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North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

by BelindaStowers Posted on May 17, 2016

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

By on May 17, 2016 1:00 pmShare

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has been in the news lately thanks to HB2, a bill he signed into law in March that forces transgender folks to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates. The backlash for McCrory — who is up for reelection this year — was swift. Along with a myriad of businesses who have threatened to pull out of the state, North Carolina residents themselves are protesting in creative ways: An “air horn orchestra” regularly performs outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, a Durham-based advertising firm is giving away toilet paper printed with the text of HB2, and activists delivered a porta-potty to McCrory’s lawn.

But HB2 isn’t the only issue that could have North Carolina voters reconsidering McCrory when they go to the polls this November: There’s also the governor’s cozy ties to Duke Energy and allegations that his administration let the company off easy after serious pollution violations.

A fine reduced

The story goes back to 2014, when Duke Energy — McCrory’s employer for nearly three decades — was responsible for a spill that dumped 40,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater into the Dan River, one of the largest coal ash spills in the nation’s history.

Initially, Duke was fined $25 million by the state, but in a retreat that many residents found disappointing — and fishy — the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) later privately negotiated the fine down to just $7 million. When the deal was announced in September 2015, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center called it “a total surrender and collapse by DEQ.”

An investigation by TV station WRAL later found that McCrory and DEQ officials secretly met with Duke Energy leaders, including company CEO Lynn Good, at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh a few months before the fine was lowered.

Duke, as it happens, donated $3 million to the Republican Governors Association soon after the 2014 coal ash spill. The association, which contributed to McCrory’s campaign in 2012, is expected to be a big backer of his reelection effort this year.

Dirty drinking water

But the low fine wasn’t the only favor that the McCrory administration appears to have done for Duke Energy.

After the Dan River spill, investigations found that Duke had more than a dozen coal ash storage sites across the state, many of which were leaching a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table. After this was discovered, 240 households located near coal ash sites were told not to drink from their wells. Duke Energy started supplying bottled water to those households in April 2015, as WBTV reports.

But a year later, the DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reversed the do-not-drink order. Residents were told their water was just as safe as water coming from public utilities.

That wasn’t true, WBTV reports. Some of the wells near Duke’s facilities were found to have levels of hexavalent chromium hundreds of times higher than the average level in the state’s public water systems.

So why the about-face by the state agencies? Duke Energy, it turns out, lobbied the state to reverse the do-not-drink order, according to the TV station. When state epidemiologist Megan Davies was deposed by a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, she said that she and her boss questioned the reversal. She also said that McCrory’s office intervened in the wording of initial do-not-drink letters sent out in April 2015.

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services insists that the water contamination is nothing to worry about. “The water in these wells meets the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Kendra Gerlach, communications director for the agency, said in a statement. “Allowing the affected residents to return to drinking their water is within federal and state guidelines and is consistent with safe drinking water practices across the country.”

For those who live near Duke’s coal ash sites, however, the state’s position doesn’t bring much comfort. In the year between the do-not-drink order and its reversal, nothing has changed. The coal ash sites weren’t cleaned up and the carcinogen didn’t go away. In fact, one thing has arguably gotten worse: In March, McCrory shut down the commission charged with overseeing the cleanup of Duke’s coal ash sites across the state.

“The water isn’t any different,” said Tad Helmstettler, an environmental health supervisor in Rowan County, one of the areas affected by the order. “If you were worried about the water before, you should be worried about it now.”

If polls are to be believed, McCrory has his own reasons to be worried: His approval rating is at an all-time low, and he’s in a tight race with Democratic challenger Roy Cooper. And as the spotlight shines brighter on HB2, as well as the governor’s ties to Duke Energy, McCrory’s prospects may only get darker.

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If You Think Ted Cruz Is Extreme, Wait Till You Meet the Conservative Activists Who Endorse Him

by MayraLamilami Posted on May 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Tuesday’s Indiana primary is arguably the final frontier for Ted Cruz to keep alive any prospect of winning the Republican presidential nomination. The poll numbers aren’t looking good for him in the Hoosier State, but he’s holding out hope that Indiana will join several other Midwestern states in rewarding him for his socially conservative record. But in his quest to become the favorite of social conservatives, Cruz has aligned himself with a number of far-right extremists who could cause him trouble in the increasingly unlikely event that he finds himself in a general election battle in November. From the star of Duck Dynasty to activists who advocate executing abortion doctors and gay people, here’s a partial list:

The Benham family: In February, Ted Cruz appointed David and Jason Benham, twin brothers and real estate entrepreneurs based in North Carolina, to his campaign’s Religious Liberty Advisory Council. As Mother Jones reported in April, the brothers have been at the forefront of every battle to oppose gay rights in North Carolina in recent years. They’ve opposed gay pride parades and organized anti-abortion protests, and at one point David Benham equated the battle against marriage equality with fighting Nazis. The brothers were most recently instrumental in stoking opposition to a Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance that eventually led to HB 2, the state’s transgender “bathroom bill” that has sparked a national uproar.

Their father, Flip Benham, is a well-known anti-gay and anti-abortion street preacher in Charlotte. In November, Cruz touted Benham’s endorsement in a press release. In 1994, Benham became the director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and he later renamed it Operation Save America. He still leads the group. Benham is best known for having helped convert Norma McCorvey—the “Jane Roe” of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion—to fundamentalist Christianity and to renouncing her past support of abortion rights. In 1995, Benham opened the national headquarters of Operation Rescue next door to the Dallas abortion clinic where McCorvey was working at the time as a marketing director. The two struck up a friendship, and when McCorvey eventually converted, Benham performed her baptism.

Troy Newman: After Flip Benham moved and renamed the national Operation Rescue operation, Newman took over its western branch, now based in Wichita, Kansas. In January, Cruz announced his campaign would form a Pro-Lifers for Cruz coalition co-chaired by 10 anti-abortion activists. Newman is one of them. The campaign’s press release announcing the coalition describes Newman as the author of Their Blood Cries Out, a 2000 book in which he wrote that “the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes.”

Last week, after Cruz appeared to be making a play for more women voters by announcing former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as his running mate, executives from several pro-choice groups wrote an open letter to the Cruz campaign encouraging it to fire Newman from Pro-Lifers for Cruz due to his history. “Troy Newman’s history of violent rhetoric and harassment toward women’s health providers is truly beyond the pale,” they wrote.

Kevin Swanson: Cruz was a featured speaker at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa last November. He was introduced by conference organizer Kevin Swanson, a pastor who is known for his belief that gay people should be killed. Right before bringing Cruz to join him onstage, Swanson gave an impassioned speech in which he clarified that gay people should be executed by the government only after they’ve had sufficient time to repent.

“Yes, Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals,” Swanson said, pacing the stage, his voice rising. “Yes, in Romans chapter 1, verse 32, the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of death. His words, not mine! And I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!” Here’s Swanson’s speech in full:

Cruz’s appearance at the event, along with those of former GOP presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Gov. Bobby Jindal, caused an uproar, but the Cruz campaign made no moves to distance itself from Swanson’s ideology. Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told the Rachel Maddow Show that Swanson’s call for the execution of gay people was “not explicit.” In December, the campaign changed its tune and told USA Today that it was a mistake for Cruz to attend Swanson’s event.

Tony Perkins: Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as an anti-LGBT hate group, and the chair of Pro-Lifers for Cruz. Early in his career, while working as a reserve police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1992, Perkins was suspended from duty after failing to report to his supervisors that an anti-abortion group was planning a violent protest at a local abortion clinic. Perkins had learned this information because he worked part-time for a local conservative TV station, and his camera crew was often outside the clinic, filming confrontations between pro-choice and anti-abortion protesters.

While managing a US Senate campaign in 1996, Perkins paid more than $80,000 to purchase the mailing list of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. He later gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, another white supremacist group, in front of a Confederate flag. Under his leadership, the Family Research Council has touted a number of false claims about LGBT people, most famously the idea that gay men are more prone to sexually abuse children. (Many medical groups, including the American Psychological Association, have debunked this claim.)

James Dobson: In February, Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, the largest organization of the religious right in the United States, endorsed Cruz for president in a TV ad and in robocalls to voters.

Focus on the Family has several million subscribers to its monthly magazines and more than 220 million listeners of its various radio broadcasts, which usually feature Dobson. The group has become known for its deep-pocketed opposition to marriage equality measures and candidates across the country who back gay marriage. It also supports the practice of reparative therapy, which aims to “cure” homosexuality, and has continued to do so even after Exodus International, a reparative therapy group it once partnered with, disbanded and disavowed the practice.

Dobson has also made some extreme statements over the years. He blamed the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on the legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage, warned of an impending civil war over gay marriage, and said he opposes the Harry Potter books because they promote a “New Age ideology” to kids.

Phil Robertson: In January, the Cruz campaign put out a video of the candidate duck hunting with Phil Robertson, the star of the A&E show Duck Dynasty, who has come under fire for his anti-gay comments. Robertson has compared homosexuality to bestiality and said AIDS is God’s “penalty” for immorality and gay sex.

In this video from the Cruz campaign, Robertson endorses Cruz, saying, “Ted is my man.” Robertson and Cruz are wearing face paint and hunting gear, shooting rifles into the air.

“I am thrilled to have Phil’s support for our campaign,” Cruz said at the time. In February, Cruz suggested that Robertson would make a good ambassador to the United Nations.

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If You Think Ted Cruz Is Extreme, Wait Till You Meet the Conservative Activists Who Endorse Him

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

by ClydeBrigstocke Posted on April 28, 2016

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

By on Apr 28, 2016 12:55 pmShare

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump just isn’t listening.

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Here’s Why Kids Are Still Getting More Obese

by GregoryDittmer Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to a 2015 New York Times analysis of government and private-sector data, the number of calories consumed annually by the average US child declined 9 percent between 2004 and 2013. And yet, researchers from Duke and Wake Forest have found that trend has not improved the child obesity situation.

Using body mass index data from the National Health Examination Survey, which tracks randomly selected households with health exams and surveys every two years, the researchers calculated moderate (class 1), mid-level (class 2) and extreme (class 3) obesity rates among kids aged 2 to 19. Here’s what they found, from a paper they published in the peer-reviewed journal Obesity.

From “Prevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity in US Children, 1999-2014,” Skinner et al, 2016.

The “overweight” rate—which encompasses the above “obese” categories as well as slightly overweight kids—also nudged upward from an already-high level: 28.8 percent from 1999 to 2000, compared with 33.4 percent from 2013 to 2014, the study found. The authors broke out data by age, gender, and race, and not a single group showed a statistically significant decline in obesity or being overweight over the time frame. (The authors used standard definitions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Overweight kids fall between the 85th and 95th percentiles compared with peers of the same age and gender, while obesity starts above the 95th percentile.)

So, despite the above-mentioned drop in calorie intake, our kids are still packing on too much weight too fast. What gives?

I put the question to Barry Popkin, a veteran obesity researcher and professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. (He wasn’t involved in the paper). He said that while kids have eased up on problematic items like sugary sodas in recent years, they’re “not shifting the quality of their diets toward healthy foods.” Instead, “we continue to see our children mainly eat what we would call junk food,” relying heavily on cookies and other grain-based sweets, along with plenty of salty snacks, fruit juice (which acts an awful lot like soda in our bodies), and other sugary beverages.

A recent analysis of another big federal data set, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), bears out Popkin’s claim. When infants transition from baby food to solid food, they still tend to get plied with plenty of processed junk and few vegetables, the study found (more here). The report noted that 40 percent of babies get brownies or cookies, and that French fries and chips are the most common form of vegetables kids eat by the time they’re two years old.

But obesity doesn’t exist just because of individual choices by parents and kids. On the policy front, the US government “has yet to aggressively do more than try to make some minor changes in a few programs,” Popkin added. For example, Congress and President Barack Obama reformed the school food environment in important ways back in 2010, cutting down on the once-ubiquitous availability of sugary snacks and beverages, but public school cafeterias are still constrained by tight budgets to churning out plenty of highly processed food. (More here on the the modest US lunch reforms and the brewing congressional backlash against them.) In Brazil, by contrast, “70 percent of all food served in schools must be real food that is healthy,” Popkin said.

And then there are chemical factors not directly related to food choices. Chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates are ubiquitous in food packaging and all manner of consumers products; yet there’s “strong mechanistic, experimental, animal, and epidemiological evidence” that at tiny doses they mess with our endocrine systems and can trigger obesity and diabetes, warns the Endocrine Society. Kids can be saddled with a higher risk of obesity before they’re even born, when their pregnant moms are exposed to BPA.

Add all of this to stubbornly low rates of physical activity among kids and the long decline of time and resources devoted to physical-education classes and even recess, and it’s no wonder our childhood obesity problem persists.

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Here’s Why Kids Are Still Getting More Obese

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The bison is back and better than ever

by CathyHenson Posted on April 26, 2016

The bison is back and better than ever

By on Apr 26, 2016Share

Congratulations to the lumbering, humbling bison. It’s set to become America’s new national mammal.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the National Bison Legacy Act, the rare truly bipartisan bill that’s earned endorsements from Native Americans, conservationists, and ranchers. Since the Senate passed the bill in December, it only takes President Barack Obama’s signature to become official.

The bill launches the 10,000-year-old species to a distinction only held by the bald eagle. It’s a big upgrade for an animal that was once nearly hunted to extinction, but has recovered to a population of about 500,000 in North America.

Despite all this attention, it doesn’t mean that bison are getting special treatment. On the contrary, national designation won’t keep them from being used for food, so the mighty animal will still face hordes of jerky-hungry hipsters.

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Celebrating Bats on Bat Appreciation Day

by lilazepps099 Posted on April 16, 2016

Bats do a whole lot more than cruise the skies at night. They play an important role in balancing our ecosystem, eating harmful insects and acting as natural pest control. And although some people think bats are freaky looking, there are hundreds of reasons to love these flying mammals.

5 Fun Bat Facts For Bat Appreciation Day

1. Bats are the only flying mammals. Talk about bragging rights! These guys can cruise up to 60 miles per hour.

2. Bats use echolocation. Consider bats the dolphins of the sky. They use echolocation not for communication, but for finding food in the dark.

3. A quarter of all mammals are bats. There are over 1,000 bat species in the world, making up 1/4th of all mammals! However, over 50 percent of these species are declining, either already endangered or on their way.

4. Bats have only one baby per year. Similar to humans, bats typically only have one bat baby (called a pup) per year. Just like people, bats will occasionally have twins.

5. Bats often eat their body weightsdaily. Insect-eating bats can consume over 1,000 insects every night. That’s one efficient mosquito trap!

Unfortunately, many once-abundant bat species in the U.S. are now endangered, and all of them are threatened.

Why Are They at Risk?

Bats are at risk for two main reasons. The first is habitat loss, which unfortunately is no one’s fault but our own. As we continue to develop more and more forest land, bats are losing their homes.

The second reason we’re seeing fewer bats is due to a fatal and fast-spreading fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, which attacks bats during hibernation, invading their skin, causing dehydration and creating a need for the critters to leave their caves early in search of food and water. Caused by a fungus from Eurasia, the disease has killed at least 5.7 million bats since it arrived to North American in 2006. White-nose syndrome has been found in 26 U.S. states and 5 Canadian provinces.

How You Can Help

1. Don’t use pesticides. While you may be using poison to keep pests off your plants, insects are bats top food sources, so chemicals are easily transferred to our flying friends.

2. Stay out of caves. By accidentally entering a hibernation site, you can disturb a bat’s natural cycle and harm the overall population.

3. Fight for forest conservation. Habitat loss is a huge contributor to the decline in bat population. Do all you can to fight for our natural forest reserves to help promote safe spaces for bats to live.

4. Adopt a bat. Don’t worry, you don’t have to take it home. These virtual bat adoption kits range from 25 to 55 dollars, and your donation will go toward protecting bat habitats and educating the public on why these flying friends are so important.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Celebrating Bats on Bat Appreciation Day

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Renewable Energy Roundup: 5 Myths About Solar Energy

by ZulmaKeynes Posted on April 13, 2016

Renewable energy continues to advance, particularly the solar energy market which is dynamic and evolving quickly. Proof you say? Let’s take a look at a few facts first.

The solar industry had another record-breaking year in 2015, with installed capacity increasing 16% over 2014 installations.
At the same time, solar system prices fell by 17%.
For the first ever, solar beat natural gas in new power capacity last year, with solar energy contributing 29.4% of total new electric generation capacity.

Meanwhile, solar technology advances are making systems more energy efficient and resistant to shade from trees and buildings, allowing them to produce a larger percentage of overall household energy consumption. Many solar installers now offer solar system monitoring, so homeowners can view historic and real-time solar system output data. With such a dynamic market and with technology advances, things that were true a few years ago may no longer be true today. 

Researching renewable energy

Separating fact from fiction, let’s take a look at a few myths about solar energy that still prevail. Here are the Top 5 myths about renewable energy — specifically solar.

Myth 1: Solar PV systems require a lot of maintenance and upkeep

With no moving parts, grid-tied solar renewable energy electric systems (without batteries) requires virtually no maintenance. Image Credit: LUCARELLI TEMISTOCLE / Shutterstock

With no moving parts, grid-tied solar electric systems (without batteries) requires virtually no maintenance. This is impressive, considering the design life of most solar systems is 25 to 30 years. Most solar panel manufacturers even provide 20 to 30 year warranties, because the technology is so reliable.

It is however recommended to inspect solar panels for dust or debris a couple times a year, and clean them with the garden hose if necessary to ensure optimum energy output. Use caution when viewing or cleaning solar panels from high heights, if they cannot be clearly viewed from the ground. Most solar system owners never do inspect panels for cleanliness or clean them however and their systems continues to perform well. 

Most residential solar systems are connected to the electric grid and have no batteries, which makes them more efficient than a system without batteries. Most utility companies across the country have net metering programs to credit solar system owners for feeding solar electricity to the power grid, when the system is generating more than the home consumes at the time.

Batteries decrease the sustainability and efficiency of the solar system, as not all the power is actually captured and used. Like any other kind of battery, solar system batteries do require maintenance and will need to be replaced every five to ten years. They are also bulky and the batteries themselves have an environmental impact, even if they are recycled at the end of their life.

Myth 2: Solar power is very expensive

Although this was a true statement just a decades ago, the cost of solar panels and equipment has plummeted. As solar technology advances, solar energy production is also increasing significantly, allowing the system to produce more of the overall household electricity. Now that solar electricity has grown nearly exponentially in popularity, solar equipment is mass produced, allowing prices to fall significantly.

A similar phenomenon happened with digital cameras, DVD players, and laptops. Although these gadgets were very costly when they first hit the market, prices have since declined dramatically, making them more affordable for many people. Likewise, solar technology is advancing and becoming more efficient as well.

“There are higher efficiency solar panels available on the market now, which come at a slightly lower price [per watt],” says Nir Maimon, CEO of Sol Reliable, a solar installation and green energy solutions company headquartered in Los Angeles. “Average panel efficiency is now 17%-21%, while previously, it was closer to 16%-17% efficiency.”

At the same time, residential electricity rates have also increased over the last decade, especially in certain areas of the country. The financial performance of a solar system is largely dependent on the cost of electricity that a homeowner would otherwise pay. Today, solar energy systems have never been as affordable, or a better investment, especially in certain markets.

Myth 3: Solar panels don’t generate much electricity during the winter

When the temperature of the solar panels is cooler, they can generate more renewable energy. Image Credit: Bernhard Richter / Shutterstock

Unless you live on the North or South Pole, solar energy systems typically generate a lot of electricity during colder weather, unless they are covered by snow or ice. Despite the angle of the sun being lower in the sky and the days being shorter, solar energy systems can generate significant amounts of electricity throughout the winter months.

This is because solar panels use light, not heat, to generate electricity. When the temperature of the solar panels is cooler, they can generate more renewable energy. Once they reach temperatures around 32 degrees Celsius or 90 degrees Fahrenheit, solar panel output starts to decline. Since panel temperatures are roughly 20 degrees Celsius warmer than ambient temperatures, these temperatures are commonly reached in most climates. 

Myth 4: Solar technology is not reliable

Solar PV systems are very reliable and durable throughout its 25 to 30 year design life, requiring few if any repairs. Of course some of this depends on the components by specific companies, as some solar panel and equipment companies offer higher quality products than others. 

Solar panels are manufactured to handle extreme weather, including medium-sized hail and falling branches. In fact, the EU Energy Institute found that 90% of solar panels last for 30 years or longer. Because solar electricity is so reliable, it is frequently used to power vital systems, including railroad crossing signals, construction safety signs, aircraft warning lights, and navigational buoys.

Myth 5: I will be off grid and store solar energy in batteries

Most solar homes are still connected to the power grid, for financial and environmental reasons. Most solar systems produce more electricity than is needed during the day. Being connected to the power grid allows homeowners to feed excess daytime electricity to the grid under a program called net metering. Studies show that an average of 20% to 40% of a solar system’s output is fed to the power grid, where it helps to power neighboring houses. Credits appear on the electric bill for energy sold back to the power grid. During overcast weather and at night, solar homes draw power from the grid.

If a home is located in a remote area away from the power grid, a standalone solar system with batteries may be the most practical solution. There is typically a charge for extending the power grid, which can be thousands or even tens of thousands, depending on the distance and other factors. Sometimes stand alone solar systems are more cost-effective to install than extending the power grid, even when taking the costs and upkeep of batteries into account.

Feature image credit: lovelyday12 / Shutterstock

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Sarah Lozanova

Sarah Lozanova is a renewable energy and sustainability journalist and communications professional, with an MBA in sustainable management. She is a regular contributor to environmental and energy publications and websites, including Mother Earth Living, Earth911, Home Power, Triple Pundit, CleanTechnica, Mother Earth Living, the Ecologist, GreenBiz, Renewable Energy World, and Windpower Engineering.Lozanova also works with several corporate clients as a public relations writer to gain visibility for renewable energy and sustainability achievements.

Latest posts by Sarah Lozanova (see all)

Renewable Energy Roundup: 5 Myths About Solar Energy – April 13, 2016
Why One Family Of Four Chose To Downsize To 900 SF – April 8, 2016
Has Solar Energy Technology Evolved? – April 1, 2016

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Renewable Energy Roundup: 5 Myths About Solar Energy

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The Little-Known Movers Behind North Carolina’s Anti-Gay Law: Ted Cruz’s Advisers

by PhilippASV Posted on April 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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As he worked to rally evangelical voters a week before North Carolina’s March 15 primary, Ted Cruz gave a speech at a church in the Charlotte suburb of Kannapolis, where he was joined by a trio of prominent local social conservative supporters: Charlotte pastor and congressional candidate Mark Harris and the Benham brothers, the telegenic real estate entrepreneurs whose house-flipping show on HGTV was canceled in 2014 when their history of anti-gay activism came to light. At the event, Cruz thanked Harris for “calling the nation to revival,” and called David and Jason Benham “an extraordinary voice for the Christian faith.”

For years, Harris and the Benhams have been at the forefront of every battle to oppose gay rights in North Carolina. This past February, they were at it again, this time against a nondiscrimination ordinance proposed in Charlotte that, among other things, allowed transgender people to use public restrooms based on their gender identity and protected LGBT people from discrimination by public institutions. The advocacy of these top Cruz supporters against the Charlotte ordinance eventually led the North Carolina legislature to push through one of the most sweeping anti-LGBT measures in the country, a law that has caused a national outcry and caused many companies, including PayPal, to scrap plans to invest in the state. The law, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, strikes down all existing and future LGBT nondiscrimination statutes in North Carolina and requires that transgender people use bathrooms based on their sex at birth.

Harris’ and the Benhams’ state activism is significant because, if Cruz wins the presidential race, the considerable influence of these three religious activists could extend far beyond North Carolina. In February, Cruz appointed them to his campaign’s advisory council for religious liberty, along with 16 other conservative Christian leaders. The GOP candidate has promised that this group will “guide his policies to protect religious liberty”—policies that could look very much like the anti-LGBT bill in North Carolina. The group is filled with key players in the anti-LGBT world, including Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council (which is classified as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center); it has already recommended that Cruz, if elected president, should stop federal employment discrimination protections for LGBT people, direct federal agencies to change their interpretation of “sex” to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity, cancel the mandate that employers provide contraceptive coverage, and much more. Cruz has surrounded himself with this group of anti-LGBT heavyweights, and the work of Harris and the Benhams in North Carolina provides a glimpse into what this group can accomplish when it comes to rolling back LGBT protections in the name of religious freedom.

Harris and the Benhams first rose to prominence in 2012, when they helped organize the movement to pass a North Carolina constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions. The Benhams—who are sons of an evangelical minister, and who had previously worked to quash local pride parades and organize anti-abortion protests—testified in favor of the measure and at one point equated the battle against marriage equality with fighting Nazis. Harris has been a well-known Baptist minister in Charlotte since 2005 and his church contributed more than $50,000 to the campaign to ban same-sex marriage. (The amendment passed but was invalidated in 2014 after a Supreme Court ruling.)

Their temporarily successful work against same-sex marriage illustrated the growing power and influence of the state’s social conservatives. Fueled by millions of campaign dollars from a few conservative megadonors, Republicans took over both chambers of the state legislature in the 2010 election, fueled by voters’ economic dissatisfaction. Once in power, legislating social issues was a logical next step for this group of newly elected conservatives, says Steven Greene, a political-science professor at North Caroline State University. By 2012, the General Assembly made one of its first moves in this direction by voting to put the ban on same-sex unions onto that year’s ballot. “Before 2010, we were largely under Democratic control,” Greene says. “All the social-issue stuff was bottled up with no outlet. But once you had the Republican legislature, you could just go wild.”

In 2014, when HGTV pulled the Benhams’ show after journalists revealed their anti-gay activism, the brothers became social conservative heroes. They then wrote their first book, Whatever the Cost, about their sacrifice for their faith. Soon after, in February 2015, Charlotte introduced its anti-discrimination ordinance and Harris and the Benhams snapped into action. Faith Matters NC, a grassroots religious liberty group vice chaired by Harris, took out a radio ad on a conservative talk radio station in Charlotte. “I’d be really scared if a man shared a bathroom with my daughter,” says a woman in the ad, of the bill’s provision allowing public-restroom use based on gender identity. “This nightmare could become a reality right here in Charlotte if we don’t speak up quickly,” she continues, encouraging listeners to contact their city council members and demand that they vote down the “bathroom bill.”

The Benham brothers, meanwhile, headlined a rally to promote biblical values at Charlotte City Hall. And on a conservative radio show David Benham called the bill part of “the radical gay agenda’s plan to change America.” He also penned an op-ed for the Charlotte Observer opposing the bill: “Clearly, this ordinance isn’t really about non-discrimination,” he wrote. “It’s about forcing the acceptance of behavior.” With his father, Flip, a well-known anti-gay street preacher in Charlotte, David addressed the city council on the day they voted on the ordinance. During the meeting, a transgender woman collapsed after giving her testimony. Flip Benham reportedly laughed and poked fun at her gender while she lay on the floor awaiting medical attention. He also allegedly confronted a transgender girl as she walked out of the bathroom, calling her a “pervert” and “young man.”

The bill failed in 2015 but was reintroduced the following year. Once again, Harris and the Benhams led the opposition: Harris, for instance, held meetings at his church for the Don’t Do It Charlotte campaign, and all three headlined a rally opposing the measure. Despite their efforts, the ordinance passed in February 2016. Several weeks later, on March 18, opponents of the measure held a press conference in front of a city government building to urge state lawmakers to override the ordinance. David Benham was the opening speaker: “We sure hope the governor and General Assembly will do what is right,” he said. Harris gave the closing speech: “Governor McCrory and the General Assembly must act now to protect women and children all across North Carolina,” he said. He urged the governor to call for a special session to undo the Charlotte ordinance.

Five days later, that’s exactly what happened. In a hastily convened special session, legislators in the Republican-controlled assembly introduced, debated, and passed HB 2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, in less than 12 hours. Lawmakers had five minutes to read the bill, and Democratic legislators walked out of the assembly in protest. The rushed passage of HB 2 and the law’s broad scope gained national attention, in part because the bill’s language invalidates all local nondiscrimination statutes in the state, not just those tied to protecting the LGBT community. “Make no mistake: While LGBT folks were clearly the political target, everybody lost rights,” Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson told Charlotte TV station WCNC. The bill also prohibits a locality from setting a minimum wage standard for private employers, and it limits how citizens can file claims of discrimination based on factors like race, religion, nationality, biological sex, and more.

When asked about their involvement in pushing for HB 2’s passage, the Benham brothers, in an email to Mother Jones, wrote: “Before the bill was passed we had already been notified by the Governor that legislative action was certain, so we simply encouraged our elected officials to listen to the voice of the people.” They continued, “It’s common sense not to allow men in women’s restrooms. It’s also common sense not to force business owners to participate in expressive events that are against their religious beliefs.”

For Cruz, who has staked his campaign on winning over evangelical voters, Harris and the Benhams made natural allies. And as Cruz plotted his presidential bid, he sought to woo these influential social conservatives. In 2014, Cruz headlined a religious rally at Harris’ Charlotte church. That same year, Cruz reached out to the Benhams to express his support after HGTV dropped their show. Then last November, the Benhams emceed a Cruz rally for religious liberty in South Carolina, and in January 2016 they formally endorsed Cruz for president. The following month, Harris endorsed him as well. “Mark’s commitment to be a guiding light in the cultural and political arenas has impacted Christians in North Carolina and across the nation,” Cruz said in a press release trumpeting the endorsement.

Supporting Cruz may bring political benefits for Harris, too. Two days after the HB 2 victory, Harris announced he would be running for Congress to protect “liberty, faith, and family.”

Mark Knoop, the campaign’s spokesman, said that since starting his own campaign, Harris “is entirely focused on his own campaign,” and has put his role as a religious liberty adviser to Cruz “on the backburner.”

The impact of the work of Harris and the Benham brothers in North Carolina has caused national backlash. As word spread of the state’s new law, more than 120 major corporations, including Apple, American Airlines, and PayPal, urged the governor to repeal the bill or to face dire business consequences. In response, the Benham brothers wrote an op-ed for conservative website World Net Daily defending the governor: “Once the media started reporting, you would’ve thought the governor had joined ISIS!” wrote the brothers. “They’ve crafted the narrative in the media that North Carolina’s HB2 is against LGBT individuals, yet nothing could be further from the truth.” (On Tuesday, the state’s Gov. Pat McCrory responded to the backlash with an executive order granting LGBT protections only to state employees.)

Harris’ campaign makes a similar point. “Its not like North Carolina is persecuting the LGBT community,” says Knoop. “The whole point is that people going to a bathroom are going to the right bathroom.” When asked to elaborate on Harris’ stance on portions of HB 2 unrelated to bathroom use, including the part that invalidates the state’s LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances, Knoop declined to comment.

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The Little-Known Movers Behind North Carolina’s Anti-Gay Law: Ted Cruz’s Advisers

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Dangerous Work for “Crap Money”—The Dark Side of Recycling

by VenusBergeron47 Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Darkness had enveloped the Newell Recycling yard by the time Erik Hilario climbed into a front-end loader on a cold evening in January 2011. Hilario, a 19-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, earned $8 an hour at the industrial park in East Point, Georgia, working amid jagged piles of scrap metal eventually bound for the smelter.

On this day, Hilario was driving a loader in a paved section of the nine-acre yard known as the defueler or car-processing area. Here, according to witness testimony, gasoline was drained from junked cars through a crude process employing a 30-foot crane and an 11-foot-tall structure topped with a spike known as The Puncher. A claw attached to the crane would pick up cars and smash them, gas tank first, onto the spike, spilling gasoline into a trough. The crane then would swing the cars onto a pile, dripping gas along the way.

As Hilario used the loader to slowly push metal scraps, a spark ignited the gasoline on the ground. An intense fire suddenly engulfed him. “Help me!” he screamed, his coworkers later testified.

When the fire was finally extinguished, Hilario’s severely burned body was found 10 feet from the charred loader. A doctor reviewing Hilario’s autopsy later determined that he was probably conscious for as long as five minutes before he died.

Recycling may be good for the environment, but working conditions in the industry can be woeful. The recycling economy encompasses a wide range of businesses, from tiny drop-off centers in strip malls to sprawling scrap yards and cavernous sorting plants. The industry also includes collection services, composting plants, and e-waste and oil recovery centers. Some of the jobs at these facilities are among the most dangerous in America. Others offer meager pay, and wage violations are widespread. Experts say much of the work is carried out by immigrants or temporary workers who are poorly trained and unaware of their rights.

“These are not good jobs,” says Jackie Cornejo, former director of Don’t Waste LA, a campaign to improve working conditions for waste and recycling workers Los Angeles. “People only hear about the feel-good aspects of recycling and zero waste, and rarely do they hear about the other side.”

The last comprehensive analysis of the American recycling industry, commissioned in 2001 by the National Recycling Coalition, estimated that it employed more than 1 million people. Private scrap yards alone generated more than an estimated $80 billion in revenue in 2015. The nation’s largest trash haulers, Waste Management and Republic Services, are also the largest recycling firms. In 2014, recycling generated a combined $1.7 billion in revenue for the two corporations, or about 7.5 percent of total sales.

But many of the companies that do this work are small and may lack the knowledge and resources to establish effective safety procedures. Recycling workers, by virtue of their immigration status or status as temps, often hesitate to speak up when they see hazards on the job or are victimized by the outright illegal behavior of their supervisors.

One of the largest sectors in recycling, scrap yards, has long had high fatality and injury rates. In 2014 its fatality rate was 20.8 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers, more than 9 times higher than manufacturing workers overall. The same year, garbage and recycling collectors had the fifth-highest fatality rate among the dozens of occupations analyzed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No one tracks how many workers die across all recycling sectors. But at scrap yards and sorting facilities, at least 313 recycling workers were killed on the job from 2003 to 2014, according to the BLS.

A FairWarning analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) records found that inspections conducted from 2005 to 2014 resulted in scrap yards and sorting facilities receiving about 80 percent more citations per inspection than the average inspected worksite did.

Christopher Webb with his daughter in May 2012, two months before he was killed at a recycling plant in North Carolina. Allison Hildebrand

Recycling is dirty, labor-intensive work. It involves heavy machinery, including conveyor belts, shredders, and grinders that can pose a serious risk of injury or death, especially if they’re not properly serviced or lack basic safety features. Unlike many industrial processes, recycling cannot be completely systematized because it deals with an ever-changing flow of materials in all manner of shapes and sizes. Workers may have to personally handle most of the scrap passing through recycling facilities, potentially exposing them to sharp objects, toxics, carcinogens, or explosives.

“I did not realize the danger,” recalls Alice Pulliam of Reidsville, North Carolina, whose 32-year-old son, Christopher Webb, was killed at the Southern Investments plastic recycling plant in July 2012. It purchased loads of milk jugs, detergent bottles, and other recyclable plastics and ground them into bits for re-sale to businesses that would further process the material.

One day, just a couple of months after joining the 13-employee company, Webb was feeding giant bales of compacted bottles and jugs into an auger with 14 spinning blades. More than a foot long and sharpened to a point, these blades broke up the bales before they were ground into finer pieces. Following the plant’s standard procedure, Webb used a forklift to place the roughly three-foot high bales on an elevated platform next to the mouth of the auger, according to a report by the North Carolina Department of Labor’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. While the blades spun below him, Webb climbed onto the bales to cut the wires holding them together. Then he used the forklift to push the bales into the auger.

Webb was on top of a bale when he fell into the spinning blades below, crushing his head. A subsequent investigation by the state department of labor found that plant employees weren’t instructed to shut down the auger while climbing on the bales, and that the machine did not have the proper guarding to prevent the blades from hitting workers.

The state cited Southern Investments with 35 safety violations, including 16 “willful violations,” and fined the company the unusually high sum of $441,000. The plant’s owner, Donald Southern, said he could not pay and agreed to close Southern Investments and not manage another plastic recycling business in North Carolina. He declined to comment for this story.

Generally, the hazards at scrap yards and sorting facilities are typical of any major industrial operation Safety measures to make these workplaces less dangerous are well known and widely implemented in other industries. “This is not rocket science,” says Susan Eppes, a Houston-based safety consultant to the recycling industry.

Although OSHA says that 5 of its 10 regions have special enforcement programs covering sectors of the recycling industry, safety advocates say that isn’t enough. “Systematically, across the country, they haven’t given the industry the attention it’s due,” says Eric Frumin, the health and safety director for Change to Win, a partnership of four national unions. Advocates are lobbying the agency to create a national program aimed at sorting plants, where metal, paper, and plastic are separated. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade association, recently announced that it is partnering with OSHA to try to reduce injury and fatality rates.

Yet basic safety procedures are often ignored in recycling plants, experts say. Consider the case of Robert Santos, a 46-year-old line supervisor at a Republic Services plant in North Las Vegas, where he helped dump mounds of recyclables onto a conveyor belt. Using radios, workers would direct front-end loaders to push paper from a holding bay onto the belt, which rolled towards a baler. State safety inspectors later learned that it was common for employees to stand on the moving belt to pull material from the holding bay, or to sweep up material along its sides.

“he was dead working for crap money”
The recycling industry tends to attract the desperate and the downtrodden. “It’s a low end of the economy,” says Eric Frumin of Change to Win. “We’ve shipped all the factory jobs to China, so what is the modern-day equivalent of dirty, dangerous factory jobs? Warehouses and recycling plants.”

Take the case of 51-year-old David Lightfritz, who was killed in a 2011 accident at Marietta Industrial Enterprises in Ohio when he tried unjamming a large machine used to separate glass from paper and plastics. Lightfritz got into the recycling business after his previous employer learned he was a registered sex offender. “He didn’t have anything else,” says his older brother, Willard Lightfritz. “He wasn’t out of prison long and he was dead working for crap money”—around $7 an hour.

Recycling drop-off centers have become a priority target of wage theft investigations in California by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Ruben Rosalez, the division’s western regional administrator, says these small businesses are among the “worst that we have to deal with,” and are as exploitative as sweatshops or the agricultural industry.

Wage and Hour investigators in Los Angeles have found that these businesses were often paying their employees as little as $55 or $65 a day, regardless of the hours they worked. Some employers were found to not even keep payroll records, and some failed to provide bathrooms for workers.

On the morning of June 8, 2012, work at the sorting facility was delayed two hours because a mass of paper had clogged the holding bay. Once the jam was cleared, Santos stood on the conveyor belt, yanking paper from the bay, when two to three tons of paper suddenly collapsed on top of him. A coworker would later remember him shouting “Stop the belt! Stop the belt!” before he was enveloped in a pile of paper eight feet high.

After the paper was lifted off of him, Santos was found to have minimal brain activity. He was taken off life support six days later and died. The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Republic Services $5,390 for the incident. Asked to justify such a small fine for a fatal accident, Nevada OSHA’s chief administrative officer said it was in line with agency policy, and that investigators did not find “clear indifference to employee safety and health.” Republic Services did not respond to requests for comment.

After his fatal accident, Erik Hilario’s family moved quickly to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Newell Recycling of Atlanta and the Hilario family declined to comment for this story.

Last September, a jury in Fulton County, Georgia, awarded $29.2 million to the Hilario family. Newell and the family subsequently settled out of court. But the pain of a life cut short lingers Hilario’s family, who were described by their lawyer as still reeling from Erik’s death five years later. “He wanted to be somebody,” Erik’s older brother, Efrain, recalled in his tearful testimony during the trial. “He had many dreams.”

Bridget Huber contributed to this report. The Courtroom View Network provided access to its archive of video trial testimony.

FairWarning, which reported this story, is a nonprofit news organization that focuses on public health, safety, and environmental issues. A longer version of the story appears at fairwarning.org.

Continued – 

Dangerous Work for “Crap Money”—The Dark Side of Recycling

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How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest

by Myrna Posted on April 11, 2016

How a reader Q&A during a reporting trip to the North Pole sea ice started a journalist’s journey into online inquiry on climate change and other “wicked” problems. Read the article –  How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest ; ; ;

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How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest

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