Tag Archives: december

Japan Wants You to Believe That These Coal Plants Will Help the Environment

by KaseyZfjpfcvo Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Japan is at it again. Back in December, the country got caught trying to pass off $1 billion worth of investments in coal-fired power plants in Indonesia as “climate finance”—that is, funding to fight climate change. Coal plants, of course, are the world’s single biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Today, the Associated Press discovered over half a billion more:

Japanese officials now say they are also counting $630 million in loans for coal plants in Kudgi, India, and Matarbari, Bangladesh, as climate finance. The Kudgi project has been marred by violent clashes between police and local farmers who fear the plant will pollute the environment.

Tokyo argues that the projects are climate-friendly because the plants use technology that burns coal more efficiently, reducing their carbon emissions compared to older coal plants. Also, Japanese officials stress that developing countries need coal power to grow their economies and expand access to electricity.

Putting aside Japan’s assumption that developing countries need coal-fired power plants (a view still under much debate by energy-focused development economists), the real issue here is that there isn’t an official, internationally recognized definition of “climate finance.” In broad strokes, it refers to money a country is spending to address the problem of climate change, through measures to either mitigate it (i.e., emit less carbon dioxide from power plants, vehicles, etc.) or adapt to it (building sea walls or developing drought-tolerant seeds, for example). But there remains little transparency or oversight for what exactly a country can count toward that end.

The reason that matters is because climate finance figures are a vital chip in international climate negotiations. At a UN climate meeting in Peru late last year, Japan announced that it had put $16 billion into climate finance since 2013. Likewise, President Barack Obama last year pledged $3 billion toward the UN’s Green Climate Fund, plus several billion more for climate-related initiatives in his proposed budget. Other countries have made similar promises.

Each of these commitments is seen as a quantitative reflection of how seriously a country takes climate change and how far they’re willing to go to address it, and there’s always pressure to up the ante. And these promises from rich countries are especially important because in many cases the countries most affected by climate change impacts are developing ones that are the least equipped to do anything about it—and least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that caused global warming in the first place. But the whole endeavor starts to look pretty hollow and meaningless if it turns out that “climate finance” actually refers to something as environmentally dubious as a coal plant.

These numbers will take on increasing significance in the run-up to the major climate summit in Paris in December, which is meant to produce a wide-reaching, meaningful international climate accord. So now more than ever, maximum transparency is vital.

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Japan Wants You to Believe That These Coal Plants Will Help the Environment

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Montana GOP Legislator Wants to Ban Yoga Pants

by BonnieLarcombe Posted on February 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Montana Republican state Rep. David Moore has a plan to guide America out of the darkness—ban yoga pants.

Moore, who is upset that group of naked bicyclists pedaled through Missoula last year, decided that what his state really needs right now is tighter regulations on trousers. His proposed bill, HB 365, would outlaw not just nudity, but also “any device, costume, or covering that gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, anus region, or pubic hair region.” Per the Billings Gazette:

The Republican from Missoula said tight-fitting beige clothing could be considered indecent exposure under his proposal.

“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Moore said after the hearing.

Moore said he wouldn’t have a problem with people being arrested for wearing provocative clothing but that he’d trust law enforcement officials to use their discretion. He couldn’t be sure whether police would act on that provision or if Montana residents would challenge it.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Moore said.

Merlin’s pants! According to the Great Falls Tribune, Moore elaborated that he also believes Speedos should be illegal.

HB 365 continues a miraculous stretch for the Montana legislature. Just last December the Republican-controlled legislature issued new dress-code guidelines for the state capitol, advising women that they should “should be sensitive to skirt lengths and necklines.”

Update: Moore’s bill has been tabled.

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Montana GOP Legislator Wants to Ban Yoga Pants

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New Yorkers Disapprove of Cops Turning Their Backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio

by KieranCimitiere Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new public opinion poll shows that an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers—nearly 80 percent—believe police union leader Patrick Lynch was “too extreme” in saying that the mayor’s office had blood on its hands for supporting the Mike Brown and Eric Garner protests. The poll comes amid persisting tensions between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD officers, and union leaders, which came to a head after two cops were shot and killed in Brooklyn on December 20. The Quinnipiac University poll, published Thursday, showed that 69 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of police officers turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio as an act of protest during the funerals of recently slain officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

The poll also revealed stark racial divides in New Yorkers’ opinions on the mayor’s handling of relations between the police and the community: 62 percent of black respondents approved, while 63 percent of white respondents disapproved. They were similarly divided on who they believed was at fault for the ongoing tensions between de Blasio and the NYPD: 69 percent of black voters blamed police; 61 percent of white voters blamed the mayor.

Read the full results here.

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New Yorkers Disapprove of Cops Turning Their Backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio

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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

by JacquieSpencer Posted on December 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s been a tumultuous year marked by civil war in Syria and Ukraine, the spread of the Islamic State in the Middle East, massive protests against police violence in the United States, air disasters for Southeast Asian airlines, a spirited campaign for control of Congress, and major policy announcements via executive order by President Obama. Here a look back at some of the best images from the year’s major news stories.

January 25: A protester hurls a Molotov cocktail during a clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine. Sergei Grits/AP

January 31: Palestinians line up for food in Yarmouk, a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. UNRWA/AP

March 22: Relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 shouted their demands at reporters after Malaysian government representatives left a briefing in Beijing. The airplane has still not been found. Ng Han Guan/AP

April 3: A Spanish officer assists a migrant who fainted atop a fence that divides Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Thousands of sub-Saharan migrants live illegally in Morocco, and regularly try to enter Melilla in the hope of later making it to the Spanish mainland. Santi Palacios/AP

April 12: Supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy fly the American flag in celebration after the US Bureau of Land Management released the family’s cattle onto public land near Bunkerville, Nevada. Armed backers of rancher Bundy lived along a state highway in southern Nevada for almost three weeks following an armed standoff with the BLM, which had rounded up the cattle saying Bundy owed $1.1 million in grazing fees and penalties. Jason Bean/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP

April 16: A South Korean rescue team and fishing boats try to rescue passengers of the sinking ferry Sewol off the country’s southern coast. The ferry capsized with 476 people aboard, many of them students—and 307 died. South Korea Coast Guard/Yonhap/AP

May 9: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a parade marking Russia’s forcible annexation, two months earlier, of much of Crimea, previously Ukrainian territory. Ukraine and NATO quickly condemned the victory lap. Ivan Sekretarev/AP

May 12: This image from a video by Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist network shows missing girls the group abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok. More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haran in April. They were forced to convert to Islam and married off to the group’s members. AP

May 16: Supporters write congratulatory messages for India’s Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi at his party’s headquarters in New Delhi. Modi’s victory, the most decisive in more than a quarter century, swept the long-dominant Congress party from power. Manish Swarup/AP

May 24: Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was killed in a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, lashed out at the NRA and politicians who support the group. The previous day, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 before killing himself. Jae C. Hong/AP

June 15: A helicopter circles over the Shirley Fire near Lake Isabella, California. The fire ultimately burned 2,645 acres and caused more than $12 million in damage. It was just one of 5,597 wildfires that altogether burned more than 90,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. Stuart Palley/ZUMA

June 18: Immigrant children who crossed the US/Mexico border without a parent sleep in a holding cell at a Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas. Eric Gay, Pool/AP

July 8: Brazil midfielder Fernandinho reacts after Germany scores its third goal during the World Cup semifinals. Germany humiliated the host nation with a 7-1 victory before eliminating Argentina in the final to win its fourth World Cup title. Natacha Pisarenko/AP

July 14: Palestinians who fled their homes under heavy bombardment by Israel take refuge at a UN-run school in Gaza City. Many such schools came under attack during the seven weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/ZUMA

July 17: NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo restrains Eric Garner with a chokehold in this still from an eyewitness video. Garner died shortly afterward, and a grand jury decision not to indict the officer sparked massive protests across the nation. YouTube

July 19: Emergency workers carry a body bag from the site of a Malaysia Airlines crash near the eastern Ukrainian village of Hrabove. Ukraine accused Russian separatist rebels of shooting down the plane, a charge the rebels deny. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

July 29: Israeli soldiers, family, and friends mourn Sgt. Sagi Erez, killed in combat after militants used a tunnel to sneak into Israel from Gaza. Ariel Schalit/AP

August 13: A demonstrator throws a teargas container back at riot police in Ferguson, Missouri, where the killing of an unarmed black man by a police officer set off weeks of street protests. Robert Cohen/St Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS/ZUMA

August 14: US servicemen discuss the deconstruction of a command operation center in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. On October 26, after 13 years, America, Britain, and Australia formerly ended Afghan combat operations. Cpl. John A. Martinez Jr./U.S. Marine Corps

August 26: A pro-Russian rebel patrols through the rubble of a market damaged by shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Mstislav Chernov/AP

August 28: A worker prepares to remove the corpse of an Ebola victim in Unification Town, Liberia, part of the most severe outbreak since the virus was discovered. Kieran Kesner/Rex /ZUMA

Mid-September: Businessman Jon Gamble near Dunblane on the eve of a Scottish independence referendum. On September 18, a majority of the voters chose to remain part of the United Kingdom. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire/AP

September 23: Air Force Maj. Gena Fedoruk and 1st Lt. Marcel Trott take off in a KC-135 Stratotanker as part of a mission to conduct airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria. Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/U.S. Air Force

September 27: Riot police use pepper spray on pro-democracy activists who forced their way into Hong Kong government headquarters, challenging Beijing’s decision to backpedal on promised democratic reforms. Apple Daily/AP

October 20: An airstrike by a US-led coalition in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop near the Turkey-Syria border. Kobani and the surrounding areas has been under assault by Islamic State extremists since mid-September. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

November 4: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell casts his ballot at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. He easily won a sixth term. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

December 8: Protesters rallying against police violence and the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police, stop traffic on Interstate 80 in Berkeley, California. Noah Berger/AP

December 20: In Havana, members of the so-called Cuban Five celebrate a recent exchange of imprisoned spies, part of a historic agreement to restore relations between the United States and Cuba. Ramon Espinosa/AP

December 26: A protester in Mexico City displays painted hands and the number 43, signifying the number of students taken from a rural teachers college and handed over to a drug gang to be killed, according to an investigation by Mexican government authorities. Marce Ugarte/AP

December 27: The casket of NYPD officer Rafael Ramos is carried from a church in Queens after funeral services. Ramos and his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, were shot to death in Brooklyn on December 20 by a man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who said it was in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Brinsley later killed himself. Julio Cortez/AP

December 29: Indonesian Air Force officials study a map during search and rescue efforts for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. Wreckage from the plane, along with dozens of floating bodies, were found in the Java Sea on December 30. Sijori Images/ZUMA

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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

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Boxing Day Cat Blogging – 26 December 2014

by CliftonBisdee Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Traditionally, Boxing Day is when the upper classes present the help with Christmas boxes full of money or gifts. As you might guess, this tradition has been corrupted a bit on its way to California. Here, it’s the day that the help presents the upper classes with a box. Empty is preferred, actually. This one is big enough for two cats, but Hopper isn’t interested in lounging inside the box. She leaves that to Hilbert. She prefers to sit on the outside and gnaw on the box instead. Her motto: If it’s cellulose-based, it’s meant to be ripped to shreds.

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Boxing Day Cat Blogging – 26 December 2014

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A Tiny Island. Millions of Crabs. Terrifyingly Awesome Photos.

by EulahWhitfeld Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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An Australian wildlife official inspects migrating red crabs on Christmas Island, in 2013. Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

This month, an eerily precise annual migration began in earnest on a tiny Australian island about 500 miles off the coast of Indonesia.

Every year, millions of adult red crabs—first the males, then the females— scamper out from Christmas Island’s central forests, across the island, and finally to beaches that meet the Indian Ocean. Their goal is to stage one giant crab sex party: to mate and spawn.

The local government has constructed underground crab-ways to accommodate the migration. Parks Australia

According to Christmas Island National Park authorities, “the females will spend two weeks brooding their eggs before making their way to the cliffs and beaches to spawn. This should occur about the 18th-19th of December. Before sunrise on these mornings the females will release their eggs into the ocean—timed perfectly for the receding tide.”

Amazing.

Ian Usher/Wikimedia Commons

Watch them below making their slow, deliberate, hard-wired journey:

So. Many. Crabs. Max Orchard/Parks Australia

Parks Australia says that there are tens of millions of crabs—20 species in total—that live on the island. Their migration occurs between October and December and is triggered by rains characteristic of the island’s tropical wet season.

The local government closes roads for the invasion to prevent the little guys from getting squashed by cars. Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

Max Orchard/Parks Australia

Ruling the island! Crab Power! Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

Wildlife rangers have installed up to 7.5 miles of crab fences along the roads, according to Parks Australia—and every year they add up to three miles of additional temporary fencing—to help protect the crabs and their mating rituals. There are already 34 “crab crossings,” which are basically culverts under the roads so the crabs can avoid the cars. Here’s a video explaining just how elaborate the preparations have become:

Behind the scenes of the red crab migration – Christmas Island 2012 from Parks Australia on Vimeo.

But this spectacular beach invasion may be threatened by global warming. Research conducted by Princeton University found that increasingly unpredictable rainfall—potentially a symptom of climate change—could harm the red crustaceans’ chances of a successful journey, and therefore imperil their survival.

The study, published in Global Change Biology, found that if fluctuations in rainfall become more extreme and frequent, the crabs might get scrambled and not even start their migration, which is what happened during an exceptionally dry 1997 season. “We found that the start date of the migration was really dependent on the rainfall they received in the weeks before the migration,” said Allison Shaw, an author of the study, and now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. “The issue for the crabs is that they have to migrate if they want to produce. If they can’t make it to the water, they won’t produce offspring.” Disturbances in the migration patterns were linked in particular to strong El Niño years, which tend to make Christmas Island dry, Shaw says.

There’s still a lot of science yet to be done to clear up the connection between El Niño and climate change, but trends are emerging. “The 20th century is significantly, statistically stronger in its El Niño Southern Oscillation activity than this long, baseline average,” Kim Cobb, Associate Professor of Climate Change at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told me last year. That is, El Niño events have gotten worse.

If that’s the case, Christmas Island, home to the crabs, will experience more intense, and therefore drier periods, says Shaw. A lack of rain can delay or entirely cancel the crimson tide of crabs, and the resulting swarms of crab offspring, seen below.

Finally, waves of baby crabs appear. Parks Australia

Parks Australia

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A Tiny Island. Millions of Crabs. Terrifyingly Awesome Photos.

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This Is the Best Newspaper "Retraction" You’ll Read All Year

by StarSlonemfxegk Posted on December 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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The “retraction” appeared in Australia’s Courier-Mail, which later interviewed the family:

Kai Bogert, as he is now called, was known as Elizabeth Anne for 19 years. Ms Bogert last night told The Courier-Mail that placing the ad was “a no-brainer”.

“I needed to show my son I support him 100 per cent and wanted to let the world know that.”

Perfect.

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This Is the Best Newspaper "Retraction" You’ll Read All Year

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How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

by ShermanTackett Posted on October 13, 2014

Treebola

How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

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13 Oct 2014 5:38 PM

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Perhaps you have heard about Ebola, otherwise known as The Most Terrifying Disease Of Our Modern Times (Sorry, MERs; panic is a fickle friend). But you might not have heard that Ebola’s origin story also features a favorite environmental arch-villain? And by “favorite,” I mean “actually the worst”: deforestation.

You see, the most recent outbreak of this extra-deadly strain of the Ebola virus began last December, in a town called Meliandou in the sleepy “Forest Region” of Guinea. That is, it used to be forested, as a recent article in Vanity Fair pointed out:

Trees were felled to make way for farms or burned down for charcoal. Endless truckloads of timber were shipped to construction companies. The forest suffered another trauma as mining interests — the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, the omnipresent Chinese — pushed aggressively to exploit the country’s natural resources (bauxite mostly). As the forests disappeared, so too did the buffer separating humans from animals — and from the pathogens that animals harbor.

And that buffer was not in place when one fateful fruit bat came into contact with a human toddler late last year:

Ordinary life in Meliandou came to an end on the day last December when the Ebola virus, which had last claimed a fatality thousands of miles away, arrived in the village, most likely in the body of a fruit bat — its natural non-human reservoir, according to a virtual consensus among scientists. Mining and clear-cutting had driven bats from their natural habitats and occasionally closer to people, like those of Meliandou. And fruit bats love palm and mango, which ripen in the village’s remaining trees. Bats also feed in colonies, which makes them tempting targets: a single shotgun blast can bring down 10.

While in many ways Ebola qualifies as a natural disaster, it’s worth remembering that the distinction between “natural” and “human-made” is a fine one. Sandy was a “natural” disaster, for example, but New York City’s bad coastal infrastructure made it worse. Same with Ebola: What could have been an exclusively harmless fruit-bat affair instead took a leap across the thinning fringe of wilderness, traveled by land and by air in our increasingly interconnected world and — well, here we are.

There’s a lot more deep and very sad thinking about epidemics, mourning, and the risks health-workers take to care for others in the Vanity Fair article here. Read it — but maybe bring a box of tissues and a hazmat suit.

Source:
Hell in the Hot Zone

, Vanity Fair.

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How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

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Watch Drought Take Over the Entire State of California in One GIF

by VioletPHLsk Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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California, the producer of half of the nation’s fruits, veggies, and nuts, is experiencing its third-worst drought on record. The dry spell is expected to cost the state billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, and farmers are digging into groundwater supplies to keep their crops alive. We’ve been keeping an eye on the drought with the US Drought Monitor, a USDA-sponsored program that uses data from soil moisture and stream flow, satellite imagery, and other indicators to produce weekly drought maps. Here’s a GIF showing the spread of the drought, from last December 31—shortly before Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency—until July 29.

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Watch Drought Take Over the Entire State of California in One GIF

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This Is the Cast of the New "Star Wars"

by MilagrosRayner Posted on April 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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We still have no idea what the plot of the new Star Wars is about, but we finally know the cast! Original cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hammil, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker will be joined by newcomers John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow.

Episode VII is set to be released December 18, 2015.

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This Is the Cast of the New "Star Wars"

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