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Virginia Republicans nominate climate-denying misogynist for state Supreme Court

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

by ZenaidaBecerra Posted on March 8, 2016

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

By Katie Herzogon 8 Mar 2016comments Share

The death rattle of coal industry grew a little louder when JPMorgan Chase announced last week that the bank will no longer be directly financing new coal operations in the developed world. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change, and that the trends toward more sustainable, low-carbon economies represent growing business opportunities,” said the bank in a statement.

JPMorgan joins a growing list of banks that have pledge to cut ties with coal, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. But before you start to think big banks are closet progressives, it’s best to keep in mind that even if they do cut ties that they are still following the money: Coal is a poor investment right now. Demand for coal in the U.S. has dropped 10 percent in the last three years, and it will drop off even more in the next 15, since replacing the power sector’s favorite fuel with renewable energy and natural gas is a key component of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Right now, production is at a 30-year low, and coal companies are going bust left and right. At the State of the Union in January, the president called on the elimination federal subsidies for fossil fuels as well as an end to cheap leases on federal lands for oil and coal companies. So while JPMorgan’s plan to pull back from coal is good, it’s also smart.

The coal industry, of course, disagrees. Bloomberg Business reports that the the National Mining Association called JPMorgan’s changes “hardly a heroic gesture” given the market downturn. “The bank hedges its bets on financing projects in developing countries, because, not surprisingly, that’s where the growth is and will be,” said Luke Popovich in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

He’s got a point: JPMorgan isn’t divesting from fuel entirely. The bank will continue to finance coal projects in developing nations using ultra-supercritical technology, which have lower emissions and higher efficiency than conventional plants. So while this is a step in the right direction, it’s just that: A step.

“In order to have a chance at stabilizing the climate, we need financial institutions to follow these commitments on coal mining with further steps to end coal financing altogether,” said Ben Collins, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, an organization lobbying for coal divestment. “It’s time for the financial sector to step up and lead the just transition we need to a clean, renewable future.”

Clearly, we’re not there yet, but with JPMorgan’s announcement, the death of Big Coal looks even more inevitable.

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Here’s why Whole Foods’ pre-peeled oranges might not be as absurd as they sound

by AnnisWillard Posted on March 7, 2016

Here’s why Whole Foods’ pre-peeled oranges might not be as absurd as they sound

By Katie Herzogon 7 Mar 2016comments Share

Whole Foods Market felt the wrath of a thousand tweeters last week after Londoner Nathalie Gordon posted an image of a new store product.

It’s an orange, but an upgraded, 2.0 version that is both more wasteful and, at $6 a pound, a hell of a lot more expensive than the regular kind.

Four days after Gordon tweeted this image, it has gotten nearly 100,000 retweets, almost as many likes, and its own hashtag — #orangegate — inspired by the maelstrom. The media has widely covered the controversial new product, with headlines like “Whole Foods’ Pre-Peeled Oranges Are the Ultimate in Bourgeois Laziness” (Eater), “Whole Foods Sells Peeled Oranges In Plastic Containers, World Revolts” (Huffington Post), and my personal favorite, “Nach Shitstorm geschälte Orange in Plastikpackung vom Markt genommen,” or, “After Shitstorm, Peeled Orange in Plastic Pack Removed From the Market,” from German site Netzfrauen.

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The overwhelming response to #orangegate has been, “WTF, Whole Foods?” In reaction, the company wasted no time pulling the product from its shelves, blaming a few experimental stores, and then making a rather astute joke about the whole thing.

It makes you wonder: Would the outcry have been so loud had the pre-peeled oranges been sold in cute little Mason jars?

Whether plastic or glass, #orangegate brings to mind another recent Whole Foods scandal, #asparaguswatergate, in which a store in California was busted selling three stalks of asparagus in a bottle of tap water. For $6. But unlike #asparaguswatergate, #orangegate has seen a vocal contingent of consumers defending Whole Foods. No, these aren’t lobbyists for the plastic industry or hoarders of to-go containers. They’re folks with arthritis and other disabilities.

Take disability studies scholar Kim Sauder, who wrote on her blog:

As a person with limited hand dexterity, I look at this and see an easier way to eat healthy food. I actively avoid eating oranges, not because I dislike them (they are definitely tasty) but because I have so much difficulty peeling them. Any attempt to peel an orange is likely to result in an unappetizing mess because I’ve squeezed the orange to hard while trying to maneuver it for peel removal.

I don’t have access to peeled oranges from my grocery store though I’d probably take advantage of them if I did. I do buy precut vegetables all the time because it is more convenient and safer for me to do so. …

Anything that helps make my regular acts of daily life safer and more convenient is always a plus. So I was one of a number of disabled people who pushed back against the wholesale shaming of preprepared foods.

Now, Sauder isn’t naive: She doesn’t think that Whole Foods came up with pre-peeled oranges in order to ease the lives of folks with disabilities. Whole Foods is a business, after all, and while the company may have slightly better core values than, say, Walmart, it’s still a capitalist enterprise — one that often prizes the bottom line over human suffering. But still, she has a point, and one that environmentalists must consider: Just as for too long the green movement ignored the effects of environmental degradation on minority and poor populations, they — we — have also ignored the disabled.

Whole Foods sells a lot of shit in plastic boxes, from pre-packaged salads to cut watermelon to that guacamole that costs a week’s pay but is kind of worth it. But, for the most part, we don’t bitch and moan about those. And it’s not just Whole Foods: Tons of stores use excess packaging. Take Trader Joe’s. Do those green peppers really need to be shrouded in plastic? And how are you supposed to get a feel for your heirloom tomatoes if they’re stuck in a vegetable coffin? It’s maddening. I’ve actually seen bananas wrapped in plastic — in the peel — at my neighborhood Harris Teeter before, something that enraged me so much that I stopped eating bananas. So while Whole Foods might be guilty, it’s hardly guilty alone.

We have a packaging problem in this country. That’s clear. But we also have a problem with dismissing the needs of minority populations because, too often, we don’t even see them. Whole Foods needs to do better, but the rest of us need to do better too.

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China’s greenhouse emissions might already have peaked

by YukikoQ52ojac Posted on March 7, 2016

China’s greenhouse emissions might already have peaked

By James Weston 7 Mar 2016comments Share

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

China is the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping pollution that is causing global warming. So what China spews into the air — how much, and when — is crucial to the planet’s future.

There might be some optimistic news on that front today.

For years, experts have expected China’s greenhouse gas emissions to continue growing over the next couple decades. But according to a new study, Chinese emissions may have actually peaked in 2014 — and could soon begin a steady decline. And if those emissions didn’t peak in 2014, researchers say, they definitely will by 2025, years ahead of China’s official 2030 goal. (Researchers say the pace and scale of change in China’s economy make it hard to pinpoint the exact year emissions will peak — or to say for sure if they already have.)

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The new findings appear in a paper released Sunday night by the U.K.’s Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. It was authored by Fergus Green and the famous climate change research economist, Nicholas Stern.

China’s current peak-emissions target of 2030 was enshrined in the historic U.S.-China climate agreement reached at the end of 2014. That deal paved the way for the global Paris agreement late last year.

But there has been a growing body of research suggesting that China could reach that goal much sooner. The new analysis is based on economic forecasts that take into account the shifting and contracting nature of the Chinese economy, which is moving away from energy-intensive industries like construction and steel-making and towards service-related sectors. The Chinese government has instituted a three-year moratorium on approving new coal mines, and is scrambling to alleviate the country’s air pollution crisis.

The study follows Chinese statistics published last week showing the country’s coal consumption dropping 3.7 percent in 2015, marking the second year in a row that the country has slashed coal use and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as news the country will close 1,000 coal mines this year alone.

As part of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan — a blueprint used by the Chinese government to lay out economic and social priorities — China announced last week it will attempt to reduce its carbon dioxide intensity by 18 percent between now and 2020, according to the Washington Post.

The new research is putting pressure on Chinese officials to do even more to fight climate change.

“China’s international commitment to peak emissions ‘around 2030’ should be seen as a highly conservative upper limit from a government that prefers to under-promise and over-deliver,” the report says.

China was put in an awkward position Monday when it was forced by news of Green and Stern’s report to say its emissions were, in fact, still growing, in order to defend its 2030 target as appropriate. Chinese leaders are famously sensitive about the country’s slowing economy, and fearful that scrutiny of its economic and environmental policies could lead to widespread discontent.

“You asked whether our emissions had peaked in 2014 — certainly not,” said Xie Zhenhua, the country’s top climate change envoy, according to Reuters. “In fact, our carbon dioxide emissions are still increasing.”

Last week, America’s own top climate official, Todd Stern, told reporters in Beijing that there could be international pressure if China’s targets appeared to be too easy to achieve. “It will be up to the Chinese government whether they increase their target but there will obviously be a lot of international opinion looking forward to additional measures — whether it is China or anyone else,” he said, according to Reuters.

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There’s an important ballot fight in Florida between big power companies and the solar industry

by VitoBadgett Posted on March 7, 2016

There’s an important ballot fight in Florida between big power companies and the solar industry

By Tim McDonnellon 7 Mar 2016comments Share

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

The Florida Supreme Court is set to weigh in on a controversial ballot measure that environmentalists warn could erect a new obstacle for the state’s struggling renewable-energy industry.

On Monday, the court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments over Amendment 1, a proposed ballot initiative that purports to strengthen the legal rights of homeowners who have rooftop solar panels. But critics in the solar industry and environmental groups claim that if the measure passes in November, it would actually deal a major blow to rooftop solar by undermining one of the key state policies supporting it.

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Amendment 1 was created by an organization with a grassroots-sounding name: Consumers for Smart Solar. In reality, though, the organization is financed by the state’s major electric utility companies as well as by conservative groups with ties to the Koch brothers. The measure qualified for the ballot in late January, after nabbing nearly 700,000 signatures from Floridians. A competing measure — pushed by Floridians for Solar Choice, a group backed by the solar industry — did not get enough signatures to make the ballot.

In Florida, the Supreme Court is commonly asked by the attorney general to review ballot initiatives to ensure that what voters will read on the ballot accurately characterizes the legal effects of the measure. And in this case, it does not, according to a legal brief filed by the environmental group Earthjustice:

If passed by the voters, the utility-sponsored amendment would be a constitutional endorsement of the idea that rooftop solar users should pay higher utility bills than other customers. Solar users could end up paying twice as much as other customers pay to buy power from the utilities. This utility-sponsored amendment pretends to be pro-solar but is actually a disguised attempt to derail rooftop solar in Florida.

“This is really shrewd, cynical deception,” said David Guest, the Earthjustice attorney who will argue the group’s position to the court on Monday.

A spokesperson for the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar countered in an email that “our amendment is not misleading” and that its opponents “are manufacturing false arguments and using scare tactics.”

The court battle over the ballot measure is just the latest episode in a long and brutal fight in Florida pitting solar companies and their environmentalist allies against power companies that fear losing their customers to rooftop solar power. Despite being one of the country’s sunniest (and largest) states, Florida ranks just 15th for solar installations. As Tim Dickinson recently explained in a great feature for Rolling Stone:

Key policies that have spurred a rooftop solar revolution elsewhere in America are absent or actually illegal in Florida. Unlike the majority of states, even Texas, Florida has no mandate to generate any portion of its electricity from renewable power. Worse, the state’s restrictive monopoly utility law forbids anyone but the power companies from buying and selling electricity. Landlords cannot sell power from solar panels to tenants. Popular solar leasing programs like those offered by SolarCity and Sunrun are outlawed. Rooftop solar is limited to those who can afford the upfront expense; as a result, fewer than 9,000 Florida homes have panels installed.

The controversial ballot measure would amend the Florida constitution to guarantee that “electricity consumers have the right to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use.” Sounds great, right?

Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, Floridians already have that right, even though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the state’s Constitution.

“There already is a right to own or lease solar,” explained Hannah Wiseman, a professor of energy law at Florida State University. In this area, she said, Amendment 1 “is entrenching existing laws.”

What the amendment won’t do, however, is legalize the type of solar lease offered by SolarCity, which is currently banned in Florida. “Third-party ownership” is a business model in which a contractor such as SolarCity installs solar panels on your roof free of charge, retains ownership of those panels, and then sells you the electricity they produce at less than the cost of buying electricity from the grid. That model has been extremely successful for SolarCity in California and other leading solar states, since it’s simple and allows homeowners to avoid the big up-front costs of installing and maintaining their own panels. In Florida, only electric utilities have the right to sell electricity to homeowners; you can buy or lease your own solar panels, but you can’t arrange to buy power from a third-party solar contractor. The failed ballot measure backed by Floridians for Solar Choice would have changed that, but Amendment 1 will not.

But according to Guest, there’s an even more insidious provision in Amendment 1’s fine print. The amendment says state and local governments have the authority “to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do.”

The issue here is net metering, a policy that exists in almost every state (including Florida) that requires electric utilities to purchase excess electricity from solar homes. In effect, the extra power your panels produce in the afternoon offsets the cost of power you take from the grid at night. The policy is widely loathed by power companies because they not only lose a paying customer to solar but also have to pay that customer and take the customer’s extra power off their hands. Electric utilities across the country have waged a variety of wars against net metering over the last several years; one of their biggest wins was in Nevada this year.

Often the fight comes down to a complicated, sometimes esoteric debate about whether net metering forces utilities to raise their rates for nonsolar homes to cover the cost of solar homes. (In addition to having to buy the excess power, utilities say solar homes still make use of transmission lines and other grid infrastructure without paying their fair share for it.)

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That brings us back to the amendment: If passed, Wiseman said, it would allow utilities to argue that net metering is a “subsidy” for solar and that lawmakers have the authority to prohibit it.

“It could open the door for utilities charging solar users high fixed fees and potentially getting rid of net metering,” Wiseman said.

Guest was more blunt: “They’re trying to kill net metering, is really what it is.”

All of this seems to be pretty confusing for Floridians, who appear to hold conflicting views on the controversy. According to the solar-industry-backed Floridians for Solar Choice, 82 percent of the state’s voters said they would support changing the law to permit third-party ownership of solar. But a recent poll from the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar found that 73 percent of voters support their ballot measure.

One of the amendment’s opponents is Debbie Dooley, a Georgia-based Tea Party activist who has rallied conservative opposition to this measure and other potentially anti-solar policies around the country. Consumers for Smart Solar is engaged in “a campaign of lies and deception,” she said. The group “claims to support a free-market principle, but they are taking an anti-free-market position by siding with monopolies to stop competition from solar.”

Now it’s up to the court to determine if Amendment 1’s wording is, in fact, deceptive. If they decide it is, they could throw the measure out. The case is much more ambiguous than the ballot measure language the court normally reviews, Wiseman said. But she added it’s rare for the court to remove initiatives from the ballot.

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Hillary Clinton has a new tune on fracking

by GonzaloTen93 Posted on March 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton has a new tune on fracking

By Rebecca Leberon 6 Mar 2016comments Share

A college student asked Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton a simple question at the Flint, Mich., debate on Sunday night: “Do you support fracking?”

And Bernie Sanders had a simple answer: “No, I do not support fracking.”

Hillary Clinton, though, needed more time to outline three conditions in a more nuanced answer on fracking. She’s against it “when any locality or any state is against it,” “when the release of methane or contamination of water is present,” and “unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using.”

Until those conditions are met, “we’ve got to regulate everything that is currently underway, and we have to have a system in place that prevents further fracking.”

“By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she added.

Clinton offered qualified support for fracking well before Sanders even registered in the presidential race. Addressing the National Clean Energy Summit in 2014, Clinton said, “we have to face head-on the legitimate, pressing environmental concerns about some new extraction practices and their impacts on local water, soil, and air supplies. Methane leaks in the production and transportation of natural gas are particularly troubling. So it’s crucial that we put in place smart regulations and enforce them, including deciding not to drill when the risks are too high.”

Yet, she sounded much more rosy on natural gas and fracking years ago than she does now. “With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal. And expanding production is creating tens of thousands of new jobs,” she said in 2014. “And lower costs are helping give the United States a big competitive advantage in energy-intensive energies.”

As secretary of state in 2010, Clinton argued in favor of gas as “the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today,” and said that “if developed, shale gas could make an important contribution to our region’s energy supply, just as it does now for the United States.” Her office, meanwhile, promoted fracking in developing nations.

After leaving the Obama administration in 2014, Clinton still emphasized the benefits of fracking, implying that strict limits on fracking should be the exception to the rule. In 2016, Clinton has flipped her emphasis, as Sanders has gained an edge from his anti-fracking stance: Now, she suggests it will be a rare, unlikely case when fracking should be allowed.

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Why the EPA’s recent pesticide battle could be a big deal

by Aisha69O9866892 Posted on March 4, 2016

Why the EPA’s recent pesticide battle could be a big deal

By Melissa Croninon 4 Mar 2016comments Share

A battle between the U.S. government and a chemical giant revealed a fundamental flaw in the way we control pesticides — one that could be allowing thousands of unsafe chemicals to go undetected.

In a rare show of regulatory muscle, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Notice of Intent on Tuesday, announcing that it planned to cancel the sale of products that included a pesticide called flubendiamide as an active ingredient. The EPA has been monitoring these products, manufactured mainly by the company Bayer CropScience LP (and also by the smaller Japanese company Nichino America, Inc.), over the past few years. Studies have shown the pesticide was breaking down into a different, more deadly compound that was killing mussels and other invertebrates that fish rely on for food — a problem that the agency deemed serious enough to warrant the banning of all products of its kind.

The EPA’s move to ban the products is a novel one, and could signal a change in the way it regulates pesticides, particularly with issuing “conditional registrations,” a loophole that allows pesticides that have not undergone otherwise required safety testing to enter the market. Conditional registrations aren’t uncommon at all — according to a 2013 report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, as much as 65 percent of more than 16,000 pesticides were first approved by the EPA for the market by way of conditional registrations.

David Epstein, a senior entomologist at the USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy, says that these conditional registrations exist to aid growers of crops like vegetables, fruits, and nuts keep away pests. And in theory, they can be a beneficial aid to help smaller growers — but the process isn’t perfect.

“It’s a risk-benefit analysis,” Epstein told Grist, explaining that registrants are evaluated for risk in terms of things like human health, environmental safety, and non-target effects, and then they weigh the pesticide’s potential benefits to farmers. Epstein said that flubendiamide, a pesticide he’s used himself on crops, is an important tool for farmers to keep away harmful pests. The conditional registration process, he said, is a way to help growers get pesticides like these more quickly.

“It’s an evolving process,” he said. “Mistakes are made and corrected, and then we and move on.”

But there’s a big problem, according to Nathan Donley, a staff scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity and an expert on pesticide regulations.

“The EPA has no way of tracking these conditional registrations,” he told Grist. “During the normal regulatory process, the public can review docs and comment. But in conditional registration, it all happens backdoor; the public doesn’t get to see.”

Donley argues that the fundamental concept of conditional registration is flawed, and should be shut down until the EPA can better regulate pesticides.

“There’s more than enough pesticides on the market,” said Donley. “If a chemical company can’t demonstrate that its pesticide is safe, then that pesticide shouldn’t be on the market.”

The latest flubendiamide news is only the most recent skirmish in a battle that’s been brewing for months between Bayer, a German chemical giant worth $42 billion that produces the pesticide under the trade name Belt, and the EPA. It all began back in 2008, when the EPA issued a conditional registration for flubendiamide — the chemical was legal to manufacture, but only under the condition that the companies must produce toxicity data on the impact of its use over the next few years, to fill in gaps in the original risk assessment. The EPA gave Bayer a generous five years to conduct scientific studies to prove that flubendiamide is safe for aquatic invertebrates, or the pesticide would have to go. Bayer agreed that it would voluntarily cancel the products if these stipulations weren’t met.

Seven years later — two years longer than expected — studies conducted by the EPA found that flubendiamide was having adverse effects on aquatic invertebrates. In January, the EPA gave Bayer the sign: a notice that, as they had agreed, Bayer must withdraw its flubendiamide pesticides. But last month, Bayer flat-out refused. In a statement, the company said that it “instead will seek a review of the product’s registration in an administrative law hearing,” asserting that the product was safe. It was a bold move, one that triggered outrage among environmentalists, many of whom demanded that Bayer play by the rules.

Now, it’s a stalemate, with EPA demanding flubendiamide products be banned, and Bayer resisting. But the damage, unfortunately, is already done. In California alone, 42,495 pounds of flubendiamide were sprayed onto 521,140 acres in 2013. In some places, it was applied six times in one year, misted over crops like soybeans, alfalfa, watermelon, almonds, peppers, and tobacco. In many cases, the EPA asserts, it was also being sprayed over wildlife.

The EPA’s notice to Bayer is out in the open, but flubendiamide isn’t leaving yet. According to NPR, Bayer is demanding a hearing before an administrative law judge before it makes any moves. The case has provoked renewed questions about what role the EPA should — and shouldn’t — play in pesticide regulations, and how to prevent unsafe chemicals from being unleashed on the planet.

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Bad news: Low-carbon air travel isn’t very likely

by NicholXVPT Posted on March 4, 2016

Bad news: Low-carbon air travel isn’t very likely

By Suzanne Jacobson 4 Mar 2016comments Share

Propaganda, false narratives, mythical science, relentless money-grubbing — I’m not talking about American politics; I’m talking about the aviation industry.

Air travel is terrible for the environment. (It’s also pretty bad for your wallet, dignity, and general respect for other people, but that’s another story.) So it’s no wonder that news organizations, including this one, tend to clamber over ever new technological innovation that comes around, promising to deliver low- or no-emission airplanes. But according to a new study published in the journal Transportation Research Part D, the prospect of near-term sustainable aviation is a myth.

Here are the sobering facts, according to the study: There were about 3,700 commercial planes in use back in 1970, 9,200 by 1990, and 21,000 by 2010. By 2030, there could be up to 40,000, and by 2050, air travel could account for as much as 19 percent of total energy used for transportation, compared to 11 percent in 2006.

Airplanes today are much more efficient — and safer — than the airplanes of Airplane!, sure, but not efficient enough to compensate for a more than quintupling of the fleet. And now, those emissions are only going to continue to rise, and, as the researchers note, “no international policy will in the foreseeable future address this situation.”

Fortunately, there’s a groundbreaking techno-fix just around the corner, waiting to usher in the clean airplane of the future, right? Wrong. According to these researchers, that airplane is a false hope that we’ve been clinging to for more than 20 years, and here’s how they found out:

First, the team compiled a list of 20 efficiency-boosting technologies hyped by the aviation industry between 1994 and 2013. These potential game-changers broke down into three broad categories: alternative fuels like hydrogen, algae, and this stuff that you’ve probably never heard of; new engines that could, for example, run on sunlight or electricity; and “airframe” improvements that would make planes lighter and more aerodynamic.

To assess how these techno-fixes played in the media, the researchers then searched the archives of major news publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and The Guardian and found 1,532 articles mentioning said miracles of innovation. From there, they narrowed the results to 1,294 articles about the nine most popular technologies and then used a random sampling of 180 articles for close analysis.

And here’s what they found:

Most of the ‘solutions’ that have been presented over the past 20 years constitute technology myths. Specifically, it is possible to distinguish three types of myths, i.e. (i) myths that refer to abandoned technologies once seen as promising; (ii) myths that refer to emerging technology discourses, though generally overstating the realistic potential offered by these technologies (and some of these potentially representing dead ends as well); and (iii) myths that refer to solutions that are impossible for physical reasons; this latter type of myth exemplified by the notion of solar flight.

The danger here is that believing these myths gives us an excuse to not address the huge problem that is air travel in a time of climate change. As evidence of this, the researchers point to something that U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Davey said in The Guardian in 2014: “If you look at the future of flight it is possible to imagine, with technological innovation, that we will have zero-carbon flight in the future.”

It’s also possible to imagine that we’ll one day be able to go through airport security without having TSA agents give us attitude for forgetting that laptops go in their own bins, belts come off, watches stay on, shoes come off — but don’t need a bin — boarding passes can be put away, baggy sweatshirts come off if you’ve got something on underneath, liquids are OK in small amounts but still go in a bin, and for the love of god EMPTY YOUR POCKETS.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen anytime soon.

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

by MilfordEdgell Posted on March 4, 2016

14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

By Rebecca Leberon 4 Mar 2016comments Share

It’s not that expectations were very high for the Republican debate in Detroit on Thursday night. Even so, the debate hardly paid attention to the city’s troubles with lead poisoning. Aside for brief comments from Marco Rubio (in which he defended Republican Gov. Rick Snyder), the GOP brushed the issue aside, while standing a mere 70 miles from Flint. Instead, we heard about more pressing topics — like presidential penises.

Democrats have their own debate in Flint on Sunday, when environmental justice activists have higher hopes for a substantive discussion on both race and the environment.

“If Flint is not the place that this happens, it probably is not going to happen in a controlled format with two presidential candidates, ever,” Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy and organizing director of Environmental Action, told Grist.

A coalition of groups partnering with Environmental Action delivered a petition with 85,000 signatures that calls on the Democratic National Committee to focus solely on racial and environmental justice. Sierra Club, the NAACP, and local community leaders are holding their own event Sunday to draw attention to other “Flints” around the country.

Both Environmental Action and Sierra Club gave Grist separate lists of sample questions they’d like to hear answers to — the topics include hydraulic fracturing, the future of fossil fuels, and equitable policy to help communities of color.

Here’s what Environmental Action wants answers on:

1. Robert Bullard, known as the “father” of environmental justice in America, has said that climate change impacts communities of color “first and worst.” As president, what specific steps would you take to make sure your policies to fight global warming better protect communities of color on the front lines of this global crisis?

2. Secretary Clinton, you just released a bulletin that calls for more use of natural gas as well as carbon capture and sequestration. But wouldn’t this plan mean increased fracking across the country and the potential for drinking water sources to be tainted as it is right here in Flint? Is there a safe way to frack, and if so, what steps would you take to ensure safety and minimize disproportionate impacts to communities of color?

3. Last December, nearly 200 world leaders signed an agreement you both support to cap global warming at 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. To accomplish that goal, scientists tell us we must leave 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. As president, what specific policies would you implement to limit new oil, gas, and coal development and keep America under this “carbon budget”? Secretary Clinton, will you support Sen. Sanders’ plan to ban drilling and mining on public lands and waters, the so-called “Keep It In The Ground” act?

4. Sen. Sanders, how will you enforce a ban on fossil fuel extraction without the support of Congress — which has voted in favor of the Keystone pipeline, oil exports, gas exports, and other fossil fuel extraction in the last six months?

5. Solutions to climate change such as electric cars and efficient lightbulbs are predicated on economic resources that are unavailable to many low-wealth communities of color. What climate change strategies would each of you implement to ensure that people of all income levels can take part in and benefit from living sustainably?

6. Policies like President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, created to address environmental racism, have been never been ratified or implemented as a national law. If elected, how would you overcome political obstacles that stand in the way of equitable and efficient environmental policy?

7. Secretary Clinton, your past statements, referring to men of color as “super-predators,” and past polices that you supported that resulted in the mass incarceration of largely Latino and African American [men] have caused some to question your commitment to racial justice. Do you regret your previous statement and support of that policy, and how would you correct it as president?

8. The GI Bill, New Deal, and favorable housing policies created generational wealth for white Americans. These programs were largely not made available to people of color, which in part contributes to the vast wealth disparity between white people and people of color. What are some specific policies you would implement to not only increase incomes for people of color, but also allow them to generate similar generational wealth as their white counterparts?

9. Native Americans who live on sovereign land have seen treaties broken time and time again, which has exposed them to toxic air and water as well as unequal protection and due process. As president, what commitment will you make to ensure tribal sovereignty and that treaties are respected and maintained?

10. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have not only contributed to increased carbon emissions, but they have also had significant impacts on jobs in communities like Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, and others. Some studies have shown that communities of color were hit the hardest from jobs shipped overseas as a result of these agreements. Where do each of you stand on free trade agreements, and if you advocate for them, how will you ensure they have environmental standards and do not result in the loss of American jobs essential to maintaining the middle class?

11. Should immigration enforcement should be suspended until the 1,000+ undocumented people in Flint get the services and help they need, should the Border Patrol should continue setting up in and around the city while this crisis is ongoing?

Sierra Club added three questions of its own that its members on the ground in Michigan want answered:

12. Do you think emergency manager laws, like the one in Michigan, are compatible with democratic ideals?

13. How should the government ensure that rebuilding after a disaster like Flint provides good paying local jobs that help lift up the community?

14. How should the federal government get involved when a crisis like Flint occurs?

Hold out some hope that CNN, which is moderating the debate, is listening. Rogers-Wright spoke to a network representative earlier this week about the questions the network should ask on Sunday, so a couple of these may indeed get prime-time attention.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hopefully won’t need too much prompting, though: Ahead of Michigan’s primary next week, Clinton has drawn attention to Flint’s problems as a main focus of her campaign, and Sanders has also called on Snyder to resign.

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