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Biofuel Boosters Rally Support for Higher EPA Blending Levels in 2017

by Posted on June 3, 2016

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Biofuel Boosters Rally Support for Higher EPA Blending Levels in 2017

Posted 3 June 2016 in

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 3, 2016
PRESS CONTACT: Zachary Cikanek, 202.677.7043, zcikanek@fp1strategies.com

WASHINGTON, DC – The nation’s leading biofuel advocates are rallying supporters to urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to increase its proposed 2017 targets under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). With the start of the EPA’s public comment period this week and the announcement of a public hearing on June 9, supporters have a limited time to call on the EPA to make more ethanol and other biofuels available to consumers in next year’s fuel mix.

“America can’t achieve its climate, health or economic ambitions without renewable fuels. Among the most powerful tools we’ve got in achieving those ambitions is the Renewable Fuel Standard – as long as it’s allowed to work,” said Adam Monroe, America Regional President, Novozymes North America. “We urge anyone who’s benefitted from the renewable fuel industry to speak out – and urge the Administration to listen to those voices and maximize renewable fuel production.”

“Consumers who care about having affordable options and a choice at the gas pump can get in on the action by contacting the EPA and asking their lawmakers to support a strong RFS,” said Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy. “Policymakers need to be reminded that ethanol producers, retailers and the current auto fleet are fully capable of accepting the statutory volumes as called for by Congress, providing consumers with a true choice and savings at the pump. As EPA noted in their own proposed rule, ‘To date we have seen no compelling evidence that the nationwide average ethanol concentration in gasoline cannot exceed 10 percent.’ It’s vital that we fight for the statutory biofuel targets for America’s 2017 fuel mix.”

“The proposed targets fall short of the statutory levels set by Congress,” said Bob Dinneen, President and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). “Consumers know that having only one choice at the pump – fossil fuels – is a vestige of outdated thinking and poor policy decisions. We must aim higher to protect the economic, environmental and energy security benefits of America’s most successful clean energy program.”

Supporters are urged to testify at the EPA field hearing in Kansas City or submit comments to the EPA by July 11, when regulators start writing a final rule.

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Biofuel Boosters Rally Support for Higher EPA Blending Levels in 2017

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It’s official: This summer will be a miserable inferno

by CamilleJeffrey Posted on May 26, 2016

It’s official: This summer will be a miserable inferno

By on May 26, 2016Share

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has released its outlook for summer temperatures, and, in the words of the American poet Nelly: It’s getting hot in herre.

Temperatures all across the country are facing increased odds for well above average summer temps: From Seattle to Sag Harbor, boob sweat and swamp ass will abound. The only exceptions in these United States are South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas — so pack your bags, babies! We’re heading to Omaha.

NOAA

Beside the basic discomfort of hot-as-balls weather, exceptionally high temperatures are bad news for things like drought, wildfire, and curly hair. This could mean an especially difficult year for parts of California and the Southwest that are already suffering from years of high temps and low precipitation.

Howard Diamond, scientist at NOAA, put it this way:

“Yes, parts of California already under severe drought could again be in for more of the same.” But, he adds, “Please also remember that the climate outlooks below for June-July-August are just that — outlooks. They are not specific forecasts, but based on past climatology, and models give us a possible snapshot of what conditions will most likely be like.”

In other words, it looks bad, but there’s always a chance that the predictions are off and the drought is over and there will be no more wildfires and we’ll all be blissfully basking in 70 degree days for the next three months.

Here’s hoping.

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It’s official: This summer will be a miserable inferno

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Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

by DerickJWCV Posted on May 2, 2016

Politics

Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

By on May 2, 2016Share

Charles Koch finds plenty of things scary. He’s alarmed by “rampant cronyism” in government (a phrase he’s used to veil his jabs at renewable energy) and by what President Obama’s reelection did to the American Dream. He is afraid for what the 2016 election holds in store and believes collectivist thinking will doom us. What the Koch Industries CEO doesn’t find alarming, however, is that humans are causing the planet to burn up.

In a recent interview with ABC News’ Powerhouse Politics podcast, Koch diminishes the impacts of our warming planet. He muses about our fate in a segment flagged by the liberal super PAC American Bridge:

Is the climate changing due to CO2 in a way that’s going to be catastrophic and unmanageable? Or is it changing in a mild and manageable way? I believe the evidence is overwhelming that it’s changing in a mild and manageable way.

These policies that are being introduced in the United States, as a matter of fact, under their own models would have virtually zero impact on the future temperature or other aspects of the climate. And in fact I think they make matters worse, because they get people going after the subsidies rather than innovating.

If this line of thinking sounds familiar, it’s because climate-denying politicians and others in the Koch-funded universe have all used similar talking points. It’s more clever than outright denying that carbon pollution is warming the planet – a fact Koch admits is true.

But Koch adds a key qualifier: Human activity, he says, has “contributed to much less than what [scientific] models projecting catastrophe show.” It’s foolish, he continues, to push policies that “are making people’s lives worse. They’re raising the cost of energy for no benefit and guess who suffers the most – the poorest people used three times the energy as a percentage of income than the average American.”

Never mind that utilities, corporations, and households are increasingly turning toward renewables in order to shave energy costs — alternative energy meets Koch’s criteria of “making people’s lives worse.”

It’s a modification of Koch’s past arguments on climate change, which have ranged from doubting scientific consensus to suggesting the warming will be good for us. With awareness of climate change back on the rise in the United States, it only makes sense that Koch is trying out another message.

The talking points might shuffle, but they serve the same purpose: delay. And like many arguments that came before it, this one is full of problems. Koch ignores that the poor in the United States and around the world are on the front lines of climate change, and are likely to be hardest hit by even the slightest changes in global averages. Indeed, they have already started to feel some dramatic consequences at an average 1-degree warming. Left unchecked, the planet is in for well over 4-degree C warming by the end of the century.

From his corporate headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, the 80-year-old billionaire has little reason to be fearful of climate change.

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Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

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Kansas Becomes the Latest State To Freak Out Over Syrian Refugees

by IssacG42rrwyqu Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback announced on Tuesday that Kansas is withdrawing from the federal government’s refugee resettlement program over concerns that Syrian refugees could be security threats.

“Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program,” Brownback said in a press release.

Brownback had already issued an executive order in November stating that “no department, commission, board, or agency of the government of the State of Kansas shall aid, cooperate with, or assist in any way the relocation of refugees from Syria to the State of Kansas.” Tuesday’s announcement would apply to refugees from any country. But while the move sounds drastic, it’s mostly a symbolic act that will have little on-the-ground impact for refugees or public safety.

For one, pulling out of the federal resettlement program doesn’t mean refugees won’t be allowed to live in Kansas. While Indiana and other states have tried to bar Syrians from entering their borders, they aren’t actually able to do so. Like any other visa holders, refugees are able to go anywhere the United States they’d like. It also doesn’t mean that support for refugees who are currently living in Kansas or may move there will dry up. The funds that state agencies use for refugee aid are almost entirely federal money, and the Department of Health and Human Services retains control over the funds even if state employees or agencies don’t take part. In those cases, Health and Human Services simply appoints another organization to administer the money. “This is the situation in some other states, usually because their resettlement program is very small,” says Stacie Blake, the director of government and community relations at the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of the nonprofit groups that resettles refugees. “The money is not ‘lost.'”

According to data from the State Department, only five Syrians have settled in Kansas since October of last year.

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Kansas Becomes the Latest State To Freak Out Over Syrian Refugees

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California Dives Into the Unknown With $15 Minimum Wage

by NellEUHzum Posted on March 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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San Francisco and Los Angeles have already passed laws raising their minimum wages to $15 per hour. Now, in a victory for labor activists who were getting ready to put a $15 minimum wage on the ballot, the state is getting ready to follow suit:

According to a document obtained by The Times, the negotiated deal would boost California’s statewide minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on Jan. 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increases through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply, delaying their workers receiving a $15 hourly wage until 2023.

Future statewide minimum wage increases would be linked to inflation, but a governor would have the power to temporarily block some of the initial increases in the event of an economic downturn.

This would genuinely be terra incognita. The chart on the right shows the California minimum wage over the past 40 years, adjusted for inflation. An increase to $11 per hour in 2018 would return the state to slightly above its historical high point. Beyond that, however, the minimum wage goes far higher than it’s ever been.

What effect will that have, especially in lower-wage areas outside the big cities? There’s no telling. It won’t be Armageddon, but it might not be entirely benign either. Small increases in the minimum wage seem to have little or no effect on employment, but this increase isn’t small, and it unquestionably gets us beyond merely catching up with past erosion in the minimum wage. A statewide minimum of $15 would be a brand new thing.

Kansas recently tried out full-bore right-wing economics, and it’s pretty much been a disaster. Now liberals are getting their chance in California. Come back in a decade and we’ll find out if left-wing economics does any better.

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California Dives Into the Unknown With $15 Minimum Wage

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Here’s Who’s Looking Strong in Today’s "Super Saturday" Contests

by NevilleLocke2 Posted on March 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Voters headed to the polls in five states today as Donald Trump looked to continue his march to the GOP nominating convention and Republican party leaders scrambled for ways to stop him. On the Republican side, 155 delegates were at stake in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine; candidates need 1,237 delegates to wrap up the nomination. Donald Trump, who began the day with 329 delegates according to the Associated Press, was looking to extend his lead over Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who have 231 and 110 delegates respectively. Ohio Gov. John Kasich—who has won only 25 delegates so far—has begun angling for a contested convention in Cleveland while Ben Carson all but dropped out on Wednesday.

For the Democrats, 109 delegates were up for grabs in Louisiana, Kansas, and Nebraska. Clinton headed into these states with 1,066 delegates, the Associated Press reported, nearly half of the 2,383 needed to wrap up the Democratic nomination. (Clinton’s count includes 458 superdelegates, who may vote for any candidate, as the New York Times reports.) Sen. Bernie Sanders started the day with 432 delegates and was hoping to make a strong showing in Nebraska and Kansas: The Huffington Post reported that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook sent a memo to staffers saying Clinton could lose in those states.

We’ll be here with updates as the results come in.

UPDATE 9, March 5, 8:50 p.m. PT: Speaking to supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump called for Rubio to drop out of the race after losing all but one of the 19 Republican contests so far. “I think it’s time for Marco to clean the deck,” he said. “I would love to take on Ted one on one. That would be so much fun…That would be easy.”

After commenting that he would order military personnel to torture terror suspects and then backpedaling on Friday, telling the Wall Street Journal that he would be “bound by laws,” Trump returned Saturday to the subject of torture. “I am totally in favor of waterboarding, and if we can, I’d like to do much more than that,” he said. “I will try to get the laws extended, broadened…so we can better compete with a vicious group of animals.”

One journalist brought up Thursday’s Fox News debate, in which Rubio made a jab at Trump’s “small hands”—and Trump reassured voters that “there’s no problem.”

“Marco just made it up, because he’s a politician, and politicians lie,” Trump said Saturday night. For those worried about the tone of a presidential campaign in which the front-runner reassured voters about the size of his manhood, Trump also had an answer: “I will be the most presidential candidate in history.”

UPDATE 8, March 5, 7:55 p.m. PT: The final race of the night has wrapped up. Trump won Kentucky with 35.1 percent of the vote, followed closely by Cruz with 31.4 percent, networks are reporting. Eighty-four percent of results have been counted.

UPDATE 7, March 5, 7:07 p.m. PT: Sanders, who tonight adds victories in Kansas and Nebraska to his wins in Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma, told the Associated Press that his campaign is bearing out its promise of a “political revolution.” In the coming months, Democratic candidates will turn their sights on New York, California, Oregon and Washington state. “I think in all of those states, we’ve got a shot to win it,” Sanders said, adding that wins in those states could convince some of Clinton’s superdelegates to switch their allegiance to his campaign.

UPDATE 6, March 5: 6:53 p.m. PT: Trump has won the Louisiana primary with 45.7 percent of the vote, networks are reporting, with 16 percent of results in. Forty-six delegates are up for grabs in the state. Cruz is in second with 29 percent of the vote, with Rubio trailing at 15.8 percent.

UPDATE 5, March 5: 6:23 p.m. PT: Networks quickly projected a Clinton win after polls closed in Louisiana, which, with its prize of 51 delegates, is the most important Democratic contest of the night. With just 8 percent of results in, Clinton had won 71.1 percent of the vote. Sanders trailed at 21.4 percent.

UPDATE 4, March 5: 6:10 p.m. PT: Sanders appears to be edging out Clinton in Nebraska, earning 54.8 percent of the Democratic vote to Clinton’s 45.2 percent, announced Vince Powers, the state Democratic Party chair. Seventy-five percent of polling locations are reporting, and the results are not final yet, Powers said.

UPDATE 3, March 5, 5:55 p.m. PT: Cruz picked up his second win of the night, earning 45.8 percent of the vote and 12 delegates in Maine, state GOP party chairman Rick Bennett announced in a speech in Lewiston, Maine. In second, Trump gained nine delegates and 32.5 percent of the vote, while Kasich picked up two delegates and 12.2 percent. Rubio failed to gain any delegates in the state, trailing at just 8 percent in the polls.

UPDATE 2, March 5, 5:30 p.m. PT: The Kansas Democratic Party has called Kansas for Sanders, with 90 percent of the vote in, CNN is reporting.

UPDATE 1, March 5, 2:45 p.m. PT: With just more than half the vote in, the Associated Press has called Kansas for Cruz, with 51 percent of the vote. Forty delegates are up for grabs in the state.

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Here’s Who’s Looking Strong in Today’s "Super Saturday" Contests

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Donald Trump Pulls Out of Conservative Conference

by CarenDiaz8529 Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, canceled his scheduled appearance at one of the largest annual gatherings of conservatives on Friday. Trump was scheduled to speak early Saturday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference, hosted this year at a hotel conference center outside Washington, DC, but CPAC announced on Twitter that he’d bailed:

CPAC wasn’t exactly prime Trump territory—but nor was it entirely hostile. There was a lonely protester lamenting that Trump would rip apart the party on Thursday. But most CPAC attendees said that they weren’t all that concerned by his reluctance to distance himself from a white supremacist, and that they’d still support him in the general election even if their preferred nominee at the moment might be Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Over the course of the first day of the conference, the schism in the Republican Party was largely left unmentioned, with speakers shying away from mentioning Trump by name.

But at a watch party for Thursday night’s GOP debate, the crowd titled heavily toward Cruz and Rubio, jeering each time Rubio attacked Trump. Perhaps Trump’s fans relayed the message and warned him against speaking to a potentially hostile crowd on Saturday.

Update: Trump issued a press release on Friday announcing a rally in Wichita on Kansas and citing it as his reason for withdrawing from CPAC:

The Donald J. Trump for President Campaign has just announced it will be in Wichita, Kansas for a major rally on Saturday, prior to the Caucus. Mr. Trump will also be speaking at the Kansas Caucus and then departing for Orlando, Florida to speak to a crowd of approximately 20,000 people or more. Because of this, he will not be able to speak at CPAC, as he has done for many consecutive years. Mr. Trump would like to thank Matt Schlapp and all of the executives at CPAC and looks forward to returning to next year, hopefully as President of the United States.

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Donald Trump Pulls Out of Conservative Conference

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Here’s What It’s Like to Work at Planned Parenthood

by LatoshaGood Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last night, Bryn Greenwood, who worked for Planned Parenthood in the late 90s, tweeted about her experience:

I worked at a #PlannedParenthood clinic in Kansas for 3 years. My coworkers & I were subjected to the following acts of terrorism:

Gasoline was poured under our back door & ignited 4 times. Twice while the clinic was occupied, causing patients to be evacuated.
Butyric acid (used as a stink bomb) was poured under our doors & into ventilation system so many times I lost count. Clinic evacuated.
2 cherry bombs were left on our doorstep after hours, causing damage & clinic closure. Imagine what it’s like going to work after that.
We received hundreds of phone calls, threatening to torch our clinic & to kill the “murdering whores” who worked there.
3 times someone drove by at night & shot out our windows. Picketers stood on the sidewalk & harassed employees as we swept up broken glass.

Our clinic didn’t perform abortions. We did well woman exams, pregnancy tests, dispensed birth control, & treated STIs. Our clinic offered free & low cost services in a low income neighborhood, but every day the “pro-life” movement tried to frighten us. The goal was to make us afraid to come to work, to make us quit, to make us close the clinic. That’s terrorism. That’s how terrorism works.

This is what life is like for women’s health providers, even ones who don’t perform abortions. I guess I’d urge caution about calling this terrorism, since I’m not sure it does us any good to expand the scope of crimes that are part of the “war on terror.” Historically speaking, that hasn’t been great for liberal values. Still, it’s hard to argue that the goals and methods aren’t pretty terrifying—and that’s even without Greenwood mentioning the personal threats implicit in photographing license plates and publishing names and addresses of clinic workers, which are common tactics.

After two days of near silence, Republican presidential candidates are finally “praying” for the victims of the Colorado attack. They could hardly avoid it when they were booked on national TV—and anyway, praying is always okay, even for sinners. Especially for sinners, in fact. It’s a turn of phrase that doesn’t risk showing even the slightest desire to protect Planned Parenthood from future attacks. Republicans might not want Planned Parenthood workers killed, but they sure don’t seem to mind if their angry hordes do everything just short of that.

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Here’s What It’s Like to Work at Planned Parenthood

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

by NataliaBrunning Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Elanco, the animal-health division of the pharma giant Eli Lilly, makes one of the world’s most controversial growth-promoting chemicals for meat production: ractopamine, marketed as Optaflexx for cattle, Paylean for pigs, and Topmax for turkeys.

A member of the class of medicines known as beta-agonists, which are also given to asthmatic people to help relax their airway muscles, ractopamine makes animals rapidly put on lean weight—but it also mimics stress hormones and makes their hearts beat faster. Studies suggest that it makes livestock more vulnerable to heat. Ractopamine is banned in the European Union, China, and more than 100 other countries, and it faces mounting criticism here in the United States.

To clean up his company’s image, Elanco’s president, Jeff Simmons, has launched a “counteroffensive,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Andrew Martin. In addition to his responsibilities operating a $2.3 billion-dollar global animal-drug business, Simmons runs an initiative called ENOUGH Movement, which calls itself a “global community working together to ensure everyone has access to nutritious, affordable food—today and in the coming decades.” Combating global hunger is one of ENOUGH’S major themes. Simmons uses a “grainy photo of himself carrying a small African child on his back” as his Twitter avatar, Martin reports.

Elanco served as the primary underwriter of The Atlantic magazine’s 2015 Food Summit, held last week in Washington, D.C. Simmons delivered a sponsored presentation at the event. In it, he complained that a group he labeled the “fringe 1 percent,” agitating for increased regulation on meat producers, is driving the national debate around food. Simmons also regaled the crowd with ENOUGH’s core messages: The world needs to produce 60 percent more meat, eggs, and dairy by 2050; doing so will require “innovative farming techniques that increase efficiency;” and organic methods—which forbid growth-boosting chemicals for animals—aren’t going to cut it. Instead, ENOUGH insists, “we must leverage the innovations and technological advances that will allow us to produce more food without using more resources.”

One can see why an exec operating in the meat industry might be feeling defensive. Industrial-scale meat production has been linked to the rise of antibiotic resistance in human medicine (which claims at least 700,000 lives per year globally); ecological ruin; increased risk of cancer; and the hollowing out of communities where it alights. Insult to injury, US consumers have been cutting back on meat consumption overall, and turning increasingly to drug-free, pasture-raised product.

And Simmons has rushed into the fray. In short, Martin shows, Simmons is taking a page from the agrichemical/GMO industry playbook: present your industry as crucial to “feeding the world” as global population grows to 9 billion by 2050, and paint your critics as out-of-touch elitists who are indifferent to hunger and poverty.

“Simmons doesn’t directly pitch Elanco products during his speeches on hunger, saying he has a higher purpose: alleviating world hunger and changing a conversation that’s been hijacked by a vocal fringe of activists,” Businessweek’s Martin writes. “If the arguments sound familiar, it’s because Monsanto and other proponents of genetically modified foods made similar claims.”

One key part of the strategy to avoid discussion of existing products, and point instead to future innovation. Generally speaking, Monsanto execs prefer to talk about still-in-development crops rather than current offerings, which are riddled by weeds and insects that have evolved to resist them. Likewise, Simmons doesn’t say much on the stump about the company’s best-known product, ractopamine.

A 2014 study from Texas Tech and Kansas State researchers found that it nearly doubled the mortality rate of cows fed on it in the weeks before slaughter. As for pigs, the drug has “triggered more adverse reports in pigs than any other animal drug on the market,” a 2012 investigation by journalist Helena Bottemiller found. “Pigs suffered from hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk, and death, according to FDA reports released under a Freedom of Information Act request.”

Rather than ponder such troubles, Simmons urges us to imagine a future where meat is abundant and the scourge of malnutrition has been defeated, all driven by “innovation” and “science.” Whether or not that vision comes to pass, this much seems clear: We’re on the verge of a loud campaign by the meat industry, particularly its pharma sector, to portray its critics as a privileged fringe, untroubled by global hunger.

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

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The Brownback Crash Continues in Kansas

by ChristeP38 Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Menzie Chinn updates us today on how things are going in Sam Brownback’s Kansas. Answer: not so good. The chart on the right compares Kansas to the rest of the country using coincident indexes, an aggregate measure of economic performance tracked monthly by the Philadelphia Fed. It consists of the following four measures:

Nonfarm payroll employment
Average hours worked in manufacturing
Unemployment rate
Wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index

The index is set to 100 at the beginning of 2011, when Gov. Brownback took office. Brownback instituted an aggressive program of tax cuts and budget reductions, promising that this supply-side intervention would supercharge the state’s economy. But the reality has been rather different. Kansas has underperformed the US economy ever since Brownback was elected.

Why is that? Is the Fed using the wrong employment data? Chinn says no: “The decline shows up regardless of whether employment is measured using the establishment or household surveys.” Is it the weather? “Drought does not seem to be an explanation to me.” How about the poor performance of the aircraft industry? “Evidence from employment data is not supportive of this thesis.”

So what is it? “I would argue much of the downturn especially post January 2013 is self-inflicted, due to the fiscal policies implemented.” Surprise! I wonder if Kansans will ever figure this out?

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The Brownback Crash Continues in Kansas

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