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It Was Chinese Tea That Spawned the Tea Party

by ClaudeErdmann Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today brings a new academic entry in the angry voter sweepstakes. A quartet of high-powered economists took a look at congressional districts and divided them up by how much they were exposed to trade with China. Some districts showed lots of job losses due to trade while others showed very little. How did voters react?

Districts with lots of job losses were somewhat more likely to vote out incumbents, but not by a lot. Nor were they more likely to switch parties. However, they were likely to become more extreme, electing very conservative Republicans and very liberal Democrats:

The point estimates suggest that about three quarters of the movement away from the political center induced by trade is the result of increasing conservativeness among elected legislators, while one quarter is due to increasing liberalness.

….Districts subject to larger increases in import competition from China are substantially less likely to elect a moderate legislator….Comparing more and less trade-exposed districts, the more-exposed district would become 18.5 percentage points less likely to have a centrist in power between 2002 and 2010. To put this magnitude in context, over the 2002 to 2010 time period, the fraction of “moderates” in the House declines to 37.1% from a baseline of 56.8%.

The authors believe that import competition from China following their accession to the WTO has played a big role in the polarization of American politics:

China bashing is now a popular pastime as much among liberal Democrats as among Tea Party Republicans. Our contribution in this paper is to show that this political showmanship is indicative of deeper truths. Growing import competition from China has contributed to the disappearance of moderate legislators in Congress, a shift in congressional voting toward ideological extremes, and net gains in the number of conservative Republican representatives, including those affiliated with the Tea Party movement.

Why did this benefit conservatives more than liberals? At a guess, it’s because they were better able to tap into voter anger. Both sides could make similar economic arguments, but conservatives could add a healthy dose of nationalism to the mix, something that liberals are a lot less comfortable with. That made their attacks on China more resonant.

Ironically, voters on both sides were basically getting scammed. Big talk aside, neither conservatives nor liberals did much to reduce trade with China. In fact, it’s not clear there was much they could have done. Short of abandoning the WTO and starting a trade war, there really weren’t a lot of options on the table. The net result, then, was lots of windy rhetoric and a more polarized Congress, and eventually the Donald Trump campaign. But Trump, like all the rest of the China bashers, has nothing more than windy rhetoric too.

At this point, the game is almost fully played out anyway. China’s impact on American jobs is a done deal, with little more to come as China itself moves to a less manufacturing-oriented economy and finds itself in competition with countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. But if the authors of this paper are right, the American political scene will continue to pay a price for decades to come.

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It Was Chinese Tea That Spawned the Tea Party

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Are Wall Street Profits Fundamentally Based on Consumer Laziness?

by LoreenDavidson Posted on April 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Brad DeLong:

It used to be that we collectively paid Wall Street 1% per year of asset value–which was then some 3 years’ worth of GDP–to manage our investment and payments systems. Now we pay it more like 2% per year of asset value, which is now some 4 years’ worth of GDP.

He is responding to a post by Noah Smith that, when I click on it, turns out to be a response to me. My question was simple: finance is a very competitive industry, so how has it stayed so astronomically profitable for so long? Smith suggests that part of the answer is lending to households, but another part is asset management fees:

Asset-management fees are middleman costs that all kinds of players in the finance industry charge to move money around….The amount of wealth in the U.S. economy has soared since 1980 — just think of the rises in the housing and stock markets over that time — meaning that the middlemen in the finance industry have been taking their percentage fees out of a much larger pool of assets.

….But why have profits from these middleman fees stayed so high? Why haven’t asset-management charges gone down amid competition? In a recent post, I suggested one answer: people might just be ignoring them. Percentage fees sound tiny — 1 percent or 2 percent a year. But because that slice is taken off every year, it adds up to truly astronomical amounts. So if people are just ignoring what middlemen skim off the top, because each fee seems small, investors could be handing significant fractions of the country’s GDP to the financial sector out of sheer carelessness. That would certainly keep profits high; if many investors pay no attention to what they’re being charged, more competition can’t push down those fees.

So a combination of rising asset values and unchanging management fees can explain a large part of both finance’s growth and its continued profitability.

James Kwak has more here, basically suggesting that lots of people pay high fees for actively-managed funds deliberately. They figure that the higher price means better performance, just as a higher price usually means better performance in most areas of the consumer economy.

If Smith and Kwak are right, it means the enormous profitability of the financial system is based primarily on products sold to consumers (mutual funds, home loans), not to services offered to the rich or to the rest of the industry. Is this true? To find out, someone would have to break out industry profitability by product line (so to speak) and figure out where most of the money is coming from. Has anyone ever done that?

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Are Wall Street Profits Fundamentally Based on Consumer Laziness?

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Are Liberals Too Smug? Nah, We’re Too Condescending.

by TajMcCullough Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Are liberals too smug? Sure. That’s what Emmett Rensin says at Vox, anyway. Unfortunately, his essay runs to a Voxtastic 7,000 words, so there probably aren’t too many people willing to read it all the way through. These days, I’m tempted to say that the real problem with liberalism is that we’ve forgotten how to make a good, crisp point in a couple thousand words. We’ve fallen victim to the idea that longer essays signal greater importance. Maybe I’ll write a 2000-word piece about that someday.

But anyway—smugness. Are liberals too smug? I’d say so, except I’m not sure smug is really the right word. Here is Rensin explaining it:

By the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word liberal. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition? Why did they abandon us?

….The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable…. The trouble is that stupid hicks don’t know what’s good for them. They’re getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that’ve made them so wrong. They don’t know any better. That’s why they’re voting against their own self-interest.

….It began in humor, and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy….The internet only made it worse. Today, a liberal who finds himself troubled by the currents of contemporary political life need look no further than his Facebook newsfeed to find the explanation:

….NPR listeners are best informed of all. He likes that.

….Liberals aren’t just better informed. They’re smarter.

….They’ve got better grammar. They know more words.

….Liberals are better able to process new information; they’re less biased like that. They’ve got different brains. Better ones. Why? Evolution. They’ve got better brains, top-notch amygdalae, science finds.

Etc.

Fair enough. But what would you call that? There’s some smugness in there, sure, but I’d call it plain old condescension. We’re convinced that conservatives, especially working class conservatives, are just dumb. Smug suggests only a supreme confidence that we’re right—but conservative elites also believe they’re right, and they believe it as much as we do. The difference is that, generally speaking, they’re less condescending about it.

(Except for libertarians. Damn, but those guys are condescending.)

In any case, to boil things down a bit, Rensin accuses liberals of several faults:

Making fun of all those working-class rubes who vote for Republicans.
Spending too much time citing research studies and insisting that simple facts back up everything we believe.
Adopting a pose of knowing things that are faintly arcane. “The studies, about Daily Show viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are knowing….Anybody who fails to capitulate to them is part of the Problem, is terminally uncool. No persuasion, only retweets. Eye roll, crying emoji, forward to John Oliver for sick burns.”
Abandoning the working class because we just can’t stand their dull, troglodyte social views.

I agree with some of this. I’ve long since gotten tired of the endless reposting of John Oliver’s “amazing,” “perfect,” “mic drop” destruction of whatever topic he takes on this week. I’m exasperated that the authors of papers showing that liberals are better than conservatives seem unable to write them in value-neutral ways that acknowledge the value of conservative ways of thinking. I don’t like the endless mockery of flyover country rubes. We should punch up, not down.

As it happens, I think Rensin could have constructed a much better case with 7,000 words to work with. His essay didn’t feel very well researched or persuasive to me, even though I agree with much of it. Still, the pushback has mostly been of the “Republicans are smug too!” variety:

But this isn’t smugness. It’s outrage, or hypocrisy, or standard issue partisanship. And as plenty of people have pointed out, outrage sells on the right, but for some reason, not on the left. We prefer mockery. So they get Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, while we get Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart.

You can find a good example in conservative criticism of political correctness on college campuses: trigger warnings, safe spaces, shouting down speakers, etc. They’re infuriated by this. They think college kids are cosseted by their administrations; can’t stand to be disagreed with; and have no respect for the First Amendment. But they’re not usually smug or condescending about it. Most of the time they’re scornful and outraged.

Generally speaking, elite conservatives think liberals are ignorant of basic truths: Econ 101; the work-sapping impact of welfare dependence; the value of traditional culture; the obvious dangers of the world that surrounds us. For working-class conservatives it’s worse: they’re just baffled by it all. They’re made to feel guilty about everything that’s any fun: college football for exploiting kids; pro football for maiming its players; SUVs for destroying the climate; living in the suburbs for being implicitly racist. If they try to argue, they’re accused of mansplaining or straightsplaining or whitesplaining. If they put a wrong word out of place, they’re slut shaming or fat shaming. Who the hell talks like that? They think it’s just crazy. Why do they have to put up with all this condescending gibberish from twenty-something liberals? What’s wrong with the values they grew up with?

So liberals and conservatives have different styles. No surprise there. The question is, do these styles work? Here, I think the answer is the same on both sides: they work on their own side, but not on the other. Outrage doesn’t persuade liberals and mockery doesn’t persuade conservatives. If you’re writing something for your own side, as I am here, most of the time, there’s no harm done. The problem is that mass media—and the internet in particular—makes it very hard to tailor our messages. Conservative outrage and liberal snark are heard by everyone, including the persuadable centrist types that we might actually want to persuade. In the end, I think this is probably Rensin’s real point. The first law of marketing, after all, is to know your audience. Handily, that’s also the first law of journalism.

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Are Liberals Too Smug? Nah, We’re Too Condescending.

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Chart of the Day: Hillary and Bernie Duke It Out on Soda Taxes

by LJZGregory Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Finally we have a real difference between Hillary and Bernie. Hillary supports Philadelphia’s proposed tax on sugary drinks of 3 cents per ounce. Bernie doesn’t. “A tax on soda and juice drinks would disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families in Philadelphia,” he said on Thursday.

Clearly this requires data. First off: how much of this tax would be passed on to consumers? The conventional wisdom is that most of it would, but a recent study out of Cornell suggests the real pass-through is much lower. The authors looked at prices of sugary drinks in Berkeley, which passed a 1-cent soda tax in 2014, both before and after the tax was implemented. Then they compared this to the before-and-after price of the same drinks in San Francisco, which voted in favor of a soda tax but not by the supermajority it required. The net difference is shown in the chart below:

The Snapple outlier is unexplained. Apparently 100 percent of the tax got passed through to Snapple addicts. But for most sugary drinks, only a fraction of the tax was passed through. Overall, after doing a bit of fancy math, the authors conclude that an average of 22 percent of the tax was passed through for Coke and Pepsi products.

So how would this affect Philadelphia? A Gallup poll confirms Bernie’s general concern: low-income consumers are more partial to sugary drinks than high-income consumers, who prefer diet drinks. A recent NIS study concluded the same, and put some numbers to it. Using their data, I figure that a low-income family of three buys about 3,000 ounces more sugary soda per year than a higher income family. If 22 percent of the 3-cent tax is passed through, that’s 0.66 cents per ounce, or about $20 per year for the entire family.

So yes, this is a regressive tax. On the other hand, it’s also a pretty small tax, and the potential benefits are large if it cuts down on consumption of sugary soda and thus reduces the incidence of diabetes—a disease that’s especially widespread among low-income families. But does it? Since we have virtually no real-world experience with this, nobody knows for sure.

So make up your own mind. It’s possible to calculate a ballpark estimate of how much a soda tax would amount to, and although it’s regressive, it’s pretty modestly regressive. But we have no idea whether it would accomplish anything. We can only try and find out.

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Chart of the Day: Hillary and Bernie Duke It Out on Soda Taxes

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Evil Dex Update

by LRTJoeldnli Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the evil dex reduced to 12 mg, I thought I’d try taking it in the morning instead of at bedtime. I won’t be doing that again. Even at the lower dose and with a sleeping pill, I’m wide awake at 3 am. I suppose I’m slightly less wide awake than before, but that’s small comfort.

Oh well. If you don’t try, you’ll never know. I guess dex reaches its full effect after about 18 hours or so. Keep that in mind in case any evil doctor ever talks you into using it.

On the bright side, this is giving me plenty of time to Photoshop a new bit of desktop wallpaper with a better picture of the furballs. As usual, then, the score is Cats 1, Humans 0.

UPDATE: Here it is:

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Evil Dex Update

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Suicide Rates Are Up, But the Most Obvious Explanations Are Probably All Wrong

by LaureneT40 Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The CDC reports that the suicide rate was up again in 2014, and the Washington Post immediately offers some possible reasons. I’ve added numbers for easy reference:

(1) Last decade’s severe recession, (2) more drug addiction, (3) “gray divorce,” (4) increased social isolation, and even (5) the rise of the Internet and social media may have contributed to the growth in suicide, according to a variety of people who study the issue.

But (6) economic distress — and dashed hopes generally — may underpin some of the increase, particularly for middle-aged white people. The data showed a 1 percent annual increase in suicide between 1999 and 2006 but a 2 percent yearly hike after that, as the economy deteriorated, unemployment skyrocketed and millions lost their homes.

David French comments:

There’s much more to say about this, but millions of our fellow citizens — friends and neighbors — are experiencing existential crises that are far beyond the ability of politics to solve. With civil society faltering, families fracturing, and millions of Americans “bowling alone,” the human toll will only continue to rise. God forgive our nation for believing we could build a culture without you.

Let’s slow down a bit. The causes of suicide are complex, and correlations are hard to prove. Still, there are a couple of things we can say. First, there should at least be a correlation if you’re claiming causation, and second, the purported cause had better come first. You can’t blame increased suicide on things that didn’t happen until years later.

With that in mind, let’s look at recent suicide rates for men. Not only does this help us control for gender, but it’s also a less noisy set of data since men commit suicide at nearly 4x the rate of women. It turns out that suicide rates barely budged between 1999-2005, so I’m going to look only at 2005-14. The chart is on the right, with suicide rates divided into three 3-year buckets. Here are some things we can say based on this and other data in the CDC report:

The Great Recession (and economic distress more generally) doesn’t really fit the facts. The suicide rate went up the most from 2005-2008, before the Great Recession. It went up the least from 2011-14. But if prolonged economic distress was at fault, you’d expect just the opposite: no effect before the recession and the greatest effect after it had been grinding away for a couple of years with no relief in sight.
Drug addiction is more plausible—but only modestly. According to HHS, marijuana use is up since 2005, but that’s an unlikely cause of suicide. Cocaine, hallucinogen, and illicit prescription drug use is down. Heroin use and heroin dependence are up. Overdose deaths among heroin and prescription opioid users are also up—but they’ve been rising since 2002 and it’s unclear how many of these deaths are suicides anyway. More generally, overall drug addiction rates have waxed and waned over the past five decades, and it’s difficult to tease out a correlation between addiction and suicide rates over the long term.
“Gray divorce” has been a thing since the 80s, well before the suicide rate started rising. It hit the mainstream in early 2007 with the publication of Calling It Quits, also before the suicide rate started rising. What’s more, suicide rates have been flat among the elderly since 1999. It’s other age groups that have seen an increase. This is unlikely to be more than a minuscule cause at most.
Increased social isolation could be a cause, but the 2006 paper that kicked off this discussion suggested only that Americans had become more isolated between 1985 and 2004. This corresponds to a period when suicide was declining or flat. What’s more, a 2009 Pew study that replicated the 2006 research found a substantially smaller—possibly zero—effect.
Internet and social media could also be a cause, though I don’t really see what the mechanism is supposed to be. And that 2009 Pew study found that internet and cell phone users were less isolated than others.

We also know that suicide is up only among whites and Native Americans, but not among Hispanics or African-Americans. So any theory about the rise of suicide needs to at least engage with what might cause this. Are whites more economically distressed than blacks? That seems distinctly unlikely. Do they have higher drug addiction rates? Higher social isolation? More family fracturing? Maybe, but I’d like to see the evidence. And what about overall life satisfaction rates? They seem to have been quite stable over the past few decades. This doesn’t suggest that growing existential angst is the cause.

My point here is not really that the increase in suicide rates can’t possibly be due to any of these things. A deeper dive might implicate any of them. What’s more, a lot of these possible causes affect a lot of people. But although suicide has seen a large percentage increase since 2005, in absolute terms it’s only gone up by about 1000 per year. That’s a small number, which makes it really hard to tease out from large-scale effects. A mere 1 percent change in the Gallup life satisfaction index, for example, represents a couple of million people, so it’s unlikely to give us much insight into relatively tiny changes in the suicide rate.

So what is my point? Just this: writers need to be careful not to casually project their own sentiments or guesses onto a topic like this. Sure, the Great Recession might be the cause of more suicides. Maybe existential crises and fracturing families are the cause. Opioid abuse could be a factor. But just because these all seem plausible doesn’t mean they’re true. Likewise, just because you personally don’t like the direction of American culture doesn’t mean they’re true either—no matter how true they seem. None of them should be tossed out casually.

For my money, we flatly don’t know what’s causing the increase in suicides over the past decade. Based on the size of the numbers and the evidence at hand, if you put a gun to my head I’d probably guess opioid abuse was the biggest cause. But I don’t know, and I’m not sure anyone else knows either.

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Suicide Rates Are Up, But the Most Obvious Explanations Are Probably All Wrong

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25 sneaky names for palm oil

by JanisWhatley Posted on November 10, 2015

green4us

Collections of fairy tales Vietnam – Nguyen Luan

“THE LEGEND OF THE MILKY WAY THE SANDALWOOD MAIDEN THE HUNDRED-KNOT BAMBOO THE STORY OF TAM AND CAM THACH SANH – LY THONG SUE GOD FOR RAIN STORY OF KITCHEN GODS THE MOON BOY (CUOI) DRAGON'S CHILDREN, FAIRY'S GRAND CHILDREN THANH GIONG STORY OF WATER MELON HOUSE OF THE RISIN' SUN”

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America's most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog's Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread

PLEASE NOTE: This is a  summary and analysis  of the book and NOT the original book.  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis   Inside this Instaread: Summary of entire book, Introduction to the important people in the book, Key Takeaways and Analysis of the Key Takeaways. […]

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Codex: Tau Empire (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

A dynamic race whose technology eclipses anything their foes can muster, the tau use speed, strategy and overwhelming firepower to win their battles. Guided by the mysterious Ethereal caste, all tau strive for the Greater Good of their empire, forging ever onward into the stars to assimilate or annihilate everything that stands in their path. […]

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White Dwarf Issue 93: 07th November 2015 (Tablet Edition) – White Dwarf

White Dwarf 93 arrives and the Heresy begins! The brand-new Betrayal at Calth boxed game brings us the first ever plastic Space Marine miniatures for the Horus Heresy and we take a look, with New Releases, Paint Splatter, a play-through the game in ‘The Wrath of Veridia’ and a special background feature in ‘The Seeds […]

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Projects for Kids – Authors and Editors of Instructables

21 Projects Guaranteed to Keep Your Kids Occupied This Weekend give you full step-by-step instructions for 21 amazing kids activities that your family will love.  Learn how to entertain your kids with the DoodleBot360, LED Throwies, Grow Your Own Magic Crystal Tree, the Marshmallow Shooter and other projects that are sure to hold your child's […]

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The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green

The definitive guide to growing marijuana just got better! Greg Green's original Cannabis Grow Bible set a new standard for handbooks on cannabis horticulture and established Green as the leading authority in the field. Green's comprehensive and professionally presented work on how to cultivate superior cannabis struck a chord with beginner, amateur and professional growers […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

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25 sneaky names for palm oil

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

by DewittRhein Posted on October 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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World leaders have a pretty comprehensive plan to fight climate change, according to a United Nations report released Friday—even if it doesn’t go as far as many of them had hoped.

In just over a month, representatives from most of the countries on Earth will gather in Paris in an attempt to finalize an international agreement to limit global warming and adapt to its impacts. The video above is a snappy explainer of what’s at stake at this meeting, but suffice it to say the proposed deal is split into two keys parts. First is the core agreement, parts of which may be legally binding, that comprises broad, non-specific guidelines for all countries. It calls on countries to take steps such as transparently reporting greenhouse gas emissions and committing to ramp up climate action over the next few decades.

But the real meat-and-potatoes is in the second part, the “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs). The INDCs are what sets the Paris talks apart from past attempts at a global climate agreement in Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Those summits either left out major polluters (the US dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol; China and India were exempted) or fell apart completely (Copenhagen), in large part because they were built around universal greenhouse gas reduction targets that not everyone could agree to.

This time around, the UN process is more like a potluck, where each country brings its own unique contribution based on its needs and abilities; those are the INDCs. The US, for example, has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. So far, according to the World Resources Institute, 126 plans have been submitted, covering about 86 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. (The European Union submitted one joint plan for all its members.) Those contributions are likely to limit global warming to around 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100. That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would would happen if the world continued on its present course.

Now, we have a bit more insight into how countries are planning to make this happen. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the group that is overseeing the Paris talks, combed through all the INDCs to look for trends. Its report is a bit convoluted and repetitive; I don’t recommend it to any but the nerdiest climate nerds. But I pulled out a few of the charts as an overview of what global action on climate change really looks like.

Types of targets: Most of the INDCs contain specific emission reduction targets. (Not all do; some countries, such as the small island nations, have such small or nonexistent emissions that it wouldn’t make sense to promise to reduce them.) The most common way to state these targets is to promise that emissions at X future date will be lower than they would be with no action. Indonesia, for example, has pledged to increase its emissions over the next 25 years by 29 percent less than it would have under a “business as usual” scenario. The US commitment fits in the second category, an “absolute” target where emissions actually begin to go down. Others specify a date at which emissions will “peak,” or set a goal for emissions per unit of GDP or energy production (“intensity”).

UNFCCC

Greenhouse gases: The commitments cover a broad range of greenhouse gases (most cover more than one), but carbon dioxide is the most common enemy. That’s no surprise, as it’s by far the most common.

UNFCCC

Economic sectors: In different countries, different economic sectors are more or less responsible for climate pollution. In the US, the number-one source of emissions is coal-fired power plants; thus, President Barack Obama’s plans focus on the power sector. In Indonesia, by contrast, deforestation is the biggest problem. Most plans cover more than one sector, but the most common is energy.

UNFCCC

How to fix it: This section finds that implementing renewable energy is the most common way countries are planning to meet their targets. More interesting is the tiny role played by carbon capture, use, and storage, down at the bottom of the chart. This refers to technology that “captures” greenhouse gas emissions on their way out of power plants, or directly from the atmosphere, and buries or re-purposes them. Support for carbon capture—also known as “clean coal”—is popular with policymakers who don’t want to curb coal use (including GOP presidential contender John Kasich), even though it remains costly and unproven at scale.

UNFCCC

How to adapt: Many countries’ INDCs also contain information about how they plan to adapt to climate change. Water use, agriculture, and public health appear to be the biggest areas of focus.

UNFCCC

A terrible, no-good, very bad summary: The most important question is clearly how all this adds up to reducing the world’s greenhouse gas footprint and averting the worst threats posed by climate change. But the chart that addresses this question (below) is…not great. I’m including it so you have some sense of one big drawback of the Paris approach—without universal emissions targets, it’s a lot harder to specify what the cumulative effect of these plans will really be. In short, here’s what this chart shows: The gray line is global greenhouse gas emissions up to today. The orange line is how emissions will grow over the next couple decades if we do nothing. The three blue lines show how quickly we would need to reduce emissions to keep global warming to 2 degrees C; the longer we wait to take action, the steeper the cuts have to be. The yellow rectangles show a snapshot of where the INDCs leave us.

UNFCCC

So, we’re better off than before, but we’re not out of danger. That’s why it’s essential for the core agreement to include requirements that countries adopt even more aggressive goals in the future; that’s one of the key things that will be debated in Paris. In other words, the Paris meeting is just one key battle in a war that’s far from over, Jennifer Morgan, director of the WRI’s global climate program, said in a statement.

“Despite the unprecedented level of effort, this report finds that current commitments are not yet sufficient to meet what the world needs. Countries must accelerate their efforts after the Paris summit in order to stave off climate change. The global climate agreement should include a clear mandate for countries to ramp up their commitments and set a long-term signal to phase out emissions as soon as possible.”

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

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GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan

by Myrna Posted on October 29, 2015

Facing a tough re-election bid, Ayotte stakes out a moderate position on power plants. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) came out in favor of the Obama administration’s effort to cut carbon pollution by power plants on Sunday, bucking Senate leadership that has worked to derail the emissions plan. The Obama administration announced final regulations on emissions from both new and existing power plants in August. Dubbed the Clean Power Plan, the rules are part of the administration’s larger push to curb emissions that cause climate change. The Clean Power Plan has faced opposition from many conservative politicians. In supporting the rules, Ayotte cited the work her state has already done to reduce emissions. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Link:  GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan ; ; ;

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GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan

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It’s Been 50 Years Since the Biggest US-Backed Genocide You’ve Never Heard Of

by DemetriusBeike Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Fifty years ago today, one of the biggest mass murders of the 20th century began in Indonesia. On the heels of a Cold War-era military takeover, between 500,000 and 1 million people were slaughtered by the army and civilian death squads—with support from the US government. Starting in October 1965 and continuing through much of the next year, these Indonesian victims were accused of being communists, whether or not they supported the country’s communist party: Many were targeted simply because they were seen as opponents of the new US-supported, military-backed Indonesian regime.

In Germany, Rwanda, and Cambodia, mass killings have been followed by truth-and-reconciliation commissions or trials. In Indonesia, despite a transition from military rule toward democracy that began in 1998, there haven’t even been memorials for the victims. The killers were never brought to justice, and many of them remain in power today. Meanwhile, the US government’s own role in the bloodshed remains unclear, as key documents related to the atrocity are classified. Even so, researchers and journalists have dug up some damning evidence of American involvement. Here’s a rundown of what happened and what we do know.

President John Kennedy and Sukarno share a car at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington in 1961. The Associated Press

During the the Cold War, why was the United States concerned about Indonesia? After Indonesia won its war of independence against the Netherlands in 1949, a hero of the struggle named Sukarno became president. The United States was not a fan of his politics: Though he was not a communist himself, he was an anti-West populist-socialist who took steps after the war to nationalize plantations and other lucrative assets. He also protected the rapidly growing communist party, known as the PKI, which by 1965 was the biggest such organization outside of a communist country. The US conducted covert operations during the late 1950s intended to weaken Sukarno’s government and strengthen the staunchly anti-communist Indonesian military. “They considered the army to have the muscle to balance Sukarno,” says Indonesian journalist Andreas Harsono, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

What sparked the mass murders? In the early hours of October 1, 1965, a group of army conspirators killed six generals in Jakarta, the country’s capital. Maj. Gen. Suharto, who would soon become Indonesia’s dictator for more than three decades, took control of the armed forces, claiming that the killings were part of an attempted communist coup. Then he and the military launched a campaign to purge Indonesians believed to be connected with the communist party or left-leaning organizations. They also targeted hundreds of thousands of Indonesians unconnected to the party who they saw as a potential opponents of their new regime, including union members, small farmers, intellectuals, activists, and ethnic Chinese. The carnage was so intense that people stopped eating fish—fearing that the fish were consuming the human corpses flooding the rivers.

Members of the youth wing of Indonesia’s communist party are taken to a Jakarta prison on October 30, 1965. The Associated Press

So, how was the United States involved? Speculation abounds over the US role in the 1965 military takeover, though there’s no concrete proof in the public record that America had a direct hand in it. However, investigations by journalists, as well as government documents, have made it clear that the United States provided money, weapons, and equipment to the Indonesian military while it was undertaking the killings. What’s more, according to excerpts of contemporary cables released by the US State Department, officials at the US embassy created lists of thousands of names of communists and provided them to the military. It has been reported that the CIA worked on the lists, too, but the agency has denied involvement, Harsono says.

How was the genocide covered by the US press? “It was presented in the American media as good news,” says Joshua Oppenheimer, a filmmaker who has spent the past 12 years investigating the mass murders and producing two award-winning documentaries about them. He cites a 1966 story in Time magazine that said the killings were the “best news for years in Asia.” In a report at the time for NBC News, a correspondent spoke with an Indonesian man in Bali who claimed that the island, famous for its tourism, had “become more beautiful without communists,” and that “some of them wanted to be killed.” The correspondent noted that Indonesia boasted “fabulous potential wealth in natural resources” before showing footage of so-called communist prisoners at a labor camp on the island of Sumatra, some of whom, he said, would be starved to death or released from the camp to be killed by local citizens.

What’s the situation in Indonesia today? Military rule ended in 1998 when Suharto was forced out, but even today many of the perpetrators of the killings remain in power, immune from prosecution. (Under Indonesian law, soldiers cannot be taken to trial in civilian courts.) Schools continue to teach that it was necessary and good to wipe out “the communists,” and the government has yet to issue a national apology or establish a truth-and-reconciliation commission. “It was the darkness period,” says Harsono. “I have hope that sooner or later the Indonesian government will apologize and overcome the handicap to learn the truth of that darkness.” Over the last 50 years, the nation has remained a key US ally in the region. Home to some 250 million people, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country and an important backer of the United States in the so-called war on terror. Oppenheimer believes a US acknowledgment of its role in the killings might embolden Indonesia’s current president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, to address what happened.

Is anyone pushing for more accountability? Human Rights Watch and other activists have for years called on the US government to declassify all relevant documents, and last year Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) introduced a resolution in Congress calling for their release. Oppenheimer’s documentaries have brought new public attention in both countries to the period. In his first film, The Act of Killing (2012), which was nominated for an Academy Award, he identified several of the killers and convinced them to reenact the murders they committed. “They offered boastful accounts of the killings, often with smiles on their faces and in front of their grandchildren,” Oppenheimer explained in a recent New York Times op-ed. “I felt I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust, only to find the Nazis still in power.” In his second documentary, The Look of Silence (2014), a death squad leader looks straight into the camera and says, “We should be rewarded with a trip to America—if not by airplane, a cruise will do. We deserve it! We did this because America taught us to hate communists.”

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It’s Been 50 Years Since the Biggest US-Backed Genocide You’ve Never Heard Of

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