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Huzzah! The economy keeps growing while energy emissions stay flat

by CoralLeahy Posted on March 16, 2016

Huzzah! The economy keeps growing while energy emissions stay flat

By Clayton Aldernon 16 Mar 2016comments Share

Uncork the champagne: We solved that whole carbon emissions thing. The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced Wednesday that 2015 saw global energy-related emissions stall for the second year in a row, despite continued 3 percent growth of global GDP. Zooming the lens in, the same was true of energy powerhouses like the U.S. and China, which both reported a drop in energy-related carbon emissions over the same time period.

International Energy Agency

The flattening of energy sector emissions can largely be attributed to an expansion in global renewable capacity, suggests the IEA. Renewables accounted for about 90 percent of all new electricity generation last year, and wind energy alone accounted for more than 50 percent of this figure. With global GDP growth continuing to hover around 3 percent, the numbers appear to confirm what coalitions like New Climate Economy have long argued: There’s no such thing as a tradeoff between the environment and the economy.

Energy-sector emissions have only declined three other times in the past 40 years — see the highlighted time-points in the chart above — and each of those were during an economic slowdown. Two years of flat emissions means we’re getting somewhere.

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Of course, this is the real world, and nothing’s quite so black and white. You’ll notice some intentional phrasing here: “energy-related CO2 emissions.” The energy sector will always be a big slice of the carbon-pollution pie — the biggest! — but it’s not the only slice. What about all the other emissions; say, from the agricultural sector? From land-use changes? From landfills?

While we won’t have up-to-date information on a lot of these other indicators for another few months, we do know that deforestation, El Niño, and rampant wildfires have already lent themselves to spikes in atmospheric CO2 levels. In Indonesia, for example, emissions due to October wildfires often eclipsed the average daily emissions from the entire U.S. economy. Land use in Indonesia accounts for more than 60 percent of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

And while energy-related emissions may have fallen in China, they have increased in the Middle East and Europe.

So yes, the IEA figures are reason to celebrate (go ahead, take a sip of that champagne), but they’re also a reason to double down on renewables.

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A bill to block GMO labeling fails key Senate vote

by TodWarfield Posted on March 16, 2016

A bill to block GMO labeling fails key Senate vote

By Nathanael Johnsonon 16 Mar 2016comments Share

A bill that would have stopped states from mandating labels for genetically engineered food failed a key vote on Wednesday morning. The measure would have quashed local laws, including one about to take effect in Vermont, that require food companies to label packages with genetically modified ingredients.

The Senate’s rejection of the current bill doesn’t mean its dead. Senators are likely to resume negotiations on the bill after they return from a two-week break and vote on it again. A similar bill has already passed in the House, so the Senate’s approval would put it a short step away from becoming law.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) sponsored the bill and got broad support from his party. But Republicans needed the help of farm-state Democrats who wound up voting against it. Earlier this month I predicted that Roberts would need to compromise with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to get this passed. Her vote is particularly important, because she has been able to pull in reluctant Democrats to vote on bipartisan agriculture bills. But Roberts never compromised: The bill sailed through committee and straight to a Senate vote without any horse trading. And on Tuesday, after meeting with organic industry leaders, Sen. Stabenow said she was against the bill as it stood. She wants something that will provide eaters with more information than they currently get, but that wouldn’t stigmatize GMOs.

Another bill championed by Oregon farmer Jeff Merkley calls for mandatory labeling. These two bills represent the initial offer and counter offer in the Senate. Now the bargaining will begin in earnest. Before the vote, Roberts sounded like someone playing the long game. “We are working both sides of the aisle very hard and, if we are not successful in getting 60 [votes] … we will have to come back after the [Easter] break and get something done,” Roberts said on Tuesday, according to Politico.

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) proposed an amendment that could serve as a compromise and draw in those 60 votes. His amendment would give food manufacturers a chance to propose their own method of labeling. If companies failed to come up with a transparent method in three years, then labeling would become mandatory. That kind of middle ground might sway farm-state Democrats to vote for the bill without alienating Republicans who seem dead set against a mandatory-labeling law.

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Hydroponics kit takes the dirty work out of kitchen gardening

by MackenzTAVY Posted on March 16, 2016

Hydroponics kit takes the dirty work out of kitchen gardening

By Kate Yoderon 16 Mar 2016comments Share

Here’s a new project to join the ranks of your Shiitake log, sourdough starter, and alfalfa sprout operation: an indoor hydroponics kit.

The practice of hydroponics — a fancy term for growing plants in water and nutrients instead of soil — dates back centuries, according to Fast Company. Now, IKEA is jumping on the bandwagon in the hopes of starting an in-the-home hydroponics revolution. Its indoor gardening kit is scheduled for release in April.

IKEA’s ad above shows the process of starting a soilless garden operation on your kitchen table, from seed to majestic lettuce leaf. The time-lapse video, set to a big band tune, offers a peek into just how much labor it takes to grow a salad. The starring actress provides her plants with TLC: watering them, turning on grow lights, and even playing the recorder to encourage the little sprouts to grow.

Sure, the grow lights use more energy to produce salad greens than the sun’s free, ever-giving rays. But with winter weather or lack of space soiling many of our garden plans, countertop hydroponics — and soil-based projects like growing herbs on your windowsill — provide us with ways to grow our own food no matter where we live. (IKEA’s Swedish homeland, for one, relies on imported food due to its short growing season.)

After all, there might be only one thing better than farm-to-table: table-to-table.

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Obama and Trudeau take a big step on methane

by latishamedlock7 Posted on March 10, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Obama and Trudeau take a big step on methane

By Rebecca Leberon 10 Mar 2016comments Share

The remarkable thing about Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama standing in front of the White House on Thursday morning was that the two countries were finally on the same side in the fight against climate change. After years of rule under Stephen Harper’s oil-dominated conservative party, Canada is now primed for a comeback as a global climate leader since the Liberal Party took over last fall. Trudeau has embraced the opportunity, joining the U.S. in announcing a series of climate pledges.

The details of the plan are as significant as the symbolism: While both countries promised responsible stewardship of the Arctic, the most notable part is their pledge on methane emissions, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and a growing climate problem.

Canada and the U.S. pledged to cut the oil and gas sector’s methane emissions by up to 45 percent by 2025 from a 2012 baseline. Before this visit, the Environmental Protection Agency had already planned on a similar cut for new or modified gas operations, but it overlooked the biggest offender — existing infrastructure. There are hundreds of thousands of sources that are currently leaking methane, sometimes a small amount during the extraction, processing, and transport of natural gas, but other times a disastrous amount, like in the case of Aliso Canyon’s massive gas leak.

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The EPA will now begin developing regulations for these sources and “move as expeditiously as possible to complete this process,” the White House noted in a fact sheet. Now, Canada is getting on board, putting “in place national regulations in collaboration with provinces/territories, Indigenous Peoples and stakeholders. Environment and Climate Change Canada intends to publish an initial phase of proposed regulations by early 2017.”

This is big. So big, in fact, that a similar 45 percent cut to global oil and gas methane emissions would be the equivalent of shutting down one-third of the world’s coal plants, according to Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate and Energy Program Vice President Mark Brownstein.

The U.S. and Canada are the Nos. 2 and 4 worst methane polluters (Russia is No. 1), accounting for 11 and 3.2 percent of global methane from oil and gas, respectively. Brownstein noted in an email reducing oil and gas methane emissions is “the single most immediate, impactful, and cost effective thing we can do to impact the rate of global warming right now.”

The oil lobby American Petroleum Institute is indignant, of course. API accused Obama of bending to the will of “environmental extremists.” Its point is that the industry already has an economic incentive to reduce methane — after all, it’s gas they could sell consumers that’s escaping into the air — and any regulation would be burdensome. Environmentalists point out that with gas prices so cheap regulatory action is an absolute must: The sector has too little incentive to shrink its methane footprint on its own.

Obama will certainly hear more from the oil and gas industry, including legal challenges, but he paid them little mind today.

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Obama and Trudeau promise to lead the transition to a low-carbon global economy

by mklabs1234 Posted on March 10, 2016

Obama and Trudeau promise to lead the transition to a low-carbon global economy

By Suzanne Goldenbergon 10 Mar 2016comments Share

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

The U.S. and Canada declared they would help lead the transition to a low-carbon global economy on Thursday, in a dramatic role reversal for two countries once derided as climate change villains.

The shared vision unveiled by Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau ahead of a meeting at the White House commits the two countries to a range of actions to shore up the historic climate agreement reached in Paris last December.

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The two leaders committed to rally G20 countries behind the accord, promote North American carbon markets, cap emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing oil and gas wells, and protect indigenous communities in a region which is warming beyond the point of no return, according to a statement from the White House.

The initiative announced on Thursday brings the U.S. a big step closer to meeting its own Paris target by committing for the first time to cut emissions of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for about a quarter of warming — from existing oil and gas wells.

The biggest news however might be the final break with the policies of their predecessors who obstructed global efforts to fight climate change. In his seven years in the White House, Barack Obama has steadily transformed the U.S. into a climate leader on the international level.

“The two leaders regard the Paris agreement as a turning point in global efforts to combat climate change and anchor economic growth in clean development,” the White House said in a statement. “They resolve that the United States and Canada must and will play a leadership role internationally in the low-carbon global economy over the coming decades, including through science-based steps to protect the Arctic and its peoples.”

With Thursday’s announcement, Obama appeared to be passing the baton of climate leadership to Trudeau. Trudeau, just months into his prime ministership, has made clear he wants Canada to play a similar leadership role at home and on the global stage, White House officials told a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

“President Obama sees Prime Minister Trudeau as a really strong partner on these issues,” the officials said. “This is a very important moment along the way and we expect that cooperation to continue in the future.”

Under the initiative, the U.S. and Canada will work to ratify the Paris agreement as soon as possible, lending an important symbolic boost to prospects for bringing the Paris agreement into force as soon as possible after the April 22 signing ceremony. The agreement must be ratified by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of global emissions.

Obama and Trudeau also said the leaders would move quickly to finalize their long-term emissions reductions strategies discussed at Paris, unveiling a plan by the end of 2016, and that they would lobby other major G20 industrialized countries to do the same.

An early opportunity for such lobbying comes later this year when Canada and the U.S. will bring in Mexico to the new North American partnership on climate.

The White House statement also suggested the two leaders would try to consolidate existing regional carbon markets, in line with other provisions in the Paris agreement for encouraging the transition to a clean energy economy.

Turning closer to home, the initiative also takes a big step to curbing a powerful climate pollutant in methane, whose emissions rose rapidly with the boom in oil and gas production across much of the U.S. and Canada.

The two countries committed to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by up to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 — in line with previous proposed rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and Canada’s major energy-producing province of Alberta.

On Thursday, the EPA raised the bar even further, pledging to draft rules to cut methane from existing oil and gas wells — which had been a key demand for campaign groups.

“We are going to have to tackle emissions from existing sources,” Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, told a conference call with reporters. “It has become clear that it is time for the EPA to regulate existing sources from the oil and gas sector.”

The commitment won widespread praise from environmental campaign groups who noted that tackling methane was one of the most effective ways of reducing U.S. and Canadian emissions overall.

The U.S. and Canada are both among the top five global emitters of methane.

“Acting fast to cut methane pollution from oil and gas operations is one of the single most important steps we can take to slow temperature rise and protect the climate,” Abigail Dillen, EarthJustice climate campaigner, said in a statement. “We applaud the president for redoubling his commitment to U.S. climate action.”

On the Arctic, the two countries said they would convene a high-level summit next August to try and keep pace with the record temperatures, sea-ice loss, permafrost thaws, and wildfires that are creating dangerous and irreversible impacts in the polar region — but also contributing to changing weather patterns and sea-level rise globally.

“There is a real need just to do more science about the speed with which the melting is occurring and what the modelling of the implications are for that,” said Angela Anderson, who directs the climate and energy program for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There is a lot of science to be done to really understand how what is happening in the Arctic is going to affect all of us.”

Environmentalists immediately demanded an end to Arctic drilling, and pressed Trudeau to declare a halt to pipeline projects from Alberta tar sands.

The U.S.-Canada partnership came as data from the U.S. science agency, NOAA, showed that atmospheric CO2 levels had jumped by the highest amount on record last year.

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Climate hawks endorse Bernie by yuge margin

by WCEKellyld Posted on March 10, 2016

Climate hawks endorse Bernie by yuge margin

By Katie Herzogon 10 Mar 2016comments Share

Climate Hawks Vote, a political action committee dedicated to electing leaders who prioritize action on climate change, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.

Sanders earned the Climate Hawks Vote endorsement after he won an overwhelming 92 percent of over 22,000 votes cast in the group’s online survey. This despite a plea from Clinton herself, who wrote in an email to Climate Hawks members:

My plan focuses on using the extensive authorities a President has to tackle this problem using laws already on the books, and on bringing together the diverse range of cities, states, rural communities, universities, businesses, nonprofits, and others who are committed to taking action—including local Republican leaders.

I believe it would be a mistake to assume that Republicans in Congress will get with the program in the near term—because we can’t wait for them to start paying more attention to scientists than they do to Big Oil. Eventually reality will catch up with them—but we can’t wait for that to happen. The next president has to start building on the progress President Obama has made right away because the next decade will be decisive in our ability to meet the climate challenge.

“We’re sincerely grateful to Secretary Hillary Clinton for participating in this process and making it clear how much she values our support,” wrote Climate Hawks Vote founder R.L. Miller in a statement. “We’re so glad that both contenders for the Democratic nomination say they want to stand up for science and fight to end global-warming pollution. But the best candidate for the job, ready to use every tool to fight climate polluters and Republican climate deniers, is Bernie Sanders. We need clean-energy leadership in the White House. We need a climate revolution.”

However, not all green groups have backed Sanders. The League of Conservation Voters went with Clinton, citing her “long history of strong environmental leadership.”

While both Democratic candidates acknowledge that climate change is a grave threat both here and abroad, their platforms are different. For one, Sanders has said he would end all fracking as president, whereas Clinton’s views on fracking are more qualified. Clinton has said that she would put an end to fracking on public lands, but as Secretary of State, her office encouraged natural gas production in developing nations. And she hasn’t always sounded like a climate hawk: In 2014, she said that “With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal. And expanding production is creating tens of thousands of new jobs.”

Clinton decries Big Oil, but some environmentalists have bristled at her accepting more than $3.25 million in donations from the fossil fuel industry. In a race where fossil fuels have spent over $100 million on candidates, $3.25 million may be a drop in the golden teacup, but it’s still $3.25 million more than Sanders has taken from dirty energy.

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Should kids be able to sue for a safe climate? This federal court is about to decide

by DelorisBourassa Posted on March 10, 2016

No Kidding

Should kids be able to sue for a safe climate? This federal court is about to decide

By Clayton Aldernon 10 Mar 2016comments Share

This post was co-published with Moyers & Company.

EUGENE, Ore. — Courtrooms usually aren’t jovial places, but with 21 youth plaintiffs and two busloads of supporting junior high-school students in tow, the air in the U.S. District Courthouse here on Wednesday felt more field trip than federal court.

The occasion for the youthful energy was a hearing on a complaint filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, aged 8–19, by Oregon nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The kids’ lawyers assert that their clients, and the younger generation as a whole, have been deprived of key rights by their own government. By failing to act on climate change, they argue, the United States government — including President Obama and a baker’s dozen federal agencies — has valued its own generation more than future generations, which will bear a greater burden with respect to the climate crisis.

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The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, and Wednesday’s hearing had a federal judge considering that motion. The youth plaintiffs’ counsel sparred with government lawyers as well as attorneys representing fossil fuel interests. This kind of case might sound, well, juvenile, but trade groups with ties to the oil and gas lobby — the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers — were concerned enough about it that they joined as co-defendants in November of last year. Now, the Oregon U.S. District Court will decide whether or not the complaint will proceed to trial.

Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh Martinez, a 15-year-old indigenous activist and a plaintiff on the case, summed up the kids’ perspective at a press conference after the hearing. “We are valuing our futures over profits,” he said. “We are valuing this planet over corporate greed.”

Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh Martinez (15) stands in front of his fellow plaintiffs and addresses the press.

This isn’t the first time Our Children’s Trust has brought forth a youth climate lawsuit. Indeed, the group has at one time or another filed suit in all 50 states and currently has cases pending in five states. Back in November, in a case brought by a coalition of Seattle teenagers, a Washington judge ruled that the state was constitutionally obligated to protect its natural resources “for the common benefit of the people of the State” — a notable win for the young plaintiffs — but she did not go so far as to rule that the state’s carbon emissions-limiting standards in question needed to adhere to the “best available science.” A 2011 suit, which the youth plaintiffs ended up losing, also targeted the federal government for failing to keep the atmosphere safe for future generations. It perhaps goes without saying that these types of complaints are incredible long shots.

Julia Olson, a lawyer with Wild Earth Advocates and Our Children’s Trust who argued the plaintiffs’ case on Wednesday, is optimistic about the outcome of this complaint, though. “I believe in our Constitution, and I think it can work to address even the most systemic, intractable problem of our generation,” she told me.

The complaint alleges violation of the kids’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. By failing to act on climate change, it argues, the government discriminates against youth as a class. Without access to a healthy climate, they’re deprived of their fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property.

The complaint is also built on the public trust doctrine, a carryover from English common law that says a government has the duty to protect certain natural resources and systems on behalf of current and future generations. “It originated with Emperor Justinian in Rome,” Alex Loznak, a 19-year-old plaintiff, explained to the press. “It’s reflected in the Magna Carta, the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and cited in U.S. court decisions dating back to the 1800s.”

An important question at hand on Wednesday was whether the public trust doctrine applies to the federal government. The U.S. government and its fossil-fuel industry co-defendants argued that legal precedent only considers it to apply to states. That’s a crucial distinction, because it will help determine whether or not the plaintiffs even have standing in the federal court system.

Youth plaintiff Isaac Vergun (13) poses outside the U.S. District Courthouse in Eugene, Ore.

The defendants also contend that if the federal court took on the case, it would amount to an egregious overstep of authority by the judiciary. “This is the type of problem that is designed to be solved by the political branches,” argued U.S. counsel Sean C. Duffy at the hearing. He said that denying the U.S. government’s motion for dismissal would effectively turn the judicial branch into a “de facto super-agency.”

Another core argument of the defense is that all cases addressing constitutional rights must demonstrate that the government, through its actions, has infringed upon these rights or exceeded its authority. Instead, the defense argued, the kids’ case alleges a failure to act, and you can’t require the government to simply “do more.” “Our Constitution is one that limits the power of government,” argued intervenor counsel Quin Sorenson, who represented industry interests at the hearing.

That’s not how Olson sees it, though. “What we have today is not just a failure to act,” she told the press after the hearing. “The government is not just sitting by and doing nothing. They are doing everything to cause this problem.” Indeed, the complaint calls out the government for its continued actions to “permit, authorize, and subsidize fossil fuel extraction, development, consumption and exportation.”

It’s also not unprecedented for a court to demand that the government meet a specific standard to ensure its citizens’ safety, she said. In Brown v. Plata, for example, a 2010 Supreme Court case concerning prison reform, the court required a mandatory limit on prison populations for the sake of health and safety. Summarizing the decision, she said that while the Supreme Court had no scientific standards to apply at the time, it ruled that it could rely on expert evidence. “The Court selected the number — it set the standard — to keep those prisoners safe.” And when it comes to determining the safe level of climate pollution in the atmosphere, “we have scientific standards,” she said.

Supporters of the youth plaintiffs assemble on the steps of the U.S. District Courthouse in Eugene, Ore., after the hearing. The banner reads, “Our future is a constitutional right.”

“The way I hope it will go is that the judicial branch will say, ‘You’ve got to do something,’” said James Hansen, adjunct professor at Columbia University and former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen’s granddaughter is a plaintiff in the case, and he’s formally listed in the complaint as the legal guardian of “Future Generations.” He continued, “Hopefully the court will ask for a plan: How are you going to ensure the rights of young people?”

In a time of gridlock and sorely needed climate action, the case couldn’t come soon enough, Hansen said. “It gets harder and harder to stabilize the climate if you go longer and longer without turning the curve.”

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Addressing climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time, and it necessarily causes us to ask some big questions. Is there a constitutional right to be free from climate change? Is there a constitutional right to a safe climate? Is youth a class, or simply a mutable trait? If the federal government takes actions that worsen the climate crisis, does that amount to an abuse of its power?

Said Olson: “We are not just in a climate crisis. We will have a significant constitutional crisis and a crisis in our democracy if this doesn’t work.”

The 21 youth plaintiffs, along with climatologist James Hansen (top, third from left) pose with Our Children’s Trust attorneys Phil Gregory (top left) and Julia Olson (bottom left).

Watch Bill Moyers’ 2014 interview with youth plaintiff Kelsey Juliana:

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A frightening record: Carbon dioxide levels show biggest-annual jump

by RoyceAkin515 Posted on March 9, 2016

A frightening record: Carbon dioxide levels show biggest-annual jump

By Rebecca Leberon 9 Mar 2016comments Share

Recently, we’ve had more reason than usual to be optimistic on climate change — the world reached its first truly global climate agreement in December, there are a lot of signs that China is getting serious about its emissions, and coal is facing economic collapse in the U.S. But there’s just as much news to sour this outlook, particularly when you look at what’s happening to carbon dioxide.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported the biggest 12-month jump in carbon dioxide concentrations since record-keeping began, based on preliminary data from its Earth Science Research Lab in Mauna Loa. From February 2015 to 2016, the global concentration of carbon in the atmosphere rose a record 3.76 parts per million (ppm), to over 404 ppm. The last record-holder was 1997-1998, when carbon dioxide rose 3.70 ppm. We’ve broke other records this past year, too: The 2015 calendar year also posted the biggest-annual rise in carbon levels, while NOAA reported last May that carbon stayed above an average 400 ppm for the entire month, a first in millions of years.

Meanwhile, 2015 was the hottest year on record.

Mauna Loa’s data looks at the big picture of carbon in the atmosphere and not just emissions from the energy sector and industry. It includes deforestation’s impact on CO2, as well as El Niño, which boosts wildfires that release even more carbon. The previous record, 1997-1998, was also during El Niño.

“Carbon dioxide concentrations haven’t been this high in millions of years,” NASA carbon and water cycle research scientist Erika Podest said in a statement on breaking another carbon milestone last year. “Even more alarming is the rate of increase in the last five decades and the fact that carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years.”

Well then. The world’s work is just beginning.

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Tech billionaires and Republican leaders use secret retreat to plot against Trump

by BarrettMeares Posted on March 9, 2016

Tech billionaires and Republican leaders use secret retreat to plot against Trump

By Katie Herzogon 9 Mar 2016comments Share

In a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from trampling all over their presidential primary, billionaires, tech leaders, and establishment Republicans met last weekend on a private resort on Sea Island, Georgia, to come up with a plan.

The Huffington Post reports that attendees of the American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, political operative Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, several members of Congress, and business luminaries like Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Larry Page, Napster creator Sean Parker, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, and Tesla founder and libertarian clean energy advocate Elon Musk, who really, really hates Donald Trump. Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, was also in attendance at the off-the-record meeting, and he reportedly wrote in an email that “A specter was haunting the World Forum — the specter of Donald Trump.”

While the event is notoriously secretive, the main attraction (beside the spa), according to insiders, was a presentation by Karl Rove, the Bush policy advisor who has nearly as many scandals linked to his name as Trump himself. Rove reportedly used data from focus groups to show that most Americans don’t view Trump as “presidential” or think he should be “anywhere near a nuclear trigger.” We don’t know where Rove got his data, but a quick Google test tells us basically the same thing.

Of course, Trump’s continuing dominance in the polls and primaries shows that some American voters might not actually have a problem with a man they think is a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler — even an orange-tinted reincarnation who thinks climate change is a liberal hoax and talks about his penis on national television. Regardless, Rove argued at the Forum that Trump’s presumed victory could be thwarted if rivals John Kasich, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio can siphon off enough votes to deny him a plurality at the Republican National Convention. If that happened, Rove would likely throw his considerable weight behind Kasich or Rubio — anyone else, Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, will lose to his presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

So did the power players down in Georgia come up with plan? Doubtful.

“Whatever becomes of Trump’s campaign,” wrote Sean Illing in Salon, “this much is certain: the people on that island won’t have a say in it. Trump owes his existence to the angry mob supporting him, and that mob was born of decades of Republican propaganda.”

The men of Sea Island, Rove, McConnell, Ryan, among others, have used their political will to spread this propaganda and divide the nation. Whatever plan did or didn’t come of AEI’s forum, it’s almost uplifting that the Republican party elites have found someone besides Obama and his fellow Democrats to dump their rage upon — and it’s someone of their own creation.

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