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Washington judge rules in favor of kids and climate

by evurlgvvc Posted on April 30, 2016

Washington judge rules in favor of kids and climate

By on Apr 29, 2016Share

When kids sue the government for failing to protect future generations against climate change, it’s a long shot. But on Friday, in King County, Wash., Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill ruled in favor of eight Seattle-area youth petitioners: The Washington State Department of Ecology must deliver an emissions reduction rule by the end of this year.

Though a previous, related decision found that Washington had “a constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources,” it did not require the Dept. of Ecology to create a new, more rigorous emissions-reduction rule-making process. (Gov. Jay Inslee had already directed the agency to come up with an emissions-reduction plan in July 2015.)

However, the Dept. of Ecology withdrew its draft emissions rule in February of this year, and Friday’s ruling installs a court-ordered deadline for the agency to promulgate a new one.

“For the first time, a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it,” said Andrea Rodgers, the young plaintiffs’ attorney from the Western Environmental Law Center, in a statement.

Our Children’s Trust, an advocacy group supporting the case, has orchestrated several similar youth-led state and federal cases around the country. Earlier this month, a magistrate judge in Eugene, Ore., recommended that the group’s federal case proceed to trial.

These cases might be long-shots, but intermediate wins like these could ultimately prove important for decisive climate action. Climate change isn’t waiting for anyone — not the legislature, and not future generations.

Said Judge Hill in her ruling: “The reason I’m doing this is because this is an urgent situation.”

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

by KimberEldershaw Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A Supreme Court ruling issued Thursday could make it much easier for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack computers across the country, angering privacy advocates and drawing a rebuke from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The court approved a change to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, which outlines how federal criminal cases are run. The current version of the rule says search warrants are only valid in the relatively small judicial districts where they were issued. Under the new rule, magistrate judges would be able to issue warrants that apply to computers throughout the country, allowing law enforcement officers to hack and infect them remotely. The change still has to be approved by Congress, which has until December 1 to reject or alter the rule change before it automatically takes effect.

The government says the change is necessary to keep up with wide-ranging computer networks and criminals who use tools to hide their physical locations online. Courts in Oklahoma and Massachusetts threw out evidence this month in two child pornography cases stemming from the government’s takeover of a dark-web site called Playpen, which it used to insert tracking tools into the computers of people accessing child porn. Because the order allowing the takeover was issued by a judge in Virginia, the judges in the two cases said, the evidence from the investigation could not be used elsewhere.

But privacy advocates say the rule change is an attempt by the government to expand its hacking powers without public debate. “Instead of directly asking Congress for authorization to break into computers, the Justice Department is now trying to quietly circumvent the legislative process by pushing for a change in court rules, pretending that its government hacking proposal is a mere procedural formality rather than the massive change to the law that it really is,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of the Open Technology Institute at the liberal-leaning New America Foundation, in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden also attacked the rule change as overly broad. “Under the proposed rules, the government would now be able to obtain a single warrant to access and search thousands or millions of computers at once; and the vast majority of the affected computers would belong to the victims, not the perpetrators, of a cybercrime,” he said in a press release. Wyden has promised to introduce a bill that would reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling.

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

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Here’s Why I Never Warmed Up to Bernie Sanders

by SarahMarquardt Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the Democratic primary basically over, I want to step back a bit and explain the big-picture reason that I never warmed up to Bernie Sanders. It’s not so much that he’s all that far to my left, nor that he’s been pretty skimpy on details about all the programs he proposes. That’s hardly uncommon in presidential campaigns. Rather, it’s the fact that I think he’s basically running a con, and one with the potential to cause distinct damage to the progressive cause.

I mean this as a provocation—but I also mean it. So if you’re provoked, mission accomplished! Here’s my argument.

Bernie’s explanation for everything he wants to do—his theory of change, or theory of governing, take your pick—is that we need a revolution in this country. The rich own everything. Income inequality is skyrocketing. The middle class is stagnating. The finance industry is out of control. Washington DC is paralyzed.

But as Bill Scher points out, the revolution that Bernie called for didn’t show up. In fact, it’s worse than that: we were never going to get a revolution, and Bernie knew it all along. Think about it: has there ever been an economic revolution in the United States? Stretching things a bit, I can think of two:

The destruction of the Southern slave economy following the Civil War.
The New Deal.

The first of these was 50+ years in the making and, in the end, required a bloody, four-year war to bring to a conclusion. The second happened only after an utter collapse of the economy, with banks closing, businesses failing, wages plummeting, and unemployment at 25 percent. That’s what it takes to bring about a revolution, or even something close to it.

We’re light years away from that right now. Unemployment? Yes, two or three percent of the working-age population has dropped out of the labor force, but the headline unemployment rate is 5 percent. Wages? They’ve been stagnant since the turn of the century, but the average family still makes close to $70,000, more than nearly any other country in the world. Health care? Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of the country has insurance coverage. Dissatisfaction with the system? According to Gallup, even among those with incomes under $30,000, only 27 percent are dissatisfied with their personal lives.

Like it or not, you don’t build a revolution on top of an economy like this. Period. If you want to get anything done, you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: through the slow boring of hard wood.

Why do I care about this? Because if you want to make a difference in this country, you need to be prepared for a very long, very frustrating slog. You have to buy off interest groups, compromise your ideals, and settle for half loaves—all the things that Bernie disdains as part of the corrupt mainstream establishment. In place of this he promises his followers we can get everything we want via a revolution that’s never going to happen. And when that revolution inevitably fails, where do all his impressionable young followers go? Do they join up with the corrupt establishment and commit themselves to the slow boring of hard wood? Or do they give up?

I don’t know, but my fear is that some of them will do the latter. And that’s a damn shame. They’ve been conned by a guy who should know better, the same way dieters get conned by late-night miracle diets. When it doesn’t work, they throw in the towel.

Most likely Bernie will have no lasting effect, and his followers will scatter in the usual way, with some doubling down on practical politics and others leaving for different callings. But there’s a decent chance that Bernie’s failure will result in a net increase of cynicism about politics, and that’s the last thing we need. I hate the idea that we might lose even a few talented future leaders because they fell for Bernie’s spiel and then got discouraged when it didn’t pan out.

I’ll grant that my pitch—and Hillary’s and Barack Obama’s—isn’t very inspiring. Work your fingers to the bone for 30 years and you might get one or two significant pieces of legislation passed. Obviously you need inspiration too. But if you don’t want your followers to give up in disgust, your inspiration needs to be in the service of goals that are at least attainable. By offering a chimera instead, Bernie has done the progressive movement no favors.

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Here’s Why I Never Warmed Up to Bernie Sanders

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What’s in the new McNugget? No one will tell me

by JosefinaWithnell Posted on April 27, 2016

What’s in the new McNugget? No one will tell me

By on Apr 27, 2016Share

Will someone please tell me what’s in the new McNugget? For the love of the Hamburglar, I just cannot figure it out.

An allegedly improved version of America’s favorite lump of fried poultry debuted at some 140 McDonald’s restaurants in Oregon and southwestern Washington in March, a spokesperson for the company told Crain’s on Wednesday. The new nuggets, according to the company, “are made with a simpler recipe that parents can feel good about while keeping the same great taste they know and love.” According to Crain’s, the rest of the country will get to enjoy the crispy little pillows of mystery ahead of the Olympic Games in August.

But McDonald’s has not provided any specific details about the contents of this new, “cleaner” nugget. And in the post-Chipotlegate era, how can we be sure that “simpler” necessarily means “cleaner” — or even “healthier?” Grist embarked on an investigative journey.

The first clue: A McDonald’s in Portland, Ore., shared a photo of what is presumably the new nugget. But it hasn’t responded to my questions regarding what, exactly, is pictured here:

It was time to go up the chain. I called the McDonald’s global corporate office multiple times. I left several messages with the McDonald’s U.S. corporate office. I sent an email. I even tweeted at the McDonald’s corporate account — no response, although the account tweets every few minutes at its loyal and vocal fans.

You’d think that McDonald’s, a company with a less-than-stellar transparency record, would jump at the chance to talk about the “cleaner” McNugget! But no one seems to want to tell me what makes this McNugget different than the old McNugget, and I’m certainly stumped. If you find out, I’d love to know.

UPDATE: McDonald’s got back to us! What’s in the McNugget? “100% white meat chicken, no artificial flavors or colors and our signature seasonings and crispy breading.  The Chicken McNuggets we are testing in Portland have no artificial preservatives.” Rest easy tonight, dear reader.

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What’s in the new McNugget? No one will tell me

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Why China (really) is losing its appetite for coal

by JulissaU46 Posted on April 27, 2016

Why China (really) is losing its appetite for coal

By on Apr 27, 2016Share

China announced this week it intends to halt construction of about 200 new coal plants, the likes of which would have accounted for 105 gigawatts of generating capacity. Avoiding 200 new coal plants may not sound like a huge step for climate change at first, but it accounts for more electricity capacity than all of Britain and makes a dent in the staggering number of coal-fired plants the world has planned.

The pressures leading to this decision are just as important as the news itself. China’s hunger for coal has been shrinking rapidly and coal-fired plants have been operating at an average of around 50 percent capacity, hinting at the wild inefficiencies in the country’s energy infrastructure. But this isn’t only a story of ruthless economic pragmatism or China’s hankering for international political capital — it’s also one of citizen accountability.

“Chinese people are saying, ‘We demand cleaner air,’” said Melanie Hart, China policy director at the Center for American Progress. Hart detailed recent moves to install real-time air-monitoring technology across the country. By comparing real-time air quality to national standards, people now have a stark picture of a government failing to follow through on its environmental promises. The Chinese Communist Party “are now allowing the citizens to have an unprecedented role in holding local officials to account over air pollution,” she told Grist.

Citizen pressure could lead China to make even bigger changes down the road. But with a country as big as China, change takes time.

And there is, as always, some fine print: China’s new guidelines provide exemptions for coal projects linked to peoples’ livelihoods, a vague phrase that could perhaps apply to personal coal-fired heating in homes. The country as a whole is going to still be using a lot of coal, but the new guidelines still show Chinese officials are serious about restricting its growth.

“One thing to understand about China is that it’s really like a giant cruise ship,” Hart said. “When the economic command in Beijing starts to turn the wheel and change direction, it takes a while for the entire ship to swing around.”

Swinging the ship around will indeed be slow and arduous — and will include hardships for coal and steel workers in the transition toward a service-based economy. China can do a lot to ease that transition with retraining and reemployment programs. And over time, when that ship is pointing the right way, the world will be a lot better off for all the coal it avoided burning.

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India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

by NikoleScrivener Posted on April 27, 2016

India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

By on Apr 27, 2016Share

India is suffering. In the midst of the worst drought it has seen in half a century, some 330 million people are currently affected, reports the government. The scarcity is so severe that schools, farms, and even hospitals cannot function — doctors don’t have enough water to wash their hands — and many people are leaving their homes in search of water.

To combat shortages, the government has started shipping water across the country via trains, but it’s not enough. In one of the most devastated states, 9 million farmers have little or no water for irrigation and at least 216 have committed suicide, reports the Guardian.

“The government says it is bringing water by train every day, but we are getting water once a week,” Haribhau Kamble, an unemployed laborer in the drought-struck district of Latur, told Reuters after waiting in line for three hours to fill up two pitchers. The situation for people like Kamble is expected to get worse as the summer temperatures rise and reservoirs dry up.

The current drought and other extreme weather events — including flooding that killed hundreds in South India last year — are linked to climate change. And while 190 countries met in Paris last year to come up with a plan to target climate change and its increasingly tragic effects, many critics argue that the accord failed to adequately address the needs of the developing nations like India, where over 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line — that is, on less than $1.90 a day.

“What we needed out of Paris was a deal that put the poorest people first.” Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for ActionAid, told the Guardian last year. “What we have been presented with doesn’t go far enough to improve the fragile existence of millions around the world.”

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India’s worst drought in 50 years is shutting down farms, hospitals, and schools

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We just lost another critical climate satellite

by FloydHeady Posted on April 27, 2016

Pour one out

We just lost another critical climate satellite

By on Apr 26, 2016Share

One of climate change’s most important biographers — a 2,700-pound satellite orbiting 450 miles above the surface of the Earth — just recorded its last data point.

Earlier this month, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that, after nine years and five months in orbit, the satellite known as F17 had stopped transmitting sea ice measurements. That’s not unusual — satellites in F17’s series, all named sequentially, are normally expected to last about five years, though some make it much longer. But F17’s failure could preempt the end of the series entirely. Walter Meier, a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, called the satellite program “one of the longest, most iconic datasets” illustrating climate change, particularly in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Since 1978, the satellites, each equipped with a set of passive microwave sensors, have been recording conditions on Earth, day in and day out. By measuring the amount of radiation given off by the atomic composition and structure of different substances, like ice or seawater, microwave sensing is a useful tool for pilots and military officers tracking weather conditions. Over time, these measurements can also track cumulative changes in sea ice. As early as 1999, scientists saw that sea ice cover was decreasing more quickly than it had in previous decades — and they’ve been observing similar trends ever since.

Until now, there have always been three or four satellites in the series orbiting at a time, as part of one of the country’s oldest satellite programs, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Over time, as new satellites were launched and older models went dark, overlapping data have kept the 40-year sea-ice dataset consistent.

With F17 floating in unresponsive silence, the bulk of the responsibility has been placed on F18, launched in 2009, as the newest of the series still in working condition (a newer satellite, F19, was launched in 2014 but failed last February). It’s not ideal to rely on a 7-year-old satellite, says Meier, but at least it is possible to keep the dataset continuous — for now. If this one were to conk out, too (knock on wood), there are some other options, including a Japanese research satellite launched in 2011. But, Meier says, the sensors vary slightly, and the data simply won’t be as consistent.

“The real problem is that there’s nothing on the horizon,” said Meier. “There’s nothing funded, or planned right now.”

Arctic sea ice extent hit a new low in 2012, compared to the average minimum extent over the previous 30 years.

There is one other option — but it’s sitting in a storage room somewhere on Earth. This satellite, F20, was the last of its series to be built, and was tentatively planned to launch in 2018. That plan fell through last June, when the Senate Appropriations Committee revoked funding for the DMSP, even rescinding $50 million that had been specifically designated for launching F20. Without Congressional approval, F20 is grounded.

“It’s sitting there, ready to be launched,” said Meier. He pointed out that the data from the satellite series is also used to study snow cover on land, ocean currents, temperature change, drought detection, and many other natural cycles. “The benefit is beyond my own work on sea ice.”

That research, he said, has led to critical discoveries. One of the most important was the observation of record-low sea-ice cover in 2007 and in 2012, findings that Meier says went even further than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“All of sudden, it was like, ‘Whoa! The ice cover is not as resilient as we thought, and things are moving a lot faster than we expected,’” he said, worrying that if another satellite were to fail, these kinds of observations would be jeopardized. “It would be a real shame if this data gets interrupted.”

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We just lost another critical climate satellite

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Republicans Aren’t Very Happy With the 21st Century

by EmilieBurney Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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If America is no longer great, when was it great?

When asked to select America’s greatest year, Trump supporters offered a wide range of answers, with no distinct pattern. The most popular choice was the year 2000. But 1955, 1960, 1970 and 1985 were also popular. More than 2 percent of Trump’s supporters picked 2015, when Mr. Trump’s campaign began.

Hmmm. Trump supporters seem to have a fondness for nice, even years. Not just Trump supporters, though: the year 2000 was the single biggest winner among both Democrats and Republicans. I suppose that makes sense. The economy was booming, 9/11 was still in our future, China hadn’t joined the WTO, and nobody knew that our upcoming election would be decided by the Supreme Court instead of the voters. But let’s return to Republicans:

In March, Pew asked people whether life was better for people like them 50 years ago — and a majority of Republicans answered yes. Trump supporters were the most emphatic, with 75 percent saying things were better in the mid-1960s.

….There were partisan patterns in views of America’s greatness. Republicans, over all, recall the late 1950s and the mid-1980s most fondly. Sample explanations: “Reagan.” “Economy was booming.” “No wars!” “Life was simpler.” “Strong family values.” The distribution of Trump supporters’ greatest years is somewhat similar to the Republican trend, but more widely dispersed over the last 70 years.

No surprises here. Old white folks pine for the days when other old white folks ruled the country. Democrats, by contrast, who are a lot less white, are considerably less enthusiastic about those days.

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Republicans Aren’t Very Happy With the 21st Century

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Marlboro Boys: Indonesia’s Youngest Smokers Light Up

by LandonCamarena Posted on April 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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More than 70 percent of Indonesian men smoke. So do more than 40 percent of 13- to 15-year old boys. And then there are the legions of even younger smokers. Despite recent bans on smoking in public places and prohibitions on cigarette ads, public-health activists describe Indonesia as a “playground” for big tobacco companies like Philip Morris, which makes the country’s No. 2 cigarette as well as the ubiquitous brand evoked by Michelle Siu‘s photos of the kids she calls “Marlboro boys.”

Illham Muhamad, who has smoked since he was five, slowly inhales his first cigarette of the day. If his grandmother refuses to give him money for cigarettes he goes through withdrawal, crying and throwing fits.

Dihan Muhamad, who used to smoke up to two packs a day before cutting down, smokes while his mother breastfeeds his younger sibling.

Kids buy single cigarettes at a kiosk after school in Jakarta.

Dihan Muhamad enjoys his first cigarette at 7 a.m. before he attends first grade.

Dihan Muhamad smokes at home.

Ilham Hadi, a third grader, smokes in his bedroom.

Andika Prasetyo, who smokes about a pack a day.

Muhammad Taufik Hidayat, 14, has smoked since he was 11.

Ardian Azka Mubarok buys a single cigarette in the town of Garut.

Then he smokes at home. He’s five years old.

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Marlboro Boys: Indonesia’s Youngest Smokers Light Up

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Donald Trump Continues to Know Nothing About the Bible

by LasonyaMesa Posted on April 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oh look. Donald Trump has a new favorite Bible verse:

WHAM 1180 AM radio host Bob Lonsberry asked the Republican front-runner if he had a favorite verse or story from the Bible that’s impacted his thinking or character.

“Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many,” he responded. “And some people—look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us.”

“And they laugh at our face, and they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country,” he continued. “And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”

I’ll say one thing for this: I actually believe it. It’s entirely plausible that this really is the biggest lesson that Donald Trump has taken from the Bible. I even predicted it six months ago.1

Sadly, Trump misinterprets this admonition the same way most people do. It was meant to stop endless feuds among his people. If you lose an eye, Yahweh limits you to gouging out the other guy’s eye in retribution. You can’t just go ahead and massacre his entire family.

Still, this should go over OK. As near as I can tell, an awful lot of supposedly devout Christians really do think this is the main lesson of the Bible, right along with getting rich, keeping out immigrants, and fighting welfare programs for the poor. It was a nice, safe choice.

1Sort of.

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Donald Trump Continues to Know Nothing About the Bible

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