Tag Archives: alaska

The Navajo Nation Will Soon Have the Country’s First-Ever Junk-Food Tax

by AdalbertoCocker Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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A version of this piece was originally published by Civil Eats.

Next month, after three years of legislative tug-of-war, the Navajo Nation will become the first place in the United States to impose a tax on junk food. The Healthy DineÌ&#129; Nation Act of 2014, signed into law by Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly last November, mandates a 2 percent sales tax on pastries, chips, soda, desserts, fried foods, sweetened beverages, and other products with “minimal-to-no-nutritional value” sold within the borders of the nation’s largest reservation.

Authored by the Diné Community Advocacy Alliance (DCAA), a grassroots organization of community volunteers, the legislation was modeled on existing taxes on tobacco and alcohol, as well as other fat and sugar tax initiatives outside the United States. The act follows on the heels of a spring 2014 amendment that removed a 5 percent tribal sales tax on fresh fruits and vegetables.

The sales tax will generate an estimated $1 million a year in 110 tribal chapters for wellness projects—greenhouses, food processing and storage facilities, traditional foods cooking classes, community gardens, farmers’ markets, and more.

Those who advocate for a return to a more traditional diet hail the law as a positive change: The Navajo Nation, a 27,000-square-mile area that straddles three states, has a 42 percent unemployment rate. Nearly half of those over the age of 25 live under the federal poverty line. The USDA has identified nearly all of the Navajo Nation as a food desert, meaning heavily processed foods are more available than fresh produce and fruit.

According to a 2014 report from the Diné Policy Institute there are just 10 full-service grocery stores on the entire Navajo reservation, a territory about the size of West Virginia that straddles parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. As a result, many people rely on food stamps to stretch grocery dollars with the inexpensive processed, fried, and sugary foods commonly found in gas stations or convenience stores.

But even having a grocery store nearby doesn’t guarantee access to healthy food. A DCAA survey of one major grocer in the town of Kayenta found approximately 80 percent of the store’s inventory qualified, in the group’s definition, as junk food. Compounding the issue is the continued popularity at family gatherings, flea-markets, and ceremonial gatherings of lard-drenched frybread—whose dubious origins have been traced back to the “Long Walk,” the federal government’s forced removal of Navajos to a military fort in New Mexico 300 miles away from ancestral land in Arizona.

The heavy consumption of soda, fat, and processed foods has taken its toll. According to the Indian Health Service, an estimated 25,000 of the Navajo Nation’s 300,000 members have type-2 diabetes and another 75,000 are pre-diabetic. The tribe has some of the worst health outcomes in the United States, with rampant hypertension and cardiovascular disease. According to data collected between 1999 and 2009 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overall death rates for American Indians and Alaska Natives were nearly 50 percent greater than those of non-Hispanic whites.

These stark health statistics drove the DCAA to lobby for a consumer tax—despite strong opposition at the start from Shelly and some council delegates. Navajo Nation Council Delegate Jonathan Nez was a co-sponsor of the Healthy Diné Nation Act. He says there was “overwhelming support” for the initiative in his region, a large rural area on the Utah and Arizona border, but he did hear misgivings amongst the general population and some of the other delegates.

“Some people thought: ‘A two-percent sales tax is going to hit my wallet,'” says Nez. The legislation was vetoed three times by Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, because of questions about how the tax would be regulated. He also cited concerns about how the tax would be enacted along with its potential impact on small business owners. Other opponents said the bill would place undue burden on consumers and drive desperately needed revenue off the reservation and into surrounding cities. After multiple revisions, the tax gained support from a majority of the council, with the added concession of a 2020 expiration date.

While this is the first “junk-food tax” in the United States, the movement to slow the consumption of unhealthy foods gained momentum last November after residents of Berkeley, California voted to tax soda and other sweetened beverages. According to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, which supports a national sugar-sweetened Beverage (SSB) Tax, studies show a correlation between added excise taxes and lower consumption rates. One 2011 study published in Preventive Medicine showed that a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages nationally could generate nearly $16 billion a year in revenue between 2010 and 2015 while cutting consumption by 24 percent.

It’s still too soon to evaluate the tax’s effect on consumption habits in the Navajo Nation, but Nez says it has already opened a discussion “about how to take better care of yourself, how to return back to the way we used to live, with fresh produce, vegetables, and fruit along with our own traditional unprocessed foods.”

Denisa Livingston, a community health advocate with the DCAA, has been leading grocery store tours in Window Rock, Arizona to educate government officials and community members about how the layout and inventory of local markets affects buying patterns. “I’ve been telling the councils, food can either empower us and make us strong, or it can kill us,” she says. “Healthy food is not just our tradition, it’s our identity. This is the start of a return to food sovereignty.”

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The Navajo Nation Will Soon Have the Country’s First-Ever Junk-Food Tax

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Overpumping of Groundwater Is Contributing to Global Sea Level Rise

by Myrna Posted on March 18, 2015

Drilling for water could account for as much as 7 percent of sea level rise. Irrigation in California’s San Joaquin Valley GomezDavid/iStock Pump too much groundwater and wells go dry—that’s obvious. But there is another consequence that gets little attention as a hotter, drier planet turns increasingly to groundwater for life support. So much water is being pumped out of the ground worldwide that it is contributing to global sea level rise, a phenomenon tied largely to warming temperatures and climate change. It happens when water is hoisted out of the earth to irrigate crops and supply towns and cities, then finds its way via rivers and other pathways into the world’s oceans. Since 1900, some 4,500 cubic kilometers of groundwater around the world—enough to fill Lake Tahoe 30 times—have done just that. Read the rest at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Original source: Overpumping of Groundwater Is Contributing to Global Sea Level Rise

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Overpumping of Groundwater Is Contributing to Global Sea Level Rise

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California Is Pumping Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago

by Myrna Posted on March 18, 2015

And it’s not going to be replaced any time soon. Irrigating rice fields in Richvale, Calif. Jae C. Hong/AP By now, the impacts of California’s unchecked groundwater pumping are well-known: the dropping water levels, dried-up wells and slowly sinking farmland in parts of the Central Valley. But another consequence gets less attention, one measured not by acre-feet or gallons-per-minute but the long march of time. As California farms and cities drill deeper for groundwater in an era of drought and climate change, they no longer are tapping reserves that percolated into the soil over recent centuries. They are pumping water that fell to Earth during a much wetter climatic regime—the ice age. Such water is not just old. It’s prehistoric. It is older than the earliest pyramids on the Nile, older than the world’s oldest tree, the bristlecone pine. It was swirling down rivers and streams 15,000 to 20,000 years ago when humans were crossing the Bering Strait from Asia. Read the rest at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. More: California Is Pumping Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago

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California Is Pumping Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago

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Baked Alaska

by Myrna Posted on March 17, 2015

If the Last Frontier is the canary in the climate coal mine, we’re in trouble. Bear Glacier, Alaska, in 2007 Tim Hamilton/Flickr Earlier this winter, Monica Zappa packed up her crew of Alaskan sled dogs and headed south, in search of snow. “We haven’t been able to train where we live for two months,” she told me. Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, which Zappa calls home, has been practically tropical this winter. Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alaska, has been dumbfounded. “Homer, Alaska, keeps setting record after record, and I keep looking at the data like, Has the temperature sensor gone out or something?” Something does seem to be going on in Alaska. Last fall, a skipjack tuna, which is more likely to be found in the Galápagos than near a glacier, was caught about 150 miles southeast of Anchorage, not far from the Kenai. This past weekend, race organizers had to truck in snow to the ceremonial Iditarod start line in Anchorage. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska tweeted a photo of one of the piles of snow with the hashtag #wemakeitwork. But it’s unclear how long that will be possible. Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the country—a canary in our climate coal mine. A new report shows that warming in Alaska, along with the rest of the Arctic, is accelerating as the loss of snow and ice cover begins to set off a feedback loop of further warming. Warming in wintertime has been the most dramatic—more than 6 degrees in the past 50 years. And this is just a fraction of the warming that’s expected to come over just the next few decades. Read the rest at Slate. Read more –  Baked Alaska ; ; ;

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Baked Alaska

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What Happens When an Eclipse Hits the World’s Most Solar-Powered Country?

by KittyU90zfgqpe Posted on March 13, 2015

Mother Jones

On March 20, Europe will experience a total solar eclipse for a few hours in the morning. The last time an eclipse of this scale happened in Europe was in 1999. Back then, Germany got less than 1 percent of its power from solar energy. Today, Germany is the world’s most solar-dependent country, drawing nearly 7 percent of its electricity from the sun. So when the passing moon blots out the sun, will the country’s lights go out too?

Over the last couple months, that question has gotten plenty of attention in the German media. In September, Der Spiegel reported that some power companies were afraid the eclipse would leave the power grid “dangerously unstable.” In February, the business weekly Wirtschafts Woche warned that factories could suddenly lose power if electric supply doesn’t keep pace with demand.

Still, the view among most energy experts is that the eclipse will come and go with no noticeable effect for consumers. That’s because the country’s utility companies have spent months preparing for what is essentially an unprecedented test of the futuristic German grid, which is a model for clean energy advocates in the United States.

“Some of the hype ahead of the eclipse served to focus minds,” said Andreas Kramer, a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam. Power companies “relish the upcoming opportunity to show how they can handle that challenge professionally.”

So what’s the big deal, exactly? The sun goes down every night, of course, and Germany is quite accustomed to cloudy days (it gets about as much sunshine as Alaska). The difference with a solar eclipse is the speed at which sunlight will disappear from, and then return to, the power system. All electric grids operate on the fundamental principle that supply and demand must always be in perfect equilibrium, second-by-second. That dynamic becomes complicated when so much of your power comes from a source like solar, over which grid operators have zero control. And it’s especially tricky when the fluctuation is so rapid and extreme.

Typically, Germans can rely on coal-fired power plants to pick up the slack at night, when power demand is relatively low anyway. But those can take many hours to fire up, and the eclipse is expected to make solar output dip nearly three times faster than normal, according to a recent analysis by clean energy market research firm Opower.

“It’s fair to say that this is the most dramatic intersection ever between a solar eclipse and solar energy,” Opower analyst Barry Fischer said.

Generally speaking, a byproduct of the clean energy revolution is an increasing need to replace the old grid model—which relied almost exclusively on a small number of big, inflexible power plants—with a highly flexible suite of interconnected options. So the eclipse is a chance to test just how responsive and adaptive Germany’s new grid can be. The outcome will be a valuable lesson for US grid managers who are looking to a much more solar-heavy future.

Take a look at the bite the eclipse will take out of Germany’s solar production, according to Opower:

Opower

The exact change will depend the weather that day; if it’s already cloudy, the drop will be less drastic. (The current forecast for Munich—which is in Bavaria, the province with the most solar—is partly cloudy on that day.)

The temporary hole left by the eclipse will be filled by natural gas plants, which fire up relatively quickly, and possibly by the release of extra hydropower. And utilities have the option of communicating directly with heavy power-users—big manufacturing facilities, for instance—and asking them to slow down production for an hour to ease the burden. It’s a bit like an orchestra conductor calling on an array of instruments in real time to keep up a steady flow of music.

Moreover, Kramer pointed out that the eclipse won’t happen all at once; it’s not like flipping a switch. As the moon’s shadow moves across the country, the impact on solar will be phased in and out geographically.

A final option is energy storage, where solar power from the previous day could be kept in giant batteries and released during the eclipse. Utility-scale storage is still in its infancy, and it won’t be on the table next week. But a spokesperson for Germany’s solar energy trade association said that solution could be up and running in time for the next major eclipse…in 2048.

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What Happens When an Eclipse Hits the World’s Most Solar-Powered Country?

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Underwater, melting glaciers are louder than a symphony of chainsaws

by FrancesLease Posted on March 7, 2015

Underwater, melting glaciers are louder than a symphony of chainsaws

By on 6 Mar 2015commentsShare

Think about the best rock concert you’ve ever been to. Pretty loud, right? Well, some parts of the ocean are that loud all the time but for a somewhat less rockin’ reason: bubbles.

That’s right. Bubbles from melting glacier ice are basically the Rolling Stones of the sea, according to a new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. When snow condenses into glacier ice, it forms tiny, spherical air pockets. As the glacier ice then melts, those air pockets pinch off into bubbles, and that pinching off process is what’s causing all the racket. This study looked specifically at glaciers in fjords — long, thin inlets of the ocean surrounded by high cliffs — and found that the average noise there registered at a whopping 120 decibels (think chainsaws), and the frequency ranged between 1000 and 3000 hertz (think the top half of the piano register).

Erin Pettit, a geophysicist from the University of Alaska Fairbanks led the study. She and her colleagues used underwater microphones to capture the noises coming from a fjord called Icy Bay in Alaska and two others — one in Alaska and one in Antarctica. In an interview with the Associated Press, Pettit said she didn’t expect to find so much ambient noise coming from the ice:

“The glacier fjord sound on a typical day for Icy Bay, (Alaska) is louder than being in the water beneath a torrential downpour, which really surprised me.”

After taking measurements in the field, the researchers conducted laboratory experiments to makes sense of their observations. Here’s a video of melting ice from those experiments:

The researchers point out that acoustic monitoring could be a way to remotely monitor glacier melt, now that they know what glacier melting sounds like. They also warn that as glacier ice retreats and fjords quiet down, local marine ecosystems could feel the ripple effects. Whales hunt by listening for their prey, so noisy glaciers might drive them to quieter waters. Seals, on the other hand, might like the noise because it hides them from the whales. Indeed, harbor seal populations have declined near retreating glaciers.

In other words, whales are basically the grumpy old codgers telling everyone to keep the music down, while harbor seals are the rowdy youths using the noise to confuse and evade their elders. Is it just me, or are these the makings of a great cartoon? Anyone have any good bubble-themed band names?

Source:
Researchers: Bubbles popping from glacier ice make fjords the world’s noisiest natural ocean

, U.S. News and World Report.

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Alaskan tribes given tiny amount of cash for climate change resilience

by Teofil1vo Posted on February 20, 2015

Alaskan tribes given tiny amount of cash for climate change resilience

By on 19 Feb 2015commentsShare

Alaskan Native American communities are soon to be the happy(ish?) recipients of $8 million from the U.S. Department of the Interior in order to encourage climate resilience. If you think that $8 million sounds like chump change when it comes to federal disaster relief funds, and particularly piddling when you consider that the money will go to an area deeply in need of repair and protection in the midst of a climate-induced crisis — well, you are right!

The Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs issued a press release on Tuesday announcing that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell plans to make the money available for promoting “climate change adaptation and ocean and coastal management planning.” The press release also states that the Interior “must act to protect these communities” — because, we assume, Alaskan tribal communities are losing access to basic needs like food, water, and adequate shelter due to the effects of climate change.

That money isn’t, however, intended for rebuilding purposes. The Department of Interior notes that of these funds, $4 million will be available for “climate adaptation planning” and the other half for “ocean/coastal management planning” — essentially, it will all go to educate, train, and plan for climate adaptation. More funds could come from President Obama’s FY16 budget proposal, which included $50 million to support resilience projects in coastal areas.

A little background, now: Native American tribes occupy about 4 percent of U.S. land, and make up about 1 percent of the population — and for the part of that 1 percent living in Alaska, climate change is a significant health hazard. For the tribes that still practice traditional lifestyles, 80 percent of their diets are foods gathered from the immediate surrounding — but they can’t gather like they used to, because climate-change provoked coastal erosion is making food harder to come by. Other scary, climate-induced effects include aquatic changes, ecosystem shifts, and increased flooding due to melting ice shelves.

Native Americans have been making their case for relocation money for years. One coastal Alaskan town, Shishmaref, has sought funding since 2002. Homes lack running water and plumbing, beaches are shrinking, and houses are literally falling into the sea. How much would it cost to save the town by moving it inland? That’s estimated at a cool $179 million.

So, you get it: $8 million isn’t nearly enough to prepare Alaskan villages for rising seas and a warmer climate. With this federal money, tribal members will be sitting in on technical workshops about “long-term climate resilience” while they watch their homes slowly tilt towards the shore.

Source:
Interior Department Will Provide Millions To Help Native Americans Adapt To Climate Change

, ThinkProgress.

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

by Shawn75Imwhebm Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Snow is falling across the Northeast, and millions of people are preparing for a massive blizzard. Due to the extreme winter conditions, my colleague at Climate Desk has issued the following advisory:

It may seem obvious to you that the existence of extreme winter weather doesn’t negate the scientific fact that humans are warming the planet. But that’s probably because you aren’t a climate change denier who’s contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination.

Last year, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) weighed in on the issue. “It is really freezing in DC,” Cruz said during a speech on energy policy, according to TPM. “I have to admit I was surprised. Al Gore told us this wouldn’t happen!” Cruz said the same thing a month earlier, according to Slate: “It’s cold!…Al Gore told me this wouldn’t happen.”

And here’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, after a major blizzard back in December 2009:

Which brings us to a couple of Republicans who are probably not going to run for president but who have nevertheless generated headlines recently by suggesting they might. Here’s Donald Trump, during a cold snap last year:

And here’s a 2012 Facebook post from former Gov. Sarah Palin, citing extremely cold winter temperatures in her home state of Alaska:

If you’re a regular Climate Desk reader, you already know why all this is wrong. You understand the difference between individual weather events and long-term climate trends. You probably even know that according to the National Climate Assessment, winter precipitation is expected to increase in the northeastern United States as a result of climate change. But if you’re a Republican who wants to be president, please pay close attention to the following video:

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

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ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

by Myrna Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest salvo in President Obama’s flurry of executive activity following the 2014 election:

President Obama proposed designating 1.4 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as protected wilderness, drawing cheers from environmentalists but setting off a bitter new battle Sunday with the Republican-controlled Congress over oil and gas drilling in pristine areas of northern Alaska.

The plan would permanently bar drilling and other forms of development in the 19.8-million-acre refuge’s coastal plain, a narrow strip between the Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic Ocean where caribou give birth. The area, estimated to hold 10.3 billion barrels of oil, is home to more than 200 species, including polar bears, wolverines, musk oxen and thousands of migratory birds.

Now, technically this is meaningless. ANWR has been a battleground for years, as much symbolic as anything else. The amount of oil it could produce isn’t really huge, but then again, the environmental damage that a pipeline would produce probably isn’t that huge either.1 In any case, the Interior Department already bans drilling in ANWR, and there’s no way that a Republican Congress is going to pass a bill to make a drilling ban permanent. So what’s the point of Obama’s proposal?

It’s simple: once again he’s using the agenda-setting power of the presidency. Basically, he’s making ANWR something that everyone now has to take a stand on. Talking heads will fulminate on one side or the other, and Republicans will respond by introducing legislation to open up ANWR to drilling. This isn’t something they were planning to spend time on, but now they probably will. Their base will demand it, as will the Republican caucus in the House and Senate. Nothing will come of it, of course, but it will eat up time that might otherwise have been spent on something else.

And that’s why Obama is doing this. It also lays down a marker and lets everyone know that Democrats are the party of natural beauty while Republicans are the party of Big Oil. It can’t hurt to make that clear. Still, that’s not the main goal here. The main goal is to toss some sand in the gears of Republican plans for the 115th Congress. Obama is proving once again that even with the opposition in control of Congress, he still has the power to decide what people are going to talk about.

1Please address all hate mail regarding this assertion to my editors. Thanks.

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ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

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72 Percent of Republican Senators Are Climate Deniers

by MartinMccarter Posted on January 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a simple amendment to the controversial bill that would authorize construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Sanders’ measure, which he proposed to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would have declared it the “sense of Congress” that climate change is real; that it is caused by humans; that it has already caused significant problems; and that the United States needs to shift its economy away from fossil fuels.

Sanders’ amendment went nowhere. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chair of the committee, used the opportunity to take a shot at climate science. “I do believe that our climate is changing,” she said. “I don’t agree that all the changes are necessarily due solely to human activity.” Murkowski didn’t elaborate on her current thinking about the causes of global warming, but in the past she’s advanced a bizarre theory involving a volcano in Iceland.

Sanders will get another chance next week, when the full Senate debates the Keystone bill—but he’s likely to run into stiff resistance from GOP climate deniers. As Climate Progress revealed Thursday, more than half of the Republican members of the new Congress “deny or question” the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. If you just look at the Senate, the numbers are even more disturbing. Thirty-nine GOP Senators reject the science on climate change—that’s 72 percent of the Senate Republican caucus.

The list includes veteran lawmakers like James Inhofe (Okla.), who is the incoming chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) and has written a book titled, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. And it includes new senators like Steve Daines (Mont.), who thinks climate change might be caused by solar cycles. (For a great interactive map showing exactly how many climate deniers represent your state in Congress, click here.)

What’s more, the Climate Progress analysis shows that many of the congressional committees that deal with climate and energy issues are loaded with global warming deniers:

…68 percent of the Republican leadership in both House and Senate deny human-caused climate change. On the committee level, 13 out of 21 Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, or 62 percent, reject the science behind human-caused global warming, joined by 67 percent, or 21 out of 31 Republican members, of the House Energy and Commerce Committee…In addition to Inhofe, 10 out of 11, or 91 percent, of Republicans on EPW have said climate change is not happening or that humans do not cause it.

All this could have serious policy consequences: Republicans are threatening to use their majority to cut the EPA’s budget and derail the power plant regulations at the heart of President Barack Obama’s signature climate initiative.

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72 Percent of Republican Senators Are Climate Deniers

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