Tag Archives: justice

Landmark children’s climate lawsuit hits new roadblock

by Alysa09819467 Posted on November 9, 2018

Subscribe to The Beacon

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

A high-profile lawsuit aiming to hold the federal government accountable for not curbing climate change has encountered yet another roadblock. After the Supreme Court permitted the case to proceed last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delayed the case again on Thursday.

The case, Juliana v. United States, has its roots in a lawsuit filed against the Obama administration in August 2015 by 21 plaintiffs—all between the ages of 11 and 21. The teenage activists claimed that the federal government had violated their constitutional rights by not curbing climate change and asked the court to “develop a national plan to restore Earth’s energy balance, and implement that national plan so as to stabilize the climate system.”

The trial had been scheduled to begin in federal district court in Eugene, Oregon, on October 29, but several interventions by higher courts kept the case in limbo.

“What these young plaintiffs are being put through just to have their day in court is disgraceful,” Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a statement to Mother Jones. “This trial would finally hold the Trump administration accountable for its climate denial and destructive agenda. The court shouldn’t let the Trump administration use absurd legal claims to weasel out of it.”

After the Trump administration inherited the defense of the case, the government’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to dismiss it in July, arguing that the district court lacked jurisdiction and calling the plaintiffs’ request to have the executive branch phase out carbon dioxide emissions “groundless and improper.” The court rejected the administration’s “premature” motion, even as the justices acknowledged that the “breadth” of the plaintiffs’ claims was “striking.” Ten days before the trial was set to begin, Chief Justice John Roberts put the case on hold pending the plaintiffs’ response to the government’s request to significantly narrow the case. While the full court reviewed the new filing, the plaintiffs rallied in the rain with hundreds of students outside the federal courthouse in Eugene, Reuters reported.

“The Brown v. Board of Education case was all about school districts inflicting harm on children because of the ‘separate but equal’ policies. Our case is about the federal government knowingly inflicting harm on children through fossil fuel emissions,” plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel Phil Gregory told Mother Jones last month. “If you substitute a word like ‘segregation’ for ‘climate change,’ there’s no way the Supreme Court would stop this case.”

Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit organization aligned with the plaintiffs, made a similar argument in a press release. “This is not an environmental case, it’s a civil rights case,” the group stated.

On November 2, the Supreme Court vacated Roberts’ previous decision and allowed the case to proceed over the objections of Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. But the government requested another delay, this time petitioning the district court directly. In a motion on November 5, the administration argued that it would be impossible to “develop and implement a comprehensive, government-wide energy policy” without breaking the constitutional imperative to vest legislative power in Congress and executive power in the White House. Three days later, the Ninth Circuit halted the case for another 15 days.

Once the Ninth Circuit makes a decision, district court Judge Ann Aiken said she will set a new date for the trial to begin.

“The Court told us to continue getting our work done for trial so that we are all ready when the Ninth Circuit rules. That’s exactly what we will do,” said Julia Olson, co-counsel for the plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, in a statement. “Our briefs to the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit … will show that there is no basis to grant the Government’s request of an appeal before final judgment.”

Link to article – 

Landmark children’s climate lawsuit hits new roadblock

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, ONA, Paradise, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Landmark children’s climate lawsuit hits new roadblock

Trump’s new attorney general hates those climate change investigations

by LynneKirton Posted on November 8, 2018

Subscribe to The Beacon

President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday. Oops, sorry, Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at Trump’s request on Wednesday. Session’s resignation letter doesn’t have a date on it, so Trump probably could have dumped this news on us at any time.

Are we surprised that he picked the day after a landmark midterm election to do it? Hell no! Here’s a little-known fact, though. The new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, has a vendetta against those climate investigations into ExxonMobil. State attorneys general have been looking into oil companies and their attempts to cover up and deny climate change. And Whitaker has been looking into those state AGs as a result.

The climate investigations began in earnest in March 2016, when a bunch of state AGs, led by New York, Massachusetts, and the Virgin Islands, started scrutinizing whether Big Oil lied to investors and the public about climate change. Immediately, Exxon and co. hit back with a narrative of their own: The investigations, and then later the slew of climate lawsuits, were part of an “orchestrated campaign” to punish oil companies and cheat them out of their First Amendment rights.

That’s the narrative parroted by Whitaker in a 2016 op-ed. In a Morning Consult piece titled, “The Environmental Left’s Double Standard Game,” he called the investigations “unconstitutional and unethical.” He accused the state AGs of bullying ExxonMobil (yes, he uses the word “bullied”), and labeled the probes an “outright assault on the First Amendment.”

Whitaker promised that the organization he led at the time, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, would “continue to press its investigation into these 17 attorneys general for more information and answers regarding the true motivation and the real agenda behind this reprehensible campaign.” His organization was funded through a secretive website frequently used by conservatives like Charles Koch to make anonymous donations.

So, is the climate fraud investigation screwed with Whitaker in office? Can the biggest AG in the land crush the smaller state AGs?

“The U.S. Department of Justice does not have jurisdiction to stop state attorneys general from investigating things. They’re separate,” says Sean Hecht, who co-directs the Emmet Climate Change Institute at UCLA’s law school.

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. attorney general doesn’t have any effect on the way state AGs operate. “It’s pretty clear from this and some of [Whitaker’s] other statements on climate that he sees government officials who are trying to address climate change as some kind of enemy,” Hecht says. “Having somebody like Whitaker in that position seems likely to chill federal enforcement efforts on a host of environmental problems,” he adds.

And apart from the potential Whitaker effect on federal enforcement, there’s something else worth knowing about the acting attorney general: He’s a climate skeptic. “You know, I think that I’m not a climate denier,” he said in an interview with a publication called Caffeinated Thoughts in 2014). “It may be warming, I think the evidence is inconclusive.” And then he added: “I don’t believe in big government solutions to a problem that doesn’t appear to be that significant or quite possibly isn’t man made.”

More:  

Trump’s new attorney general hates those climate change investigations

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Landmark, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s new attorney general hates those climate change investigations

Don’t blame Hurricane Michael victims for voting for climate deniers

by DebraTerpstra4 Posted on October 17, 2018

Get your

daily dose of good news

from Grist

Subscribe to The Beacon

When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle and Southern Georgia last week, it devastated areas known for their poverty — and their conservative politics. And some media outlets didn’t hesitate to lean into the apparent irony.

A day after the calamity, while many were just beginning to process the scope of the damage, The Guardian ran a story originally titled “Victims of Hurricane Michael voted for climate deniers,” which some readers interpreted as victim-blaming. “Florida voters could put an end to this nonsense,” wrote the article’s author John Abraham. “Climate deniers are making these storms worse by stopping action on climate change. What the hell do we expect to happen when the deniers are writing the laws?”

The backlash to the article varied. Some people criticized the tone of the headline. Others, like Union of Concerned Scientists fellow Michael Lautner, had a different issue with the story — he saw the premise as patently flawed.

“It’s not that [those affected by Hurricane Michael] are voting for climate deniers,” Lautner told Grist. “It’s that they don’t really have much of a choice to vote in the first place.”

According to Latner, officials in both Florida and Georgia have used a vast arsenal of voter suppression methods to reduce voter turnout and distort civic representation. He says these techniques include heavy gerrymandering in low-income communities — the same places that are often most vulnerable to environmental woes.

Many of the Florida and Georgia residents who were most dramatically affected by Hurricane Michael live in low-income communities. Think Calhoun County in Georgia with a 33 percent poverty rate or Franklin County in Florida with a 23.5 percent poverty rate. (The states’ poverty rates stands at about 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively.)

Both Georgia and Florida have specific policies that could result in voter suppression. Florida has disenfranchised an estimated 1.5 million ex-felons — that’s ten percent of the state’s adult population, including one in five African Americans. And earlier this year, Florida Governor Rick Scott, a known climate denier, banned early voting at university campuses, which represent a younger, more liberal, diverse and climate-conscious electorate. A federal judge halted the policy, but three Florida universities announced they still would not allow early voting at their campus polls.

In Georgia, secretary of state and current Republican gubernatorial hopeful Brian Kemp froze 53,000 voter registration applications, nearly 70 percent of which belonged to African Americans, because of a mismatch with drivers license or social security information. Georgia has also reduced the number of polling places, closing eight percent of the state’s total since 2012. Three-quarters of the counties affected are communities of color. In Randolph County, an area that’s now reeling from wide-spread damage due to Hurricane Michael, local election officials attempted to close seven of nine polling places in an overwhelmingly black area, abandoning the plan only when faced with a statewide protest.

It’s unclear what, if any, effect these policies have on election outcomes. But in states like Georgia and Florida, where gubernatorial races are known to be razor-close, both voter suppression and Hurricane recovery could be significant factors.

“[In Florida and Georgia] you have a combination of factors… that are often times worse off in environmental disasters,” Lautner said. “And in communities that are already overburdened with socioeconomic distress and the like, these barriers make a difference.”

Source – 

Don’t blame Hurricane Michael victims for voting for climate deniers

Posted in Abrams, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar power, Thermos, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Don’t blame Hurricane Michael victims for voting for climate deniers

Floridians who missed voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael are out of luck

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 11, 2018

Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle Wednesday afternoon. The third strongest storm to ever hit the United States, it brought 155 mph winds, heavy rainfall, and towering storm surges. While Floridians in Michael’s path were searching for refuge from the storm’s imminent fury, thousands of would-be voters missed the state’s October 9 voter-registration deadline.

In response, a coalition of civil rights groups including the Advancement Project, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the American Civil Liberties Union has filed an injunction in federal court against the state. Florida officials refused to further extend the registration deadline, despite issuing mass evacuations and closing down offices in preparation for Hurricane Michael. There have also been mounting complaints about “a mess” in the online registration system — with glitches that could have disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters. The lawsuit calls for the voter-registration deadline to be extended by at least one week statewide.

“Our lawsuit is about protecting the right to vote for people impacted by Hurricane Michael in a moment where state officials have been unresponsive and unwilling to do the right things,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Grist. “It is unreasonable to expect that anyone in Florida will have an opportunity to register and vote when you’re in the storm’s path.”

Considering Florida has a long-standing history of razor-close elections, as well as the high stakes of November’s upcoming election — where climate-related issues like toxic algae blooms and now Hurricane Michael are expected to take center stage — voters who were unable to register could have some political influence on the environmental burdens they and other Floridians face.

According to a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists out earlier this month, the same communities that suffer from the burden of socioeconomic distress and environmental segregation — such as exposure to air toxins — also often face restrictive electoral laws. Researchers made the connection by examining Congressional election turnout and compared the effect of both socioeconomic, environment, as well as institutional factors on turnout.

“These cumulative inequalities add up and make it very difficult for those who are most in need of protecting their interests in their community from actually having a voice in the political process,” said Michael Latner, lead author of the analysis and a Union of Concerned Scientists fellow.

Researchers found that the lowest voter turnout happens in vulnerable communities and communities of color. “You get this cumulative effect such that you’ve got environmental injustice inequalities — that is, the burdens of environmental pollution and degradation — more concentrated among people of color and economically burdened communities,” Latner told Grist.

The areas affected by Hurricane Michael are some of Florida’s poorest. Gulf County and Franklin County have some of the highest poverty rates in the state at 23.5 percent and 23.1 percent, respectively. (Florida’s overall poverty rate stands at 14 percent, per the U.S. Census.) Calhoun County, just inland of where the storm made landfall, has a poverty rate of 21 percent. It’s also the county with the lowest median household income in the state — less than $32,000 per year.

“People who are economically depressed, in many ways, have less of a voice,” said Donita Judge, senior attorney and co-director of the Power and Democracy Program at the Advancement Project, one of the groups that brought suit against the state. “When some communities catch a cold, poor communities catch pneumonia. It’s always worse for them to overcome.”

This is not an isolated instance. Back in 2016, civil rights groups also sued the state after its refusal to extend the voter registration deadline during Hurricane Matthew. “Everybody has had a lot of time to register,” said Florida Governor Rick Scott at the time. Scott is currently on the ballot for one of the state’s two seats in the Senate.

But Scott’s response ignores the fact that, historically, there are spikes in voter registration rates right as a deadline approaches. In 2016, after a court ordered an additional one-week extension of the statewide deadline to accommodate those affected by Matthew, more than 100,000 additional Floridians registered.

Of course, Florida is not the only state facing allegations of voter suppression. Texas, which has some of the worst voter registration and voter participation rates, rejected 2,400 online voter registrations before the October 9 deadline. In Georgia, 53,000 voter registrations — of which nearly 70 percent belonged to African-Americans — are in limbo after the state’s Republican candidate for governor, who is also its current secretary of state, began overseeing an “exact match” registration verification process.

On Sunday, Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner authorized election supervisors in select counties to accept paper registration applications whenever their offices reopen. But considering that prolonged recovery efforts follow soon after devastating hurricanes, civil rights groups feel this “limited, confusing, and inconsistent” solution was insufficient.

As human-induced climate change continues unchecked, disasters the likes of Michael are becoming the norm. “From Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Michael, these past few years make clear that climate change is having an impact on our country,” Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said. “Election officials should do a better job at having emergency plans in place that safeguard the rights of voters.”

Read this article: 

Floridians who missed voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael are out of luck

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Prepara, Radius, Thermos, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Floridians who missed voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael are out of luck

Best climate scenario is still too hot for many communities of color

by MilfordEdgell Posted on October 10, 2018

It’s no surprise that the U.N.’s new major climate report has a lot to say about heat. But as average global temperatures continue to rise, certain communities are more at risk of getting burned than others.

Extreme heat already kills more people in the United States than any other weather event, including hurricanes or flooding. And when it strikes, urban low-income and communities of color often pay the highest price.

To paint a picture of how serious this is, we’ll need to get into some numbers. Scientists say that if we want to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we have to stop the world from reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2030. This is a hard number to hit, considering we’re currently on track to reach 3.4 Celsius by the end of the century. But even if we succeed, that moderate rate of warming would still lead to 38,000 more heat-related deaths each year compared to rates from the 1960s to 1990s.

Just how much heat mortality rates rise will depend on additional factors, including the vulnerability of specific populations, the built environment, and whether or not people have access to air conditioning. Older people, children, and people with pre-existing conditions are the most vulnerable to the heat. It can trigger asthma attacks and other complications as the body struggles to cool itself.

“You have more emergency room visits, more doctor visits, it’s just bad all around,” says Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and national spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

El-Hasan, who also serves on the Environmental Justice Advisory Group at the Southern California Air Quality Management District, says some of his low-income patients keep their windows open in lieu of air conditioning, inadvertently increasing their exposure to nearby sources of air pollution. Those pollutants can end up damaging their lungs, making them even more vulnerable to heat waves. The changing climate, coupled with socioeconomic inequities, trigger an avalanche of health risks, El-Hasan says. “Everything just cascades on top of each other and becomes a bigger problem than it might have otherwise been.”

Like real estate, heat vulnerability is very much about location. Not only are neighborhoods that border freeways more polluted, but they’re also actually hotter too. Plants and trees help cool the air, while dark pavement traps heat. As a result, places with more concrete and less green — often low-income, black and brown neighborhoods where there’s been a history of redlining or disinvestment — are several degrees warmer than their typically more affluent neighbors. It’s called the urban heat island effect, and in places like New York City, its consequences are stark. On average, 100 people die each year in the city — half of them African Americans, even though they only make up a quarter of the population.

“It’s becoming unlivable in urban cities,” says Cynthia Herrera, Environmental Policy and Advocacy Coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a community-based organization in Harlem. Over the summer, her organization tracked the number of weather advisories in the hopes of gathering information to help the community adapt to a warming climate. They recorded four heat waves this past summer — a number that’s likely to rise but already feels overwhelming to residents.

“Even if we just stay the same and have four heat waves every summer for the next 10 years we’re not prepared,” she said.

Heat-related deaths are entirely preventable, and there are still ways for communities to adapt — like greening cities and making sure people have places to cool down. Kim Knowlton, senior scientist and deputy director at the National Resources Defence Council, has hope that the U.N. report will be a wake-up call.

“The science about this has to do with everyone,” Knowlton says. “I hope that people start to demand protections for themselves.”

Read this article:  

Best climate scenario is still too hot for many communities of color

Posted in alo, Anchor, Cascade, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Thermos, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Best climate scenario is still too hot for many communities of color

Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and the credibility of a woman scientist

by KristianNeff Posted on October 5, 2018

Christine Blasey Ford is a woman. She is a prolifically published expert in psychological statistics. She is a conventionally attractive natural blonde. She is the product of an elite private school education. She is a mother of two. She is a scientist.

All of these traits together contributed to the public’s impression of Dr. Ford as she testified to Congress that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Much has already been said about the Ford’s testimony as a survivor. But rereading her words, what struck me anew was the way she described the assault in clinical terms — the vulnerable state of the adolescent brain and the well-documented impact of childhood trauma — without evading an ounce of her own humanity. It’s a remarkable feat in a time when science itself is undergoing aggressive interrogation.

“I think that it was extra courageous for her to put in the effort to recognize that the science was important and her way of explaining it would be important,” says Kelly Ramirez, co-founder of the group 500 Women Scientists.

Neurological science tells us that a sexual assault at a young age will impact most victims for the rest of his or her life. Millions know the lasting impact of an assault from experience, but are not able to identify why they feel this way.

Throughout her testimony, Ford simply and carefully explained the different biological processes that contribute to the sharp memory of certain details and the blurriness of others; the surge in hormones that enabled her to escape; the varied and complicated pathology of sexual assault survivors. It was a relief to hear this in such relatively straightforward terms: You feel this way because this is what your body is doing. It is not a failure of your own will.

It is difficult to imagine a more impressive testimony on sexual assault — even as acknowledged by her detractors. Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor hired to interrogate Ford in Congress, acknowledged at the conclusion of her questioning that she had been “really impressed” by Ford’s expertise.

But it was not simply the statement of those anatomical facts that made Ford’s testimony powerful. The humanity in Ford’s testimony was where she exposed the lasting scars of (depressingly) shared experiences, which so many observers were able to recognize.

We also like to see scientists as humans, Ramirez says, and we trust them more when we see them show emotion. Isn’t that ironic! We understand climate science better, for example, when we can empathize with its personal impact on the scientist explaining the theory. Renowned climate scientist James Hansen has made his fight about the uncertain lives his grandchildren face.

The public’s reaction to Ford’s testimony was largely positive. Before the hearings, a poll found that 26 percent of respondents believed Kavanaugh and 32 believed Ford. After they testified, those who believe Kavanaugh bumped slightly to 33 while a remarkable 45 percent believed Ford.

Many comparisons have been drawn between the impassioned testimony of Ford and the cooler one of Anita Hill, the black civil rights attorney who accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his own confirmation hearings. “African-American women have routinely been challenged in their efforts to tell a story about sexual abuse,” one of Hill’s attorneys said about the race and gender dynamics of the two hearings. (Hill, who graduated from Yale, was infamously depicted as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” by a Republican operative.)

“I really hope that it’s not because of Ford’s position as a scientist that people find her credible,” says Maryam Zaringhalam, another senior leader of 500 Women Scientists. “I hope it’s because people are starting to understand that this is something that happens to all women, from all backgrounds, of all ethnicities, with all educational experiences.”

See the article here: 

Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and the credibility of a woman scientist

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and the credibility of a woman scientist

Fuming residents are fighting back against a neighboring oil refinery

by MarisolMontano Posted on October 4, 2018

Nestled between two major highways, the Houston ship channel, and a Valero refinery, the neighborhood of Manchester stews in a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals. Houston, known as the Petro Metro, is home to a quarter of the petroleum refining capacity in the United States. An elementary school next to a chemical plant; a public park next to a refinery. These are the kinds of places that exist in Manchester.

The southeastern Houston community is brimming with industrial facilities — over a dozen, including oil refineries, chemical facilities, and a metal recycling plant. Like most of Houston, many of these hazardous facilities make up a large part of the local economy. And as many locals see it, they may also account for many of the community’s health problems.

Yvette Arellano, a community organizer for the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, told Grist they’ve heard local mothers give tear-filled accounts of their children suffering from constantly red eyes and unable to eat because of nausea from the fumes. Manchester residents are actually at a 22 percent higher risk of cancer than the overall Houston urban area, according to a 2016 report.

“The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has two goals: economic health and public health,” said Arellano, “public [health] coming second.”

Manchester is not the only community bombarded with potentially harmful chemicals. According to a new report by the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, nearly 40 percent of the country lives within three miles of at least one of the 12,500 high-risk chemical facilities (federally regulated by the EPA’s Risk Management Plan Rule) in the United States. This area is what is known to some activists as the “fenceline” zone.

People of color and people at or near poverty levels tend to make up a higher number of these communities, facing disparate levels of exposure to toxic chemicals. And location matters when it comes to exposure — there are 11,000 medical facilities and 125,000 schools — which 24 million children attend — within “fenceline” zones.

“These communities have been paying with their health and well being,” said Michele Roberts, co-coordinator at the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform and a contributor to the report.

Residents of Manchester, Texas, line up to speak at a public forum about hydrogen cyanide emissions from the nearby Valero Refinery.Courtesy of t.e.j.a.s.

Back in Manchester, concerned residents are pushing for change. Over the past several months, residents and environmental justice advocates have been facing an uphill battle against the nearby Valero refinery. Local residents’ latest grievance is the company’s request to amend a permit that would allow the refinery to emit 452 tons of hydrogen cyanide, a known neurotoxin historically used as a chemical warfare agent, yearly into the community’s air. Though the poisonous chemical compound is illegal to store and illegal to produce, it is not illegal to emit.

Local exposure to the chemical is not new. The refinery has always emitted hydrogen cyanide, but activists say the new permit will allow for emissions of almost nine times the amount that is currently being released. Valero did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

The refinery originally sought a permit that would allow for 512 tons of hydrogen cyanide emissions per year — a number they lowered after a public uproar at the first permit hearing back in June. But concerned residents say that’s still not good enough.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Yvette Arellano, a community organizer for the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, told Grist. “This should not be permitted at all.”

As Manchester residents grapple with a plethora of health concerns, momentum in the community is growing. Several undocumented mothers are spearheading a coalition against Valero behind the scenes, teaming up with environmental justice groups like t.e.j.a.s. Other Manchester residents are voicing their concerns at public hearings — around 50 residents and advocates were present at the first meeting earlier this summer.

To address the toxic air that may already be wafting into residents’ spaces. T.e.j.a.s. and members of the Manchester community are working together to roll out an air quality monitoring app, giving them the vital information they can use to push hazardous facilities to clean up their act. T.e.j.a.s. and many community members are also supporting the Toxic Alert Bill, which would set up an emergency alert system for residences near chemical plants in the case of a spill or an explosion.

“Communities are taking their narrative into their own hands,” Roberts said. “They’re speaking for themselves and being supported by environmental justice collectives that can help them get what it is that they actually want and need for their community.”

According to Arellano, in the current fight over hydrogen cyanide emissions, Valero might seek an exception so that they do not have to report that they’re even emitting the chemical. Manchester residents are now calling for more information in order to keep refineries, as well as chemical and storage facilities, accountable. Arellano says that though some residents want to leave the community, others simply want the plants to close.

“The residents were here first,” Arellano said. “This is their community.”

Visit site:  

Fuming residents are fighting back against a neighboring oil refinery

Posted in alo, Anchor, Crown, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fuming residents are fighting back against a neighboring oil refinery

Economic uncertainty already hung over the heads of Puerto Rico’s children. Then came Maria.

by EarthaDarbonne Posted on September 28, 2018

More than a year has passed since Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico, but Bethlyn Avilez and her family are still grappling with the irrevocable upheaval. Avilez lives in the central Puerto Rican municipality of Ciales with her husband and her two young boys, 9-year-old Xarquier and 4-year-old Xanier.

After the storm’s 155 mph winds and intense rainfall had torn through the island, causing a nearby bridge to collapse and a nearby river to rise, the family swam to a neighbor’s house. When the swollen river completely submerged their home, Xarquier intently watched the drastic devastation unfold from his neighbor’s window.

“He saw his things floating — his toys, his clothes, everything,” Avilez told Grist in her native Spanish. When the family finally trekked to its home two days after the storm had passed, Xarquier grasped the full scope of the wreckage.

Dear reader, like what you see here?

Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. All donations made between now and September 29 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

  

“He told me all he felt was sadness — that he’d lost everything, that things weren’t the same,” Avilez added.

That sentiment hangs over the Avilez family today. A new normal has yet to arrive. Avilez estimates it took three to four months for Xarquier to return to school — and finding supplies and clothes was a struggle since many stores were either closed or inaccessible. The family is still living in Avilez’s parents house while its works on finding a new home to start from scratch.

As part of the “Maria Generation,” stories like that of Avilez’s children are not unique. Long before the hurricane, economic uncertainty had shaped the experience of Puerto Rican youth: The territory already had the highest percentage of childhood poverty in the nation, at 57 percent. (Compare that to slightly more than 15 percent nationwide.)

Now, preliminary findings from a study out this week reveal that increased economic hardship following Maria, coupled with inadequate access to health and education, is further affecting the wellbeing and development of young people.

The study involved interviews with more than 700 Puerto Rican households with children under 18 years of age between July and September of 2018. Researchers used a three-pronged approach: looking at the extent to which economics, health, and education had levied deep-seeded impacts on children.

The findings are pretty grim. Following Maria’s onslaught on the island, about a third of households surveyed had reduced incomes due to loss of employment and reduced work hours. Low-income families suffered disproportionately by this erosion of income. According to the study, they reported difficulty paying utilities, buying food, and clothing.

Children, especially impoverished youth, are struggling in Maria’s wake. The study reveals that 44 percent of minors exhibited new behaviors after the hurricane — with 23 percent of that group experiencing anxiety. Children under 5 years old went an average of 92 days without attending preschool, while children between 5 and 17 years old are estimated to have spent an average of 78 days away from school. Further, 3 out of 10 children with disabilities that require medication for treatment had difficulty obtaining it after the hurricane.

“This study shows that families with children, who were facing significant challenges before the hurricane, are facing even more bleak conditions today,” said Anitza Cox, director of analysis and social policy at Estudios Técnicos, the firm that helped administer the survey. “This type of economic insecurity is what has led to families leaving in droves over the last decade, and what will continue to drive it if comprehensive policies are not put into place immediately.”

Indeed, more than 30 percent of households surveyed indicated that they are very likely or likely to move due to Hurricane Maria. In Florida alone, 200,000 Puerto Ricans arrived within the first two months after the storm made landfall.

Avilez considered being part of the subsequent mass migration, but ultimately felt that she needed to face this newfound reality head-on.

“If I had left, I’d be running away,” she told Grist. “I wanted to be brave. And so, we started over.”

This article is from: 

Economic uncertainty already hung over the heads of Puerto Rico’s children. Then came Maria.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Economic uncertainty already hung over the heads of Puerto Rico’s children. Then came Maria.

Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

by RaymondJessup Posted on September 25, 2018

Construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is set to rev up next year. The project received a green light from the State Department late last week — the latest salvo in a contentious decade-long battle between indigenous communities and TransCanada, the pipeline’s developer.

On Friday, the State Department issued a 338-page supplemental environmental impact statement for an alternate route through Nebraska. The agency has determined that major environmental damage stemming from the $8 billion, 1,180-mile project would be “negligible to moderate.” According to the report, there will be safeguards in place that would prevent a leak from contaminating ground or surface water.

“Keystone XL has undergone years of extensive environmental review by federal and state regulators,” TransCanada spokesperson Matthew John said. “All of these evaluations show that Keystone XL can be built safely and with minimal impact to the environment.”

Dear reader, like what you see here?

Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. All donations made between now and September 29 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

  

The review comes a little more than a month after a Montana court required the State Department to conduct a separate analysis — not part of the pipeline’s 2014 environmental impact study — of the updated route under the National Environmental Policy Act. The new route will be longer than TransCanada’s preferred route.

Following the release of the environmental assessment, TransCanada lawyers filed a response on Friday to address concerns by environmental and indigenous groups that are challenging the pipeline’s permit to cross into the U.S. from Canada in the Montana court.

But as TransCanada moves ahead with plans to construct the pipeline — which would carry up to 830,000 barrels of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska — tribal communities living in its path remain steadfast in challenging the review’s conclusions.

“It’s a total disregard for the land, and the animals, and the people that reside on it and have for generations,” Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a vocal opponent of major oil-pipeline projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline, told Grist. “I think the thing to remember is that the people who are building this pipeline — they don’t care because they don’t have to live here. But it’s not going to stop me from fighting back.”

Pipeline-opponents on the front lines like Spotted Eagle are gearing up for what comes next, pledging to fight until the pipeline project is halted for good. Earlier this month, the Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued the Trump administration after it granted the pipeline a permit which they claimed didn’t assess how it’s construction “would impact their water and sacred lands.”

Indigenous groups aren’t the only ones voicing their discontent — the Sierra Club called the new State Department report a “sham review.” “We’ve held off construction of this pipeline for 10 years, and regardless of this administration’s attempts to force this dirty tar sands pipeline on the American people,” said Kelly Martin, director of the group’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “That fight will continue until Keystone XL is stopped once and for all.”

Members of the public have 45 days to comment on the State Department’s review, but Spotted Eagle is skeptical that the powers that be will even bother to consult with indigenous people residing in the pipeline’s route. “There is no regard to nation-to-nation relationships with tribes,” she says.

Continue reading here: 

Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Green Light, Jason, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

Some displaced Puerto Ricans face homelessness after FEMA stops paying for hotels

by TheronHeidenrei Posted on September 21, 2018

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

It’s been a year since Hurricane Maria upended Jennyfer Ortiz’s life. The single mother fled Puerto Rico with her two children after their house in the mountain town of Orocovis lost power. They have been using a government-funded program to pay for a hotel in the Bronx, but that ended last week, forcing Ortiz, her 20-year-old son, and 14-year-old daughter into a homeless shelter.

“Maria changed our lives ― ruined our lives ― and left us with nothing. After 18 hours of horror, we woke up the next day and had lost everything,” Ortiz said. The 46-year-old hasn’t been able to work since they’ve been in New York City ― she has diabetes and hypertension, takes 14 medications a day, and uses a walker. Her son works full time at a grocery store but doesn’t make enough to pay for their own place.

Dear reader, like what you see here?

Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. All donations made between now and September 29 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

  

“We’re working. We’re not just waiting for the government to pay everything,” she said. “We’re trying to get ahead ― but it’s hard.”

Ortiz is one of 2,436 displaced Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland who, as of last month, were still in hotels paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program.

After repeated extensions of the program in response to a lawsuit from the advocacy group Latino Justice, a federal judge ruled late last month to end it, forcing people still using the program to check out by September 14.

There were few good options for the people still in hotels: accept the government’s offer to pay for a plane ticket back to Puerto Rico or stay on the mainland and either secure their own place, stay with friends, or go to a shelter.

Many relying on FEMA’s housing funds are in precarious financial situations, said Peter Gudaitis, executive director of the nonprofit New York Disaster Interfaith Services, which has been helping Maria evacuees. Some have medical conditions, others have young kids and haven’t been able to afford daycare, which has prevented them from finding a job. Even evacuees who have found work struggle to save enough for a security deposit and first month’s rent.

“I don’t have anybody here. I don’t know what to do,” Myrna Reyes, another Maria evacuee, who suffers from diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure, told HuffPost on Monday. “I’ve lost hope.”

After Reyes left the hotel that FEMA was paying for in Brooklyn on Friday, she ended up at a New York shelter. But she didn’t feel safe there. She saw people outside injecting drugs, she said, and her room was up four flights of stairs with no elevator, and she has limited mobility. She went to a friend’s home nearby, but that friend is moving to Florida next week, and Reyes will have to find somewhere else to go.

“They’ve left us practically in the street,” Reyes said. “They’re not treating us like the U.S. citizens that we are.”

Jennyfer’s daughter, 14, painting at the table in their room at the Bronx shelter. HuffPost.

When U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman in Massachusetts ruled to end the FEMA hotel program earlier this month, he urged the government to find longer-term housing solutions for Maria evacuees. Latino Justice alleges that FEMA hasn’t.

FEMA told HuffPost on Tuesday that since Maria hit, it had assisted more than 7,000 families who had survived the storm with temporary hotel rooms in 40 states, costing more than $100 million.

“While FEMA and other forms of government assistance can never make a disaster survivor whole, the assistance is meant to help survivors begin their recovery process,” FEMA spokesperson Lenisha Smith wrote by email. “FEMA will continue to work with survivors in their long-term housing plans.”

Gudaitis, whose group has been helping Maria survivors in New York, said that of the 34 families it assisted who were still in hotels paid by FEMA as of last week, over two-thirds are now in the New York City shelter system. The rest are staying with family, and a “small number” have found their own place, he said.

In central Florida, Vamos4PR, a group assisting Maria evacuees there, said of about 100 families it knew of that were using the FEMA program, about half are now doubled up with friends, a “handful” returned to Puerto Rico, and a few had secured their own place. For the remaining, the group is now trying to assist with cash or by negotiating low hotel rates. They were told in recent months that there was no more capacity in the central Florida shelter system. Amneris Ortíz (no relation to Jennyfer) is a single mom who had been using the FEMA program to pay for a hotel on the outskirts of Orlando until Friday, along with her elderly mother and three children, ages 17, 10, and 8. A local church helped her pay a deposit and the first month’s rent to secure an apartment, but she doesn’t know how she’ll make rent next month.

She had been working at a Wawa gas station, but after her car broke down in July, she lost that job because it was too far to walk there. She then got a job closer to the hotel, working as a part-time teacher in a daycare, but the apartment they were able to line up is too far from that job. When HuffPost spoke to her Monday, she hadn’t been able to make it to work that day.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” said Amneris Ortíz. Her kids have asthma, and her mother also has health issues. She has a college degree, but her current job pays only $9 an hour. “I’m trying to make enough to help my kids get by, but it’s really hard.”

Amneris Ortíz, her mother and three kids in their rental apartment.

Huffpost.

FEMA noted that one of the options it offered evacuees was free plane tickets to return to Puerto Rico. About 500 people have taken them up on that.

But for many of the most vulnerable families, returning to the island is not a viable option. Experts say Puerto Rico’s recovery process will take years. Repeated power outages still plague the island, and the health care system has not fully recovered.

In the wake of the storm, the schools Amneris Ortíz’s kids had attended had closed. In Florida, they’re getting a good education, at least. The principal at her son’s school even paid for his soccer cleats so he could join the team.

Jennyfer Ortiz says she’s undergoing treatment in New York for her medical conditions. She has knee surgery scheduled. Without power in the wake of Maria, she couldn’t keep her insulin refrigerated. The family would line up for hours for ice only to have half of it melt by the time they got home. She doesn’t see how she can return to an island where she has no place to stay ― their home that flooded was a rental ― and where there’s still a shortage of doctors.

“Without health, we have nothing,” Jennyfer Ortiz said. “They wanted to pay me a ticket to go back to an island where I lost everything. And to return where? To the street?”

FEMA also pointed to a rental assistance program it offers to provide two-months’ rent to survivors. The agency said it had provided it to 3,833 families who had previously stayed in FEMA-paid hotels stateside.

But Gudaitis said that, to his knowledge, none of the families his group serves in New York had been able to get rental assistance through that program. Vamos4PR echoed that in central Florida: None of the families it had assisted received additional longer-term housing assistance from FEMA.

“I honestly feel lost,” said Amneris Ortíz. She applied for rental assistance from FEMA a couple of weeks ago and sent further documentation last week. She has not heard anything so far.

“I’m getting panic attacks. I’m scared of ending up in the street with my kids,” she said, in tears. “Not being able to provide them with what they need ― they ask me for things and I can’t. I’m feeling very depressed. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

See more here: 

Some displaced Puerto Ricans face homelessness after FEMA stops paying for hotels

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Some displaced Puerto Ricans face homelessness after FEMA stops paying for hotels