Tag Archives: infrastructure

China Has Seized a US Navy Underwater Drone in the South China Sea

Mother Jones

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China has seized an unmanned underwater US Navy research vehicle in the international waters of the South China Sea, Reuters reported Friday.

The underwater drone was seized on Thursday 100 miles off the port at Subic Bay in the Philippines, according to an unnamed US official who spoke to CNN. The vessel, called a “glider,” was testing water salinity and temperature, according to the BBC. The motivation behind the alleged action by the Chinese remains unclear.

According to CNN:

US Navy Ship Bowditch had stopped in the water to pick up two underwater drones. At that point a Chinese naval ship that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat into the water. That small boat came up alongside and the Chinese crew took one of the drones.

China asserts territorial claims over a string of islands in the South China Sea, where it has built military-grade airstrips and other infrastructure, dredged harbors, and sometimes created artificial islands in an area rich in oil and gas resources. China’s actions are opposed by neighboring countries—Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines—which also lay claim to the islands and archipelagoes. The United States calls China’s actions in the area provocative acts of militarization.

China claims its activities are purely civilian in nature. But this week a Chinese Defense Ministry statement appeared to confirm photos showing the country had installed military weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, on the islands. In November, China flew a nuclear-capable bomber over the South China Sea, according to Fox News. That action came after President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, breaking decades of US protocol.

This post will be updated as more details become available.

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China Has Seized a US Navy Underwater Drone in the South China Sea

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If the White Working Class Is the Problem, What’s the Solution?

Mother Jones

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I think it’s still too early to know the extent to which Donald Trump won because of his appeal to the white working class. These folks have been moving steadily into the Republican camp for a long time, and 2016 merely continued this trend. At the same time, the upward spike this year was pretty big, and it appears to have been especially pronounced in several swing states in the upper Midwest. So it’s hardly unfair to suggest that Democrats need to do more to reach out to rural, blue-collar whites.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering exactly what Donald Trump’s economic pitch was to the white working class:

He demonized foreigners for “stealing our jobs.”
He promised to build a wall to keep out Mexicans.
He promised to start trade wars by levying insane tariffs on countries he disapproves of.
He promised to rain down hellfire on companies that move jobs overseas.
He promised to essentially repudiate the entire postwar edifice of free trade.
He promised not to touch Social Security.
He promised to create blue-collar jobs by building $1 trillion worth of infrastructure.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it hits all the high points. Here’s the dilemma it presents to the progressive community: it is 100 percent composed of (a) demagoguery that Democrats just aren’t willing to engage in, and (b) things that Democrats already support. And when you add racial dog whistles and conservative social issues to the mix, the problem grows even worse. All we get is yet another list of things that Democrats flatly can’t appeal to.

In other words, even if the white working class is the problem for Democrats, it’s not clear what the solution is. That’s especially true since Trump isn’t going to do most of the stuff he talked about, and the rest of it is unlikely to help struggling blue-collar workers anyway. J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, says most working-class whites know this perfectly well:

My view is that folks are pretty clear-eyed about what Trump is actually going to do. I don’t see many people saying, “Well, Donald Trump is going to fix these problems.”

What he’s offering them is a proverbial middle finger to all the people that they’re frustrated at. If you think about what folks have been doing for 20 or 30 years, they have been bottling frustration and resentment that the political elites don’t understand them, that the political elites don’t care about them, that the political elites judge them in various ways.

All Donald Trump does is provide the opposite of those things. He seems to care about them. He seems not to judge them. He seems to understand them, and most importantly, he is willing to scream and yell at the people who have been judging them and misunderstanding them for a generation.

Progressives understand this language pretty well when it comes to their own constituencies. Even if there’s not a lot that you can concretely do, at least you can show some respect and make it clear that you care. If a New York billionaire, a Vermont socialist, and an Ohio mega-liberal can do it, surely the rest of us can do it too?

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If the White Working Class Is the Problem, What’s the Solution?

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Obama: US Army Corps Looking At Ways to "Reroute" Dakota Access Pipeline

Mother Jones

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The US Army Corps of Engineers may consider “ways to reroute” the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Barack Obama said in an interview on Tuesday. Though Obama did not say whether he would intervene in pipeline’s construction, he told NowThisNews that his administration was closely monitoring the issue. “As a general rule, my view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans,” said Obama. He later added, “We’re going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans.”

Protests over the pipeline have continued to escalate in recent weeks, with police using tear gas, rubber pellets, and sound cannons against demonstrators occupying the construction site. Protesters say that the 1,172-mile pipeline would damage sacred lands and endanger the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Tribal members have also accused the US Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that issued the permit for the pipeline’s construction, of failing to properly assess its impact. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump have taken a clear position on the issue. In October, Bernie Sanders and several other senators called on Obama to halt the pipeline’s construction.

When asked about some of the police tactics towards protestors, Obama urged both sides to show restraint. “There’s an obligation for protesters to be peaceful,” he said, “and there’s an obligation for authorities to show restraint.”

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Obama: US Army Corps Looking At Ways to "Reroute" Dakota Access Pipeline

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

Mother Jones

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People pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the first presidential debate. Mary Altaffer/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change is a grave threat to our future, but it probably won’t come up at Monday’s presidential debate. Topics for the event include “Securing America,” and although you’d think issues of national security might involve climate change (the military certainly does), if history is any indication, it likely won’t get mentioned at all.

But if it does get the attention it deserves, here’s where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand:

Dirty energy: Clinton supports some natural gas extraction on public lands, is against offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, and has pledged $30 billion to provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining as we move away from coal as a source of energy.

Trump has promised to boost coal production, ease environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas extraction, and increase permits for oil pipelines. He also is considering appointing an oil executive to head the Department of Interior and a fracking mogul to lead the Department of Energy.

Clean energy: Clinton has said she would install more than half a billion solar panels in the United States by the end of her first term, and that under her presidency, we will generate enough clean energy to power every home in America by 2027.

Trump has said wind power is a great killer of birds (it’s not) and that solar is too expensive to be a viable source of energy, despite the fact that the cost of solar has now reached record lows—and with proper government investment, it would get even cheaper. Trump also objects to Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan, as well as the Paris Climate Accord, which he says he would cancel.

Environmental justice: After a debate in Flint, Michigan, in April, Clinton said she would require federal agencies to devise plans to deal with lead poisoning and other environmental justice issues, and she pledged to clean up more than 450,000 polluted sites around the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, mocked the Democratic National Committee for including climate justice in the party’s platform, and has previously vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—or, as he calls it, “the Department of Environmental”—although he’s recently backtracked on that particular idea.

Fossil fuel donations: While Republican presidential candidates can usually count on generous support from the fossil fuel industry, this year is the exception. Between both individual and corporation donations, Clinton has taken nearly twice as much from Big Oil as Trump, and some oil execs may even vote for her. Looks like we can add this to the list of things the great race of 2016 has upended.

Third and fourth party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate Monday night, which is too bad, because they tend to have the most interesting answers on climate change…and everything else.

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

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Louisiana’s flood couldn’t have been stopped, but it didn’t have to be so devastating

Louisiana’s flood couldn’t have been stopped, but it didn’t have to be so devastating

By on Aug 22, 2016Share

Louisiana’s Amite river basin, which flooded and destroyed 60,000 homes earlier this month, is surrounded by deserted flood control projects that were begun after a massive flood in 1983. All that proposed infrastructure could have saved thousands of homes — but the Amite River Basin Commission left them either half-baked, or never started them in the first place.

As The Advocate reports, a proposed Comite River Diversion Canal may have saved “up to a quarter of homes damaged in the basin,” according to a government official. That’s just one of several pieces of infrastructure — including a reservoir and additional levees — that had been deemed unfeasible or simply “impractical.”

Worse, nothing was done to stop new housing from being built in the path of the old flood. Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people living in Livingston and Ascension, two parishes on the floodplain, went from 109,000 in 1980 to more than a quarter-million in 2015.

Climate change made this flood much worse than it would have been, but poor infrastructure and city planning are as much to blame for the devastation it caused.

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Louisiana’s flood couldn’t have been stopped, but it didn’t have to be so devastating

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The hot new trend in American infrastructure: Unpaved roads

The hot new trend in American infrastructure: Unpaved roads

By on Jul 12, 2016Share

There’s an odd new trend in American infrastructure, and it may make you think you’ve found a wormhole back to the 1950s: All over the country, roads are getting de-paved.

Wired’s Aarian Marshall reports that transportation agencies in 27 states have ripped up roads they can’t afford to maintain. Even with congressional spending on infrastructure going up, it doesn’t match the rising cost of concrete, asphalt, and cement. Municipalities still can’t afford to pay for road upkeep, so instead they de-pave.

This may have consequences on your struts, but unpaved roads can have a few net benefits if done right. Paving materials not only absorb heat and make the area around roads hotter, they also contribute to surface runoff and can cause erosion, water pollution, and flooding. Plus, the cement industry is a huge producer of carbon dioxide — responsible for about 5 percent of all global emissions. So while de-paving might not be the sexiest solution to our infrastructure problem — and only goes to show how little we’re spending — it really isn’t the worst that could happen.

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Obama Just Cracked Down on Pollution From Fracking

Mother Jones

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The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the final version of new federal rules intended to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, had previously been unregulated. There’s a mounting pile of evidence suggesting that as the United States relies increasingly on gas to produce electricity, methane emissions are much higher than most people expected them to be.

That’s a problem for the fight against climate change. Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and methane survives in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time. But methane is far more effective at trapping heat than CO2 is, which makes it a significant near-term warming threat. As I reported in a deep dive on methane yesterday:

When unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere, it can help cause dramatic warming in a relatively short period of time. Methane emissions have long been a missing piece in the country’s patchwork climate policy…The natural gas system produces methane emissions at nearly every step of the process, from the well itself to the pipe that carries gas into your home. Around two-thirds of those emissions are “intentional,” meaning they occur during normal use of equipment. For example, some pneumatic gauges use the pressure of natural gas to flip on or off and emit tiny puffs of methane when they do so. The other one-third comes from so-called “fugitive” emissions, a.k.a. leaks, that happen when a piece of equipment cracks or otherwise fails.

The lack of regulations on methane was one reason why President Barack Obama’s climate strategy, which hinges on swapping the country’s coal consumption for natural gas, has been frowned upon by some environmentalists. Even today’s regulations are only a partial solution, since they only apply to new and modified natural gas infrastructure, not systems that already exist. And by some analysts’ reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist.

Still, the regulation announced today achieves one of the final remaining big items on Obama’s climate checklist. It aims to reduce gas-sector methane emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 by tightening the allowed emissions from pumps, compressors, wells, and other infrastructure; requiring more frequent surveys for leaks; and implementing a data-gathering survey that will give officials and companies a better understanding of just how much methane leakage there really is. The EPA expects the regulations to cost $530 million by 2025 but to produce $690 million in environmental benefits.

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Obama Just Cracked Down on Pollution From Fracking

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Two senators want the U.S. to start selling war bonds — to fight climate change

Two senators want the U.S. to start selling war bonds — to fight climate change

By on Apr 28, 2016Share

What if we fought climate change with the same commitment we fight wars? The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Al Gore have long argued for a World War II-scale mobilization to fight climate change, and on Wednesday, two senators introduced a bill — the Climate Change Adapt America Bond Act — that’s the most concrete realization of this concept yet.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) propose issuing up to $200 million worth of infrastructure bonds to raise funds for climate change adaptation efforts like seawall construction, desalination, and drought resilience programs. The bill would leverage public interest to fend off the climate menace, modeled after the U.S. War Bonds program from World War II.

A bit like “We Can Do It,” no?

Not all observers are pleased with the bill’s focus on adaptation efforts. Margaret Klein Salamon, director of advocacy group The Climate Mobilization, called it “a defeatist strategy — as if war bonds were sold to Americans so they could better adapt to Nazi rule rather than actually attempt to win the war.”

Salamon also pointed to the scale of the proposal, noting that the $200 million figure pales in comparison to the $185 billion worth of war bonds purchased during World War II. Adjusting for inflation, that’s over $2 trillion today.

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Study: Miami Can Expect 380 Instances of Flooding a Year by 2045

Thanks to climate change. Flooding in South Beach after Hurricane Sandy meunierd/Shutterstock A new study says much of Miami-Dade County will see the number of projected floods rise from 45 a year to 80 with a 10-inch rise in sea levels by 2030, and then accelerate to 380 instances of flooding a year by 2045. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) came up with the projections using new data compiled by the Army Corps of Engineers. “In 2045, given normal variations in the tides, while some days would be flood-free, many days would see one or even two flood events—one with each high tide,” UCS said in its report. The findings jibe with another recent report from the University of Miami that since 2006, flooding in Miami Beach has soared 400 percent from high tides and 33 percent from rain. Read the rest at Fusion. View original post here: Study: Miami Can Expect 380 Instances of Flooding a Year by 2045 ; ; ;

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Study: Miami Can Expect 380 Instances of Flooding a Year by 2045

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Hillary Clinton: "Politics Has to Play Some Role In This"

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton is famously well briefed, so you can be sure she had no trouble answering question from the Daily News editorial board. “Look, I’m excited about this stuff,” she said. “I’m kind of a wonky person. I’m excited by it.”

Needless to say, this also meant her interview was spectacularly dull. But after a wonky discussion of her idea for a national infrastructure bank, we got at least one revealing tidbit:

Daily News: There are many who believe that the stimulus program that had a lot of infrastructure money was divided up politically.

Clinton: Well, look. Politics has to play some role in this. Let’s not forget we do have to play some role. I got to get it passed through Congress. And I think I’m well-prepared to do that. I was telling you about Buffalo. I got $20 million. Now I got that because it was political. But it worked. And it has created this amazing medical complex. So I don’t disregard the politics, but I believe one of the ways to get to the overall political outcome is by doing a better job than I think was done in the Obama administration, in constantly talking about what this can mean — new jobs, new economic growth and competitiveness.

This isn’t breaking news or anything, but it’s a surprisingly direct defense of plain old politics, which modern politicians are supposed to condemn with extreme prejudice. Politics is the problem, not the solution. It’s why Washington doesn’t work. Too many Beltway folks playing the same old political games.

But as Clinton says, that’s not really true. Like anything, political maneuvering can go too far. But the problem with Washington these days is too little politics, not too much. Bring back earmarks! Bring back logrolling and backscratching! Bring back carrots and sticks! Bring back conference committees! Bring back a bit of give and take.

You don’t hear politicians defend the grubby business of politics very often these days. It’s nice to hear it once in a while.

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Hillary Clinton: "Politics Has to Play Some Role In This"

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