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Trump’s victory could be a big win for the Dakota Access Pipeline, but opponents stand strong

by LoreenDill12 Posted on November 12, 2016

The sound had not been heard in over 150 years. Rising over the remote plains of North Dakota, below a hot November sun and cloudless blue sky, the drums and song of the seven bands of the Sioux nation joined together as tribal elders lit the peta waken (sacred fire) for the first time since Abe Lincoln was President. They were surrounded by some 800 Native Americans and their allies, including women, toddlers, and the elderly, standing silently in a wide circle five people deep, heads bowed in prayer.

“The climate is already at a point of no return,” intoned Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader of the Sioux Nation, from within the circle. “Our waters are polluted by fracking … We must stop this contamination.”

“We are supposed to stop this snake,” Jon Eagle of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said in reference to the nearby Dakota Access Pipeline. “We’ve already defeated them; they just don’t know it yet.”

The ceremony was held last weekend to bring renewed unity, grounding, and prayer to the “water protectors,” as they call themselves, gathered together on this windswept grassy field amidst tipis, tents, and morning camp fires at the Oceti Sakowin camp. It is the largest of three makeshift camps erected over the past seven months by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and allies near — and at times on top of — the Dakota Access Pipeline route. The 1,200-mile pipeline would carry fracked oil from the Bakken shale regions of North Dakota to Illinois and on to the Gulf Coast, passing half a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation through areas of tribal spiritual and cultural significance, including under the Missouri River: the primary drinking water source for the tribe and millions of other people downstream.

Barely one week earlier, the water protectors had a pitched battle for territory on which the pipeline was set to pass, including a sacred tribal burial ground. On a hilltop to the north, just behind those gathered for the ceremony, several pieces of bright yellow construction equipment loomed. Dakota Access Pipeline’s operations were actively underway.

Dakota Access Pipeline equipment is seen at the Missouri River near Standing Rock.Reuters / Stephanie Keith

The struggle to stop the pipeline has pitted the water protectors against an increasingly militarized and aggressive police force, with the camps currently under what can only be described as a siege. Floodlights, erected either by Dakota Access or the police (or both), sit atop a hill focused down on Oceti Sakowin, shining all throughout the night, every night. Law enforcement and private security surveillance drones, helicopters, and planes constantly buzz low in circles just overhead.

Highway 1806, leading from the camp to the pipeline and a main artery of rural North Dakota, is blockaded by law enforcement and the burned carcasses of two large trucks. Armored Humvees, often with snipers in their turrets, are a frequent sight. And there is the clear and ever-present danger that if protectors try to get near the pipeline, they will be repelled with extreme measures, including but not limited to: pepper spray, rubber bullets, batons, arrests, and jail. Though these measures have not stopped the protectors — rather, they seem to have strengthened both their numbers and resolve — they have succeeded in facilitating the continued progress of the pipeline construction.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, said on Thursday that 84 percent of the entire project is complete. It has excavated and is laying pipe nearly up to, and on both sides of, the Missouri River, where just one area remains untouched: that which passes under the river.

In September, the Obama administration denied Energy Transfer Partners the easement it needs to build under the Missouri River in order to give the Army Corp of Engineers time to review the safety and advisability of doing so. The administration asked that during that review, the company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of the river.

The company flatly refused.

On Nov. 4 and again on Thursday, the Army Corps asked Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work “for a 30-day period to allow for de-escalation,” citing concern “for the safety of all the people involved with the continued demonstrations.” Each time, Energy Transfer Partners refused.

On Sunday, the Norwegian bank DNB, which represents 10 percent of the financing required to build the pipeline, announced that it would consider pulling its support if concerns raised by the Native Americans were not addressed.

Energy Transfer Partners kept building.

Two days later, Citibank, representing 20 percent of the financing, released a statement citing its own “commitment to sustainability and respect for human rights” and advocating for “constructive engagement with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in an effort to come to a resolution.”

Dakota Access not only kept building, but released its own statement on Election Day. “To be clear, Dakota Access Pipeline has not voluntarily agreed to halt construction of the pipeline in North Dakota,” it said. Rather, it would be moving horizontal drilling equipment into place in preparation for tunneling under the Missouri River, expecting “no significant delays in its plans to drill under the lake.”

In an interview last week, President Obama said that the Army Corps of Engineers was exploring ways to “reroute” the pipeline around Native American lands.

Asked about Obama’s comments, pipeline spokesperson Vicki Granado told the Guardian: “We are not aware that any consideration is being given to a reroute, and we remain confident we will receive our easement in a timely fashion.”

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States on Tuesday. The next day, the stock value of Energy Transfer Partners’ parent company rose by 15 percent, as “investors now expect the pipeline to proceed,” Barron’s reported.

“I do expect Trump to approve it,” said Ron Ness, head of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an industry trade group.

“Dakota Access went from being in some doubt to being a solid bet with this election,” Ethan Bellamy, a senior financial analyst, said.

Much of this confidence is on solid footing.

Trump has between $500,000 and $1 million personally invested in Energy Transfer Partners, with a further $500,000 to $1 million holding in Phillips 66, which will have a 25 percent stake in the Dakota Access project once completed.

Kelcy Warren, chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, donated $103,000 to elect Trump and $66,800 to the Republican National Committee since Trump became the party nominee.

Many of Trump’s campaign advisors and likely cabinet, moreover, are drawn directly from the ranks of companies involved and invested in the pipeline and in Bakken oil development. Together, they will form one of America’s most fossil-fuel-centric administrations since Warren B. Harding; perhaps even more so than that of George W. Bush. There are fossil fuel company executives, investors, rabid industry cheerleaders, and notorious climate change deniers. Trump has pledged to dramatically increase fossil fuel production from every nook and cranny of the United States, particularly the Bakken shale region.

“Fracking king” Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, was Trump’s campaign energy advisor and has long been seen as a leading candidate for energy secretary. Continental Resources’ Bakken oil will be carried via the completed Dakota Access Pipeline, according to its November update to investors.

Trump campaign advisor John Paulson — president and CEO of Paulson & Co. and “one of the titans of the U.S. hedge fund industry,” managing some $14 billion — is heavily invested in the U.S. oil and gas industry, particularly in the Bakken. After becoming the largest shareholder in Whiting Petroleum in 2013, Paulson surpassed Hamm to become the largest producer of oil in North Dakota before selling off his entire Whiting holdings earlier this year. Paulson’s continued investments in the sector include Oasis Petroleum, renowned for its role in the single worst accident in Bakken history, involving a blowout, explosion, two worker deaths, and a worker suicide.

Oasis is working to complete a 19-mile oil transmission system from its North Dakota petroleum handling facility to the Dakota Access Pipeline, thus positioning it to supply roughly one-ninth of the pipeline’s estimated 470,000 barrels of daily crude oil deliveries, records from the North Dakota Public Service Commission show.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is seen near New Salem, North Dakota.Tony Webster

According to Oasis Petroleum’s most recent financial filings, Paulson’s hedge fund owns the fourth-largest share of the company. Trump has invested between $3 million and $15 million in Paulson’s hedge funds.

Dennis Nuss of Phillips 66, a 25 percent owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, said Wednesday that the pipeline should be fully operational in the first quarter of 2017.

Doing so, however, would require that the Army Corps of Engineers grant the easement, either under the Obama or Trump administrations.

Last week, Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II recommitted the tribe to the fight against the pipeline. “If there is an easement granted,” he said, “we will sue.”

The tribe has a federal lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers pending, which argues that the Corps failed to adequately consult with the tribe and that granting the easement for the pipeline to pass under the Missouri River would do irreparable harm.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg rejected these arguments on Sept. 9, but only under the National Historic Preservation Act. The underlying lawsuit also argues that the Corps’ permitting process violated the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Rivers and Harbors Act. None of those claims has been fully litigated.

Another lawsuit underway in Iowa goes to court next month. Landowners in six counties there argue that Energy Transfer Partners’ claims of eminent domain when using their land for the pipeline were unlawful. Protests have also been ongoing in the state, continuing on Thursday, when three protectors — bearing food, water, and sleeping bags — locked themselves inside of the pipeline. They halted construction for 17 hours next to a sign reading: “No Eminent Domain for Private Gain.”

President Obama has 70 days left in office before Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20. Late Friday, conflicting reports from the administration were reported by Politico and Reuters, originally suggesting that the Obama administration might go ahead and give its approval to the pipeline on Monday, then denying those reports, then quoting spokesperson Amy Gaskill of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that a decision “would come in the next few days, possibly by Monday.”

Lorrena Alameda, age 33, and her mother Gladys Renville, age 55, Dakota Sioux from South Dakota, are among the thousands of people from some 200 tribes who have flocked to Standing Rock to defend the water and the land, including some 6,000 people this past weekend alone. Alameda expects President Obama to take action on their behalf.

“I feel like all the promises he made to us, he needs to be there right now and tell [Energy Transfer Partners] to stop doing what they’re doing, and he needs to enforce it,” Alameda tells me. “Because, right now, everything that happens here is on his watch.”

Obama has many options. He can deny the easement and order the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This was not done, the Sierra Club’s Catherine Collentine explains, because the pipeline was “fast-tracked” using a far less comprehensive environmental assessment.

The administration could deny the easement and remain open to the pipeline crossing the Missouri River at another location — i.e. reroute the pipeline. Regardless of whether the reroute also requires an EIS, it would by definition require additional study by both the federal government and the company — all of which would be both time-consuming and costly.

Every day the project is stalled or incomplete costs money, adds more time for action by the protectors and their allies, and builds concern among investors.

Energy Transfer Partners is already suffering financially, reporting on Thursday a whopping 82 percent collapse in profits in the third quarter of 2016 versus the same period last year. Moreover, it originally committed to completing the pipeline by Jan. 1, but now predicts that it will not be operational until April. Every day the Jan. 1 deadline is not met, shippers planning on using it can terminate their contracts.

Finally, Obama can deny this, or any other easement for crossing the Missouri, thereby killing the Dakota Access Pipeline altogether.

In the midst of the historic peta waken ceremony, a tribal elder admonished the President, saying, “Obama, he started this, saying what our children can be. I say, ‘Don’t start it if you can’t finish it!’ I learned that in Cambodia.”

Any of these decisions could be undone or reversed by the incoming Trump administration. But doing so would also open the door to further litigation, something Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, the attorney representing the Standing Rock Sioux, says he is fully prepared to do. If Obama grants the easement, that too can be litigated.

Those at Standing Rock remain unflinching in their commitment to stop the pipeline. Most could not be reached for comment on Friday as they were busy stopping work on the pipeline for several hours by blocking the pipeline route and taking over Dakota Access construction equipment near Highway 6; while others were busy winterizing the camps.

Facebook

Their Facebook pages are replete with responses to Trump’s election, however, including this oft-posted image. “Disappointed, but not surprised” is a common theme, as is a renewed hope that President Obama will take swift action while still in office and that support from allies will grow, such as the protests at banks that invest in the project and the “Stand for Standing Rock” day of action on Nov. 15 at Army Corps of Engineers offices around the country.

Stopping the project is the option most favored by those at Standing Rock as they do not wish the problems they seek to avoid near their home thrust upon others. Most also seek to end dependence on oil altogether.

Chair Archambault declared as the fire ceremony drew to a close: “We have to decrease the dependency on how we use oil. If not, this is just one pipeline. There will be more.”

Antonia Juhasz writes about oil. You’ll find her writing in many publications, including Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Harper’s Magazine and The Nation. She is the author of three books, most recently, Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.

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Trump’s victory could be a big win for the Dakota Access Pipeline, but opponents stand strong

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These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

by ConcepcMacarthu Posted on November 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like labor unions everywhere, the local Plumbers & Pipefitters union in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley—a historically Democratic bastion due to the influence of labor—endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in September 2015 and urged its members to vote for her. But unlike in years past, when Roland “Butch” Taylor briefed about 200 members on the union’s support of Clinton and the prospective benefits of a Clinton presidency in May, the meeting didn’t go well. “I got a lot of boos,” he recalls. “I got a lot of chatter back. And out of the group, only one person came up and asked me for a T-shirt.”

“Right then and there, I knew something was wrong,” says Taylor, who retired a few months later. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe it will change as the campaign moves forward.'”

As the results on election night show, it didn’t change. Clinton fell well short of polls and expectations in the Rust Belt, losing two key swing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and two that were thought to be safe bets, Michigan and Wisconsin. Working-class white voters, including many union members, banded together into a pro-Donald Trump force that the strategists in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters didn’t see coming until it was too late.

But local Democrats did. And they tried to warn the Clinton campaign.

In May, after thousands of Democrats had switched parties to vote for Trump in the primary, Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David Betras circulated a memo cautioning that Trump was making headway in his Rust Belt region and urging the Clinton campaign to take the threat seriously. The memo focused largely on the issue of trade, arguing that because Democratic politicians in Ohio regularly denounce the North American Free Trade Agreement and free trade generally, Trump’s anti-trade message was familiar and its appeal powerful. If the Clinton team didn’t find a way to counter it, Betras warned, she would lose a lot of votes she was counting on.

Betras sent the memo to Aaron Pickrell, an adviser to Clinton’s Ohio campaign team; David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party; Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents northeast Ohio; and union leaders in the region.

To counter Trump’s populist appeal, Betras urged Clinton to go vigorously after blue-collar workers by promising to bring back jobs. The key, Betras argued, was to have this message delivered not by politicians but by local blue-collar families in radio and television ads across the region. “The messages can’t be about job retraining,” he wrote. “These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bullshit.” Instead, he argued, the ads should “focus on the reinvigoration of American manufacturing, and I don’t mean real high-tech stuff because they’ve heard that a million times before and they aren’t buying it.”

Betras wrote:

Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure—digging ditches, paving roads, building buildings and producing the materials needed to do it all. The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers, they want to run back hoes, dig ditches, sling concrete block. They’re not embarrassed about the fact that they get their hands dirty doing backbreaking work. They love it and they want to be respected and honored for it. And they’ll react positively if they believe HRC will give them and their kids the opportunity to break their backs for another ten or twenty or thirty years. Somewhere along the line we forgot that not everyone wants to be white collar, we stopped recognizing the intrinsic value of hard work.

Clinton did revoke her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal, supported unions and higher wages, and talked about an economy that would work for all people. While Trump spoke in broad strokes, her website boasted detailed economic plans, including one to bring back manufacturing. But it was clear from Bernie Sanders’ primary victories in Wisconsin and Michigan that she was lagging with the white working class. Like Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney four years ago, she was the candidate who made millions by giving speeches to Wall Street banks. (It certainly didn’t help that when pieces of those speech transcripts were released in the WikiLeaks hacks, the sentence that stood out most was: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” Trump used that line at his campaign rallies to claim, falsely, that Clinton was going to open the borders completely.)

“Somewhere in all of this, we forgot that we’re the party of the working class,” says Betras, trying to explain Clinton’s loss. He believes the campaign did try to reach out to the blue-collar families of the Rust Belt, but that the attempts never reached the pitch and fervor they needed. “I did like her message of ‘Stronger Together,’ but that doesn’t get anyone a job, does it?”

The Ohio Democratic Party shared Betras’ memo with Clinton’s Ohio campaign team, according to state party spokeswoman Kirstin Alvanitakis. In an email to Mother Jones, Alvanitakis wrote that “Chairman Betras’s memo was a helpful reminder that Democrats should not neglect working-class voters and the Clinton campaign should acknowledge the very real struggles working families are facing in Ohio.”

She added, “The Ohio Democratic Party was the first state party in the nation to pass a resolution against fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and our leaders—including Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Tim Ryan, Rep. Marcy Kaptur and more—acutely understand the economic pressure facing working-class families because of terrible trade deals and big banks and corporate special interests run amok. The fact is that the typical Ohio household had a higher income three decades ago than it has had in the past few years.”

Betras believes strongly that economic populism was to thank for Trump’s Rust Belt victories, saying, “It was people who want a job and want to be able to work and want a job, and they would accept an imperfect messenger because at least he was saying that.” But of course there was more to Trump’s message. Some African American residents of Youngstown, the largest city in Mahoning County, have long believed that Trump’s appeal in the region had more to do with racial resentment than with economic populism—that Trump’s racially charged rhetoric united white voters against others who they believed were taking their jobs, their culture, and their country. (On Tuesday night, Clinton won Mahoning County by a hair thanks to backing in minority-majority Youngstown but lost the mostly white surrounding counties of the Mahoning Valley.) As a local African American labor organizer told Mother Jones this summer, “This whole racist rhetoric plays well with some people here.”

Like Betras, Taylor doesn’t believe his peers and neighbors who supported Trump are racist. But he understands how Trump’s talk about immigration appealed to people in the Rust Belt. A few years ago, his union was working on a billion-dollar natural gas processing plant, and the workers noticed that the bulk of the work was being done by Spanish-speaking laborers who arrived each morning on buses. “It brought a lot of resentment to the area because they’d never seen it before,” Taylor says. “People see that and then they go tell everybody else, and social media, the way it is, it just runs wild.” He believes Trump benefited when the community saw immigrants “taking jobs that Americans think they should be doing.”

When went to Youngstown in June and met Taylor, jovial and smartly dressed in a suit, he believed his peers would see through Trump’s demagoguery on trade and manufacturing and reject him. “We also are citizens of this country concerned about how he’ll react, whether it’s a nuclear war, God forbid, to racist comments, to deporting immigrants,” he said. “These are core beliefs that as citizens of this country we don’t stand for.”

In the aftermath of the election, even as Taylor looks backs and sees the writing on the wall, he sounds shaken by what the country—and specifically white-working class voters in the Rust Belt—allowed to happen. He acknowledges that the Clintons were “wrapped so close to NAFTA” (which Bill Clinton approved as president) and that Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees from big banks looked bad. “I see where people would have resentment,” he says.

But then, sounding close to tears, he adds, “She’s the most qualified person ever to run for the position, and I agree, she would have done a great job if given the opportunity. But she did not—she had the opportunity to win. She did not win.”

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These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

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Florida voted down an anti-solar initiative.

by XHHSusannah Posted on November 9, 2016

A President Clinton would have faced a divided Congress, limiting what she could accomplish in terms of advancing climate action. But with both houses in GOP hands, Donald Trump has no such limitations in what he could do to reverse it.

Most of President Obama’s efforts on the clean energy front were made using his executive powers — powers that will now allow Trump to fulfill many of his promises to completely defund climate action and gut environmental protection.

He’s pledged to pull the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He’s vowed to cut all federal climate spending. He is going to appoint a known climate denier, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s transition team.

Under Trump’s appointees, the EPA’s powers will be rolled back, with weaker enforcement of regulations mandated by the Clean Air Act and upheld by the Supreme Court. Of course, Trump will have his pick on the Supreme Court, too — which could soon decide the fate of Obama’s central climate accomplishment, the Clean Power Plan.

All of this could set the world back another decade or more on tackling climate change. Democrats can filibuster some. Environmentalists, in full defense mode in the courts, might be able to limit the damage. But limiting is the best we can hope for now.

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Florida voted down an anti-solar initiative.

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That fish might be lying about its identity, but it also might be more sustainable.

by Trey06490677002 Posted on November 8, 2016

It’s no surprise, really, as passing such a policy was always going to be an uphill climb, and in this case even climate activists were not unified behind it. Big business was against it too, of course.

I-732 was designed to be revenue-neutral: It would have taxed fossil fuels consumed in the state and returned the revenue to people and businesses by cutting Washington’s regressive sales tax, giving tax rebates to low-income working households, and cutting a tax for manufacturers. A grassroots group of volunteers got it onto the ballot and earned support from big names like climate scientist James Hansen and actor/activist Leonardo DiCaprio.

But other environmentalists and social justice activists in the state didn’t like this approach, and they got backing from their own big names: Naomi Klein and Van Jones. They want revenue from any carbon fee to be invested in clean energy, green jobs, and disadvantaged communities.

“There is great enthusiasm for climate action that invests in communities on the frontlines of climate change, but I-732 did not offer what’s really needed,” said Rich Stolz of OneAmerica, a civil rights group in the state. “This election made it clear that engaging voters of color is a necessity to win both nationally and here in Washington state.”

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That fish might be lying about its identity, but it also might be more sustainable.

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Tim Kaine says a Dakota Access reroute would be “the right thing to do.”

by GuillermoCarpent Posted on November 8, 2016

It’s no surprise, really, as passing such a policy was always going to be an uphill climb, and in this case even climate activists were not unified behind it. Big business was against it too, of course.

I-732 was designed to be revenue-neutral: It would have taxed fossil fuels consumed in the state and returned the revenue to people and businesses by cutting Washington’s regressive sales tax, giving tax rebates to low-income working households, and cutting a tax for manufacturers. A grassroots group of volunteers got it onto the ballot and earned support from big names like climate scientist James Hansen and actor/activist Leonardo DiCaprio.

But other environmentalists and social justice activists in the state didn’t like this approach, and they got backing from their own big names: Naomi Klein and Van Jones. They want revenue from any carbon fee to be invested in clean energy, green jobs, and disadvantaged communities.

“There is great enthusiasm for climate action that invests in communities on the frontlines of climate change, but I-732 did not offer what’s really needed,” said Rich Stolz of OneAmerica, a civil rights group in the state. “This election made it clear that engaging voters of color is a necessity to win both nationally and here in Washington state.”

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Tim Kaine says a Dakota Access reroute would be “the right thing to do.”

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Ryan Says Obamacare Is Around for Good if Hillary Clinton Wins

by BerenicPaling Posted on November 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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HuffPo’s Jeffrey Young passes along a radio interview of Paul Ryan:

Obamacare doesn’t get repealed, likely ever, if Hillary wins….Agree?

Yes. Yes, I do agree….All of us have basically gotten to consensus on what our plan is, but we have to win an election to put it in place.

OK, that’s good to hear. Except for one thing: remember what Ryan’s predecessor said a couple of days after the 2012 election? Diane Sawyer asked John Boehner if he still planned to repeal Obamacare:

I think the election changes that. It’s pretty clear the president was reelected. Obamacare is the law of the land.

As I recall, Boehner was immediately savaged for saying this, and within a few months House Republican passed yet another Obamacare repeal. Since then they’ve voted to repeal Obamacare nearly a dozen times or so, depending on how you count. The most recent attempt was in February of this year.

If Ryan is smart, he’ll call it quits on Obamacare repeal and work instead on finding places where he can horsetrade with Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, I don’t know if Ryan is smart. Nor do I know if his caucus will allow him to move on even if he wants to. We’ll see.

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Ryan Says Obamacare Is Around for Good if Hillary Clinton Wins

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Environmentalists are raising the pressure on Obama over Dakota Access.

by LavadaDedman Posted on November 7, 2016

Cushing, Oklahoma, was shaken on Sunday night by a 5.0 magnitude temblor. About 40 to 50 buildings were damaged, some substantially, according to the Associated Press, but no major injuries have been reported. The quake was felt as far away as Illinois, Iowa, and Texas.

Cushing — aka the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” — is home to one of the largest oil storage terminals in the world. In 2012, President Obama visited Cushing to promote his support for the oil and gas industry.

But that same oil and gas industry has spurred a surge of earthquakes in Oklahoma, which are triggered when drillers inject wastewater underground. In 2005, prior to the state’s current oil and gas boom, there was only one earthquake of magnitude 3.0 or higher in Oklahoma. In 2015, there were more than 900.

Just in the last week, there have been about two dozen quakes in the state. Luckily, no damage has been reported to the Cushing oil terminal. But how long will that luck last?

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Environmentalists are raising the pressure on Obama over Dakota Access.

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Staring at Defeat, Donald Trump Is Sleepless and Vengeful

by BradHeanearesg Posted on November 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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The New York Times has a truly remarkable piece this morning about the final days of the Trump campaign:

Aboard his gold-plated jumbo jet, the Republican nominee does not like to rest or be alone with his thoughts, insisting that aides stay up and keep talking to him. He prefers the soothing, whispery voice of his son-in-law.

….Mr. Trump’s candidacy is a jarring split screen: the choreographed show of calm and confidence orchestrated by his staff, and the neediness and vulnerability of a once-boastful candidate now uncertain of victory.

….Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.

His polished older daughter, Ivanka, sat for a commercial intended to appeal to suburban women who have recoiled from her father’s incendiary language. But she discouraged the campaign from promoting the ad in news releases, fearing that her high-profile association with the campaign would damage the businesses that bear her name.

How…Nixonian. Yikes.

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Staring at Defeat, Donald Trump Is Sleepless and Vengeful

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One Bold Way to Blow Up the College Debt Nightmare

by SherriAmerson Posted on November 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2008, sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab began studying a group of 3,000 students as they entered public universities in Wisconsin. For six years, she tracked how financial aid affected their college experiences and whether it would help them graduate. The results were stunning: Even with aid, half the students dropped out of school, often because they couldn’t afford to keep studying. Less than 1 in 5 earned a degree in four years.

A four-year college degree is one of the most important predictors of economic success: Americans who have one earn an average of 98 percent more per hour than those who don’t. But how much should students pay for this piece of paper? In her new book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, Goldrick-Rab argues that for most families, it’s become financially unmanageable to send a kid to college. Poorer families are hit the hardest: the poorest quarter of households can spend up to 84 percent of annual income on college bills, with little guarantee of return.

University of Chicago Press

The sociologist from Temple University thinks it’s time to overhaul how we handle financial aid. “The system is broken in so many ways that we need to stop trying to save it,” she tells me. She advocates a “first-degree free” approach, where all students—regardless of their family’s income—can earn at least an associate’s degree without paying a cent of tuition; in her model, financial aid, no longer earmarked for tuition costs, could help students from low-income families cover the additional costs of living while they finish their degree. I caught up with Goldrick-Rab to hear about the biggest surprises of her research, her advice for college students, and her thoughts on Donald Trump’s education plan.

Mother Jones: You followed these students for six years. What stood out to you?

Sara Goldrick-Rab: A lot of people talk about student loans with regard to how things are after you finish college, such as the challenges of repaying debt. But they don’t talk about the fact that people are so worried about debt even while they’re still in college. Watching people go without enough food to eat because they’re afraid to take out a loan, or decide to not go abroad or not hang out with friends because they’re so worried about what will happen—that to me says that we’ve changed what college is.

MJ: How so?

SGR: Well, it’s always been the case that you go to college and you get a fair bit of choice in deciding where you’re going to go, what you’re going to study and how you want to set that up. And the thing that distinguishes one choice from another is your ability—how intelligent you are and how hard you want to work. Increasingly, that’s not true. What distinguishes you and your choices is your income.

MJ: You say in the book that it’s sort of a failure of the American dream.

SGR: Well, it’s a betrayal. We tell people that the way to get ahead in life is through education, but then we only give them educational options that are unaffordable and end up shoving them backward. Imagine going to college and ending up with debt and no degree. That’s a betrayal.

MJ: Half the students in the study dropped out. Was that a surprise?

SGR: It’s aligned with national figures, so on the one hand, it’s not that surprising. But numbers like that still surprise you when you see that students were doing most things right—they were trying to go to class, they were interested in school, they were working and taking on debt and doing all the things that we tell them to do. And they still didn’t get a degree.

MJ: Do you know what happened after they dropped out?

SGR: We stopped collecting data for the most part in 2014. We have enough information to recontact them, but contacting people in a study like this is very expensive. They’re probably around 25 or 26 years old now. What I really want to know is how they view their own education now—whether they think it was worth it, and whether they plan to send their own kids to college.

MJ: They might have so much debt that they won’t.

SGR: Exactly. Or such a bad taste in their mouths.

MJ: So why is college financial aid so broken?

SGR: The first reason is that it tries so hard to figure out who needs what and who doesn’t deserve money. Think about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It introduces all kinds of bureaucracies that alienate people. It also leaves out the constituency that’s needed to make it politically viable: the middle class. It makes it a program for poor people—and programs for poor people are poor programs. It doesn’t have a broad base support, which means it’s perpetually underfunded. The other thing is that, in the FAFSA’s effort to decide who gets what, it uses a bunch of fake numbers that don’t mean much. It produces the “expected family contribution,” a number that doesn’t even consider the family’s debt. The FAFSA also relies on prices for tuition and living costs that are set up by colleges with no assessment of whether they’re accurate. So if a college says it costs $10,000 a year to attend, well, that’s all you can get. If a college says it costs $30,000, you might be encouraged to take loans up to an amount that would be ridiculous to repay. So they overstate and understate the actual cost of college.

MJ: You point out that there’s no federal authority that requires states to make colleges affordable, and since the 1980s states have slowly decreased their funding for public schools, leaving families to take on more costs. College is much more expensive than before, but, as you note, the proportion of state budgets going to higher education is about the same today as it was in 1966.

SGR: Right. The whole federal system is based on the assumption that states would also help out, but they didn’t do anything to encourage states to do that. I don’t know what the federal government was thinking when they put trust in states in the beginning.

Sara Goldrick-Rab Chris Kendig

MJ: So what’s the way out of all this?

SGR: The way out is to build a different type of system. We can do some small things, such as expanding the federal work-study program so students can have more jobs on campus, or making sure that when students file for financial aid, they can get information about other benefits available to them. But we better be working on a system that more effectively lowers the price of college for a lot more people. Doing that requires focusing on the public sector. We need to have a conversation about whether we’re going to continue funding private colleges and universities when we’re underfunding public ones. I wish more people realized every time they see a commercial on TV for the University of Phoenix that they are funding those universities. I don’t think most Americans have a clue how much they’re spending on private education.

MJ: What do you think of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s education plans?

SGR: Donald Trump has talked about taking the federal government out of making student loans, and I think it’s very dangerous.* We actually just started making student loans from the federal government about six years ago. If we stopped doing that and let banks do it instead, taxpayers will end up with a lot more wasted money. Note: Though Trump’s policy director has mentioned this plan, Trump has not mentioned it during campaign speeches, calling instead for increased federal and state funding for students to attend either public or private schools.

Hillary Clinton’s plan is a decent step in the right direction. I would like to see it be a little more focused. Debt is not the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem. All the talk right now is about making college debt-free, but I’d rather see a strong, clear message of making college tuition free and putting support in to cover living expenses for those who need it.

MJ: Wasn’t one of the main criticisms of debt-free college that if we make college tuition free for all families with an income under $125,000, it would actually hurt poor students and help more affluent ones?

SGR: This is driving me crazy. In order to make good policy, we need to stop counting who gets what dollars and think in terms of who gets what benefits. Think of it this way: Right now, there are students who don’t go to college because the current financial aid system is so underfunded, so in the current system, they get nothing. That’s Person 1. Person 2 is going to college, and they’re not getting a full Pell Grant, so the tuition is not covered. They’re probably from a middle-income family. If we make college tuition-free, then two things happen. First, the person who’s already going to college is going to see tuition costs eliminated and we will have given them some money for living expenses. Some people think that we shouldn’t give them that money because they already go to college, but they’re missing that these students are not always finishing college—the small subsidies could go a long way to help. Second, the person who doesn’t currently go to college, if he gets money, he comes into the new system—he gets to come to college.

The idea that tuition-free college is going to only benefit the upper-middle class ignores the huge benefits to the lower-middle class. The other thing is that we can count on the wealthy to go to private schools. Hillary Clinton said when she was debating Bernie Sanders that she didn’t want Donald Trump’s kids to benefit from free college…But we really don’t have to worry about it: Donald Trump is not going to suddenly send his kids to public schools.

MJ: You said you were surprised by the study. Did you have an emotional reaction?

SGR: It’s totally distressing. These are actual people to me. I know some of them still. Some of them I’m in regular touch with.

MJ: What would you tell a student who is facing some of these struggles?

SGR: I would tell them that the struggles they’re facing are happening to lots of people. I know it doesn’t solve anything for them, but knowing you’re not alone matters when you’re really struggling financially. Students also…have to let people know this is happening to them. And even though it might be too late for them and their kids to escape these struggles, students have a responsibility to change the future system. They need to make it a voting issue. This is not a private trouble—it is a public problem, and it needs to be treated like one.

Excerpt from – 

One Bold Way to Blow Up the College Debt Nightmare

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U.N.’s annual climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

by AlyciaLinder Posted on November 6, 2016

International negotiators are coming together on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, for the most highly anticipated climate gathering of the year. But they’ll spend the first couple of days doing exactly the same thing as the rest of the world: holding their breath as they nervously watch to see how the U.S. presidential election turns out.

Yes, America’s 2016 electoral dumpster fire will loom large at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, aka COP22. The main goal of the Marrakech meeting is to hash out more specific plans for putting last year’s landmark Paris climate agreement into action. Donald Trump has said he would “cancel” the agreement, so if he’s elected, negotiators are likely to panic. If an antagonistic American president moved to pull the U.S. out of the deal, implementing it around the globe would become a whole lot more difficult.

If, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton is elected, then conferees will feel more confident in getting down to work.

Riding a wave of momentum

U.S. election aside, there’s a lot of positive momentum heading into COP22. The Paris Agreement formally entered into force on Nov. 4, much earlier than anticipated. That’s because leaders of other countries wanted to make sure the deal was done before American voters had a chance to throw it off-course, so they kicked their normally lethargic ratification processes into high gear. That says a lot about the unprecedented level of international commitment to this deal.

The month leading up to Marrakech saw two other notable steps toward climate progress. On Oct. 6, more than 190 nations reached the world’s first agreement to cut emissions from international flights. And on Oct. 15, over 170 countries pledged to rid air conditioners and refrigerators of hydrofluorocarbons — which can have warming potential thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide — in a legally binding accord, potentially cutting warming by 0.5 degrees C.

So negotiators are landing in Morocco on a wave of optimism. At the same time, they know there’s a great deal that still needs to be done. Says Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute, “The COP is about celebrating, but it’s not about complacency.”

At last year’s Paris climate conference, 195 countries made a nonbinding agreement to keep warming below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, with a stretch goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees. Each nation made an action pledge to cut or curb its greenhouse gas emissions, and agreed to ratchet up its commitment in the future. The Paris signatories also agreed to raise more funds to help poorer countries adapt to a warming world.

Now, in Marrakech, negotiators will try to figure out how to turn those promises into action. They won’t be able to sort everything out, so some of the work will roll into 2018. But here are the three big issues on the agenda:

1) Money

One of the most contentious topics in Paris was money — big surprise — and you can expect the same in Marrakech.

In 2009, wealthier nations agreed to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance yearly by 2020 to aid poorer nations. In Paris, the rich countries reconfirmed that commitment, and in mid-October, released a plan for how they’d get there.

But many leaders from developing nations and policy advocates say $100 billion falls far short of what’s needed for countries to create programs that stave off climate change and build infrastructure that can withstand it, while working to improve quality of life for their citizens and grow jobs and GDP.

“My organization and many others remain concerned that this is nowhere near enough the amount of money that is needed to help the most vulnerable communities,” says Annaka Peterson, who works on injustice and poverty issues with Oxfam America. “About 20 percent of the $100 billion promised would support adaptation. However, a lot of estimates suggest that by 2030 developing countries could face costs from $140 billion to $300 billion a year.”

And actually, rich countries are not planning to come up with $100 billion a year themselves. They’re counting on sizable contributions from private companies to help meet that goal, which has some negotiators and activists wary about conflicts of interest.

2) Trust and Transparency

If nations are to fully invest in the Paris process, they need to be able to trust that other nations are working toward their goals and accurately reporting their progress. The Paris Agreement asks countries to publish national data on emissions as well as submit their data to a review body.

But how will that work in practice? Will the process be different for rich and poor countries? Negotiators in Marrakech will be working on creating those systems.

“What is the structure of how we look at transparency from now on?” asks Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation at World Wildlife Fund. “Will there be flexibility for countries in how they’re reporting?”

Countries also need to start getting specific about how they’ll fulfill their pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, says countries should be bringing detailed plans to Marrakech to demonstrate their progress. “What we need to see is NDCs turning from aspirational to roadmap and investment plans,” he says, “the sort of soup to nuts.”

3) Ambition

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the Paris Agreement is that it sets the world on a path to 2.7 to 3 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels — significantly higher than the 1.5–2 degree ceiling called for in the actual text of the agreement, and needed to avert drastic climate change.

But that more aggressive goal will play an important role in Marrakech, where another critical task is setting a plan to ratchet up the ambition of countries’ pledges every few years. The Paris deal calls for countries to assess progress in 2018 and return to the table in 2020 to revisit and ideally toughen their action plans. Diplomats need to create a system that can spur cuts every five years, while increasing the expectation of how drastic those cuts will be.

Based on the agreement’s swift ratification, climate advocates are hoping countries will be able to toughen their plans even earlier than called for, in 2018, as part of a “global fact check,” says Mohamed Adow, co-chair of Climate Action Network International.

“The question is: How fast and how deep is the green transformation going to be? This is why Marrakech is going to be important,” says Dagnet. “Marrakech needs to pave the way for more ambitious action.”

While the Paris conference was a flashy affair fit for celebrities and political wheelers and dealers, Marrakech is one for the wonks to sort out the nitty-gritty. The proceedings won’t be as glamorous, but they’re still critically important.

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U.N.’s annual climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

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