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The EPA is one step closer to making our air even dirtier

by FlorrieGillan Posted on November 1, 2018

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The Trump administration is one step closer to dismantling a major federal energy policy aimed at improving air quality and lowering carbon emissions — just on the heels of a World Health Organization report highlighting the impact of air pollution on children’s health.

Former Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt announced last year that his agency would repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), which the EPA had estimated would prevent 90,000 asthma attacks in children and save 4,500 lives each year. The plan’s replacement, the “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” relaxes regulations for coal plants. If implemented, it could lead to 1,400 more premature deaths each year by 2030, according to EPA estimates.

Public comment on the proposed replacement plan just closed Wednesday. A dozen national medical and public health organizations — including the American Lung Association, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and others representing physicians and nurses — submitted a joint comment urging the EPA to stick to the original Clean Power Plan. Their letter highlighted the dangers of both air pollution and climate change, which can increase the production of smog and fuel wildfires and dust storms that can also make it harder to breathe.

“The changing climate threatens the health of Americans alive now and in future generations,” they wrote. “The nation has a short window to act to reduce those threats.”

In case you’re in need of a “just how bad is it” reality check, earlier this week, the World Health Organization released a report stating 93 percent of kids under 15 are breathing air that endangers their health and development. Even in wealthy countries like the U.S., more than half of children under the age of 5 are exposed to pollution levels above the WHO’s air quality guidelines.

Kids are particularly vulnerable to air pollution because they’re short and air pollution concentrates closer to the ground, the report says. Their growing bodies and brains are more affected by toxins that can, among other health risks, affect neurodevelopment and cognitive ability.

“Air pollution is stunting our children’s brains,” Maria Neira, director of WHO’s Department of Public Health, said in a statement. But, she added, “There are many straight-forward ways to reduce emissions of dangerous pollutants.”

Which brings us back to the EPA’s proposed energy plan.

Green Latinos submitted a comment on the plan, highlighting the disproportionate burdens placed on communities of color: “One of two Latinos in the United States lives in a county that does not meet EPA’s public health air quality standard. We also know that 40 percent of Latinos live within 30 miles of a power plant, and that Latino children are 40 percent more likely to die from asthma than non-Latino white children…Carbon pollution also endangers Latinos nationwide by driving climate change. Already, we see Latinos on the frontlines of climate change, in the line of fire of extreme heat in the Southwest, extreme drought in California, and sea level rise in Florida.”

The National Mining Association, on the other hand, applauded the EPA’s repeal of Obama-era emissions regulations. “[The Clean Power Plan] is based on the misguided notion that the nation must stop using fossil fuels because these fuels are harmful to the public interest,” wrote Association President and CEO Hal Quinn.

The EPA is expected to put forward a final rule by the end of the year.

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The EPA is one step closer to making our air even dirtier

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Washington state will likely vote on a carbon price in November. The oil industry’s already fighting it.

by DwightGarsia Posted on July 3, 2018

A bunch of heavy boxes arrived in the Washington state capital on Monday morning. They were filled with thousands of petitions in support of the proposed “Protect Washington Act” — a first-of-its-kind “carbon fee.”

Initiative 1631 has collected nearly 380,000 signatures from Washington voters — 120,000 more than necessary for it to appear on the ballot this fall. If voters pass the measure in November, Washington would be the first state in the country to adopt anything like a carbon tax.

“We’re all set,” says Nick Abraham, communications director at the Yes on 1631 campaign. “It’ll take a week to two weeks to certify and verify all the signatures, and then we are officially on the ballot.”

It’s one of three carbon pricing efforts to watch in the United States this year. In Washington, D.C., Councilmember Mary Cheh is expected to introduce a “carbon fee” bill to the district’s progressive city council this month. The Massachusetts state legislature is also mulling over a (somewhat vague) carbon price.

Washington state’s proposal would charge industrial emitters $15 per metric ton on carbon emissions starting in 2020, ramping up by $2 per year until Washington state meets its climate goals. The revenue raised would go toward investing in clean energy, protecting clean water and forests, and helping to make sure the communities that suffer the most from carbon emissions prepare for the effects of wildfires and sea-level rise.

Surprise, surprise — major oil and gas companies are already trying to fight it. The Western States Petroleum Association recently formed the “No on 1631” political action committee. The Seattle Times reports that the PAC has the support of the big guys, like BP, Shell, Chevron, Phillips 66.

So far, opponents to the carbon fee are arguing that prices will rise at the gas pump, hitting average people where it hurts. Mark Funk, a spokesperson for No on 1631, told the Seattle Times that the fee would “place the burden for initiative squarely on middle-income and lower-income people.”

The PAC has already paid more than $130,000 in fees to a national consulting firm that helps wage battles over ballot measures, Winner & Mandabach Campaigns. (The company’s website boasts that it has a 90 percent success rate.)

The carbon fee initiative has something going for it, though. It’s backed by more than 200 groups across Washington state, from labor groups and faith communities to tribal nations.

“This is the largest and most diverse coalition in the political history of the state,” says Aiko Schaefer, director of Front and Centered — an alliance of organizations advocating for low-income residents and people of color that played a key role in drafting the initiative.

The Yes on 1631 campaign is going to be knocking on doors and making phone calls, Abraham says, working to educate people all over the state about climate change and what the initiative could do for their local communities. It’s also focusing on mobilizing voters.

“Polls show that people of color care deeply about these issues,” Schaefer says. “Our job is to show them that they have an opportunity to act on that concern this November.”

Polls have shown that both Latinos and African Americans want climate action more than the population at large. More than 80 percent of Latinos, for instance, support a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies, according to a 2017 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Just two years ago, Washington voters rejected a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Kyle Murphy, executive director of Carbon Washington (the group behind that 2016 attempt) says his group supports the new campaign — and he has some advice.

Murphy says grassroots organizing is the best way to counter the oil and gas industry’s message. “People will always believe their neighbors, the local firefighter, or the local clergyman over ads on TV from the oil industry,” Murphy says. “It’s gotta be normal people, regular people out there fighting for this.”

The initiative also has to find a way to reach voters in the middle of the political spectrum, he says: “We need some sliver of Republicans and moderates to join Democrats in passing something here.”

Public opinion polls say that almost 70 percent of Washington voters would support a measure to regulate carbon pollution; that includes more than half of Republicans. One of the big challenges for the I-1631 campaign, Murphy says, is convincing people that this initiative is the one that they want.

That, and of course, the fossil fuel industry. Schaefer says that she knows they will do everything they can to fight the initiative. But she still feels confident.

“They have a lot of money, we have a lot of people,” Schaefer says. “So our job is to mobilize people.”

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Washington state will likely vote on a carbon price in November. The oil industry’s already fighting it.

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There Was No Apparent “Whitelash” This Year

by RustyEbersbache Posted on November 9, 2016

Mother Jones

Among liberals, one of the most popular explanations for Donald Trump’s victory is that it was a “whitelash,” a primal scream of lost influence and latent racism among white voters. I myself certainly talked about racial animus quite a bit during the runup to the election. However, in the spirit of figuring out where we were wrong, the actual voting patterns suggest this is flat wrong. Using exit poll data from 2012 and 2016, here is Trump’s share of the vote compared to Romney in 2012:

Whites voted less for Trump than for Romney, while both blacks and Latinos voted more for Trump.1 There’s nothing here that suggests Trump appealed to white backlash in any special way. Quite the opposite. But now let’s add a column to the table:

Among whites, Trump lost 1 percent of white votes, but third-party candidates gained 3 percent. Among Latinos, third-parties gained 4 percent, and among blacks they gained 3 percent.

This is the big difference. Who did third-party candidates hurt the most, Trump or Clinton? And why? Or was the damage equal? You need to answer this question before you can say anything sensible about race.

It’s worth nothing that this doesn’t mean that race played no role in this election. But it does mean two things. First, white racial animus seem to have played no more of a role than it did four years ago. Second, although Trump’s blatant appeal to white ethnocentrism did him little good, it also did him no harm—and that was true among all racial groups. That’s disheartening all on its own.2

When more detailed data is available, it might turn out there are specific subsets of the white vote that moved very strongly toward Trump. But what we have so far doesn’t suggest anything of the sort. If you still want to claim that whitelash played a big role in this election, you need to contend with this.

1You can break this down by age or gender, but it doesn’t really change anything. For example, white men moved slightly toward Trump while white women moved slightly away from him. Likewise, middle-aged whites moved slightly toward Trump while young and old whites moved slightly away. But the differences are small enough that they don’t change the picture much.

2Since I first put up this post, several people have suggested that national data isn’t the right way to look at voter demographics. Instead, we should look at the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But that doesn’t change things. If you look at the exit poll data, Trump did slightly worse than Romney in Pennsylvania and slightly better in Wisconsin and Michigan. But the operative word is “slightly.”

Still, maybe turnout was up among white voters? That’s possible. But we don’t have that information yet, and I’m not sure when we’ll get it.

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There Was No Apparent “Whitelash” This Year

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Republicans Just Made a Very Awkward Pitch to Conservative Latinos

by SamualDRDlzfqmb Posted on July 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Selling Donald Trump’s candidacy to Latinos—even conservative, Republican Latinos—is a tricky political dance.

A few of Trump’s top surrogates in Cleveland paid a visit on Wednesday to an event hosted by the Latino Coalition—a conservative, nonpartisan group. Their pitch for the real estate mogul wasn’t exactly inspiring.

“I want you all to understand,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said, “that I made a choice to support Donald Trump not only because he’s been my friend for 14 years, but because I am completely confident he is going to be the Republican nominee for president, and last night he became the Republican nominee for president.” Christie then asked the event’s attendees to make a similar calculation when it comes to picking between Hillary Clinton and Trump. The message was clear: Suck it up, and vote for Trump.

The next speaker, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), delivered a brief speech in which he slammed Clinton for being too liberal, praised the work of the Republican Congress, and bashed bureaucratic red tape. He never even mentioned Trump. Originally a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), Duffy seemed more inclined to raise his own profile among the group than to tout the virtues of his party’s standard-bearer.

Sharon Day, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, stopped by to pitch party loyalty—not by invoking the GOP presidential nominee, but by quoting Rubio. “We open our arms,” she said, “and I can’t say this as eloquently as Marco Rubio may have said it, but you know what: We welcome legal immigration with wide gates and wide open arms. But again there is a rule of law in the country. There is an opportunity for everyone to come in this country legally; and we welcome all to do that.” Like Duffy, she didn’t mention Trump.

These party emissaries seemed to know their audience—most of the attendees were less than enthusiastic about Trump. Tony Quinones, a venture capitalist and registered Republican from California, is hopeful that Trump will evolve into a typical Republican nominee. “But if he starts diverting off of that”—for example, his pledge to build a wall along the US-Mexico border—”that I know makes people nervous. It makes me nervous. It makes people in my family nervous. It makes people I do business with nervous.”

“I’ve talked to at least 20 family members about politics and about how we as a family want to approach it,” Quinones said when asked how he would vote in November. “So I’m here to find out what the real policies are going to be.”

Mario Lopez, the president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative group, wasn’t optimistic that conservative Latinos would rally behind Trump this year. “A lot of the data from 2012 shows that the Latinos who did not vote, who stayed home, were more likely to self-identify as politically conservative,” he said. He sees little evidence that those voters will turn out for Trump in November. “I think it’s highly unlikely,” he said, beginning to laugh. “The signs don’t point in that direction, let me put it that way.”

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Republicans Just Made a Very Awkward Pitch to Conservative Latinos

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A New Ad Strategy Will Mean Many More Pro-Clinton Videos Online

by TracieHmelnitsk Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the general election campaign approaching, the top super-PAC backing Hillary Clinton is preparing to release an onslaught of ads attacking Donald Trump and bolstering Clinton. But the group, Priorities USA, is not just repeating its 2012 approach, when its TV ads aimed to tarnish Mitt Romney’s image. This time it is also investing heavily in online ads intended to get out the vote among Clinton’s core groups of supporters in November, particularly Latinos and African Americans.

Partly, the new strategy seeks to keep up with changing patterns of media consumption; TV no longer dominates the way it once did. But the approach also reflects a recognition that in a campaign where Trump has alienated one constituency after another, most Democratic voters won’t need to be persuaded to support Clinton. Instead, the central goal will be nudging reliable supporters to go to the polls, with the hope of boosting turnout among groups that traditionally don’t vote in huge numbers but that overwhelmingly oppose Trump. In a PPP poll from last week, 50 percent of Hispanics said they planned to vote for Clinton, compared with 14 percent for Trump. Among African Americans, Clinton led Trump 84 percent to 5 percent.

Priorities USA has budgeted $130 million in ad spending for the general election. Most of that ad time has already been booked on TV and radio stations and websites, and the total figure is likely to increase, depending on donations. Of that total, $90 million is slotted for traditional TV ad buys, with $35 designated for digital. (In 2012, the super-PAC spent $75 million, almost entirely on TV ads.)

“The way that we communicate with voters is changing rapidly with each election cycle,” says Anne Caprara, the group’s executive director. As voters have gotten more of their information online, “particularly a lot of the core audiences that we want to speak to,” she says, advertising has to move in the same direction.

Priorities’ ads are split into two categories: an initial rollout set to begin on June 8—the day after the California primary, which could effectively seal Clinton’s nomination—and lasting through the convention in July, followed by a ramped-up effort starting in September that will hit its peak shortly before the election. Those ads—both TV and online—will be concentrated in the traditional battleground presidential states: Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Florida. (With Trump on the ticket, it’s possible that some normally red states such as Arizona or Georgia could come into play and be targeted by Priorities ads as well.)

The TV ads won’t stray much from the traditional formula, but for its digital ads, Priorities is targeting key groups that include Latinos, African American women, and millennials. The super-PAC has been conducting polls, testing ads online, and holding focus groups to figure out exactly what messages and clips resonate with those groups. (Trump offers so much potential fodder for attack ads that the super-PAC will need to determine which of the many negative clips are most effective.) The group points to a host of statistics to explain why TV ads wouldn’t help it target its key groups. One in four millennials don’t watch cable or broadcast TV, for example, and 66 percent of Latinos access media mainly through their mobile devices.

Most of Priorities’ digital purchases are so-called non-skippable pre-roll video ads. Think of the ads you have to sit through before watching the latest Justin Bieber music video on YouTube, the ones that don’t offer you the option of skipping past after just five seconds. “That’s kind of the gold standard in digital advertising, the most valuable piece of it,” says Caprara. She says the group will likely buttress those online video spots with ads on Facebook and website banner ads, but for now, ads preceding web videos are its primary focus.

The group is still figuring out exactly what form those ads will take—likely some combination of positive spots about Clinton’s record and hit pieces on Trump. Caprara says she’s learned not to pull early punches against Trump, noting that his Republican opponents “committed political malpractice” by waiting so long before they started to go negative on Trump. “We don’t take him for granted,” she says. “We don’t think the election’s going to be easy. We think it’s going to be a competitive race. But we’re not scared of him, either. We think that there’s a lot of material out there, obviously.”

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A New Ad Strategy Will Mean Many More Pro-Clinton Videos Online

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Vámonos! An Unprecedented Latino Voter Drive Could Tip the Scales in Iowa

by ErnieRau44478 Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Across Iowa, thousands of Latino voters are getting the same call. “It is important the Latino community participate in the presidential caucuses,” a young Latina woman says on the robocall. “If we don’t participate in the Iowa caucuses, then everyone else gets to decide for us what issues are important and which candidates will address those issues.”

A total of 50,000 Latino voters are receiving direct mailings bearing similar messages, and 25,000 are receiving robo and live calls encouraging them to caucus on February 1. For those living in the 20 Iowa counties with the highest concentration of Latino voters, they are getting knocks on their door and caucus training opportunities in their communities. It’s all part of an ambitious effort to organize Iowa’s Latino population into an influential voting block in the caucuses next month. “People will be surprised,” predicts Joe Henry, the man spearheading the effort. “I think you’re going to see a little history here.”

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Vámonos! An Unprecedented Latino Voter Drive Could Tip the Scales in Iowa

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Is Obama Trolling Republicans Over Immigration?

by MabelISSrj Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Jonah Goldberg is unhappy with President Obama’s immigration order, but he’s not steaming mad about it. And I think this allows him to see some things a little more clearly than his fellow conservatives:

Maybe President Obama is just trolling?

….As Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution notes, Obama “could’ve done all this quietly, without making any announcement whatsoever.” After all, Obama has unilaterally reinterpreted and rewritten the law without nationally televised addresses before. But doing that wouldn’t let him pander to Latinos and, more important, that wouldn’t achieve his real goal: enraging Republicans.

As policy, King Obama’s edict is a mess, which may explain why Latinos are underwhelmed by it, according to the polls. But that’s not the yardstick Obama cares about most. The real goal is twofold: Cement Latinos into the Democratic coalition and force Republicans to overreact. He can’t achieve the first if he doesn’t succeed with the second. It remains to be seen if the Republicans will let themselves be trolled into helping him.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty certain that Obama did what he did because he really believes it’s the right thing to do. Goldberg just isn’t able to acknowledge that and retain his conservative cred. Still, somewhere in the Oval Office there was someone writing down pros and cons on a napkin, and I’ll bet that enraging the GOP caucus and wrecking their legislative agenda made it onto the list of pros. So far, it looks like it’s probably working. But if Republicans are smart, they’ll figure out some way to follow Goldberg’s advice and rein in their worst impulses. If they go nuts, they’re just playing into Obama’s hands.

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Is Obama Trolling Republicans Over Immigration?

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

by Ebony8143ve Posted on September 26, 2014

Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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26 Sep 2014 6:21 PM

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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Yes, America’s green movement is often seen as white. And there are plenty of reasons for that, including the fact that environmental organization staffers are predomnantly white and that a small fraction of environmental grant funding goes toward environmental justice. But when you ask Americans what they care about, nonwhites are the ones who give a damn.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, organized and prettified by FiveThirtyEight’s DataLab, nonwhite Americans are significantly more likely than whites to think global warming should be a top priority for the U.S. government. The gap is now over 20 percent.

FiveThirtyEight

What FiveThirtyEight notes, however, is that even when you control for political party (sure, Democrats are going to be more likely to favor government action, and more minorities are Democrats), the numbers still skew in favor of nonwhites.

FiveThirtyEight

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In other words, despite any sort of messaging to the contrary, people of color care about the environment. A lot.

As many media outlets have noted, if the People’s Climate March was any indication, this movement is getting visibly more diverse. But events like the Americas Latino Eco Festival and this kind of polling data are bringing more attention to the idea that, if we’re talking beliefs, it already was diverse. Ninety percent of Latinos, for example, believe that the government should take action on climate change. According to a 2010 poll from Yale University, people of color “were often the strongest supporters of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” And a recent Green For All survey shows similar results.

People talk about “inclusivity” in the environmental movement. Maybe what they should be pointing to is “reality.”

Source:
The Racial Gap on Global Warming

, FiveThirtyEight.

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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60 Years Ago Today, The Supreme Court Told Schools to Desegregate. Here’s How Fast We’re Backsliding.

by SFGJrg Posted on May 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The changes required by Brown v. Board of Education decision were not immediate, but they were profound and lasting. Today, schools in the South are the least segregated for black students in the nation.

Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. In honor of the Brown anniversary, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project released a report that analyzes the progress of desegregation since 1954. According to the report, starting in the 1980s, schools began to ditch integration efforts and shift focus to universal education standards as a way to level the playing field for students in unequal schools. In 1991, when the Supreme Court ruled that school districts could end their desegregation plans, it put the nail in integration’s coffin.

Black students integrating a Clinton, Tennessee, school in 1956 Thomas J. O’Halloran/Library of Congress

Today, the picture of American schools is far different than what the 1954 ruling seemed to portend. The UCLA report notes that Latino students are the most segregated in the country. In major and mid-sized cities, where housing discrimination historically separated neighborhoods along racial lines, black and Latino students are often almost entirely isolated from white and Asian students—about 12 percent of black and Latino students in major cities have any exposure to white students. Half of the students who attend 91-100 percent black and Latino schools (which make up 13 percent of all US public schools) are also in schools that are 90 percent low-income—a phenomenon known as “double segregation.” And the Northeast holds the special distinction of having more black children in intensely segregated schools (where school populations are 90-100 percent minority) in 2011 than it did in 1968. In New York state, for instance, 65 percent of black students attend schools that are intensely segregated, as do 57 percent of Latinos students.

Bused to a white school, New York City children face parent protests in 1965. Dick DeMarsico/Library of Congress

Even in the South, where Brown made such a profound difference, school integration is being rolled back. The chart below shows the percentage of black students attending majority white schools in the South over the last 60 years. You can see the progress made after Brown—and how rapidly it’s dissolving.

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60 Years Ago Today, The Supreme Court Told Schools to Desegregate. Here’s How Fast We’re Backsliding.

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