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Environmentalists Hate Fracking. Are They Right?

by HoraceBrookman Posted on May 11, 2016

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The pros and cons of natural gas, explained. Lonny Garris/Shutterstock What if President Barack Obama’s biggest achievement on climate change was actually a total failure? That’s the central argument of a recent story in the Nation by Bill McKibben, a journalist and environmental activist. “If you get the chemistry wrong,” McKibben writes, “it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.” McKibben’s criticism is all about fracking, the controversial oil and gas drilling technique that involves blasting underground shale formations with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals. (He made a similar case here in Mother Jones in September 2014.) Over the last decade, we’ve witnessed much-celebrated strides in solar and other renewable sources of electricity. But by far the most significant change in America’s energy landscape has been a major shift from coal to natural gas. The trend was already underway when Obama took office, but it reached a tipping point during his administration. In March, federal energy analysts reported that 2016 will be the first year in history in which natural gas provides a greater share of American electricity than coal does: EIA Across the country, many coal-fired power plants are being refitted to burn natural gas, or closing entirely and being replaced by new natural gas plants. This transformation is being driven in part by simple economics: America’s fracking boom has led to a glut of low-cost natural gas that is increasingly able to undersell coal. It’s also driven by regulation: In its campaign to address climate change, the Obama administration has focused mostly on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas. Coal-fired power plants are the country’s number-one source of CO2 emissions. When natural gas is burned, it emits about half as much CO2 per unit of energy. So gas, in the administration’s view, can serve as a “bridge” to a cleaner future by allowing for deep cuts in coal consumption while renewables catch up. So far, that appears to be working. A federal analysis released this week shows that energy-related CO2 emissions (which includes electricity, transportation, and gas used in buildings) are at their lowest point in a decade, largely “because of the decreased use of coal and the increased use of natural gas for electricity generation”: EIA But for many environmentalists, including McKibben and 350.orgâ��the organization he co-foundedâ��Obama’s “bridge” theory is bunk. That’s because it ignores methane, another potent greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas. 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; this week the Obama administration is expected to roll out the first regulations intended to address the problem. But the new regulations will apply only to new infrastructure, not the sprawling gas network that already exists. So is fracking really just a bridge to nowhere? What is methane, anyway? For Obama’s bridge strategy to succeed, it would need to result in greenhouse gas emissions that are in line with the global warming limit enshrined in the Paris Agreement: “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. So let’s start with the gas itself. According to the EPA, methane accounted for about 11.5 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 (the rest was mostly CO2, plus a little bit of nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons). Roughly one-fifth of that methane came from natural gas systems (the number-three source after landfill emissions and cow farts and burps). Even with the fracking boom, methane emissions from natural gas have held at about the same level for the last five years, and they are actually down considerably from a decade ago (assuming you trust the EPA stats; more on that later). By volume, they’re at about the same level as CO2 emissions from jet fuelâ��in other words, a significant source, but an order of magnitude less than CO2 from power plants or cars. But the tricky thing about greenhouse gases is that volume isn’t necessarily the main concern. Because of their molecular shape, different gases are more or less effective at trapping heat. To compare gases, scientists use a metric called “global warming potential,” which measures how much heat a certain volume of a gas traps over a given stretch of time, typically 100 years. There’s considerable debate among scientists about how the global warming potential of methane compares to CO2. The EPA says methane is 25 times as potent as CO2 over 100 years. McKibben cites a Cornell University researcher who says a more relevant figure for methane “is between 86 and 105 times the potency of CO2 over the next decade or two.” It’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison because the two gases have different lifespans. CO2 can last in the atmosphere for thousands of years, whereas methane lasts only for a couple decades (after which it degrades into CO2). Global warming potential is also an imperfect comparison metric because it leaves out other kinds of impacts besides trapping heat, said Drew Shindell, a climatologist at Duke University. Atmospheric methane also creates ozone, for example, which is dangerous for the health of plants and humans. By Shindell’s reckoning, including all their impacts, each ton of methane kept out of the atmosphere is equal to 100 tons of prevented CO2 in the near term, and 40 tons of CO2 in the long term. The timescale is key, said Johan Kuylenstierna, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute. Methane has a more immediate effect on global temperature, he explained, so over the next decade or two, reducing methane emissions could be a way to stave off the immediate impacts of global warming. “If we reduce the rate of near-term warming, we can reduce the impact to habitat shifts in species,” Kuylenstierna said. “We can buy time for vulnerable communities to adapt. We can reduce the rate of glaciers’ melting in the Arctic.” But in terms of limiting permanent, long-term damage to the climate, and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, “the only way to do that is to address CO2,” he said. That was the key finding of a 2014 study by University of Chicago geophysicist Ray Pierrehumbert, which concluded that “there is little to be gained by implementing [methane and other short-lived climate pollutant] mitigation before stringent carbon dioxide controls are in place.” Pierrehumbert and his colleagues repeated that conclusion in a new study this month, finding that by mid-century, if CO2 emissions aren’t under control, the short-term warming caused by methane will be irrelevant. In other words, at the end of the day, CO2 is still enemy number-one. With that said, there’s widespread agreement among scientists that ultimately, the only solution to climate change is stop emitting all greenhouse gases. So at a certain point the methane vs. CO2 debate becomes less scientific and more of a value judgment: How much short-term climate damage are we willing to tolerate in exchange for reducing the emissions that are more damaging over the long term? Meanwhile, there’s another problem. Debating the relative dangers of methane versus CO2 is of limited value unless you know how much methane the natural gas industry is really emitting. And figuring that out is harder than it sounds. Measuring the methane 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 that 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. Since natural gas companies aren’t legally obligated to measure and report their methane emissions, scientists and the EPA have to make a lot of educated guesses to come up with a total. The inadequacies of the EPA’s official measurements were made clear in February, when the agency released estimates for methane from the oil and gas industry that were radically higherâ��about 27 percent higherâ��than had been previously reported. That difference, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, represents a 20-year climate impact equal to 200 coal-fired power plants. The revision resulted from improved metrics showing how much natural gas infrastructure there really is and how much methane is being emitted from each piece of it. The EPA had been systematically low-balling both of those figures for years. Other evidence has piled up to suggest that methane emissions are higher than the EPA previously estimated. EDF surveyed more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies of methane emissions from specific fracking sites in Texas, Colorado, and elsewhere; almost all of these studies found that emissions levels were higher than had been previously reported. McKibben leads his story with a new study from Harvard that concluded that methane emissions have increased more than 30 percent over the last decade. That’s a big departure from the EPA’s analysis, which suggests there was no significant increase over that time period. However, the Harvard paper includes a major caveat: The authors admit that they “cannot readily attribute [the methane increase] to any specific source type.” In other words, there’s no evidence the increase is from fracking any more than from agricultural or waste sources. Either way, it’s clear that methane emissions from the gas system are higher than most people thought, and certainly higher than they should be if fighting climate change is the end goal. Even EPA chief Gina McCarthy admitted in February that there was “a big discrepancy” between the administration’s original understanding of gas-related methane emissions and what new studies are revealing. A natural gas well in Colorado Brennan Linsley/AP It turns out that measuring methane leakage from gas systems, whether intentional or accidental, is hard, and often inexact. Hand-held infrared detectors work for doing spot checks, but they’re labor-intensive and not very useful if the leak is in an underground pipe. Aerial surveys give a better picture of overall emissions but, again, can’t easily locate specific leaks, as illustrated in this graphic from MIT. The good news is that increased public concern about methane has pushed the gas industry to adopt better emission detection methods, said Ramon Alvarez, a senior scientist at the EDF. These include drive-by detectors that are more precise and better calibrated to account for weather conditions that make it hard to pinpoint emissions sources (i.e., wind blowing methane away from where it originated). “The methods are improving,” he said. “Some of these mobile surveys with new instruments are on the cusp of becoming accepted practice, and regulators are considering requiring those things.” So can we fix the leaks? A key difference between CO2 emissions from coal plants and methane emissions from the gas system is that the latter are much easier to reduce. In other words, many of the leaks can be fixed fairly easily and cost-effectively. That’s a crucial advantage over coal: Capturing CO2 emissions from coal plants has proved to be massively expensive and not very effective. There are no operational “carbon capture and sequestration” coal plants in the United States; one of the two under construction is billions of dollar over budget before even being switched on. A 2014 study commissioned by EDF found that using existing technology, system-wide methane emissions could be reduced by 40 percent at a cost to industry of less than a penny per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of natural gas. (A typical new fracked shale gas well produces about 2,700 Mcf of gas per day). Some repairs are easier than others. McKibben warns about the difficulty of fixing cement casings on wells themselves. Pipelines, too, are vexing. According to the EPA, there are about 21 miles of plastic gas pipelines in the United States for every mile of old cast iron pipes. But cast iron pipes leak so muchâ��24 times the emissions of plastic pipesâ��that their cumulative emissions are actually higher than plastic pipes. Replacing cast iron with plastic is a no-brainer technologically, but it’s very expensive and slow. But wells account for only about 5 percent of gas system methane emissions; pipelines only 2 percent. Other sources could be much easier to control. The single biggest source, leaks from compressors, can be greatly reduced simply by replacing a few functional parts more frequently than the current industry standard. The second-biggest source, leaks from pneumatic gauges, can be fixed by running them on electricityâ��possibly from a few small, well-placed solar panelsâ��instead of gas pressure. Altogether, including the value of saved gas that would otherwise leak, the 40 percent reduction projected by EDF would save the industry and gas consumers $100 million per year, the study foundâ��not even counting the climate benefits. So why aren’t gas companies pursuing these measures more aggressively? Hemant Mallya, an oil and gas specialist with the market research firm ICF International, who authored the EDF report, pointed to a number of factors. Costs for various fixes can vary widely between sites. There may be efforts by companies that own gas infrastructure to shift the responsibility to different companies that operate and maintain it, or vice-versa. Even the most cost-effective measures require up-front investment, which could be too high a bar for companies with competing financial needs. But perhaps most importantly, because methane emissions aren’t currently regulated, companies simply don’t have to do anything about them. Why spend money fixing a problem you aren’t required to fix? “Any voluntary measure capital needs will receive lower priority compared to projects necessary to drive the business,” Mallya said. That calculus could change soon: This week, the EPA is expected to finalize regulations on methane emissions that aim to reduce leaks from new gas infrastructure 40 to 45 percent by 2025. The new rules are only a tiny piece of the full solution since, by EDF’s reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist. In March, Obama made a joint promise with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to implement regulations on methane at existing sources, but it’s unlikely those will be finalized before Obama leaves office. So it will be up to the next president to follow throughâ��or not. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have promised to strengthen methane regulations. Donald Trump has been mum, but given that he thinks climate change is a hoax and wants to dismantle the “Department of Environmental,” it’s safe to say methane emission regulations will probably not rank among his top priorities. Lock-in Regardless of what happens with methane emissions, there’s one other reason to be concerned about Obama’s idea of a natural gas “bridge.” In particular, will a build-up of gas infrastructure force the country to keep using fossil fuels long after we need to get off them almost entirely? As part of the international climate agreement finalized in Paris in December, Obama promised that the United States will reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. But to stay within the Paris-mandated global warming limitâ��”well below” 2 degrees C (3.6 F)â��emissions will have to drop much lower than that. A consortium of scientists called the US Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project has found that for the United States, the 2C target means reducing emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a massive, society-wide shift from where we are now. Needless to say, a core aspect of the group’s recommended strategy is to reduce fossil fuel use as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Even if we managed to eliminate methane emissions and leaks from the natural gas system, gas power plants will still emit carbon dioxideâ��less CO2 than coal-fired plants, but a significant amount nonetheless. And the longer we continue sinking money into new fossil fuel infrastructure, the more challenging the transition to clean energy becomes. That’s because power plants have lifespans of several decades, as they slowly repay their massive upfront costs to investors. A new report from the University of California-Berkeley finds that, on average, a gas plant built todayâ��and, remember, Obama’s Clean Power Plan hinges on the construction of more natural gas plantsâ��will stay in operation until 2057. Each passing year in which new gas plants are built pushes that date back. The consequence of this so-called “lock-in effect” could be that renewable energy stays shut out of the electricity mix, instead of gradually filling the gap left by the decline in coal. A 2014 market forecast study led by UC-Irvine projected that with a high supply of natural gas, renewables will produce just 26 percent of US electricity in 2050; with a lower gas supply, the share of renewables increases to 37 percent. The upshot, according to the study, is that increased reliance on gas results in very little reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades. The study found a similar outcome even when the methane leakage rate was assumed to be zero. This would create a situation in which the United States either blows past its climate targets, has to somehow forcibly shut down gas plants before their planned expiration date, or hopes that renewables will get cheap enough to out-compete gas on their ownâ��not exactly a savory choice for politicians and investors. But the UC-Irvine study based its forecast on the assumption that existing policies would remain unchanged: No regulation of methane emissions (a situation that, as of this week, will likely change); no new incentives at the federal, state, or local level for renewable energy, etc. In other words, there was no exit ramp from the “bridge.” Once again, it will be up to the next president and Congress to design that exit rampâ��or not. Other benefits of coal-to-gas transition All forms of energy production come with environmental side effects that have nothing to do with climate change. And while EPA scientists concluded last year that fracking has not led to “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water,” individual cases of contamination continue to occur. The evidence that underground wastewater disposal from frack sites can lead to earthquakes gets stronger all the time. Of course, anyone who has seen Appalachia’s mountaintop-removal coal mining knows that coal comes with no shortage of its own devastating impacts. Ash from coal-fired power plants, loaded with arsenic and other toxic substances, causes a wide array of severe or fatal illnesses. Coal mining remains an extremely dangerous profession. And burning coal is incredibly hazardous to nearby communities. A 2010 study by California’s Clean Air Task Force directly blamed coal-fired power plants for 13,200 deaths, 9,700 hospitalizations, and 20,000 heart attacks in the United States in that year alone. Flaming tap water near frack sites notwithstanding, the public health impacts of coal consumption are clearly far worse than those caused by gas. A 2013 report by the Breakthrough Institute does a nice job of comparing coal and gas on a variety of non-climate metrics: Breakthrough Institute Even if you think natural gas might is a foolish choice when it comes to greenhouse emissions, the picture changes considerably when you look at the full public health impacts of coal production. In a 2015 study, Duke’s Shindell used an economic analysis to put a dollar value on the cumulative impactsâ��climate, health, etc.â��of coal and gas. He found that the cost to society of burning coal was 14 to 34 cents per kilowatt-hour; for gas it was 4 to 18 cents. How does this all add up? For people who live near fossil fuel extraction sites or the power plants where fossil fuels are burned, the answer is pretty obvious: From a public health perspective, Obama’s gas “bridge” benefits coal-impacted communities at the expense of fracking-impacted communities. But from a local employment perspective, the opposite is true. From a climate perspective, a rapid transition off of coal has clear long-term benefits, even if there are short-term impacts from methane. Greenhouse gas emissions from gas are probably much easier to mitigate than emissions from coal, meaning that the kinds of regulations already being drafted by EPA could go a long way toward improving gas’s stature as a climate solution. So, is fracking really worse than coal? That claim seems highly dubious, given the myriad significant benefits of reducing coal consumption and lowering CO2 emissions. But at least from the climate change perspective, if natural gas is the end of the road, the transition may be a wash: Ultimately, the only thing that really matters is getting as much renewable energy as possible as quickly as possible. So the “bridge” only makes sense if we have a way to get off of itâ��and so far, that road map is unclear. The debate between fracking and coal too often misses the forest for the trees, according to Shindell. “We really have to target both,” he said. “If we start trading one against the other, we don’t really get anywhere.” Kuylenstierna agreed: “The only way you get anywhere near 1.5 degrees C is by doing everything.”

Originally posted here –Â

Environmentalists Hate Fracking. Are They Right?

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Environmentalists Hate Fracking. Are They Right?

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Trump’s foreign policy plan has one giant, baffling hole

by ClydeBrigstocke Posted on April 28, 2016

Trump’s foreign policy plan has one giant, baffling hole

By on Apr 28, 2016 12:55 pmShare

Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had a gaping hole in his speech that laid out his foreign policy platform on Wednesday. While covering topics ranging from ISIS, North Korea, and China, Trump’s discussion of climate change was light. The only time he addressed it was to mock it.

“Our military is depleted, and we’re asking our generals and military leaders to worry about –” Trump said, pausing before delivering the punch line, “global warming.”

Trump failed to touch on the landmark 196-nation Paris agreement, in which nations pledged emissions cuts and finance to act on “an urgent and potentially irreversible threat.” What we do know about Trump’s opinion of the agreement is from December, when Trump called Obama’s Paris remarks “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, or perhaps most naive.” The candidate is known for conflating weather and climate, stating that global warming was “created by and for the Chinese,” and flat-out denying the scientific consensus about climate change.

Trump could formally pull the U.S. out of the agreement, or simply fail to deliver on Obama’s pledges; it’s tough to ever guess what he’s going to do next.

Let’s put aside Trump’s views on climate science for a minute and focus on the pure politics of this. Climate change may be just one issue on a long list of diplomatic conflicts that Trump would have upon entering the White House, but pulling from the Paris deal alone would be huge: Trump is prepared to take the United States in the opposite direction of every single one of our allies. And he hasn’t told us yet how he will engage in trade talks and tackle migration crises while the rest of the world recognizes these issues are linked to climate change.

By ignoring climate change, Trump is ignoring the advice of America’s military experts. The Pentagon itself, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the helm, warned in 2014 that climate change would directly contribute to security risks for U.S. relations abroad. Last year, a study commissioned by the G7 countries found that climate change, which poses a threat to both global and economic security, has become “the ultimate threat multiplier” for regions that are already facing another type of threat.

Trump just isn’t listening.

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Trump’s foreign policy plan has one giant, baffling hole

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LA Sheriff Having a Hard Time Firing Liars

by MarcySpooner Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jim McDonnell, LA County’s new sheriff, thinks that deputies who lie on official reports should be terminated for cause. For example, there’s Daniel Genao, who wrote that there was a gun in a suspect’s waistband when it was actually behind a nearby planter. You’d think it would be hard to argue against firing folks like this. But you’d be wrong:

To fully implement his strict regime, McDonnell must contend with the Civil Service Commission, a five-member body appointed by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors that adjudicates discipline cases of county employees. In the last year, the commission has reinstated Genao as well as a deputy who lied about whether he had tried to take a photo under a woman’s skirt and another deputy found to have falsely asserted that he had not witnessed a colleague beat up a jail inmate.

….Sean Van Leeuwen, vice president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, a union representing deputies, criticized McDonnell’s “one size fits all” approach to honesty. “Was this a bad act or was this a bad heart?” Van Leeuwen said. “Did you do something wrong because you made a mistake, or was this really a bad act?”

….The hearing officer concluded that dismissal was excessive because Genao admitted to the false statement and was a popular, well-respected deputy. Other deputies have ended up on the Brady list1 yet remained on the job, and Genao could work a non-patrol assignment, the hearing officer noted.

How is it that we can happily apply zero-tolerance rules to five-year-olds who bring butter knives to school, but not to full-grown sheriff’s deputies who lie on official reports? And in what universe does it make sense to say that other deputies have lied and kept their jobs, so why shouldn’t Genao? If we want to understand why so many people of color don’t trust cops, this is a pretty good place to start.

1From the article: “In the landmark Brady vs. Maryland case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. Local prosecutors keep a so-called Brady list of officers with credibility issues, which defense attorneys can use to undermine the officers’ testimony, potentially derailing criminal cases.”

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LA Sheriff Having a Hard Time Firing Liars

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Here Are Six All-Important Cases Now Pretty Much Decided After Scalia’s Death

by ElizbethCardwel Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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The last time a sitting Supreme Court justice expired on the job was in 2005, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died of cancer. But Rehnquist’s death was somewhat expected, and he died in September, before the start of the October term, and before the court was in full swing with oral arguments and case decisions. Justice Antonin Scalia, unfortunately, has died smack in the middle of a blockbuster court term, with a host of hot-button cases argued, or about to be argued, and all to be decided by the end of June.

Because of the polarized nature of the court, Scalia’s death makes it all but certain that in most of those cases, the votes will result in a 4-4 tie, which means that the decision of the lower courts will likely stand unless one of the justices goes off the reservation and votes with the opposite side. That means we can probably predict the outcome of several key cases without having to wait until June.

The results are a mixed bag. The Obama administration is likely to lose an important fight over immigration. Unions win. Reproductive rights for women could suffer. And challenges to redistricting are likely to founder.

Here’s a rundown of how six of those cases are likely to unfold:

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Scalia’s death are public sector unions. This case, which produced one of the more contentious oral arguments of the term, was headed towards a 5-4 decision in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs and the other plaintiffs who were challenging the California’s teachers’ union’s right to charge public school employees fees to cover the costs of the collective bargaining it did on their behalf, even though they aren’t members of the union. The case was teed up by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and labor supporters feared a ruling against the union could devastate what’s left of labor’s power. The lawyers for Friedrichs asked the lower court to rule against them to hasten the case’s arrival at the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals complied, and now that decision is likely to stand if the liberal-conservative split on the court delivers a 4-4 vote. Labor wins.

US v Texas: Texas and nearly two dozen other states filed suit to block the implementation of President Barack Obama’s orders to the Department of Homeland Security to defer the deportation of about 5.5 million immigrants, especially children brought to the US illegally by their parents. In November, the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding a lower court decision, ruled that Obama had exceeded his authority to make such sweeping changes to the immigration system without an act of Congress. Obama’s move was in trouble even with Scalia on the court, but now it seems likely that a tie vote will result in the Fifth Circuit’s ruling holding fast. Immigrants lose.

Evenwel v Abbott and Harris v Arizona Independent Redistricting: These cases both involve attacks on the drawing of legislative districts and involve the sorts of political issues that the court has historically avoided, preferring to leave politics and redistricting fights to the politicians. Rulings in favor of the plaintiffs–mostly tea party activists–would likely result in political districts more tilted to favor rural, white Republican voters. Both cases came to the court on appeal from unusual three-judge courts that are specifically delegated to hear certain sorts of election law and voting rights cases. Those trial courts are different in that appeals of their decisions go straight to the US Supreme Court, bypassing the traditional federal appellate courts. Conservatives in recent years have used these courts as a way of fast-tracking their cases to the now-very conservative Supreme Court. The landmark Citizens United case came to the court this way. Now, though, that fast track is going to grind to a halt, as the plaintiffs in both cases lost in the three-judge courts, whose decisions are likely to now stand. Tea partiers lose.

Women’s Whole Health v Hellerstedt and Zubik v Burwell: The court is poised to hear several major challenges involving women’s reproductive health rights. In Women’s Whole Health, the court will decide whether Texas’s restrictive abortion law, which has already resulted in the closure of many clinics and, if fully enforced, would close even more clinics and force women in Texas to travel long distances or leave the state in search of a legal abortion, is constitutional. The conservative Fifth Circuit upheld most of the law, but the Supreme Court blocked parts of it from taking effect until the case could be heard. If there’s a tie at the Supreme Court, the abortion clinics are all but doomed.

In Zubik, a host of religious organizations, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, have asked the court to block a requirement by the Obama administration that they sign a form asking for a religious exemption for providing mandatory contraception coverage in their insurance plans for employees that’s required by the Affordable Care Act. Virtually all of the lower courts have ruled against the nuns and the other organizations, declaring that signing a piece of paper isn’t much of a burden on religious liberty. So a tied Supreme Court vote is likely to result in a victory for the Obama administration. Nuns lose.

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How Roe v. Wade Survived 43 Years of Abortion Wars

by Alejand55Z Posted on January 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Forty-three years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. The landmark case established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Ever since then, anti-abortion politicians and activists have tried to chip away at Roe. States have passed more than 1,000 restrictions on the procedure and the Supreme Court has ruled on several other abortion cases, each time further limiting abortion access.

What is clear, however, is that after Roe v. Wade, the availability of safe and legal abortions radically changed health outcomes for women. In a book that collected stories from the illegal abortion era, a man who assisted with autopsies at a hospital described seeing many women die from botched abortions. “The deaths stopped overnight in 1973,” he said. “That ought to tell people something about keeping abortion legal.”

Today, discussions of women’s safety are more often heard in statehouses enacting further restrictions on abortion. The medical safety of women framed many of the arguments cited at the Texas Capitol in 2013, when the state Legislature debated, and ultimately passed, HB 2. This omnibus abortion bill imposed costly requirements on clinics—such as hospital-admitting privileges and stringent construction rules—which the medical community overwhelmingly deems to be unnecessary. Since its passage, 23 of the state’s 41 abortion providers have closed, and others are likely to follow if the measure is upheld after the Supreme Court reviews HB 2 this year. The high court’s ruling could deal a serious blow to the guarantee of the right to a legal abortion enshrined 43 years ago. Either way, many players will be affected—patients, providers, lawyers on both sides of the debate, legislators, the courts, and even lobbyists.

Over the years, Mother Jones has covered the abortion wars from many of their perspectives. Here’s a look back at some of those stories:

The women

In 2004, Eleanor Cooney wrote an essay entitled “The Way It Was” about the illegal abortion she had as a 17-year-old in 1959, 14 years before Roe. The year before her story appeared, President George W. Bush, flanked by smiling Republican senators and congressmen, had signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law, banning the dilation and extraction abortion method usually used in the second trimester. The measure heralded a new era of legislative efforts aimed at stifling abortion access. “Like some ugly old wall-to-wall carpeting they’ve been yearning to get rid of,” wrote Cooney, “they finally, finally loosened a little corner of Roe. Now they can start to rip the whole thing up, roll it back completely, and toss it in the Dumpster.”

The providers

In 1981, 14 clinics in Mississippi provided abortions. In 2013, only one remained, thanks to legislation that chipped away at the providers’ ability to keep their doors open. In “Inside Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic,” former Mother Jones reporter Kate Sheppard profiled the providers fighting to keep the clinic open, the doctors who flew in from out of state to perform the procedures, a woman who made the decision to terminate her pregnancy, and one of the protesters, who stood outside the clinic every day, tossing miniature plastic babies at car windows.

The doctors

In 2003, 76-year-old gynecologist Dr. William Rashbaum was still working, and his practice included providing late-term abortions, something he’d been doing for the 30 years since Roe. He was one of the oldest living providers of second-trimester abortions in the United States before his death in 2005. In “End of the Road,” Rebecca Paley profiled the doctor in the final years of his career, visiting his practice and chronicling his fierce commitment to helping women.

The courts

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled on a pivotal abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Robert Casey was the governor of Pennsylvania at the time, and Planned Parenthood sued the state over five provisions in a recently passed abortion law. The high court ruled that states could pass abortion regulations, provided these did not place an “undue burden” on women’s access to the procedure. The ruling opened the door for a wave of abortion restrictions across the country. Right around this time, attorney Harold Cassidy was going through a drastic evolution: A former pro-choice liberal, he had started going to court to defend mothers, including surrogates and birth mothers of adopted kids. He then became one of the anti-abortion movement’s most prominent and successful lawyers. In “The Man Who Loved Women Too Much,” Sarah Blustain profiles Cassidy and his decades-long legal push to restrict abortion access by turning the pro-choice argument on its head: arguing that abortion violates women’s rights.

The states

Earlier this month, a Guttmacher Institute report pointed out that since 2010, more anti-abortion laws have been passed than in any other five-year period since the Roe decision. These restrictions have created a new landscape of severely restricted abortion access in a number of states. Last fall, former Mother Jones reporter Molly Redden traveled to report on what life is like for women facing unplanned or unwanted pregnancies in these states. She spoke to women who went thousands of miles or crossed state lines to get abortions, going from Texas to Washington, DC, from Indiana to Ohio, and more. “Most abortions today involve some combination of endless wait, interminable journey, military-level coordination, and lots of money,” wrote Redden. “Four years of unrelenting assaults on reproductive rights have transformed all facets of giving an abortion or getting one—possibly for good.”

Anti-abortion crusaders

At one point, the most visible members of the anti-abortion movement belonged to Operation Rescue, an extreme activist group that would protest in front of clinics. Increasingly, it became clear that the harassment of women and doctors at clinics distracted from the anti-abortion mission. But other organizations that focused on attacking abortion legislatively, rather than physically, gained prominence. One of them is Americans United for Life. Founded in 1971 and run mostly by women, AUL is “one of the most effective anti-abortion organizations in the country,” writes Kate Sheppard, even though its budget of about $4 million pales in comparison to many other anti-abortion groups. AUL’s mission is to end abortion in the United States, and its main strategy for doing so is helping states chip away at Roe by passing various abortion restrictions. Sheppard profiled AUL in 2012, right after it had one of its most successful years on record: In 2011, 92 restrictions on abortion were passed in states nationwide, 24 of which were either written or promoted by AUL.

Abortion politics

In the summer of 2015, the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress released a series of secretly recorded and deceptively edited videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue—a practice that would be illegal. The videos inflamed the abortion debate and resulted in numerous state and congressional investigations and efforts to defund the largest women’s health care organization in the country. Six states tried to defund Planned Parenthood, seven states investigated the women’s health provider (none found evidence of fetal tissue sales), and three congressional committees launched their own inquiries.

One of these committees summoned Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to testify in September 2015. House Republicans grilled Richards for more than four hours about how Planned Parenthood spends its federal funding. The most aggressive interlocutor was Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who—as Kevin Drum explained—also used a series of completely incorrect charts to make the erroneous point that Planned Parenthood’s primary business is abortion.

Pseudoscience

Florida marriage therapist Vincent Rue has appeared in a number of states in the past few years assisting them in defending anti-abortion laws. In a 2014 article, Molly Redden explains how his research—which claims to show that women who go through the procedure eventually suffer from mental illness—has been thoroughly discredited by several courts and health organizations. Still, states continue to pay for his expertise: “Republican administrations in four states—Alabama, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin—have paid or promised to pay Rue $192,205.50 in exchange for help defending anti-abortion laws,” Redden wrote.

The Supreme Court:

In March, the high court is set to hear arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole. The case, brought by Texas abortion provider Whole Woman’s Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights, challenges HB 2, the Texas abortion bill whose onerous restrictions could shut down all but 10 of Texas’ abortion clinics, leaving women in large swathes of the state without an abortion provider. Many advocates are calling this the most important abortion case in nearly 25 years. The plaintiffs are challenging HB 2 as a violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that abortion restrictions can’t place an “undue burden” on abortion access. If the Supreme Court upholds the Texas law, it could widen the already murky “undue burden” standard, opening the door for similar regulations in other states. “This case represents the greatest threat to women’s reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago,” wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a November statement. “Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion.”

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How Roe v. Wade Survived 43 Years of Abortion Wars

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Here’s the Worst Appropriation of #BlackLivesMatter We’ve Seen Yet

by romaniacardpayoneer Posted on January 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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As “Black Lives Matter” chants have grown common in communities nationwide responding to police violence against black men and women, opponents of the BLM movement have controversially altered the phrase to “All Lives Matter.” Now, Missouri state Republican Rep. Mike Moon has introduced a bill that further co-opts BLM’s rallying cry, this time for his anti-abortion agenda. Titled the “All Lives Matter Act,” the bill would define a fertilized egg as a person, asserting that life begins at the moment of conception and that embryos have the same rights as humans.

Reproductive rights advocates and activists say this use of the language of Black Lives Matter opponents is an affront to the BLM movement and especially to black women. “By hijacking the prolific chant that has become the title of a movement led by a new generation of human rights activists and recontextualizing it, Rep. Moon is further marginalizing Black women,” writes Christine Assefa at the Feminist Wire.

“Black women have had very little reproductive choice, historically. During slavery, they were forced into childbirth. Then, they were forced into methods for sterilization,” wrote Alison Dreith, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, in a column for the St. Louis American. “This bill continues the trend in Missouri, that women should not make their own decisions.”

The legislation has been moving through the Missouri House since its 2016 session began last week. Missouri already has a “personhood” law in place, but this bill would make the provision more extreme by repealing part of the law that says that the state “personhood” law must still comply with the US Constitution and Supreme Court precedent such as Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion.

Without such a caveat, this “personhood” bill would virtually wipe out abortion access—and likely be found unconstitutional. In general, “personhood” bills can also restrict some methods of contraception because both the morning-after pill and IUDs can prevent an already-fertilized egg—a zygote that is considered a “person”—from implanting in the uterus. Opponents say such measures can also upend laws around abortion access. These laws usually preserve a woman’s right to an abortion as established by Roe, but they establish the fetus as a “person,” say, in the case of the murder of the mother or if the pregnancy, usually later term, results in a miscarriage. Under these laws, in vitro fertilization can be made illegal, and women who miscarry can potentially be investigated and prosecuted for fetal homicide.

“Personhood” ballot measures have been roundly rejected by voters in many states—most recently in North Dakota, Colorado, and Mississippi—but are already on the books in Kansas and Missouri. Courts in Oklahoma and Alaska have also struck down “personhood” initiatives.

In Missouri, this bill is just one of several initiatives seeking to further the state’s existing abortion restrictions. A current state Senate bill proposes tightening rules around fetal tissue donation, physician admitting privileges—by requiring abortion clinic doctors to have surgical privileges at a nearby hospital—and abortion clinic inspections, proposing that the state’s health department be required to conduct unannounced inspections of abortion clinics annually. Today, the entire state of Missouri only has one clinic that performs abortions after a Columbia clinic was forced to stop offering abortions last November when a local hospital pulled the clinic doctor’s admitting privileges.

“There are two anti-abortion laws in the Senate already. And 11, maybe 12, in the House,” says NARAL’s Dreith. “And our first day of session was Wednesday, so it hasn’t even been a full week yet. It’s going to be a long year.”

As for the title of the bill, Rep. Moon did not respond to Mother Jones‘ request for comment about why he named the measure the “All Lives Matter” act. But the title was bound to garner controversy. The Black Lives Matter movement ramped up in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August 2014. On the day that Moon prefiled the All Lives Matter Act, a different state representative prefiled a bill that would revoke athletic scholarships from college athletes who refused to play for any reason other than health. The bill was filed just a few weeks after more than 30 black football players at the University of Missouri refused to play as part of a protest against the university president and the school’s negligence on issues around racism and a lack of diversity on campus. The coincidence of these bills being filed on the same day is telling, says NARAL’s Dreith.

“Reproductive health is intrinsically linked to racism and to the Black Lives Matter movement,” Dreith says. This bill, she notes, shows that “the lives of women—and especially black women—do not matter to this legislator.”

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Here’s the Worst Appropriation of #BlackLivesMatter We’ve Seen Yet

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Maine Governor Warns That Drug Dealers Named "D-Money" Are Impregnating Young White Girls

by FletchePyh Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage told a town hall audience on Wednesday that heroin use is resulting in white women being impregnated by out-of-state drug dealers named “D-Money.”

LePage was asked by an attendee what he was doing to curb the heroin epidemic in his state. “The traffickers—these aren’t people that take drugs,” he explained. (You can watch the exchange beginning at the 1:55:00 mark. “These are guys with that are named D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty, these types of guys, that come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we that we’ve go to deal with down the road.”

State legislators may attempt to impeach the governor as early as next week, over charges that he threatened to block funding from a charter school if it hired a political rival.

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Maine Governor Warns That Drug Dealers Named "D-Money" Are Impregnating Young White Girls

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The Republican War on Obamacare Heads to the President’s Desk

by Barney69Iujua Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Republicans in Congress have finally concluded their long-running, if likely futile, campaign to send a law gutting the landmark Affordable Care Act to President Barack Obama’s desk. The House passed a bill on Wednesday by a vote of 240 to 181 that would repeal much of Obama’s signature 2010 health care law. But it’s ultimately a symbolic measure: Obama pledged in December to veto the bill, which could strip health care coverage from millions of low-income Americans, and Republicans don’t have the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

This is the 62nd time that Congress has voted on repealing the law colloquially known as Obamacare, but it’s the first time the repeal bill has actually cleared both houses of Congress. Republicans finally got the bill through the Senate last December through a special filibuster-proof budget process that requires only 51 votes for passage instead of the usual 60, and the House approved the Senate’s bill on Wednesday. The bill would eliminate many of Obamacare’s key provisions, including the Medicaid expansion, tax credits to help low-income people afford insurance, and taxes to fund the program. It would also abolish the requirements that people get health care coverage and that large employers provide it.

Democratic lawmakers have lambasted the bill as a waste of time, but Republicans are eager to demonstrate their conservative credentials to constituents. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) touted the bill on Twitter as the beginning of a new era for conservatives in Congress.

The bill also includes measures to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood, another conservative priority. The reproductive health organization has been under fire since an anti-abortion group released videos last year purporting to show officials from the organization discussing the sale of fetal tissue.

While the effort to gut Obamacare may be doomed to failure as long as Obama remains in the White House, the stakes are high. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 17.6 million uninsured people have gained coverage through Obamacare. And despite their frequent attempts to repeal the program, Republicans have yet to agree on an alternative.

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Breaking: World Leaders Just Agreed to a Landmark Deal to Fight Global Warming

by Bart70735787193 Posted on December 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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There was relief and celebration in Paris Saturday evening, as officials from more than 190 countries swept aside monumental differences and agreed to an unprecedented global deal to tackle climate change.

The historic accord, known as the Paris Agreement, includes emissions-slashing commitments from individual countries and promises to help poorer nations adapt to the damaging effects of a warming world. Negotiators also agreed on measures to revise, strengthen, and scrutinize countries’ contributions going forward.

“This is a tremendous victory for all our citizens,” said Secretary of State John Kerry during the final session of the summit. “It’s a victory for all of the planet and for future generations.”

However, the deal leaves some key decisions to the future, and it is widely recognized as not representing an ultimate solution to climate change. Instead, it sets out the rules of the road for the next 10 to 15 years and establishes an unprecedented international legal basis for addressing climate issues. Within the agreement, nearly every country on Earth laid out its own plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change impacts. Although those individual plans are not legally binding, the core agreement itself is.

The deal sets a long-term goal of keeping the increase in the global temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and calls on countries to “pursue efforts” to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees C. It adds that “parties aim to reach a global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who has served as chair of the two-week summit, said the deal is the most ambitious step ever taken by the international community to confront climate change.

In announcing the deal, President Barack Obama clinched a major foreign policy success years in the making and secured long-term action on climate change as a core part of his legacy, despite extraordinary opposition at home from the Republican majority in Congress. During the second week of the talks in Paris, Kerry was a driving force, delivering several high-profile speeches in which he sought to cast the United States as a leader on climate action. For Kerry, who has been a prominent voice in climate summits for two decades, it was essential to craft a deal to which the United States could agree and not to return home empty-handed.

The deal signals that world leaders are now committed to responding to the dire scientific warnings about the impacts of warming. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and other human activities are threatening to usher in an era of rising sea levels, sinking islands, scorching heat waves, devastating droughts, mass human migration, and destruction of ecosystems.

Among the deal’s biggest successes is a commitment to produce a global review of climate progress by 2018 and to bring countries back to the negotiating table by 2020 to present climate targets that “will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then-current” target. In other words, countries are committed to ramping up their ambition in the short term. This was an essential item for many people here, since the current raft of targets only keeps global warming to 2.7 degrees C, not 1.5 degrees. The deal also promises to hold every country accountable to the same standard of transparency in measuring and reporting their greenhouse gas emissions; this was a provision that the United States had pushed hard for in order to ensure that other big polluters such as China and India abide by their promises.

“Countries have united around a historic agreement that marks a turning point in the climate crisis,” said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute. “This is a transformational long-term goal that should really send clear signals into the markets” about the imminent decline of fossil fuel consumption.

The deal is expected to be a boon for the clean energy industry, as developing and developed countries alike increase their investments in wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources. Early in the talks, a high-profile group of billionaire investors, including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, promised to pour money into clean energy research, and a critical component of the agreement is a commitment for developed countries to transfer clean technologies to developing countries.

“If we needed an economic signal from this agreement, I think this is rather remarkable,” said Michael Jacobs, a senior advisor at New Climate Economy.

Still, parts of the deal left some environmental groups unsatisfied, particularly with respect to financing for clean energy technology and climate change adaptation. The deal requires all developed countries to “provide financial assistance to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation.” Although the deal sets a floor of $100 billion for that assistance and calls for that number to be raised by 2025, it doesn’t specify a new higher target and does not commit any country, including the United States, to any particular share of that. The deal also specifies that nothing in it can be construed as holding countries with the biggest historical contribution to climate change—most importantly the United States—legally or financially liable for climate-change-related damages in vulnerable countries. And it provides no specific timeline for peaking and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions; according to some scientists, that will need to happen within the next few decades for the 1.5 degrees C target to be achievable.

“There’s not enough in this deal for the nations and people on the frontlines of climate change,” said Kumi Naidoo, international executive director of Greenpeace, in a statement. “It contains an inherent, ingrained injustice. The nations which caused this problem have promised too little help to the people who are already losing their lives and livelihoods.”

The task of delegates at Le Bourget, a converted airport north of Paris, over the past two weeks was substantial. After all, more than two decades of UN-led climate talks had failed to produce a global deal to limit greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen talks in 2009 collapsed because officials couldn’t agree on how to level the playing field between rich and poor countries, sending negotiations into a morass of recriminations. Before that, the Kyoto protocol in 1997 also failed—the United States and China didn’t ratify it, and it only covered about 14 percent of global carbon emissions. This year’s negotiations, the 21st in the series of UN climate talks, had to be different.

One of the major reasons negotiators were able to reach a deal was that much of the work had been done in advance. By the time Paris rolled around, more than 150 countries had promised to change the way they use energy, detailing those changes in the form of individual commitments. Known as INDCs, these pledges formed the basis of Saturday’s deal. Of course, the INDCs won’t be legally binding, and even if most countries do manage to live up to their promises, they aren’t yet ambitious enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming.

The latest estimate is that the INDCs will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. That’s above the limit of 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) that scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts of global warming—and far above the 1.5 degrees C target that negotiators in Paris agreed to aim for. But it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.

The Paris summit began as the largest meeting of government leaders in history (outside the UN building in New York) just two weeks after ISIS-affiliated terrorists killed 130 people across the city. While French officials immediately promised the talks would continue, they soon banned long-planned, massive climate protests, citing security concerns. That decision set the stage for several skirmishes between police and protesters, who remained committed to disrupting the talks in order to highlight issues such as sponsorship from big oil companies and the plight of poorer countries. At one protest, an estimated 10,000 people formed a human chain in the Place de la République, the site of a spontaneous memorial to the victims of the Paris attacks. There were scores of arrests.

But the climate talks themselves went ahead as planned. Some 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists descended on the French capital for the event. Perhaps the biggest factor driving the negotiators’ unprecedented optimism was the fact that the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, and the world’s two biggest economies—the United States and China—had made a public show of working together to get an agreement. A landmark climate deal between the two countries in November 2014 built critical momentum. China later promised to create a national cap-and-trade program to augment a suite of emissions control policies. The Obama administration, meanwhile, pushed through its Clean Power Plan regulations, despite aggressive resistance from Republicans. Still, as the talks neared their conclusion on Friday, tensions were rising between the so-called “High Ambition Coalition”—a negotiating bloc including the United States, the European Union, and dozens of developing countries—and China and India.

Nevertheless, a rare alliance between world leaders ultimately prevailed: Pope Francis, for one, campaigned tirelessly for a climate deal ahead of the talks, decrying the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem.”

All of this cleared the way for large groups of developed and developing countries to cooperate at the talks. Bigger countries appeared ready to work with the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations. Recent changes of leadership in Canada and Australia, notable adversaries of climate action in recent years, switched these mid-sized players into fans of a deal before the talks. Even Russia’s Vladimir Putin seemed to have an eleventh-hour change of heart—or, at least, of rhetoric—and called for action.

Read the final draft of the agreement below.

More details to follow.

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The-Paris-Agreement (PDF)

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Breaking: World Leaders Just Agreed to a Landmark Deal to Fight Global Warming

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The Island of Nauru Could Live or Die at the Hands of COP21

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2015

Over the years, this tiny Pacific island has been devastated by war, phosphate mining, and now climate change. Years of strip-mining have left three-quarters of Nauru’s land useless. Sosrodjojo/JiwaFoto/ZUMA You’ve probably never heard of Nauru. But you might want to learn its name. It may not be around much longer. Nauru is a speck in the South Pacific. It’s the tiniest island nation and the third smallest nation in the world. At roughly 8 square miles and with just over 10,000 residents, Nauru isn’t exactly a political heavyweight on the world stage. But Nauru is sinking, drying out, and generally in peril due to the ever-accelerating effects of climate change. And it may spark a debate at the Paris climate talks currently underway about what to do with populations on the verge of becoming climate refugees with literally nowhere to go. Nauru is not your typical drowning-island scenario. What used to be a Pacific island oasis is now, by many accounts, a physical example of how quickly paradise can be destroyed. In the early 1900s, a German company began strip-mining the interior of the island for phosphate, the main component of agricultural fertilizer. Then came Japan, which occupied the country during World War II, and continued the phosphate mining. The U.S. bombed Japan’s airstrip on Nauru in 1943, preventing food supplies from entering the island. Less than a year later, Japan deported 1,200 Nauruans to work as forced laborers on a nearby island—only 737 of them survived the ordeal to be repatriated after the war just three years later. After the war, Australia took control of the country, and phosphate mining resumed as an Australian enterprise, before mining rights were transferred to Nauru when the nation became independent in 1968. Read the rest at Newsweek. More:   The Island of Nauru Could Live or Die at the Hands of COP21 ; ; ;

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The Island of Nauru Could Live or Die at the Hands of COP21

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