Tag Archives: mayor

It’s a Miracle! Spending Bill Contains Virgin Birth Provision.

by MaryannHickey Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Our new $1 trillion spending bill1 contains a provision that allows donors to give ten times more money to political parties than in the past. This may or may not be a good thing. Jonathan Bernstein, for example, tells us that some experts on campaign finance consider formal party organizations (as opposed to independent Super PACs) to be “a force for pragmatism and against extremism.” So more money flowing in that direction might be a net benefit.

Fair enough. But check out the third paragraph of the Washington Post’s writeup:

Neither party’s leaders in Congress would claim responsibility for inserting the new provision, which was tucked into the final pages of the more than 1,600-page spending bill on Tuesday evening.

The bare minimum we should expect in an alleged democracy is to know where our laws come from and who sponsored them. Instead, our two major parties, which are normally at each others’ throats like rabid dogs, regularly connive to produce the legislative version of a virgin birth whenever the subject is something that benefits politicians themselves. This happens again and again, and it’s ridiculous. If Mitch McConnell is truly dedicated to a transparent Senate, how about putting a stop to this nonsense when he takes over next year?

1In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars, this bill is affectionately known as the Cromnibus, a mashup of CR (continuing resolution) and omnibus. That’s because it’s an omnibus spending bill that funds lots of agencies in one swoop, but for one particular agency it’s merely a short-term continuing resolution. That one agency is Homeland Security, and they get only a CR for now because Republicans consider this a kind of revenge against President Obama for his recent executive order on immigration. Welcome to kindergarten.

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It’s a Miracle! Spending Bill Contains Virgin Birth Provision.

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Bill de Blasio Explains Why Encounters with Police Are “Different for a White Child”

by LeandroRuff Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

In his call for Americans to begin an “honest conversation” about broken race relations in America, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio defended earlier statements he made explaining why his biracial son Dante needs to be especially careful in encounters with law enforcement.

“What parents have done for decades, who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have a connection with a police officer,” de Blasio opened up to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

“It’s different for a white child. That’s just the reality in this country. And with Dante, very early on with my son, we said, look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone, because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

His appearance on Sunday follows a previous statement he made revealing the personal story of when he and his wife sat down with Dante with instructions on how he should act if he were to ever be stopped by an officer. The anecdote drew outrage from police union leaders who criticized the mayor for “throwing officers under the bus.”

In the aftermath of last week’s decision by a grand jury not to indict the officer who placed Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold, de Blasio has had the difficult task of demonstrating support for both protestors and members of the New York City Police Department. Many have applauded the mayor for being able to view Garner’s death from a raw, personal standpoint.

Backing de Blasio’s personal views are a number of studies showing that even absent conscious, blatant racism, our brains are wired with implicit biases that cause all of us, including police, to instincitvely react with prejudice.

After his appearance on Sunday, however, Ed Mullins of the Sergeants Benevolent Association rejected the mayor for doubling down on his comments and suggested the mayor should move out of the city if he can’t trust his own police force.

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Bill de Blasio Explains Why Encounters with Police Are “Different for a White Child”

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Meet the Former Bike Executive Who Could Crush Scott Walker’s White House Dreams

by MichaelPud Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

This March, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker launched what, in the post-Citizens United era, amounts to a de facto presidential exploratory campaign. He jetted to Las Vegas for a private audience with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul and Republican Party kingmaker who is said to have spent nearly $150 million during the 2012 elections and may dump as much as $100 million more into this year’s midterms. It was a pinch-me moment for Walker, who in four short years had ascended from county executive to conservative hero. Inspired by his boyhood idol, Ronald Reagan, Walker took on Wisconsin’s public-employee unions and refused to buckle in the face of massive protests and a weeks-long occupation of the state Capitol. When the unions subsequently tried to oust him via a recall election, he barnstormed the state, raised a record $37 million, and won with 53 percent of the vote. Soon the preacher’s son and college dropout began appearing alongside Chris Christie and Jeb Bush on 2016 short lists.

But these days, Walker’s presidential dreams are hanging by a thread as he battles for reelection against a political neophyte whose only previous electoral campaign was a self-financed 2012 run for the local school board. Why is he vulnerable? Walker devoted his first term to ramming through a chunk of the modern conservative agenda: He limited collective-bargaining rights, slashed taxes on the wealthy, enacted new voter ID requirements, boosted funding for vouchers at the expense of public schools, curtailed abortion access, and weakened environmental protections. These policies have sharply polarized Wisconsin—splitting families, church groups, golf foursomes—with only a sliver of the electorate not firmly pro- or anti-Walker.

Mary Burke, Walker’s opponent, is running as a McKinsey moderate, the anti-politician with business savvy who will jump-start the state’s economy and heal a divided Wisconsin. She believes her pro-business message can win over those key undecided voters. In a nonpresidential year when turnout could decide the election, Burke’s strategy is a gamble—and it just might work.

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Excerpt from:  

Meet the Former Bike Executive Who Could Crush Scott Walker’s White House Dreams

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Dot Earth Blog: Michael Bloomberg, Now a U.N. Climate Envoy, Presses the Case for Urban Action

by Myrna Posted on September 19, 2014

Michael Bloomberg, a mayor turned U.N. climate envoy, explains what cities can do to blunt climate change and its impacts. View original article –  Dot Earth Blog: Michael Bloomberg, Now a U.N. Climate Envoy, Presses the Case for Urban Action ; ; ;

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Dot Earth Blog: Michael Bloomberg, Now a U.N. Climate Envoy, Presses the Case for Urban Action

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How a Town in Maine Is Blocking an Exxon Tar-Sands Pipeline

by Fredrick Wise Posted on July 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Citizens trying to stop the piping of tar-sands oil through their community wore blue “Clear Skies” shirts at a city council meeting in South Portland, Maine, this week. But they might as well have been wearing boxing gloves. The small city struck a mighty blow against Canadian tar-sands extraction.

“It’s been a long fight,” said resident Andy Jones after a 6-1 city council vote on Monday to approve the Clear Skies Ordinance, which will block the loading of heavy tar-sands bitumen onto tankers at the city’s port.

The measure is intended to stop ExxonMobil and partner companies from bringing Albertan tar-sands oil east through an aging pipeline network to the city’s waterfront. Currently, the pipeline transports conventional oil west from Portland to Canada; the companies want to reverse its flow.

After an intensely debated, year-and-a-half battle, the South Portland City Council on Monday sided with residents like Jones who don’t want their city to end up as a new “international hub” for the export of tar-sands oil.

Proponents of the Clear Skies ordinance, wearing blue, packed a South Portland city council meeting on July 9. Dan Wood

“The message to the tar sands industry is: ‘Don’t be counting your chickens yet,'” said Dylan Voorhees, clean energy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “There is a pattern of communities saying ‘no’ to the threat of tar-sands oil.”

A clear signal

The ordinance could have global implications. The Canadian government expects the nation’s oil industry to be producing 4 million to 6 million barrels of tar-sands bitumen a day within a few years, and it’s pinning its hopes on somehow getting all that oil to coastal ports, said Richard Kuprewicz, president of Washington-based pipeline safety consulting firm Accufacts Inc. Indeed, a recent report from the International Energy Agency found that the industry needs export pipelines in order for its boom to continue.

South Portland’s move is just the latest setback for plans to pipe the bitumen out to international markets. Another big hurdle is the long delay over the Keystone XL pipeline. And in Canada, pipeline plans have met with opposition from indigenous peoples (known as First Nations), who are taking the lead to stop projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway tar-sands pipeline through British Columbia.

Now, there is a clear signal that communities along the U.S. East Coast will fight tar-sands expansion too.

“Do not underestimate the power of a local government,” said Kuprewicz.

“A lot of perseverance”

In early 2013, residents formed Protect South Portland to try to stop the Portland-Montreal Pipeline reversal. They put an initiative on the November 2013 ballot to block the project, but it lost narrowly at the polls.

So the city council took up the cause. In December of last year, the council voted to impose a six-month moratorium on shipping tar-sands oil out through its port. Then a council-appointed committee crafted the Clear Skies Ordinance to permanently block tar-sands shipments, which is what the council officially approved this week. The law also changes zoning rules to block the construction of twin smokestacks that would be needed to burn off bitumen-thinning chemicals before the oil could be shipped out.

Over the past few months, concerned residents met in homes and Protect South Portland grew. Meanwhile, the group Energy Citizens, backed by the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s largest trade group, ran ads that said “It’s just oil. From Canada.” The oil companies hired a number of lawyers and brought public relations firms on board.

Protect South Portland spokeswoman MJ Ferrier estimates that the grassroots group was outspent by at least 6 to 1.

So how did residents win over Big Oil? “A lot of perseverance and a lot of community engagement,” Voorhees said.

After the vote, supporters of the ordinance went to a local bar, and “we raised our glasses,” Jones told Grist.

Cautious celebration

But while local activists are celebrating this week’s win, they know “this is not the end,” said Jones.

South Portland Councilor Tom Blake, who’s been a champion of the effort to protect the city from tar sands, said a legal challenge seems imminent, by either Portland Pipe Line Corp., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, or by the Canadian government. Blake had this message for the oil company and Canadian officials Monday evening: “This ordinance is the will of the people,” he said. “Do not spend millions of dollars and force the city of South Portland to do the same.”

But the oil interests are unlikely to heed his warning.

Tom Hardison, vice president of Portland Pipe Line, told reporters that the city had made a rush decision and bowed to environmental “off-oil extremists.” He added that the zoning changes amounted to a “job-killing ordinance” that prevents the city’s port from adapting to meet the energy needs of North America.

Matthew Manahan, attorney for Portland Pipe Line, told the city council before the vote that its ordinance is “illegal” and “would clearly be preempted by federal and state law.”

“The council is ignoring the law” and “ignoring science,” the lawyer added.

Air and water worries

Like the process of extracting tar-sands oil, the process of transporting it takes a huge toll on the environment. Before the heavy, almost-solid bitumen can be sent through pipelines, it has to be thinned with a concoction of liquid natural gas and other hydrocarbons. And then before it can be loaded onto ships, that concoction has to be burned off. ExxonMobil currently holds permits to build two smokestacks on South Portland’s waterfront that would do the burning.

Ferrier, a retired psychologist and a nun, joined Protect South Portland largely out of concern for what the oil companies’ plans would do to air quality in an area that has already received a “C” for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association. The proposed smokestacks would emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs). “We know there is benzene in it, a known carcinogen,” said Ferrier.

Resident Andrew Parker had similar concerns. “Tonight is about children,” he said at Monday’s city council meeting. “The oil company will put poison in the air, that is a fact.”

For Mayor Gerard Jalbert, who also sits on the city council and voted in support of the ordinance, it came down to concerns about water quality. The risk of water contamination in the case of a spill far outweighed the nebulous claims about job creation.

“When I look at the economic benefit, which no seems to be able to detail, the risk seems to outweigh the benefit,” Jalbert told Grist.

The easternmost 236-mile stretch of pipeline crosses some of the most sensitive ecosystems in Maine, including the Androscoggin River, the pristine Crooked River, and Sebago Lake, which supplies drinking water for 15 percent of the state’s population.

Blake, the council member, is worried that using old pipes to transport heavy bitumen could lead to a spill like the one that happened in Mayflower, Ark., in March 2013, when an ExxonMobil pipeline built in the 1940s ruptured and spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of tar-sands oil.

Saying “no” to tar sands is part of a bigger shift to a greener future in South Portland, Blake added. “Being a community that has been heavily dependent on petroleum, this turns a tide,” the councilor said.

He pointed to a new electric-car charging station at the city’s community center and potential plans to build a solar farm on an old landfill as steps toward a sustainable future. “I think we are starting to walk the talk,” Blake said.

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How a Town in Maine Is Blocking an Exxon Tar-Sands Pipeline

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Oh, Good: More Sports Teams Asking Taxpayers to Pay for Their Stadiums

by DelilaDPMwb Posted on May 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Cleveland’s professional sports teams have poured more than a million dollars into a fight they’re hoping will end in victory on Tuesday. The end goal isn’t a championship, though—it’s a municipal tax extension.

While many voters will go to the polls Tuesday to vote in congressional primaries, Cleveland residents have another decision to make: whether to extend the city’s notably regressive sin tax, which bumps up the price of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages by a few cents. If it passes, the sin tax extension will bring the amount of public money Cleveland has spent on the stadiums, which are publicly owned, up to $1.2 billion since 1990. (The city’s mayor and council president have argued that the investment pays for itself, though such claims are often exaggerated.)

The NBA’s Cavaliers and baseball’s Indians have proposed $135 million in renovations to Quicken Loans Arena and Progressive Field, respectively, including new scoreboards and concrete repairs, while the NFL’s Browns already struck a deal with the city netting $2 million a year for 15 years to pay for new scoreboards, faster escalators, and a new sound system at FirstEnergy Stadium. The three teams are fighting to ensure that sin tax money will help assuage those costs—of the $1.4 million raised by Keep Cleveland Strong, the pro-sin-tax PAC, more than $1 million has come from the Browns, Cavs, and Indians. The opposing PAC, Coalition Against the Sin Tax, has raised a mere $6,500.

Teams aren’t just tossing in cash to make sure taxpayers help foot the bill for new scoreboards. The Indians instructed ushers to wear pro-sin-tax stickers on Opening Day, according to an employee instruction sheet a former usher gave to Cleveland.com. While the Indians had told reporters that the stickers were purely voluntary, the handout reads, “An Issue 7 Keep Cleveland Strong sticker is part of your uniform. Place it chest high on your outermost layer.” The former usher, Edward Loomis, said he was fired by the team after refusing to wear the sticker. When opponents proposed adding a $3.25 ticket fee to help pay for the renovations, Keep Cleveland Strong claimed that it would punish local families and innocent sports fans.

Cleveland teams certainly aren’t the only ones asking for public money to help their facilities. The Minnesota Vikings secured hundreds of millions of dollars for their new stadium after pleading that they “only have $975 million in the budget,” while the Atlanta Braves announced a new stadium that will cost suburban Cobb County, Georgia, $300 million. The absolute nadir of public financing for stadiums came two years with the construction of Marlins Park in Miami, which will end up costing city and county taxpayers $3 billion.

The Marlins Park fiasco created such a backlash that local voters rebelled when the Miami Dolphins asked for taxpayer-funded stadium renovations, voting the measure down. The strange alliance pushing for the same result in Cleveland—Ralph Nader, meet Big Tobacco!—has an uphill climb, given the funding differential and the pro-sin-tax support of so many local officials. Maybe Kevin Costner should forget about helping the Browns in this week’s draft—and instead help figure out a more efficient use of taxpayer funds.

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Oh, Good: More Sports Teams Asking Taxpayers to Pay for Their Stadiums

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

by AdelePlatz Posted on May 2, 2014

Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

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Southeast Environmental Task Force

When tar-sands oil is refined, a nasty byproduct called petroleum coke, or petcoke, is produced — thick, dusty gunk that is increasingly being stored in huge piles along Midwestern rivers. On Chicago’s Southeast Side, unfortunate neighbors have been fighting to get rid of three such piles, noting that the petcoke blows over their communities and even into their homes. But they’ve failed, at least for now.

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday voted to ban new petcoke storage facilities, but the old ones will be allowed to remain in place and uncovered for up to two years. City lawyers said stricter proposed regulations might not stand up in court. The Times of Northwest Indiana reports:

Aldermen voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure by 10th Ward Alderman John Pope that will require petcoke to be stored in indoor structures within two years. …

Currently, Beemsterboer Slag Corp. and KCBX Terminals Co. are the only companies storing petcoke within Chicago, both at sites along the Calumet River in the 10th Ward. …

2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti, the lone alderman to vote against the petcoke measure, said he … thinks city officials, in creating this measure, were more concerned with protecting the business interests of Beemsterboer and KCBX than they were in looking out for city residents.

Activists are not backing off — they’re filing an unusual lawsuit that directly targets the Koch brothers, owners of KCBX Terminals, among other parties. Climate Progress has the story:

Two environmental groups on Monday sent a letter to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, saying they intend to file a lawsuit against them for polluting a primarily low-income area of Chicago with thick, black, oily dust.

The letter sent by the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) gave official 90-day notice of intent to sue the Koch brothers and 10 of their companies, including the KCBX Terminals Company, in federal court. The lawsuit will seek to hold them liable for the harmful effects of pollution caused by coal and petroleum coke, or petcoke …

It will likely be difficult to hold the Koch brothers individually responsible for the alleged actions of their large companies. Suing company officers requires a legal maneuver called “piercing the corporate veil,” a tactic used in “exceptional situations” when it can be proven that the officers themselves were the main drivers of the alleged violation. Because a large corporation like Koch Industries has many levels of decision-making, it won’t be easy to prove in court that the brothers were at the helm of each one.

Meanwhile, officials at the city and state level are also filing suit to stop the petcoke pollution, as the Chicago Tribune reports:

The mayor’s office also has joined Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn in fighting two companies that store petcoke and coal on the Southeast Side.

KCBX Terminals, a company controlled by industrialists Charles and David Koch, faces a lawsuit filed by Madigan and [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel that accuses the company of violating air pollution laws … Another state and city lawsuit urges a Cook County judge to cite KCBX for violating water-quality and open-dumping laws by failing to prevent petcoke and coal from washing into the Calumet River

Detroiters managed to get rid of their petcoke piles last year. Maybe Chicagoans should call them for a little advice.


Source
City Council OKs petcoke restrictions, The Times
Koch Brothers To Face Lawsuit Over ‘Swirling’ Chicago Petcoke Pollution, ClimateProgress
Chicago stops short of petroleum coke ban, Chicago Tribune

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

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San Francisco moves to ban plastic water bottles, scoffs at every other sad city

by MozelleNorthern Posted on March 12, 2014

San Francisco moves to ban plastic water bottles, scoffs at every other sad city

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Two big pieces of news out of San Francisco this week: Barry Bonds started a brief stint coaching for the Giants, and the city made significant progress toward outlawing plastic water bottles. As a result, the average level of self-satisfaction exhibited by San Franciscans increased by a factor of three.

And that’s just from Bonds’ ego! Did you really think we were going to shame a city for striving to be more environmentally conscious? Not that we’re ruling out that San Francisco might have done it just a little bit to make every other American city look even worse. (Oh, come on! You were thinking it too!) Still, this is downright cheery news.

On Tuesday, the city’s board of supervisors unanimously approved a ban on selling single-use plastic bottles of water on city property. The ban, which still needs a second vote and the sign-off of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, will go into effect in October of this year for indoor events, and 2016 for outdoor events. Sporting events that require excessive water consumption — such as the San Francisco Marathon — could be excluded from these restrictions, but not without first attempting to secure other, more sustainable sources of water.

SFGate reports:

[Supervisor David] Chiu noted that it wasn’t until the 1990s that there was a plastic water bottle industry, which is now a $60 billion a year business. He said one goal of the legislation is to get people thinking about the waste, much like the city’s plastic bag ban, which has dramatically increased the number of consumers who use reusable bags.

“I want to remind people that not long ago, our world was not addicted to plastic water bottles,” he said. “Before (the 1990s), for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated.”

At which point, every other city supervisor struggled to recall what life was like at any point before approximately last Thanksgiving.

Chiu, however sassy about it, has a point. Since 1991, U.S. bottled water consumption per capita has tripled. And this is in spite of the fact that bottled water is widely acknowledged as an enormous scam: 25 percent or more of bottled water is just straight tap water, but you pay as much as 2,000 times more for it than the stuff that comes out of your kitchen faucet.

As scams go, bottled water also has an undeniable environmental impact. In 2007, production of water bottles for U.S. consumption alone used up to 54 million barrels of oil. Seventy-five percent of plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead ending up on beaches, in rivers, and partially full of unidentified liquid on nearly all the empty bus seats you’ve ever tried to sit in.

San Francisco, you’ll always be The City That Waits to Die to us. That said, Most Sustainable City in the United States has a pretty nice a ring to it, too.


Source
S.F. supervisors back ban on sale of plastic water bottles, SFGate

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

by MargeneBrune Posted on March 4, 2014

Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

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Despite the pugnacious storms that had California on the ropes this past weekend, the state is still in the middle of a record-making drought. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is well under half its usual level for this time of year, and there’s almost certainly no way to catch up this late in the season.

Enter the ongoing construction of 17 desalination plants across the state. A $1 billion plant being built in Carlsbad, Calif., expected to be ready by 2016, will pump 50 million gallons of drinkable water out of the ocean daily — making it the largest such facility in the Western Hemisphere. Another project underway near San Francisco (a discount at only $150 million) could supply 20 million of the 750 million gallons of water guzzled daily in the Bay Area by 2020.

Desalination involves sucking up seawater and pushing it at high pressure through a series of very thin membranes, to strip away the salt and ocean gunk. Water purists (ha) know it as reverse osmosis. It’s not an ideal process, since it uses an enormous amount of energy to turn about two gallons of seawater into one gallon of potable water, plus there are the aforementioned ocean gunk leftovers, but it does keep working rain or shine. A spokesperson for the Carlsbad plant describes it as “droughtproof” — a tantalizing prospect that would probably have Californians salivating, if they could spare the spit.

Instead, we can measure excitement by the uptick in investment. Currently there are only three small desalination plants operating in the state, including one that provides all the water to aptly named Sand City since 2010. By “all the water,” we mean “enough for the 334 people who live there.” From the San Francisco Chronicle:

“It’s a miracle how we managed to get this plant,” said Sand City Mayor David Pendergrass. “If we didn’t have it, the whole area would be in trouble. We’re not under any rationing here, but then we’ve been practicing conservation for years already, so we are responsible about our water use.

“I would absolutely recommend desalination for other areas.”

Of course, the miraculous transmutation of Pacific brine to sweet freshwater comes with a price — the literal one, but also a load of energy, carbon emissions, hapless sea creatures siphoned up intake tubes, and extra salt and miscellaneous water treatment chemicals flushed back into the ocean. Some plants in progress have been stalled by these concerns. Many environmentalists and/or spendthrifts argue that it makes more sense promote water conservation and recycling before turning to expensive alchemy, but water officials still aren’t convinced that will be enough. From NPR:

Jeffrey Kightlinger, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, says the district has invested in conservation and recycling, and it has helped, but the region still needs more water to meet demand. That’s always been the case in arid California, but it’s even more so now.

“There are two things that are changing the landscape for us,” he says. “One is we’ve grown a lot. We’re doing water for nearly 40 million people statewide. The second thing that really changed is climate change. It’s real. And it’s stressing our system in new ways.”…

“We don’t have time to rehash the same debates over and over and over again. We’re going to have to start investing in things for the future,” Kightlinger says.

Even if cheap, renewable energy sources could theoretically power desalination plants without producing a lot of extra ocean pollution, desalination is not going to solve all the state’s water problems in one fell swoop. Weaning So Cal off water imported from other areas would mean building a Carlsbad-scale plant every four miles along the coast, which adds up to 25 plants just between San Diego and L.A. With so many people and so little water, no solution is going to work without significant cuts in wasted water.

Whether these facilities are a good investment, or at least a bearable compromise, will have a lot to do with what havoc climate change decides to wreak on the coastal state in the coming decades. If this drought is a sign of climates to come, California may not be the only state to run on desal.


Source
The Search For Drinking Water In California Has Led To The Ocean, NPR

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.

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Drought-plagued California tries to drink the ocean (hold the salt)

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Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone? (Updated)

by duhhumavug Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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This post has been updated.

Student protesters have filled the streets of many Venezuelan cities for the last two weeks to express their dissatisfaction with the socialist government, the deteriorating economy, and the violence that plagues the country. In the past few days the situation has worsened, as crackdowns from the National Guard and attacks from paramilitary groups have left at least six people dead so far.

Who are the protesters? Venezuela’s opposition party is unified by the desire to end the reign of “chavismo,” the socialist system devised by Hugo Chávez, and continued, albeit less handily, by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. The emergent leader of the protests is Leopoldo López, a Harvard-educated descendent of Simón Bolívar, and the former mayor of a Caracas municipality. He turned himself over to government forces after Maduro publicly demanded his arrest; López has called for more protests from prison. Also prominent in the opposition is María Corina Machado, a congresswoman in the National Assembly.

The protests started in the western border city of San Cristóbal, where students took to the streets on February 2 to express discontent with rampant crime. The forceful reaction of the authorities prompted other students in other cities to protest in solidarity. The protesters are largely from the middle class.

Maduro’s leadership has proved ineffective, and the economic policies he inherited from Chávez, including the nationalization of many industries, have wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan economy; these days, people are struggling to find the bare necessities. The scarcity index has reached an astonishing 28 percent, meaning that toilet paper, flour, and other basics simply might not be in stock. Maduro has threatened to raise gas prices, which were kept artificially low for 15 years because increasing them is politically disastrous. Inflation has more than doubled in the past year. Finally, the insanely high homicide rate, 39 deaths per 100,000 people in 2013, has many Venezuelans fed up with the status quo.

How is the government responding? Maduro, who narrowly beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in the election after Chávez’s March 2013 death, has swiftly cracked down on broadcast media coverage of the protests. The Colombian channel NTN24, which was covering the violence in the streets, has been taken off the air. Maduro expelled the CNN team today by revoking their press credentials.

Reports of paramilitary groups (known as colectivos), riding around on motorcycles and terrorizing protesters and civilians “tend to be exaggerated,” said David Smilde, a University of Georgia sociologist and senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America who returned from Venezuela yesterday. Though it is surely happening (with low quality video evidence to back it up), “that phenomenon appeals to the middle class’s worst nightmare of having these armed poor people on motorcycles.”

“The bigger problem,” Smilde continued, “is actually the government troops. The National Guard is the one that is doing the most violence, shooting on protesters and buildings. They tend to be very unprofessional. They don’t think in terms of civilian policing, so they will often fire on people who are fleeing. These are people who are 20 to 22 years old and oftentimes they end up being violent. I don’t think it’s necessarily state policy to repress voters. But the state could definitely make it clearer that there should be no violence.”

In a dramatic video, armed men reportedly from SEBIN, the Venezuelan intelligence agency, stormed the opposition party HQ. Reports have also surfaced of detainees being beaten, and the Human Rights Watch has called for the international community to condemn the violence against protesters and journalists.

How serious is the crisis? While some residents of Venezuela’s biggest cities, like Caracas, San Cristóbal, Mérida, Valencia, and Maracaibo decry the “war zone” in the streets, for many in Venezuela, life continues as normal. “From the outside it always looks like the whole country’s in flames, but of course life goes on and most things are up and running,” Smilde said.

However, San Cristóbal appears to be headed toward more dramatic confrontation. The Andean college town of 650,000, situated near the border with Colombia, has been heavily barricaded by opposition protesters. The government has cut off internet service to the city. Government paratroopers are on the way. And the opposition isn’t backing down, said Juan Nagel, editor of the blog Caracas Chronicles.

What’s going to happen next? So far it seems like the protests have not achieved support from the poor, who long have identified as chavistas. As Capriles, still the opposition’s biggest name, told The Economist, “For the protests to be successful, they must include the poor.”

Capriles has urged protesters to gather tomorrow en masse, and march peacefully. From prison, López passed a note to his wife, calling for more protests, a message that rapidly spread through social networks. “Tomorrow will tell what the future’s going to be,” Smilde said. If the turnout is huge and violence breaks out, Venezuela may be headed for prolonged unrest. If not, he said, things may “fizzle out.”

UPDATE: Saturday, February 22, 6:30 p.m. ET (Benjy Hansen-Bundy): Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets today, some to protest Maduro’s government, others to support it. The AFP reported at least 50,000 opposition protesters marching in the streets of the Sucre neighborhood of Caracas. A pro-government rally, also in the capital, marched “against fascism.” Though today’s protests were largely peaceful, Al Jazeera has reported at least eight deaths and more than 100 injuries since the protests began on February 4.

Leopoldo López Miguel Gutierrez/EFE/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Nicolás Maduro Venezuela’s Presidency/Xinhua/ZUMA

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Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone? (Updated)

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