This tiny but mighty California bureau is taking on polluters
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This tiny but mighty California bureau is taking on polluters
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The radical history and dockless future of bikeshares
Perhaps you’ve seen them: Red, orange, yellow, or green bikes filling up sidewalks in cities nationwide. They’re called dockless bikeshares, and they’re the latest attempt to change urban mobility with bikes. Just find a bike, pay a dollar on your phone, and you’re off!
If they work, they could help cities fight traffic, air pollution, and climate change. But history tells us that’s easier said than done. Watch our video to find out how dockless bikeshares — if they can stay afloat — could change the way people get around town.
Read our feature for more on how electric bikes are changing Seattle.
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Paying at the Pump
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Seeing Red on Climate
Todd Tanner has a pretty sweet offer for his fellow Montanans: a new shotgun in exchange for science-based evidence that he’s wrong about climate change.
The conservationist uses the challenge in an attempt to raise awareness about our warming planet. A lot of people where Tanner lives in Bigfork, Montana, would probably like to take him up on his offer: The state has one of the highest rates of outdoor recreationists in the country, and Tanner is no exception. He was planning on going hunting after we finished our interview. “You wouldn’t know it,” he said over the phone, “but I’m literally walking around in a pair of wool pants.”
Tanner is sure he’ll never have to hand over that new shotgun, though he says he would love to find out that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real. “If someone shows me the error of my ways they can have their choice,” he said. “They can have any rifle, shotgun, pistol, or rod I own, and I’ll walk away feeling like I got the better end of the bargain.”
Since 2011, Tanner has harnessed his prominent position in Montana’s hunting and fishing communities to get people engaged. After wildfires incinerated forests and droughts desiccated rivers in Big Sky Country this year, agitated sportsmen and women have become easier to find. Tanner’s nonprofit, Conservation Hawks, is part of a coalition of grassroots organizations trying to pull conservatives into the conversation about rising temperatures.
And it’s starting to work. There’s a small but growing alliance of concerned conservatives who want to reclaim climate change as a nonpartisan issue. This motley crew of lobbyists, Evangelical Christians, and far-right radicals call themselves the “eco-right.”
Christine Todd Whitman, former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, believes the eco-right has a real chance at inspiring action in Congress. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, and a record-breaking year of environmental disasters finally behind us, 2018 could be the year the party reverses course. “If you look at the damage from just this last summer, from the floods, the droughts, the fires, it’s pushing $300 billion out of our economy,” Whitman said.
In Montana, Tanner diligently crafts his messaging in the hopes that he can turn even a small portion of the red state’s hunters and anglers into climate activists. There’s also a broader, national effort to target American conservatives. RepublicEn, for instance, is a coalition of more than 4,000 conservatives and libertarians pushing for environmental action. The organization hopes that, generations from now, the eco-right will be remembered for leading the United States out of the climate crisis and into the clean energy revolution.
Alex Bozmoski is the director of strategy and operations at RepublicEn. It’s a job he’s well-suited for — he used to be a climate denier himself.
Alex Bozmoski
As an undergrad at Georgetown, Bozmoski enrolled in a climate science class as a joke, planning to heckle the professor. But when challenged to justify his skepticism, Bozmoski found he had drawn erroneous conclusions fueled by conservative radio shows and Fox News. He cast around in his network of fellow Republicans and conservatives for people he could discuss his newfound understanding of climate change with, but he kept coming up empty.
Bozmoski found that, despite a long legacy of environmental leadership in the Republican Party, most modern-day members weren’t even thinking about our overheating planet, let alone figuring out how to address the problem.
Environmental issues weren’t always this polarizing. President Nixon set a firm national precedent when he created the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970. The Senate passed the Clean Air Act that same year, 73 votes to 0.
Fast-forward to the 2012 presidential election, when multiple Republican candidates advocated for abolishing the EPA. Two years later, just one of all the 107 Republicans running for Senate mentioned climate change.
It’s no wonder Bozmoski felt betrayed by his party and ill-equipped to apply his conservative thinking to the issue. Yet he could still understand why his fellow conservatives didn’t care.
“When you don’t trust anyone talking about climate change, when you don’t see your tribe talking about solutions that fit with your worldview, it’s really easy to cope with the problem by ignoring it or denying it,” he said. Bozmoski did neither.
He went hunting for like-minded Republicans and found Bob Inglis, a former U.S. representative from South Carolina who came out swinging against global warming in 2010 (a position that likely cost him his seat in the House). Bozmoski tracked the ousted politician down in 2012, and they started a project called the Energy and Enterprise Initiative. RepublicEn grew out of that project. They popularized the term “eco-right.”
RepublicEn hit the road in 2014, traveling across the country to persuade conservatives that their principles and values can be applied to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, RepublicEn has held 300 events across America, mostly for expressly conservative audiences. Bozmoski estimates that the organization has reached more than 26,000 Americans. He gets people to listen by reminding them that they have power.
“You are the most important environmental champions on planet Earth,” he tells them. “Republicans won’t lead without first being led by their constituents. You have an outsized influence on our ability as humanity to deal with this problem.”
RepublicEn hopes to generate conservative support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. “It’s the only solution that’s effective enough to address climate change and fits with conservative principles,” Bozmoski said.
A carbon tax is pragmatic and relatively simple: Put a rising fee on the use of fossil fuels, forcing companies to curb their emissions. To make it revenue neutral — and more acceptable to conservatives — the money generated by that fee goes back to Americans through checks or by cutting payroll or sales taxes.
A carbon tax in any form is unlikely to make it through today’s highly partisan Congress, so, in the meantime, RepublicEn advocates for a level playing field for wind and solar energy, less leaky oil and gas infrastructure, and nuclear power.
Jessica Fernandez, a lifelong Floridian and conservative, was one of the people inspired by RepublicEn’s national eco-right tour. Her upbringing might have had something to do with it. “At my house,” she said, “we grew up with solar panels on the roof and composting.”
Jessica Fernandez
In 2014, she met Alex Bozmoski and Debbie Dooley, head of a subset of the Tea Party called the Green Tea Party. Fernandez, a long-time director of the Miami Young Republicans, liked their pitch that conservatives should be leaders in conserving the environment. “It’s groundbreaking, I know,” she said with a chuckle. When trying to engage other Republicans on green issues, she quickly learned that an alarmist attitude just doesn’t work.
What approach does work? A focus on money. Fernandez said that conservatives are more likely to respond positively if you say, “Hey! Fixing the climate is something that can benefit you economically.” She tells them about community solutions like solar co-ops, groups of homeowners who use their collective purchasing power to install solar on the cheap, thereby reducing monthly electric bills.
Tanner, the conservationist from Montana, approaches the issue from a different angle. He thinks talking to conservatives about climate change requires language that is hyper-specific and localized.
The fine lines between demographics are razor-sharp. Messaging that works for a hunter might not work for a fisherman, even though both face the same set of environmental consequences: a scarcity of fish and game. “It’s almost like code,” he said. “As soon as you try and talk to people who aren’t like you, all of these barriers go up.”
For that reason, Tanner says the messenger and the message have to be authentic. He spends his weeks customizing language that personally appeals to various sub-demographics of sportsmen and women. There are millions of hunters and anglers in the United States. “That’s a ton of us,” he said. “If even 20 percent or 30 percent of them got engaged, it would have a huge impact.”
James Tolbert
James Tolbert is an unlikely environmental lobbyist. He spent 27 years helping big corporations clean up pollution. In 2013, the engineer was wrapping up work on the fallout from a million gallons of crude oil spilling from the Enbridge Pipeline into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan when he decided to switch teams. He traded in his senior position at energy infrastructure firm AECOM for a role as a lobbyist at Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
While Conservation Hawks and RepublicEn use grassroots organizing to drum up support among conservatives, lobbyists like Tolbert use a “grasstops” approach to push Republican representatives in Congress to support solutions.
We “create political space with a member of Congress by showing him that there is support from key members in his community,” Tolbert said. Citizens’ Climate Lobby calls these key community members “influencers” — business leaders, members of the chamber of commerce, even regional newspaper editorial boards. He sees them as crucial to getting anywhere with members of Congress.
When a Republican representative hesitates to accept climate change for fear of losing an upcoming reelection campaign, a well-placed opinion piece in a hometown newspaper or an endorsement from a local business leader can occasionally tip the scales.
It’s premature to say the winds of change are blowing, but we may be seeing the beginnings of a breeze. This month, more than 100 congressional lawmakers, including 11 House Republicans, wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to address climate change and the threat it poses to national security after his administration left the issue out of its national security strategy.
William Ruckelshaus, who served as EPA administrator under Nixon and President Reagan, has met with a number of eco-right organizations. He believes massive support for significant action on global warming is “going to have to include conservative groups, and virtually every discipline in society.” When Republicans do finally warm up to the idea of a conservative environmental movement, the eco-right will step out of the wings.
“They’re going to begin to get worried” about the growing impacts of a warming planet, Ruckelshaus said. “If there are organizations that they feel more comfortable with, they’re more likely to sign on.”
Todd Tanner.Image credit: Jeremy Roberts
The eco-right hasn’t exactly received a warm embrace from the conservative movement. In 2014, the Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm Berman and Company launched the Environmental Policy Alliance — yes, EPA for short. The outfit is “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups.” Among its targets: climate-conscious organizations like Tanner’s Conservation Hawks.
Shortly after it started, the alliance launched a website called Green Decoys, which claims that left-wing environmental NGOs use sportsmen as a cover for their “radical environmental activist” agendas.
The site has a different informational video targeting each kind of American conservation group. In the “Montana” video, a man in camouflage carrying a rifle speaks straight into the camera. “I’m a real sportsman,” he says. “And I’m a member of organizations that support hunting and fishing.” His double appears on screen, wearing a camo neckerchief. “And I’m a phony sportsman,” the double says. “I support candidates that think we cling to our guns because we just don’t know any better.”
Tanner isn’t worried about people who question his legitimacy. “If the folks who run Green Decoys, and I’m well aware of who they are, want to get together and see who’s a better hunter or fisher, or who’s the real deal and who’s not,” he said, “we are more than happy to have that conversation.”
Bozmoski recognizes that some conservatives have gone too far down the path of denial to be receptive to RepublicEn’s message. “We aren’t big enough to go around persuading people who really believe, to their core, that this is a government conspiracy,” he said. “We don’t worry about the people on the fringe who are hobbyists in antagonism on climate change.”
Fernandez hopes the tide of support for environmental legislation will rise to the highest levels of government.
“Climate change doesn’t have a political affiliation,” she said. She believes that even President Trump might change his tune if the solution is “repackaged as something that benefits the United States of America.”
What should the eco-right do while the top dogs on Capitol Hill insist on looking the other way? Ruckelshaus, the former EPA chief, says to “keep on.” But as we descend into ever-worsening environmental chaos, the question remains: How soon can these conservatives alter the course of history?
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The first wintertime megafire in California history is here
The first wintertime megafire in California history is here
By Eric Holthauson Dec 8, 2017Share
In the hills above the Pacific Ocean, the world crossed a terrifying threshold this week.
As holiday music plays on the radio, temperatures in Southern California have soared into the 80s, and bone-dry winds have fanned a summer-like wildfire outbreak. Southern California is under siege.
As the largest of this week’s fires skipped across California’s famed coastal highway 101 toward the beach, rare snowflakes were falling in Houston, all made possible by a truly extreme weather pattern that’s locked the jet stream into a highly amplified state. It’s difficult to find the words to adequately describe how weird this is. It’s rare that the dissonance of climate change is this visceral.
This shirt is so
hot right now.
That one of California’s largest and most destructive wildfires is now burning largely out of control during what should be the peak of the state’s rainy season should shock us into lucidity. It’s December. This shouldn’t be happening.
The Thomas fire is the first wintertime megafire in California history. In a state known for its large fires, this one stands out. At 115,000 acres, it’s already bigger than the city of Atlanta. Hundreds of homes have already been destroyed, and the fire is still just 5 percent contained.
In its first several hours, the Thomas fire grew at a rate of one football field per second, expanding 30-fold, and engulfing entire neighborhoods in the dead of night. Hurricane force winds have produced harrowing conditions for firefighters. Faced with such impossible conditions, in some cases, all they could do is move people to safety, and stand and watch.
“We can’t control it,” firefighter and photographer Stuart Palley told me from a beach in Ventura. “In these situations, you can throw everything you’ve got at it, tanker planes dropping tens of thousands of gallons of flame retardant, thousands of firefighters, hundreds of engines, you can do everything man has in their mechanical toolbox to fight these fires and they’re just going to burn and do whatever the hell they want. We have to learn that.” As we spoke, another wall of flames crested a nearby ridge, reflecting its orange glow off the sea.
The Thomas fire isn’t the only one burning right now. At least six major fires threaten tens of thousands of homes and have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee in recent days. “California fires enter the heart of Los Angeles” read one New York Times headline, a statement so dire it could double as a plot synopsis in a nearby Hollywood movie studio. Million-dollar mansions in Bel Air were evacuated, and the 405 freeway, one of L.A.’s busiest, was transformed into a dystopian hellscape during the morning commute. Ralph Terrazas, the Los Angeles fire chief, called the conditions the worst he’s seen in his entire 31-year career. “There will be no ability to fight fires in these kinds of winds,” said Ken Pimlott, the state fire chief. Shortly after these statements, state officials sent an unprecedented push notification to nearly everyone in Southern California, ominously warning millions of people to “stay alert.”
For years, climate scientists have warned us that California was entering a year-round fire regime. For years, climate campaigners have been wondering what it would take to get people to wake up to the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. For years, we’ve been tip-toeing as a civilization towards a point of no return.
That time is now.
The advent of uncontrollable wintertime megafires in California is a turning point in America’s struggle to contain the impacts of a rapidly changing climate. Conditions that led to the Thomas fire won’t happen every year, but the fact that they’re happening at all should shock us.
As California-based scientist Faith Kearns writes in Bay Nature magazine, “The admission that our best efforts may not always be enough opens a small window to shift how we think about disasters.”
The sirens are wailing, the long-feared scenarios are coming true. The era that scientists have warned us about for decades is here. There’s no denying the facts anymore: What’s happening right now in California is a climate emergency.
Historically, the Santa Ana fire season in Southern California peaks in October, at the end of the long summer dry season, just as the first snows of the winter start to appear in the Sierras. With the right conditions, the dense, cold air further inland gets funneled toward the coast, warming and drying as it quickly descends toward the sea, waiting to transform an errant spark into a raging inferno.
These are the Santa Ana winds, and they’ve been happening here for millennia. What’s different now, of course, is there are millions of people living in the area, for all the reasons people want to live in Southern California. The seasons are changing, too. Increasingly, those two facts are becoming incompatible.
There’s a whole series of links between climate change and this week’s fires. Ten years ago, scientists warned of possible lengthening of the Santa Ana fire season, and the data bear that out. Fire season is more than a month longer now, and 13 of the state’s top 20 fires in history have happened since 2000. This year’s “rainy” season has also been suspiciously absent so far, with Los Angeles rainfall 94 percent below normal since October. Right now, the atmosphere over the West Coast is the driest in recorded history. There’s no rain in the forecast for at least the next two weeks – the current fires could last until Christmas. Combine that with more people wanting to live in harm’s way – more than a million more people live in Southern California compared to 2000 – and it’s no wonder wildfire seasons are becoming increasingly catastrophic.
This year was the most expensive wildfire season in U.S. history, but money isn’t really the issue here. It’s the daily terror that fills residents as they look up and see a blood red sky and wonder if their home will make it through the night. It’s the rush on breathing masks as air pollution values spike above the top of the scale. It’s the realization that what you thought was normal, isn’t anymore.
In Houston, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles, Americans are feeling the urgency of climate change not in weather data and distant news reports, but in their pulse rate.
Climate change is no longer some abstract concept, some line on a graph, some strongly-worded scientific consensus statement. Climate change is terrifying. It’s families fleeing a fire with only a moment’s warning to collect their photo albums. It’s single mothers using an ax to break a hole in the roof of their house as floodwaters rise into the attic of their home in the backyard of the oil industry’s capital city. It’s an entire island destroyed and forgotten, buried in a frenetic news cycle.
A new study this week that examines the recent performance of climate models, provides a hint that the ones showing the quickest rise in global temperatures have generally been the most accurate so far. Increasingly, that rise will accelerate, say the models, unless the world institutes a sharp reduction in emissions. Should we continue on a business as usual pathway, the new findings show a 93 percent chance that global warming will exceed what was previously considered a worst-case scenario by 2100.
A baby alive today has a good chance of living to the year 2100. The people of the future are real people, you can already meet them. Their climate futures are increasingly tangible. That climate change is now a California emergency doesn’t necessarily fate the region to uninhabitability, it provides an opportunity for a radical rethink. If we bungle this opportunity, all indications are that things can definitely get a lot worse.
A version of this story originally appeared in Rolling Stone.
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Why a Kindle Is the Greener (and More Community-Minded) Choice
When I gave my TEDx talk on the benefits of minimalism the audience totally resonated with the overarching theme of my message. But to a person, they all had one driving concern.
?What about books?? they wanted to know, with a poorly masked look of terror on their face.
Letting go of their books was an unfathomable concept to them. Apparently holding an actual book lends a whole different experience to reading. I don?t get it, but given my ?less is more? lifestyle I guess I?m not really in a position to comment.
Still, I don?t believe it’s a good enough reason to hold onto?books. There are exceptions, of course, such as beautifully photographed coffee table books or?dog-eared recipe books covered in flour and tomato sauce (or, is that just me?).
But when it comes to paperbacks, I?m less inclined to empathize. Let me explain.
Books and the Environment
If you?re on the fence about whether to stop buying paper books and use an e-reader instead, then perhaps this will sway you.
A 2006 study found that the US book industry consumed approximately 30m trees in a single year. Of course, producing a Kindle also takes a toll on the environment, but the more books you read on it the more you offset those emissions.
More and more publishers are moving towards sustainably sourced paper though, so if you are planning to buy a book be sure get one that carries the FSC logo. That said, given the rate that we?re losing forests due to urban creep,?perhaps?we shouldn’t be so quick to cut them down.
Okay, so how do you save the trees and still keep reading real books??There are two routes you could go here.
Join a Library
The first is to go old school and join a library. (I know, how very eighties of me.) Regardless of how state-of-the-art it is, you?re bound to find something on the shelves to appeal to your reading tastes. Plus, because you?re not actually paying for the books, you can be a little more risky in your choices. If you don?t like a book, just return it and take out something else.
Spread the Love
The second option is to buy the books you want and then, once you?ve read them you can donate them to your library, a school or an old age home, for example. Most libraries have a wishlist of books they?d like to see on their shelves, so you could check in with them first.
A lot of people struggle with the challenge of letting go of books. In my experience it?s usually for one of two reasons. They either think it?s a waste because they spent their hard earned cash on the book or the story really resonated and they somehow feel that by holding onto the book, they?ll hold onto the story as well.
If you fall into the first group, then donating the book when you?re finished reading it is a win/win. Ultimately, your money will have a far greater impact than it would have if the book remained on your shelf at home.
However, if you?re inclined to keep the book because you loved the story then I?d urge you to donate it to a library close to you. That way you can borrow it back and reread it whenever the mood takes you.
Books and Clutter
It might be difficult?at first, but if you take it slow and remember the good you?re doing by donating them, it will get easier. One approach is to start by identifying the books that spark joy and set those to one side. Knowing that you?re keeping at least some will make you feel more at ease about the task.
Remember, books take up space and they?re heavy. If you?ve ever moved with boxes of books, you?ll know what I?m talking about. Do yourself a favor and unclutter your bookshelf now, your back will thank you.
7?Awesome Things About a Kindle
1. You can read in the dark
If you buy a Kindle with a backlight you can read in bed without disturbing your partner. This feature also comes in handy if?the electricity goes out or when?you?re camping.
2. You can take as many books as you want on vacation
Picking just a couple of books to take with you on holiday is tough. What if you?re not in the mood for the ones you chose or worse, you made a bad choice and the story isn?t nearly as thrilling as the book jacket led you to believe?
3. You have access to a world of books
If you want a new book, the only thing you need is wifi and you can connect to Amazon?s storefront and browse to your heart?s content. As an added bonus, you can download a sample first to see if you like the book.
4. Giving Indie authors a leg up
Nowadays, a lot of emerging writers only publish their work on Kindle. This means?there are countless gems that you?d never have known about if you didn?t have a Kindle. Plus, you?re helping these guys get their work out into the world.
5. Moving house is a breeze
You may well own hundreds of books, but all you have to do is slip your Kindle into your laptop bag and you?re done moving them. How easy is that?
6. Look Ma, no hands!
You can balance you Kindle on your lap, leaving your hands free for important stuff like drinking hot chocolate and munching?on Oreos.?(I’m not the only one who snacks and reads, am I?)
7. They’re easier to clean
Okay, obviously if you spill the entire contents of your coffee cup directly onto your Kindle things aren’t going to look too good. However, cleaning greasy fingermarks and cookie crumbs is a breeze.
Related:
What Does Watching TV vs. Reading a Book Do to Your Brain?
7?Books to Read For Spiritual Growth
20 Ways to Reuse Old Books
Photo credit: Thinkstock
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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Why a Kindle Is the Greener (and More Community-Minded) Choice
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Inside the climate movement’s Trump-fighting strategy
With the election of Donald Trump, environmentalists find themselves bracing for their worst possible scenario at the worst possible time.
Only recently, the world has made slow but steady progress in the fight against climate change — even as signs of global climate disruption have accelerated. The world has already warmed about 1 degree C above preindustrial times, which might not sound like much, but scientific evidence shows it’s contributing to an increase in extreme weather, drought, and conflict across the globe. If we don’t ramp up immediate action to limit warming, the consequences will become more deadly, even catastrophic, for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
History could one day judge this election as the point of no return. Our science-adverse, climate-denying, fossil fuel–friendly president-elect promises to take a wrecking ball to the few promising signs that the world is beginning to deliver on a more sustainable future.
At best, it will turn out that Trump (never one for consistency) was bluffing during his campaign. Republicans could still decide not to fulfill their promises to cut all federal climate funding and cripple the Environmental Protection Agency. Perhaps the international backlash can slow Trump’s roll to pull the United States from the Paris climate deal.
But at worst — and this is the way things appear to be leaning — Trump and his administration of fossil fuel executives will undo not just the incremental progress made under President Obama’s second term, but over 40 years of environmental progress since the inception of the Clean Air Act. Millions, even billions, of people could be hurt because of a single U.S. election, especially if America’s reversal sabotages the climate efforts of other countries.
Facts and science have often taken a beating in U.S. politics, and advocates will find themselves in a familiar, if daunting, position over the next four years: limiting what the presidency can do to unwind climate action.
Progressives across the board are now navigating a post-election minefield. Some have been tempted to normalize Trump’s positions and pledge to work with him if he comes around, while many others have no illusions about what his presidency will bring. In wide-ranging interviews across the movement in the week after Trump’s election, environmental leaders and activists explained how they are gearing up to fight.
Their message: Have hope.
Strategy 1: Apply public pressure
At a sober press conference the day after the election, Kevin Curtis, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund (the political affiliate of the larger national group), made a weak joke about how many of his fellow speakers had gray hair. His point: Many of them have faced these battles before, specifically when Republicans controlled Congress in 1980, 1994, and 2004, and promised to handicap the Environmental Protection Agency, just as Trump has.
“The environmental community experienced this 16 years ago with President George W. Bush,” echoed Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, in a separate interview. “We used the courts to protect rules. We went after political appointees, personnel policy.”
Each time a Republican president took office over the past few decades, environmentalists saw protections and oversight rolled back or delayed, resulting in loose standards for air pollutants and loopholes in fracking regulations. We’re still seeing ramifications of those changes today.
But advocates also successfully fought many proposals that could have permanently handicapped the Clean Air Act and environmental enforcement.
“When Newt Gingrich came in, as the public realized what he was actually intending to do, the public became very active in voicing concern, as did media and others,” said David Goldston, NRDC’s government affairs director. “There was a level of attention and criticism that made Gingrich and his allies realize they were expending too much political capital on an anti-environmental agenda that was not successful.”
Another such fight involved Bush’s Energy Policy Act of 2005. Now infamous for the “Halliburton loophole” that prevents federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing, environmentalists who were fighting many of the act’s provisions at the time remember it for its potential to do far worse.
“It was a laundry list for polluters, and really nothing that was going to benefit America and move us toward a clean energy future,” Environment America’s D.C. Director Anna Aurilio said. “We fought hard against that bill for five years.”
Filibustering blocked, among other things, the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and kept many public lands off limits to drilling. Environmentalists mobilized their supporters to call on Senate leaders to block the worst of the fossil fuel wishlist.
Another tactic that seemed to work, Friends of the Earth’s Pica noted, was exposing the many ties between the fossil fuel industry and the Cheney energy task force that recommended changes in the law and regulations.
The parallels between the second Bush administration and today aren’t exact. The GOP held less extreme positions on climate change than it does today, and even then enviros lost on many fronts. It is unclear whether Democrats will even have the filibuster, which allows the minority party in the Senate to block legislation, at their disposal this time around.
There are other differences that offer a bit of hope, though. “The stakes on climate are far higher, and this time the urgency is greater,” NRDC’s Goldston said. “I think the prominence of where the issue starts is more prominent than where pollution was when the Reagan, Bush, and Gingrich fights took place.”
Strategy 2: Thanks, Obama
Obama’s lame-duck period won’t be boring, that’s for sure. Before the president leaves office in January, enviros expect their most powerful current ally to push through a series of finalized regulations and public-lands protections, setting up obstacles to a Republican polluter-free-for-all.
Activists are pressuring the administration to deny the permits that would allow completion of the final leg of the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River. They are pressuring Obama to take the Atlantic coast and Arctic Ocean off the table in his five-year drilling plan. (Less realistically, they hope to see the Gulf off-limits for more drilling, too).
There’s also a push to declare the area around the Grand Canyon off-limits to uranium mining. And enviros are asking Obama’s EPA to finalize as many anti-pollution regulations as possible.
The problem is that whatever Obama can do by executive action can be undone just as easily by executive action, or by Congress. Republicans are already eyeing reigning in one of the presidency’s greatest environmental powers of the last century — the ability to designate national monuments. Even if Obama fulfills every last item on environmentalists’ wish list, it doesn’t mean his actions will withstand the test of time.
That’s not the point, argues one of the groups pushing the administration to do more.
“Even if these things are busted up after the Obama administration,” said 350.org Communications Director Jamie Henn, “at least it forces Trump to actively break them, instead of letting him charge ahead.”
Strategy 3: Sue the bastards
Environmental groups weren’t ready to comment in detail about their legal strategy in a Trump era. They already have their hands full with the legal defense of the Clean Power Plan (Obama’s regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants) and other Obama-era regulatory cases that are threading through the courts.
They have the law — at least for now — on their side. The Supreme Court has upheld the EPA’s ability to regulate pollution, and has also determined that, technically, the government must address greenhouse gases, if the best science says they’re a threat to public health (they are).
Under Obama, the EPA already issued these so-called endangerment findings, confirming the science underpinning the health threats of climate change, and a president can’t simply reverse those with the stroke of a pen.
Environmental groups could be expected to go on the offense and not just play defense, maintaining that — by law — the government has to address climate change.
Although court battles sometimes work, they can’t perform magic. A Trump administration will still be governed by anti-science personnel and strategy, and one of the easiest solutions from them to stall environmental action would be to cut funding to agencies’ most important work. Lawsuits are also contingent on judges who go by precedent and rule for the environmental side, while many lower courts are staffed by more conservative justices.
“Legal strategies are end-of-the-pipe solutions,” activist and Environment Action policy director Anthony Rogers-Wright said — meaning they are the last line of defense.
Strategy 4: Win in the states
Much of the progress on climate change over the past decade has occurred at the state and local level, and that will be even more true in a Trump era.
Large environmental and progressive groups have reported record fundraising in the days after the election. Community-based groups have also seen an outpouring of support.
Elizabeth Yeampierre, who runs UPROSE, a group focused on environmental justice in Brooklyn, said that this week alone she has seen a flood of interest from community members interested in volunteering. “It took us by surprise,” she said. “People are looking for community anchors, spaces they can organize, spaces they can preserve our rights, and move the dial forward on climate change.”
“What I find most promising and most exciting is the level of concern and interest in supporting organizations like ours.” One of UPROSE’s main focuses in the upcoming year will be turning the industrial waterfront off Brooklyn’s Sunset Park into a hub for sustainable development and offshore wind.
“It’s interesting,” Yeampierre said. “People say that’s very local, very parochial, but areas like those are well-positioned to serve regional and local needs at the same time.” It’s those kinds of efforts in which progress on sustainability could continue during the Trump years.
Bold Nebraska’s Jane Kleeb, for her part, is ready to organize against a renewed push to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. (Builder TransCanada has already announced plans to reapply for a permit under the Trump administration.)
“We will start to really hit Republicans on the eminent domain issue,” Kleeb said. Forcing landowners to turn over their property for pipelines, which allows private companies to profit, is unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans.
“We’ll continue to fight pipelines around property rights, water, and sovereignty issues,” Kleeb added. “We’ll be fighting for public lands and water.”
Whether it’s blocking a coal-export terminal in Seattle or California passing ambitious climate legislation, those local fights will grow even more important as Trump tries to move the country in the opposite direction.
Republicans will have the least control over trends in state and local clean energy development, which have been dictated more by economic factors than political ones. Of course federal policy still helps shape those trends, especially in the remote possibility that Congress zaps clean-energy tax breaks.
Nevertheless, for at least the next four years, progressive states will continue to take the lead in climate policy in the United States. While some states get cleaner, Republican-dominated states could very well go in the opposite direction as the federal government lowers the bar they’re required to meet.
Strategy 5: Expand the movement
The climate movement has a tool at its disposal that no election can take away — the movement itself, which has changed dramatically over the past few years and now includes a much larger coalition of faces and groups.
That new mix was on display two years ago at the 311,000-strong People’s Climate March in New York City, as frontline communities and environmental justice advocates led the way.
Advocates agreed that to succeed, environmentalists are going to have to lean even harder into a broad-based strategy that engages more people and new allies in the climate fight.
Yong Jung Cho, a former organizer with 350.org who is a cofounder of the new progressive group All Of Us, notes that although single-issue organizing is important, “we need movements” that push a broader set of priorities from the outside.
All Of Us will be less concerned with organizing against GOP’s racist agenda than with pressuring Democratic politicians to hold the line, Cho said. This week, the group organized a sit-in at the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer, expected to be the next Senate Minority Leader.
To organize effectively in a Trump era, Rogers-Wright said “our local organizing prowess is going to have to improve and increase tenfold. We’ve seen some amazing things happen at the local level that have had a lot of profound change.”
Just look at the rallies across the country this week calling on Obama to do whatever he can to permanently stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota before he leaves office. What began as a legal battle between the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the pipeline owner, Energy Transfer Partners, has become a national rallying cry for indigenous rights and protecting clean water, resonating as few environmental battles have in recent years. Tens of thousands of people have now taken action in solidarity with what began as a local fight.
Similarly, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune says he finds hope in the growth of a different kind of coalition that has emerged as clean energy has become competitive economically.
“When it comes to climate and clean energy, there is an alliance between the market and our movement that we never had before,” Brune said. “Clean energy now is cheaper than coal and gas in most parts of the country, and it creates more jobs than fossil fuels. Investors are increasingly moving away at least from coal — investors and corporate leaders that we didn’t have in the Bush administration.”
Whereas a strong progressive movement would apply pressure to Democrats and more moderate Republicans, business leaders might carry a bit more weight among conservatives. The pressure has already started, as more than 360 businesses have called on Trump to stick with the Paris climate deal.
At first glance, these two goals — shoring up a wider progressive base of climate voters and appealing to business interests — might seem in conflict. But that’s not necessarily true.
“The way that movements work and are most effective is not that everyone does the same thing, or that everyone adopts the same messaging,” said 350.org’s Henn. “It’s about having a diversity of approaches that work together — an ecosystem, if you will — that are somewhat in concert with one another.”
Key to this strategy, Henn said, is not forgetting the larger stakes of the fight.
“It’s important to remind people that that there’s something fundamentally awful about what he’s doing. It’s going to be important to not normalize the Trump agenda. … The climate community is going to need to keep doing that. If we fight this as a policy fight, we’re going to lose.”
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How To Green Your Outdoor Deck Maintenance Routine
Summer takes its toll on outdoor decks: the elements, foot traffic, pets, runoff from the roof and plant debris — it all adds up. It’s unavoidable. Regular outdoor deck maintenance ensures that your deck not only looks better but stays structurally sound longer. So what’s a eco-conscious deck-loving home owner to do?
Green your outdoor deck maintenance
There are plenty of outdoor deck maintenance products on the market. These products promise to rid your deck of dirt, stains and mildew yet can contain harsh chemicals. Why not make your own outdoor deck maintenance cleaner with natural, eco-friendly household ingredients instead? With some elbow grease, a power washer and a utility broom, your deck will look brand new in no time at all. Best of all, you and your guests won’t be standing on a pile of toxic timber.
Here’s how to get started.
Eco-friendly deck cleaner recipe
Make your own outdoor deck maintenance cleaner with natural, eco-friendly household ingredients instead!
- Using a utility broom, clean all the loose debris from your deck.
- Use a power washer to loosen the embedded dirt and rinse off your deck.
- Sprinkle the deck with baking soda.
- Make your own deck cleaner using 1 gallon of hot water, 1 cup of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of your favorite eco-friendly dish soap. The acid from the vinegar helps clean away any mildew or algae. If you find you have a lot of build-up, consider adding 2 cups of vinegar.
- Using a scrub brush or broom, wash your deck with your homemade cleaner. The natural reaction between the vinegar and the baking soda helps to give your deck a good scrub. The baking soda also acts as a mild abrasive to scrub away any tough stains.
- Rinse your deck again using the power washer.
- Let your deck dry overnight.
Note: If you haven’t washed your deck in a few years, consider repeating this process the next day for a good, thorough clean.
Run away from the toxic runoff routine
The best part of this method is using a natural cleaner saves toxic chemicals from leaking into your lawn and water supply. Enjoy your clean deck knowing it was washed in an environmentally responsible way.
To see other materials to upkeep your deck, visit your local Home Depot.
Feature image credit: Artazum / Shutterstock
Sommer Poquette
Sommer Poquette is author and blogger for
, a site about environmentally-friendly DIY projects for the home.
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How To Green Your Outdoor Deck Maintenance Routine – September 28, 2016
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Judge Orders Apple to Help FBI Crack San Bernardino iPhone
Mother Jones
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A federal judge wants Apple to build a “back door” that allows it to access encrypted data on the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino attackers. Apple is resisting:
The order, signed Tuesday by a magistrate judge in Riverside, Calif., does not ask Apple to break the phone’s encryption but rather to disable the feature that wipes the data on the phone after 10 incorrect tries at entering a password. That way, the government can try to crack the password using “brute force” — attempting tens of millions of combinations without risking the deletion of the data….Federal prosecutors stated in a memo accompanying the order that the software would affect only the seized phone.
In theory, this should be little more than a macabre joke. If Apple is truly using strong encryption, it wouldn’t take ten million tries to crack the password, it would take more tries than there are atoms in the universe.
Unless, of course, the attackers are really stupid and used “123456” or “Jihad Forever” as their password. Which they very well might have. Folks like this aren’t always especially bright.
In any case, I find it hard to side with Apple here. It’s one thing for Apple to implement strong encryption that even Apple itself can’t break. It’s another to deny law enforcement the ability to even try to break the encryption. My initial reaction—which I admit might change if I think about this further—is that liberals have never opposed the right of the government to execute a search. We just want them to get a warrant first, and we want it particularized to a specific case. So we object to warrantless searches and we object to mass collection of surveillance data. A court order that applies to a specific case shouldn’t be a problem.
Apple, of course, is arguing that if they create a special FBI version of iOS, it can be used anytime and anywhere, with or without a warrant. So that’s the question for the court. If they compel Apple to create a version of iOS that can be hacked, are there legally enforceable restrictions on its use? Or does it become a permanent plaything for anyone who can issue a national security letter—which appears to include practically the entire FBI? This will be an interesting case going forward.
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7 Normal Snacks With a Crazy Amount of Sugar
Mother Jones
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Call us greedy, self-centered, or overly idealistic, but no one should ever accuse Americans of being bitter: We devour more added sugar than people in any other country—30 teaspoons a day by some estimates. (Indians, on the other end of the spectrum, consume just one.)
The reasons go back to the 1960s, when supermarkets proliferated in US cities and readily available corn-syrupy sodas and juice drinks supplanted milk on the dinner table. By 1996, the daily calories we got from added sweeteners had increased by more than 35 percent.
On top of that, during the low-fat frenzy of the 1980s and ’90s, manufacturers replaced the flavorful natural oils in their products with sweeteners. “Now it’s challenging to find a food without added sugar,” says Dr. Andrew Bremer, a pediatric endocrinologist and program director in the diabetes, endocrinology, and metabolic diseases division at the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, today a full three-quarters of the packaged foods that we purchase—including everything from whole-wheat bread and breakfast cereals to salad dressings—contain extra sweeteners.
That’s a problem: Naturally occurring sugars (the kind in fruit, for example) come with fiber, which helps us regulate the absorption of food. Without fiber, sugar can overwhelm your system, eventually leading to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems. Given these risks, experts suggest dramatically cutting your intake of extra sweets. In March, the World Health Organization recommended that 5 percent of your daily energy come from added sugars, which for an adult of average weight comes out to roughly six teaspoons—about 25 grams.
The trouble is that it’s hard to tell how much added sugar you’re actually eating. You’ve probably learned to spot cane juice and corn syrup, but what about barley malt, dextrose, and rice syrup—and the 56 other names for added sweeteners?
What’s more, food companies aren’t required to distinguish on labels between added and naturally occurring sugars. The US Department of Agriculture used to list added sugars in an online nutrient database, but it removed this feature in 2012 after companies claimed that the exact proportion of added sugar was a trade secret.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed changing nutrition labels and requiring companies to display both added and naturally occurring sugars. But industry giants like Hormel and General Mills are objecting—and even if a new label gets approved, it could still be years before packaging changes.
In the graphic above, we crunched the numbers on some everyday snacks and meals to discover just how easy it is to reach six teaspoons.
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