Tag Archives: california

California Farms Are Sucking Up Enough Groundwater to Put Rhode Island 17 Feet Under

by CarenSundberg Posted on July 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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California, the producer of nearly half of the nation’s fruits, veggies, and nuts, plus export crops—four-fifths of the world’s almonds, for example—is entering its third driest year on record. Nearly 80 percent of the state is experiencing “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. In addition to affecting agricultural production the drought will cost the state billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and a whole lot of groundwater, according to a new report prepared for the California Department of Food and Agriculture by scientists at UC-Davis. The authors used current water data, agricultural models, satellite data, and other methods to predict the economic and environmental toll of the drought through 2016.

Here are four key takeaways:

The drought will cost the state $2.2 billion this year: Of these losses, $810 million will come from lower crop revenues, $203 million will come from livestock and dairy losses, and $454 million will come from the cost of pumping additional groundwater. Up to 17,100 seasonal and part-time jobs will be lost.
California is experiencing the “greatest absolute reduction in water availability” ever seen: In a normal year, about one-third of California’s irrigation water is drawn from wells that tap into the groundwater supply. The rest is “surface water” from streams, rivers, and reservoirs. This year, the state is losing about one-third of its surface water supply. The hardest hit area is the Central Valley, a normally fertile inland region. Because groundwater isn’t as easily pumped in the Valley as it is on the coasts, and the Colorado River supplies aren’t as accessible as they are in the south, the Valley has lost 410,000 acres to fallowing, an area about 10 times the size of Washington, DC.
Farmers are pumping enough groundwater to immerse Rhode Island in 17 feet of it: To make up for the loss of surface water, farmers are pumping 62 percent more groundwater than usual. They are projected to pump 13 million acre-feet this year, enough to put Rhode Island 17 feet under.
“We’re acting like the super-rich:” California is technically in its third year of drought, and regardless of the effects of El Niño, 2015 is likely to be a dry year too. As the dry years accumulate, it becomes harder and harder to pump water from the ground, adding to the crop and revenue losses. California is the only western state without groundwater regulation or measurement of major groundwater use. If you can drill down to water, it’s all yours. (Journalist McKenzie Funk describes this arcane system in an excerpt from his fascinating recent book, Windfall.) “A well-managed basin is used like a reserve bank account,” said Richard Howitt, a UC-Davis water scientist and co-author of the report. “We’re acting like the super-rich, who have so much money they don’t need to balance their checkbook.”

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California Farms Are Sucking Up Enough Groundwater to Put Rhode Island 17 Feet Under

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Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters

by LucretiOrta Posted on July 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Almonds are a precious foodstuff: a crunchy jolt of complete protein, healthful fats, vitamins/minerals, and deliciousness. Given their rather intense ecological footprint—see here—we should probably consider them a delicacy, a special treat. That’s why I think it’s deeply weird to pulverize away their crunch, drown them in water, and send them out to the world in a gazillion little cartons. What’s the point of almond milk, exactly?

Evidently, I’m out of step with the times on this one. “Plant-based milk” behemoth White Wave reports that its first-quarter sales of almond milk were up 50 percent from the same period in 2013. In an earnings call with investors in May, reported by FoodNavigator, CEO Greg Engles revealed that almond milk now makes up about two-thirds of the plant-based milk market in the United States, easily trumping soy milk (30 percent) and rice and coconut milks (most of the rest).

Dairy is still king, of course, comprising 90 percent of the “milk” market. But as our consumption of it dwindles—down from 0.9 cups per person per day in 1970 to about 0.6 in 2010, according to the US Department of Agriculture—plant-based alternatives are gaining ground. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that sales of alternative milks hit $1.4 billion in 2013 and are expected to hit $1.7 billion by 2016, with almond milk leading that growth.

Now, I get why people are switching away from dairy milk. Industrial-scale dairy production is a pretty nasty business, and large swaths of adults can’t digest lactose, a sugar found in fresh dairy milk. Meanwhile, milk has become knit into our dietary culture, particularly at breakfast, where we cling to a generations-old tradition of drenching cereal in milk. Almond milk and other substitutes offer a way to maintain this practice while rejecting dairy. (Almond milk has been crushing once-ubiquitous soy milk, perhaps partly because of hotly contested fears that it creates hormonal imbalances.)

All that aside, almond milk strikes me as an abuse of a great foodstuff. Plain almonds are a nutritional powerhouse. Let’s compare a standard serving (1 ounce, about a handful) to the 48-ounce bottle of Califa Farms almond milk that a house guest recently left behind in my fridge.

A single ounce (28 grams) of almonds—nutrition info here—contains 6 grams of protein (about an egg’s worth), along with 3 grams of fiber (a medium banana) and 12 grams of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (half an avocado). According to its label, an eight-ounce serving of Califia almond milk offers just one gram each of protein and fiber, and five grams of fat. A bottle of Califia delivers six eight-ounce servings, meaning that a handful of almonds contains as much protein as the mighty jug of this hot-selling beverage.

What this tells you is that the almond-milk industry is selling you a jug of filtered water clouded by a handful of ground almonds. Which leads us to the question of price and profit. The almonds in the photo above are organic, and sold in bulk at my local HEB supermarket for $11.99 per pound; this one-ounce serving set me back about 66 cents. I could have bought nonorganic California almonds for $6.49 per pound, about 39 cents per ounce. That container of Califia, which contains roughly the same number of nonorganic almonds, retails for $3.99.

Click here for more comparisons. Mother Jones

The water-intensive nature of almond milk, of course, is no secret. By law, food manufacturers have to name ingredients in order of their prevalence in the product. For Califia and other almond milk brands, it starts like this: “filtered water, almonds.” Given that it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow a single almond in California, where 80 percent of the world’s almonds are produced, drenching the finished product in yet more water seems insane.

Califia does make a couple of splashy nutritional claims: “50% more calcium than milk,” the bottle declares, and “50% RDI of Vitamin E.” Almonds are a great source of these vital nutrients, but not that great. Our ounce of whole almonds contains 74 mg of calcium vs. 290 mg for a cup of whole milk, and 7 mg of vitamin E, about 37 percent of the recommended daily intake.

How does Califia’s beverage manage to outdo straight almonds on calcium and vitamin E when it lags so far behind on protein and fat? Again, the answer lies in the ingredients list, which reveals the addition of a “vitamin/mineral blend.” All fine and well, but if you’re interested in added nutrients, why not just pop a vitamin pill?

Moreover, almond milk isn’t just a few nuts packaged with lots of water. It often contains additives. For example, in addition to vitamins, the Califia product, like many of its rivals, contains small amounts of carrageenan, a seaweed derivative commonly used as a stabilizer in beverages. Academic scientists in Chicago have raised concerns that it might cause gastrointestinal inflammation.

I’m not saying your almond milk habit is destroying the planet or ruining your health, or that you should immediately go cold turkey. I just want people to know what they’re paying for when they shell our for it. As for me, when I want something delicious to moisten my granola or add substance to a smoothie, I go for organic kefir, a fermented milk product that’s packed with protein, calcium, and beneficial microbes. Added bonus: according to the label, it’s lactose-free—apparently, the kefir microbes transform the lactose during the fermentation process.

The industry, meanwhile, aims to take its lucrative almond-milk model on the road. FoodNavigator reports that White Wave is setting up a joint venture to market its plant-based milks in almond-crazy China.

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Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters

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Guess which two words can make your nonpartisan education reforms a hot potato?

by FrancesBolling Posted on July 15, 2014

Guess which two words can make your nonpartisan education reforms a hot potato?

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Depending on who you’re talking to, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)– the first major national recommendations for teaching science to be made since 1996 — either painfully water down the presentation of climate-change information or attempt to brainwash our nation’s youth into believing climate change is real.

The backlash to the NGSS began last year, but now, we also have the backlash to the backlash — an effort by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others, to frame science education as a civil rights issue and mobilize a grassroots movement around the idea of a Climate Students Bill of Rights. The idea is to ensure that the new standards actually wind up getting taught.

If you’re the kind of person who likes geeking out over curricula, you’ll find the NGSS’s website fascinating. How do we teach climate change? It’s such an awkward thing to explain to children, who have not caused the problem and have yet to have a chance to help make it better. Or worse, for that matter.

The standards spell it out, grade by grade. Kindergartners  will learn that “Things that people do to live comfortably can affect the world around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things.” High schoolers will learn that “All forms of energy production and other resource extraction have associated economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical costs and risks as well as benefits. New technologies and social regulations can change the balance of these factors. “

It’s up to the states to adopt new educational standards like this. When the feds want to get new educational standards approved, they can pressure states into signing by attaching federal funds to the deal. Because the NGSS standards were developed by a smorgasbord of scientific organizations and the states themselves — or 26 of them, anyway — that financial incentive doesn’t exist. Instead, there’s the motivation that comes from so many states having participated in the process, as well as fears of America’s waning scientific standing.

Attempts to block the NGSS have taken several forms. In Wyoming, state legislators added a last-minute footnote to its state budget that banned the use of any public funds to adopt the new science standards, which effectively removed them from the public school system. In Oklahoma, a group of lawmakers tried to repeal its NGSS-based science standards, but were blocked by the state’s education department, which managed to get the governor to sign off on them.  The NGSS have been adopted by 11 states so far, including California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia, though Kansas promptly got sued over it.

I grew up in Michigan, in a suburban community outside of Detroit that was a melting pot of religions, all of which seemed to have objections to scientific education. In general, teachers steered clear of anything more controversial than photosynthesis. Outside of school, I took every chance I could get to (a) read about dinosaurs/space shuttles/stalactites and (b) wish I was a dinosaur/space shuttle/stalactite.

For all that I loved science, it took me years to learn the really important stuff: how to wade through what people want to believe — and what you want to believe — to figure out what can be empirically proven. Here’s hoping that these new standards will help students get to the same place.

Heather Smith (on Twitter, @strangerworks) is interested in the various ways that humans try to save the environment: past, present, and future.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Guess which two words can make your nonpartisan education reforms a hot potato?

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Is Montana More Corrupt Than Miami?

by JaimeFunkhouser Posted on July 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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For such a sparsely populated state, Montana has managed to generate some outsized headlines lately. There’s the GOP Senate candidate who made news by suggesting that creationism should be taught in public schools. Then there’s Missoula’s reputation as the “rape capital” of the world, thanks to, among other things, serious allegations of sexual assault committed by University of Montana football players. And continuing that theme, there’s also the Justice Department’s investigation of the Missoula County Attorney’s office alleging that prosecutors had been systematically discriminating against female sexual abuse victims.

Now comes new data showing that Montana is leading the country in public corruption prosecutions, suggesting that the state’s reputation for graft (dating back to the days of the Copper Kings) hasn’t changed much. Clocking in with 18 active cases, the federal judicial district of Montana has had more public corruption prosecutions in 2014 than those in south Florida, southern California, and even New Jersey, according to data crunched by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

How is it that such a small state has so many prosecutions? “Why prosecutors do what they do is a mystery,” says TRAC’s David Burnham. But the prosecutors in Montana have a good explanation: They’ve recently organized a major crackdown on corruption on American Indian reservations, of which the state has seven.

A recent AP investigation concluded that, nationally, tribal governments are five times more likely to have “material weaknesses” in their administration that make corruption possible, and reporters for years have been sounding alarms that federal prosecutors have largely turned a blind eye to these problems. Montana decided to change that trend, at a time when millions in additional federal dollars have flowed into tribal governments thanks to the federal stimulus package enacted after the financial collapse in 2008.

In 2011, the US Attorney’s office launched a task force, dubbed the Guardians Project, with the FBI, the IRS, and inspectors general of various federal agencies, to target corruption on American Indian reservations. The results have been telling: In 2012, Montana had only one official corruption prosecution, but by August of last year, the Guardians Project had netted 25 indictments against people who’d allegedly done all sorts of devious things to keep federal money from reaching those it was supposed to help.

Prosecutors promised there would be more to come, and there have been. Just last month, four members of the Blackfeet tribe were sentenced to prison for involvement in a scheme to steal federal mental health and substance abuse treatment funds from a $9 million contract. More than $225,000 intended for the program ended up being spent on travel and gambling, among other things.

Six people have pleaded guilty to embezzling federal dollars from a $361 million pipeline project designed to bring freshwater to the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation. Another seven people from the Crow reservation were indicted for stealing at least half a million dollars from the tribe in a double-billing scheme operated out of the tribe’s historic preservation office. One of the people convicted in the scheme allowed a coal company to take a backhoe to a 2,000-year-old sacred bison burial site. The corruption investigations have already ensnared a former state representative and Chippewa Cree tribe official, Tony Belcourt, who in April pleaded guilty to bribery, theft and tax-evasion charges related to the water project, as well as construction of a multi-million dollar clinic.

Overall, though, Montana itself probably isn’t more scandal-plagued than New Jersey or Miami. Montana’s US Attorney has just taken a harder line on prosecuting the abuses on its reservations, and all those cases have added up to boost Montana to the top of the rankings in terms of public corruption prosecutions. “These figures from Syracuse reflect only a portion of our effort,” US Attorney Mike Cotter said in a statement Tuesday. “Many of the public corruption indictments brought in Montana were initiated before last October. Relatively speaking, Montana is a small office; a David among Goliaths. But the Guardians have done truly remarkable work. Their efforts have unearthed widespread criminal activity and flagrant abuses of trust with regard to federal programs and grants designed to provide for the common good of our Indian communities.”

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Is Montana More Corrupt Than Miami?

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Being an Oakland Raiders Cheerleader Just Got a Little Less Awful

by ThaliaKetchum Posted on July 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In January, an Oakland Raiders cheerleader named Lacy T. filed a class-action lawsuit against the team with a laundry list of embarrassing allegations: Raiderettes were paid well below minimum wage, fined for things like forgetting to bring their pom-poms to practice or gaining five pounds, prohibited from talking to the press about their working conditions, and required to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars out of pocket for hair appointments, tanning sessions, and other beauty supplies. Similar lawsuits quickly followed from four other NFL cheer squads: the Ben-Gals (Cincinnati Bengals), the Flight Crew (New York Jets), the Jills (Buffalo Bills), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ cheerleaders. (Read Mother Jones‘ roundup of NFL cheerleaders’ allegations here.)

But last week, the Raiderettes had a small but real victory: In audition flyers that have since been taken off the team’s website, the Raiders stated that this year’s cheerleaders will earn $9 per hour, California’s minimum wage. This makes the Raiders the first of the sued NFL teams to give their cheerleaders a raise. Furthermore, Caitlin Y., a cheerleader waging a separate class-action lawsuit against the Raiders, was invited back to the team after auditions this past weekend, making her the first active cheerleader to have spoken openly to the press against the team’s working conditions.

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Raiderettes Lawsuit (PDF)

Raiderettes Lawsuit (Text)

The battle isn’t over yet for the Raiderettes: Arbitration in mid-July will address other allegations from the January lawsuit, like the requirement that cheerleaders pay out of pocket for beauty expenses, and will discuss the potential for veterans to receive back pay to make up for lost wages. The lawsuit that Caitlin Y. and teammate Jenny C. filed against both the Raiders and the NFL is still under way. In addition to claims about low pay, it alleges that cheerleaders are ridiculed for the size of their breasts, called “Oompa Loompas” if their skin is too tan, and routinely required to work events where they are subject to the inappropriate comments and groping hands of drunken fans.

Notably, this degrading treatment echoes claims made in other squads’ lawsuits: Buffalo Bills cheerleaders allege that they are subject to routine “jiggle tests” to make sure that their stomachs and thighs aren’t too bouncy, and that at the team’s annual golf tournament the bikini-clad cheerleaders are dunked into pools of water and “auctioned off” to the highest bidder.

The cheerleaders have a long road ahead, but, just maybe, a pay raise for the Raiderettes could be the first step toward NFL teams treating their cheerleaders with some semblance of dignity. If professional cheerleaders can’t keep their hopes up, who can?

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Being an Oakland Raiders Cheerleader Just Got a Little Less Awful

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

by UQEEmiliojhttek Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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In response to California’s ongoing drought, San Francisco’s water agency has come out with a hilariously creepy ad campaign to make saving water sexy. In addition to the commercial above, featuring a water-efficient showerhead being stroked and a seductive male voice telling you to “screw them on,” ads encourage water users to “Make it a quickie” and “Get paid for doing it” (“it” referring to your shower and the replacement of your old toilet, respectively).

Unfortunately, new data from the state’s Water Resources Control Board shows that Californians need to be “doing it” a lot more. Gov. Jerry Brown requested that Californians voluntarily reduce their water usage by 20 percent in January, when he declared the drought to have reached a state of emergency. But the Control Board found that, as of April, Californians had reduced their water usage by only 5 percent, and Bay Area residents had reduced by only 2 percent. The state has yet to enforce mandatory water restrictions, though a handful of cities have. Listen to KQED’s deep dive on water reduction here.

And, in the name of water reduction, here are a few more ads:

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

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Hopefully NASA won’t screw up its CO2-measuring satellite this time

by MarilouK96 Posted on June 30, 2014

Space Oddity

Hopefully NASA won’t screw up its CO2-measuring satellite this time

By

JPL/NASA

The last time NASA tried to launch a satellite to measure carbon dioxide levels from space, within minutes the $273 million project plopped into the Southern Ocean (oops). Tomorrow they’re giving it another go. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 will blast off at 2:56 a.m. PDT from the Vadenburg Air Force Base in California. This time, it’ll hopefully make it to 438 miles above the planet, where it will be in a prime position to obsessively watch Earth breathe.

JPL/NASA

Which sounds stalker-esque, but don’t get too creeped out. OCO’s main goal is to figure out where, exactly, atmospheric CO2 currently comes from – and, more mysteriously, where it ends up. While fossil fuel emissions have tripled since the 1960s, levels of atmospheric CO2 have risen by less than a quarter (but unfortunately that’s still enough to cause big global change). That’s because somehow our oceans and plants have, on average, been able to keep pace with absorbing half of the total atmospheric CO2. But scientists still don’t know a lot about the dynamics of how this is happening, which leaves them wondering: How long can we expect these carbon sinks to keep sucking the stuff down?

“Understanding what controls that variability is really crucial,” OCO project manager Ralph Basilio said at a press conference in Pasadena. “If we can do that today, it might inform us about what might happen in the future.”

The satellite will carry a 300-pound instrument that measures the colors of sunlight that bounce off the earth, because that color intensity indicates how much CO2 the light beams through. While it will only take in a square mile at a time – an area smaller than New York’s Central Park – scientists say that it will tell a much more complete story of the comings and goings of atmospheric CO2 than the 150 land-based stations from which they currently get their measurements. It will collect 24 measurements a second, which means a million a day, but scientists predict that only a tenth of them (100,000/day) will be clear enough of clouds to be usable.

If they can get it up there in the first place, that is. Ground control to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on …


Source
NASA satellite to inventory climate-changing carbon from space, Reuters
NASA Launching Satellite to Track Carbon, The New York Times

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.

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Hopefully NASA won’t screw up its CO2-measuring satellite this time

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Kool A.D.’s Bizarre Pop-Culture Carnival

by KarriSchmid Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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A lot of musicians can’t run fast enough from their first big hit. Led Zeppelin wouldn’t play “Stairway to Heaven.” Madonna hates “Like a Virgin.” And if you ask Radiohead to play “Creep,” Thom Yorke might tell you to fuck off (if he deigns to respond).

Not so the guy who broke through as one-third of Das Racist, the rap group behind “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” which was memorialized by The New York Times in 2009 as “an entrancing but numbing track based largely on the repetition of the title phrase.” Victor Vazquez, the 30-year-old rapper, punk rocker, novelist, and visual artist also known as KOOL A.D., parted ways with Das Racist in 2012, but says he tries “to think of everything I do as part of a continuous idea—I guess because it is all one continuous idea, in that all human life is one continuous idea.”

Peep the artwork, and you’ll get what he means. Maybe.

Vazquez is quick to point out that the hooks for Pizza Hut/Taco Bell and “Michael Jackson,” another of Das Racist’s hits, both came from a song he wrote in 2006, before the rap crew existed. Broadly speaking, his work feels remarkably consistent across his various media—a strong sense of unity emanates from beneath the seeming chaos. Vazquez’s mind is sensitive and humanistic, preoccupied by the philosophical challenges and existential absurdity of living in American society, yet nonetheless living as a part of it.

BEAUTIFUL DOG PIC (2014), by Victor Vazquez

He’s also absurdly prolific. A few months ago Vazquez married Saba Moeel, a fashion designer/musician he’s known since he was 15. A baby is on the way, and so is a book: O.K., A NOVEL, due out this fall, is a 442-page experimental narrative done as 100 fragmented episodes. Vazquez frequently switches up the narrators and breaks from standard prose into lists, screenplay-style scripts, dictionary entries, tweets, and fake ad copy.

His drawings and paintings, which gained some prominence in a 2009 “cartoon-off” with The New Yorker‘s Farley Katz (widely deemed to have ended in Vazquez’s favor), have shown in galleries in Oakland, California, and New York City. An internet-age artist through and through, he also sells visual art pieces via Instagram—some go for hundreds of dollars in seconds. The KOOL A.D. Twitter feed is itself a spectacle, and its oblique comedy and wild musings were partially compiled in Joke Book, his 33-page chapbook of “axioms and aphorisms,” such as: “NPR is to Fox as Starbucks is to Dunkin’ Donuts in that who cares” and “If you’re using a French word to describe it, it can’t be all that ‘avant-garde,’ now can it?” You can almost feel his mischievous smile.

The records keep dropping, too: Vazquez’s Bandcamp page now advertises 12 solo releases, with six full-length albums since 2012. He plans to make his latest, WORD O.K., a “visual album” (a la Beyoncé) with videos to accompany each track.

It’s hard to get much further from Beyoncé than WORD O.K., though. The video for one song, “WORD,” is a three-and-a-half minute, highly NSFW animated short that feels like an acid-fueled journey through a dystopian corporate carnival. It pans smoothly from Bart Simpson wearing a McDonald’s tee and smoking a joint to a sexualized, anthropomorphized rabbit doing the same. Yin-yangs, peace signs, and other pop symbols breathe in and out of cartoon orifices.

His associations might seem offhand, but really they are part of a thoughtful effort to deconstruct and rearrange cultural objects in ways that challenge our deepest assumptions. “We are all part of one universal organism, but at the same time we’re also distinct individual creatures,” he says. “It’s a paradoxical duality that, say, the yin-yang, as one of many symbols or combination of symbols, describes in a sort of shorthand.”

O.K., A NOVEL comes out this fall.

The ability to perceive the universal in particular moments and places, creating heightened impressions that encourage broader, often subversive, considerations, is where Vazquez’s work shines brightest. In “Open Letter,” the five-minute opener of WORD O.K., he raps: “The ice might melt and drip away / But picture yourself rolling in a Lincoln / Seeing pawnshops slink in your peripheral vision / And drift away.” On “Special Forces,” the final track, he takes a completely different rhetorical tack, bluntly repeating “Polo is owned by Nestle,” three times in a row.

In conversation, Vazquez is more explicit about how he relates to the world, artistically and politically. A proud San Francisco Bay Area native (three of his recent releases, 51, 19, and 63, are named after local bus routes), he’s outspoken about the impacts of gentrification.

“There’s nothing wrong with a couple new coffee shops or bars or restaurants,” he says. “But the rich people that move to a spot because it’s ‘cool’ often enough don’t really understand the politics of their being there.” He points to the tech industry: “You might take a private bus line to your software development company or whatever and essentially live a life that’s completely segregated from the majority of people in the world, and in the meantime you’re trying to develop products and concepts that are ostensibly going to enrich those people’s lives? When you don’t know a single thing about them? Don’t even ride the bus with them? Eat at a restaurant that replaced the restaurant they used to eat in and is now too expensive for them to go to? That kind of atmosphere breeds resentment and contention.”

When I ask if any particular political label suits him, his answer is characteristically circular: “I mean, I appreciate art and music and religious and spiritual concepts and, like, even drugs and socializing and sex and conversation and mediation as means of learning and acting that are less hampered by the seemingly inevitable dogmas you tend to find when you follow any argument about how people are supposed to live to its ‘logical’ conclusion.” As for thinkers who have influenced him, he sends me a list of more than a hundred names, including Swizz Beats, Jay-Z, Andy Warhol, Frantz Fanon, John Zerzan, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Walter Benjamin.

So it’s hard, perhaps even for KOOL A.D., to predict exactly where he’s headed. Will his fans age with him, and stay along for an unpredictable ride? “I have a feeling some of my fans aren’t aging at all. Some might even be growing younger,” he says. “I’m trying to crack the immortal demographic.”

As always, Victor Vazquez sets his own terms.

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Kool A.D.’s Bizarre Pop-Culture Carnival

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Just how friendly are your “bee-friendly” plants?

by ConsuelStarling Posted on June 26, 2014

Buzz kill much?

Just how friendly are your “bee-friendly” plants?

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We don’t want to kill your bee-loving buzz, but if you buy “bee-friendly” plants and seedlings from Home Depot or similar stores, then you could be unwittingly killing the bees that you’re trying to protect.

Friends of the Earth tested 71 garden plants with “bee-friendly” labels purchased from major retailers in the U.S. and Canada and discovered that 36 of them had been treated with bee- and butterfly-killing neonic pesticides.

“Since 51 percent of the plants that were tested contained neonicotinoid residues, the chance of purchasing a plant contaminated with neonicotinoids is high,” states a new report detailing the findings. “Therefore, many home gardens have likely become a source of exposure for bees. For the samples with positive detections, adverse effects on bees and other pollinators consuming nectar and pollen from these plants are possible, ranging from sublethal effects on navigation, fertility, and immune function to pollinator death.”

Déjà vu? You bet. The nonprofit published similar findings last year.

The difference this year is that the some of the large retailers have responded to the findings by pledging to try to end the appalling practice of treating “bee-friendly” plants with bee-killing pesticides. Reuters reports:

Atlanta-based Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, is requiring its suppliers to start [labeling plants treated with neonic pesticides] by the fourth quarter of this year, said Ron Jarvis, the company’s vice president of merchandising/sustainability. Home Depot is also running tests in several states to see if suppliers can eliminate neonics in their plant production without hurting plant health, he said. …

Also on Wednesday, BJ’s Wholesale Club, a warehouse retailer with more than 200 locations along the East Coast, said it was asking all of its vendors to provide plants free of neonics by the end of 2014 or to label such products as requiring “caution around pollinators” like bees.

At least 10 other smaller retailers, with locations in Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland and California, have announced plans to limit or eliminate neonics from plant products.

Here’s a list of retailers that have pledged to sell neonic-free plants.


Source
Gardeners Beware (2014): Bee-toxic pesticides found in “bee-friendly plants sold at garden centers across the U.S. and Canada, Friends of the Earth
U.S. retailers look to limit pesticides to help honeybees, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Just how friendly are your “bee-friendly” plants?

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Obama is absolutely lambasting Republicans on climate change now

by EloisaBastow Posted on June 26, 2014

jokes on you, assholes

Obama is absolutely lambasting Republicans on climate change now

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White House

It isn’t cool to wreck the climate. Not in 2014, anyway. That much is iceberg clear in the wake of a speech by President Barack Obama on Wednesday. Addressing a League of Conservation Voters’ annual dinner, Obama, who one year ago outlined a Climate Action Plan that sidesteps the obstructionist Congress, escalated the ridicule that he has lately been slathering on Republicans and other climate change deniers. From Politico:

“It’s pretty rare that you encounter people who say that the problem of carbon pollution is not a problem,” Obama said. “In most communities and workplaces, they may not know how big a problem it is, they may not know exactly how it works, they may doubt they can do something about it. Generally they don’t just say, ‘No I don’t believe anything scientists say.’ Except, where?” he said, waiting for the more than accommodating crowd to call back, “Congress!”

Obama smiled — not his big toothy self-satisfied grin, but his stick-it-in-the-ribs smirk.

“In Congress,” he said. “Folks will tell you climate change is hoax or a fad or a plot. A liberal plot.”

Then, Obama said, there are the people who duck the question. “They say, hey, I’m not a scientist, which really translates into, I accept that man-made climate change is real, but if I say so out loud, I will be run out of town by a bunch of fringe elements that thinks climate science is a liberal plot so I’m going to just pretend like, I don’t know, I can’t read,” Obama said.

“I mean, I’m not a scientist either, but I’ve got this guy, John Holdren, he’s a scientist,” Obama added to laughter. “I’ve got a bunch of scientists at NASA and I’ve got a bunch of scientists at EPA.”

These weren’t Obama’s first jabs at the atrociously anti-science, burn-it-all, fuck-the-planet, Koch-fueled Republican stance on climate change. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported over the weekend:

When President Obama stood before students in Southern California a week ago ridiculing those who deny climate science, he wasn’t just road testing a new political strategy to a friendly audience. He was trying to drive a wedge between younger voters and the Republican Party.

Democrats are convinced that climate change is the new same-sex marriage, an issue that is moving irreversibly in their favor, especially among young people, women and independents, the voters who hold the keys to the White House in 2016. …

Polls show large majorities of Americans favoring action on climate change, even if it causes electricity prices to rise. That’s one reason Obama has moved ahead forcefully on a rule proposed this month by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon dioxide pollution from the nation’s power plants, the biggest step against climate change yet taken by any administration.

It’s also worth noting that billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, who is spending $50 million to help topple climate change-denying Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, met with White House officials yesterday.

Recall that less than two years ago, Mitt Romney was ridiculing Obama for caring about climate change. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans,” Romney said as he accepted the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, an apparent quip that elicited raucous laughter. “And to help the planet.” More laughter. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Cue near-deafening applause.

Well, who’s laughing now?


Source
Barack Obama becomes mocker-in-chief on climate change skeptics, Politico
Democrats use climate change as wedge issue on Republicans, San Francisco Chronicle

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Obama is absolutely lambasting Republicans on climate change now

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