, if they do, if they will harm non-pests like bees, fish, and even humans.

As we’ve written before, nanotechnology involves engineering particles that are tinier than the tiniest tiny. (More technically, we’re talking anything measured in billionths of a meter.) Scientists find this useful, since most substances behave much differently at that scale. Already, nanotechnology has changed the medical world, with nanoparticles used to purify water, protect against UV rays, and detect contamination.

The same could be true in farming. By shrinking the size of pesticide droplets down to nano-scale, scientists could help decrease overall pesticide use in U.S. agriculture. Which is a big thing — although we’ve come down a bit from the pesticide heyday of the 1980s, we still poured out 516 million pounds of pesticides in 2008 alone. Yipes. Here’s more on the potentially game-changing tech, from Modern Farmer:

By shrinking the size of individual nanopesticide droplets, there is broad consensus — from industry to academia to the Environmental Protection Agency — that the total amount of toxins sprayed on agricultural fields could be significantly reduced. Smaller droplets have a higher total surface area, which offers overall greater contact with crop pests. As well, these tiny particles can be engineered to better withstand degradation in the environment, offering longer-lasting protection than conventional pesticides.

Because many pesticides have been linked to birth defects, nerve damage, and cancer, scientists are pretty damn jazzed about the idea of using less of them.

But wait! Before we all lose our heads over the extreme tinification of agricultural chemicals — scientists still believe there could be a dark side to spraying our food and land with untested substances unknown to nature and immune to the usual kinds of breakdown (whaaa?! no way!).

So researchers across the world are slipping into lab coats and digging in. One project, led by Oregon State researcher Stacey Harper, is currently looking into how the compounds interact with their environment in “nano-sized ecosystems.” The research is still in its beginning stages, but the findings are slated to be published by the end of the year.

There is an obstacle and, surprise, it’s money. Scientists need more — more even than the $3.7 billion the the U.S. has invested through its National Nanotechnology Initiative to date — to assess fully the possible risks and rewards of nanotechnology.

Meanwhile, we giants here in the macro-world will continue enjoy the benefits of nanotechnology in our sunscreen, clean water, and scrumptious caramelly treats — even if invisible to us. As long as they don’t start manipulating magnets …

Source:
Everything You Need To Know About Nanopesticides

, Modern Farmer.

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Pesticides just got a whole lot smaller. Is that a good thing?

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Cuomo and Christie Veto Port Authority Reform Bill. But Is It Permanent?

by BrookeV16j Posted on December 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’m as distant from the politics of New York and New Jersey as it’s possible to get, but I’m puzzled about today’s news that the governors of both states have vetoed legislation that would have reformed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Here’s a typical piece from the New York Daily News:

Rather than sign the bill supporters say would have opened the bi-state agency to much needed transparency and accountability, the two governors crossed party lines to announce they would push a reform package recommended Saturday by a panel they had created earlier this year.

….The bill’s Assembly sponsor James Brennan (D-Brooklyn) and other critics argued there was no justification for the veto of legislation passed unanimously by the legislatures in both states.

Some, like former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who in 2009 sponsored a public authorities reform bill that did not cover the Port Authority, suggested Cuomo, a Democrat, and Christie, a Republican, were more interested in protecting their own power than actually reforming the agency. “It’s shameful,” Brodsky said. “They ripped the heart out of real reform in order to maintain their control and power.”

….New Jersey Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto said the vetoes were a slap in the face to commuters who “rightly expected more from the governors after the revelations at the Port Authority over the last year.”…Cuomo and Christie say the reforms they are recommending embrace “the spirit and intent” of the legislation….But critics suggest the recommendations were meant as a smokescreen to distract from the vetoes. “Power trumped good government,” Brodsky said.

Wait a second. The bills were passed unanimously in both legislatures. It should be a snap to override the vetoes, right? And yet, none of the stories I read so much as mentioned the possibility. The best I could find was the last sentence of an AP dispatch:

New Jersey Sen. Loretta Weinberg said the decision was a “cop-out,” and Assemblyman John Wisniewski said he’s disappointed the bill didn’t become law…..Both Weinberg and Wisniewski predicted that overturning a veto would be difficult.

Can someone fill me in on the inner workings of New York and New Jersey politics? Do legislators’ loyalties to their governors really carry that much weight? I mean, everyone knew Cuomo and Christie were opposed to the bill from the start. So if the legislatures passed it unanimously to begin with, why can’t they now muster a two-thirds vote to override? What am I missing here?

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Cuomo and Christie Veto Port Authority Reform Bill. But Is It Permanent?

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