Tag Archives: oregon

Will Canada export its fresh water or will the US just take it?

by Myrna Posted on September 21, 2015

It’s probably one or the other, whether Canadians like it or not. Link: Will Canada export its fresh water or will the US just take it? ; ; ;

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Will Canada export its fresh water or will the US just take it?

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The Drought Isn’t Just a California Problem

by grycjanekg Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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California’s been getting a lot of attention for the drought, but it’s not alone in its lack of rain: This year is on track to be the driest on record for several western states. As the map below—a recent iteration from the US Drought Monitor—shows, virtually all of Washington, Oregon, and Nevada are covered in swaths of “severe,” “extreme,” or “exceptional” drought.

Here’s a primer of the situation in each state:

OREGON

While Oregon is technically in its fourth year of drought, the state started feeling the effects in earnest in 2014. Since then, Gov. Kate Brown has declared two-thirds of the state’s counties to be in a state of emergency. “The extreme drought conditions we are experiencing reflect a new reality in Oregon,” she said in a July statement.

The past year hasn’t been particularly dry, but it has been abnormally warm, meaning some water is falling as rain but not freezing into a slow-trickling snowpack that feeds streams. While the western side of the state, which relies on rain-fed reservoirs, has been shielded from the worst effects of the drought, the eastern side relies on snowpack, which is at record low levels. The snow that did fall melted more than two months earlier than it usually does.

Of the water that’s diverted from streams and rivers, about 85 percent is used on agriculture. Top products include cattle and milk, hay, wheat, and “greenhouse products” (flowers and herbs). Like in California, irrigation districts are cutting off water to farmers with junior water rights. Farmers are compensating for the lack of surface water by pumping groundwater, but unlike California, Oregon has regulated its groundwater for more than 50 years. In water basins that are deemed to be in critical condition, farmers are prohibited from digging new wells.

NEVADA

Nevada relies on water from the Colorado River, which is stored in two giant reservoirs: Lake Mead, in Nevada, and Lake Powell, in Utah. Las Vegas depends on Lake Mead, about 15 miles from the city, for 90 percent of its water, but the reservoir is just 38 percent full. Still, officials are confident there’s enough in the reservoirs to stave off water cuts, at least for the next year.

NASA images from 2000 to 2015 show Lake Mead shrinking while Las Vegas expands. NASA

With its sprawling cities in the middle of the desert, Nevada has been forced to be smart about water for years. This is in part due to history: The amount of water that localities could take from Lake Mead was decided when the lake was created back in the 1930s, and that allocation has stayed constant while the population of the state has shot up. Las Vegas may seem like a giant party of fountains and pools, but the city recycles (treats and reuses) a whopping 94 percent of its water. The state pioneered “cash for grass” programs, in which residents or businesses get rebates for replacing turf with desert landscaping; since 1999, the state has removed roughly 4,000 acres of turf. In Las Vegas, any home built after the year 2000 is prohibited from having a front lawn.

WASHINGTON

Like Oregon, Washington derives its water from snow melt and can’t count on El Nino to boost the water supply. Last June, snowpack levels in the state were at their median levels, but by this past May, when Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency, the levels were at 20 percent of the median. Now, stream levels across the state continue to reach record lows. This has spurred some action: The state allocated $16 million to drought responses over the next two years, including grants to help the agriculture industry, which is a leading producer of apples, milk, wheat, and hops. The Department of Agriculture estimates the drought will cost the state $1.2 billion in 2015 in lost crops, or about 12 percent of past crop values. Some localities are imposing restrictions on watering lawns, and the Seattle/Tacoma area is asking for a 10 percent reduction in voluntary water use to avoid future cuts.

Washington’s Chiwauwkum Creek wildfire in 2014. Washington Department of Ecology

The drought has also turned the normally cool, rainy state into a wildfire hotspot: The state is on track to experience the most destructive and costly year of fires on record. Earlier this week, three firefighters were killed battling a wildfire. “Our fire season started a month ahead, our crops matured weeks ahead and the dry weather we usually get in August, we’ve had since May,” Peter Goldmark, Washington’s commissioner of public lands, told the New York Times earlier this month.

State ecologists are also concerned about the drought’s effects on fish, particularly salmon, which swim upstream in the late summer and fall to spawn but may have trouble doing so this year because streams are so shallow and warm. The state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife is now creating artificial channels, using sandbags and plastic sheeting, to help the fish move upstream.

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The Drought Isn’t Just a California Problem

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Kids sue Obama over climate change

by BlytheDouglas Posted on August 14, 2015

Kids sue Obama over climate change

By on 14 Aug 2015commentsShare

A new lawsuit filed against President Obama and a handful of federal departments and agencies condemns the government for supporting the fossil fuel industry in the face of a changing climate. The plaintiffs? A group of 21 children aged 8–19, mostly from Oregon. The complaint, originally drafted in green Crayola, holds the president culpable for the effects of historical and future carbon emissions and demands immediate climate action on constitutional grounds. The filing itself is a hefty document, but the argument looks something like this:

1. The government has known about the climatic effects of carbon emissions for decades. There’s scientific consensus on climate change and ocean acidification, and the story is pretty awful.

2. In spite of the danger, the government encouraged and subsidized the fossil fuel industry. The continued authorization of new fossil fuel projects (like the proposed Jordan Cove natural gas export terminal in Oregon) will further harm the children in question.

3. Climate change disproportionately affects youth because they’ll live more of their lives in a turbulent world.

4. Mitigating the effects of climate change and shifting to clean energy is possible, and the government has admitted it is the trustee of the nation’s “air (atmosphere), seas, shores of the sea, water, and wildlife.”

As such, the kids — a coalition of youth activists — allege that the government has violated the due process and equal protection principles of the Fifth Amendment, violated their rights that fall outside of the Constitution but are still protected by the Ninth Amendment, and violated the public trust doctrine of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Which boils down to the broader allegation that support of the fossil fuel industry infringes upon youths’ fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property.

As Responding to Climate Change reports, the complaint also outlines the kids’ relationship with a changing climate:

11-year-old Hazel spends a lot of time at the coast, bodysurfing and rock-pooling, as well as relying on it as a food source. By the time she is an adult, she fears that both of these benefits will be lost.

Perhaps most shocking is the testimony of 8-year-old Levi Draheim, who lives on a barrier island [in Florida] which separates the Indian River Lagoon from the Atlantic Ocean. Faced with rising sea levels, Levi has been forced to accept the potential loss of his home.

The lawsuit comes in the wake of a similar legal case in Washington which earlier this year set a new, science-based emissions trajectory for the state.

Some claims are more extreme than others. (Compare “Levi can no longer swim in the Indian River Lagoon because of increasing flesh-eating bacteria and dead fish” to “Kelsey enjoys snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and snow camping.”)

The lawsuit is likely a long shot, but in aggregate, the stories embedded in the complaint help paint a picture of the effects of climate change in human terms. In a world that has repeatedly demonstrated that it couldn’t care less about the polar bears, that’s a good thing.

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8-year-old takes US government to court over climate change

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How catching big waves helped turn this pro surfer into a conservationistRamon Navarro first came to the sea with his fisherman rather, found his own place on it as a surfer, and now fights to protect the coastline he loves.


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Kids sue Obama over climate change

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Don’t Panic: Health Insurance Rates Aren’t About to Rise by 50 Percent

by EstellaMassie Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest Fox News bait from the Wall Street Journal:

Major insurers in some states are proposing hefty rate boosts for plans sold under the federal health law, setting the stage for an intense debate this summer over the law’s impact.

In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products. Moda Health, the largest insurer on the Oregon health exchange, seeks an average boost of around 25%.

All of them cite high medical costs incurred by people newly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act.

Well, of course they do. It’s a handy excuse, so why not use it?

In any case, we’ve all seen this movie before. Republicans will latch onto it as evidence of how Obamacare is destroying American health care and it will enjoy a nice little run for them. Then, a few months from now, the real rate increases—the ones approved by state and federal authorities—will begin to trickle out. They’ll mostly be in single digits, with a few in the low teens. The average for the entire country will end up being something like 4-8 percent.

So don’t panic. Sure, it’s possible that the Obamacare shit has finally hit the fan, but probably not. Check back in October before you worry too much about stories like this.

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Don’t Panic: Health Insurance Rates Aren’t About to Rise by 50 Percent

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Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Help Me Tackle Student Debt

by LouisaFurpnvefn Posted on March 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) isn’t just a thorn in the side of Wall Street banks. She’s also happy to go head-to-head with the Obama administration when she feels the president’s team is part of the problem.

Right now, the issue fueling a dispute between Warren and the White House is student loan debt. Last week, Warren sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging that his department is not using many of the tools at its disposal to help Americans who are struggling to pay back student loans. In particular, the department has authority to help students duped by predatory for-profit colleges, and Warren says they’re not using it.

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Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Help Me Tackle Student Debt

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Texting While Walking Is Obviously Dumb. So Why Can’t We Stop Doing It?

by AlbertinaK62 Posted on December 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last year, it was reported that a small city in China had created a texting-only lane for pedestrians. The story went viral before it was somewhat debunked—turns out the lane is in a theme park, and it’s just 100 feet long—but there’s a reason it got eyeballs: everybody’s worried about “texting while walking,” and no one knows what to do about it.

According to a 2012 Pew study, most grownups have bumped into stuff while looking at their phones, or been bumped by someone else on their phone. A Stony Brook University study in 2012 found that texting walkers were 61 percent more likely to veer off course than undistracted ones, a finding backed up by other researchers.

Greatest “hits” compilations abound on YouTube. One woman tumbled into a mall fountain, another off a pier. A man nearly collided with a roaming bear. While pride suffered most in those cases, more than 1,500 pedestrians landed in emergency rooms due to a cell-phone related distracted walking injury in 2010—a nearly 500 percent jump since 2005—according to a recent study from Ohio State University.

Jack Nasar, professor of urban planning at Ohio State University and one of the study’s co-authors, said the real number of injuries could be much, much higher. “Not every pedestrian who gets injured while using a cell phone goes to an emergency room,” he told Mother Jones. Some lack health insurance or (erroneously) decide their injuries aren’t serious. Others will deny a phone had anything to do with their injury. “People who die from cell-phone distraction also don’t show up in the emergency room numbers,” says Nasar.

Of course, pedestrians aren’t the only ones with their noses in their phones. According to a 2013 University of Nebraska Medical Center study, the rate of pedestrians getting hit by distracted drivers grew by about 45 percent between 2005 and 2010. The good news is that 44 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico have banned texting and driving for all drivers, but the bad news is that texting and walking is potentially more dangerous and has proved harder to ban.

For one thing, local governments often define “pedestrian” quite broadly. In San Diego, anyone who chooses to “walk, sit, or stand in public places” is a pedestrian; so would a ban mean no more texting at the bus stop? With the endless variation in how people use their phones, and phone technology changing all the time, it’s hard for lawmakers to keep up. And for some politicians, proposed bans raise “nanny-state” hackles. Utah State Rep. Craig Frank, a Republican who opposed a ban in Utah in 2012, said at the time, “I never thought the government needed to cite me for using my cell phone in a reasonable manner.”

Statewide bans have failed in Arkansas, New York, and Nevada. Some cities have made progress; despite opposition from Frank and others, the Utah Transit Authority imposed a $50 civil fine for distracted walking near trains in 2012—including phone use—and it seems to be working. Rexburg, Idaho, has a ban on texting in crosswalks, and Fort Lee, New Jersey, added distracted walking to its finable violations under jaywalking. San Francisco and Oregon are using public awareness campaigns to get the word out. And some advocacy groups have created their own PSAs, like this highly dramatic one from AAA’s Operation Click road-safety campaign:

Melodrama aside, the video raises the obvious question: is it really that hard for pedestrians to police themselves? A July 2014 experiment by National Geographic in Washington, D.C. set up a texting-only lane at a busy DC intersection, but found that most people just ignored the markings. And there’s the rub: If walking and texting is inherently distracting, would people even notice a cell-phone-only lane, or other environmental cues? “I think there is good evidence out there that engaging a phone after a ring or vibration is a trained and conditioned response,” says Dr. Beth Ebel, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. She co-authored a study in 2012 that found that people texting and walking were four times less likely to look before crossing a street, or obey traffic signals or cross at the appropriate place in the road. “This compulsive nature applies to all of us,” she says.

Maybe the answer lies in the phones. An app called Type n Walk lets you text while the phone’s camera shows you what’s in front of the phone (but doesn’t work with Apple’s iMessage). Another app in the works is Audio Aware, which interrupts your music if it hears screeching tires, a siren, or other street sounds. Then there’s CrashAlert, a proof-of-concept developed by researchers at the University of Manitoba in 2012, which would use the front-facing camera on your phone to scan for obstacles in your path (but isn’t currently in development). It’s too soon to say whether these apps will take off, or how well they’d work.

For the time being, Ebel isn’t advocating we abandon our phones—”We don’t have to go backwards. I love my phone.”—but that at the very least we have honest conversations with ourselves about our phone use and the risks we’re taking. As for critics who fly the “nanny state” banner whenever texting-and-walking bans come up, Ebel says they’re downplaying the danger. “From a law enforcement perspective, this is a form of impairment. It needs to be treated as such.”

Additional reporting by Maddie Oatman and Brett Brownell.

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Texting While Walking Is Obviously Dumb. So Why Can’t We Stop Doing It?

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Washington Voters Just Passed the Gun Law Congress Couldn’t

by KindraIQMpdpf Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Most post-election coverage has focused on how Republicans drubbed Democrats in the battle for Congress, but there was another resounding victory on Tuesday worth noting, and it wasn’t a partisan one. Universal background checks for gun buyers became law in Washington state, the first such measure to be passed by popular vote in any state in recent memory.

And popular it was, supported by 60 percent of voters. They agreed that buying weapons at gun shows or on the Internet should no longer be possible without basic regulations. “Our goal has never been about finding a single solution that will end gun violence once and for all,” said Seattle Mayor Ed Murray after Initiative 594 passed. “Instead, our goal has been to enact a sound system of commonsense rules that can, by working in concert, make an enormous difference.” Murray noted that states with expanded background checks—now 18 of them, plus Washington DC—have fewer women killed in domestic violence situations, fewer law enforcement officers shot, and fewer suicides with firearms. The editors of the Seattle Times said the wide margin of victory showed that “voters feel the grim, relentless toll of gun violence.”

It was fresh on their minds. Public gun rampages—which tend to draw outsized media attention—have been on the rise the last several years, with the latest taking place at a Seattle-area high school on October 24. Three victims died, two others were gravely injured, and the perpetrator shot himself to death, as so many of them do. Local polling right at that time appeared to show an increase in support (which had already been strong) for I-594. The last time a similar measure was passed by popular vote was in Colorado in 2000, in the wake of the Columbine massacre. (It’s worth noting that the hardcore gun lobby’s opposition in Colorado back then included the same strain of Nazi rhetoric that was trotted out in Washington state this time.)

Washington state’s vote was the clearest electoral test yet beyond Congress for the gun-reform movement that rose out of the devastation at Sandy Hook Elementary School two years ago. Everytown for Gun Safety, backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and Americans for Responsible Solutions, founded by former congresswoman and mass shooting survivor Gabrielle Giffords, both devoted major funds and other strategic assets to the fight. The primary stated goal of these groups is to function as a formidable counterweight to the National Rifle Association and its political influence; if the passage of I-594 (as well as the defeat of a counter initiative) is any indication, they’ve gained some serious momentum in their less than 24 months of existence. Everytown now has 2.5 million supporters, according to the organization’s former executive director Mark Glaze. “The movement now has plenty of money and plenty of talent, and that’s a big difference from just a few years ago,” Glaze told me on Wednesday. “As the NRA will tell you, intensity trumps money much of the time. In this case they lost on both counts.”

The NRA and its allies also spent millions on the fight—and feared the outcome they now face. “We are very concerned that Bloomberg’s group will replicate this and we will have ballot initiatives like this one across the country,” a NRA spokesperson told The Olympian just prior to the vote.

The gun lobby has long tapped allies in statehouses to block firearms regulations, but the Washington experience may have just revealed a potent threat to that modus operandi. Next up? Glaze says Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Maine are strong prospects. Ballot initiatives tend to be expensive (and aren’t allowed in all states), but expanded background checks look to be a solid bet, consistently drawing overwhelming support in national polls. Circumventing state legislators may not be the easiest route, notes Glaze, “but when a majority of people want something badly enough, they can still get it.”

For more of Mother Jones’ reporting on guns in America, see all of our latest coverage here, and our award-winning special reports.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/10/25/3388327_dueling-gun-initiatives-pit-two.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

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Washington Voters Just Passed the Gun Law Congress Couldn’t

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The Tom Steyer campaigns you haven’t heard about yet

by AntonioLarnach Posted on November 4, 2014

The Tom Steyer campaigns you haven’t heard about yet

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4 Nov 2014 6:29 AM

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You already know about the huge amount of money being spent to get voters to care a bit more about climate change, and to prod those who already care into polling places today. Leading the charge, of course, has been Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire turned political moneyman who is forcing candidates for Senate and governor to address an issue they really, really don’t want to talk about.

But even though those congressional and gubernatorial races get the bulk of the attention, Steyer and like-minded donors have been active at the state level too. The New York Times’ Kirk Johnson reported recently on Steyer’s spending in Washington state:

The effort by a California billionaire named Thomas F. Steyer to bolster global climate change measures in Washington has turned the battle over the State Senate into one of the most expensive legislative elections in state history.

Money has poured into the handful of legislative races that Mr. Steyer’s political action committee identified as central to shifting the Senate’s leadership from a Republican-led coalition to a Democratic majority that would support the ambitious climate goals set by Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat.

… The Democrats need a net gain of two seats to achieve a Senate majority, and Mr. Steyer’s political action committee, Nextgen Climate Action, has contributed $1.25 million to that goal.

“We want to make climate change a local issue,” a spokesperson for Nextgen Climate told the Times. The PAC is also spending on state legislature races in Oregon, California, and Iowa, though the biggest money is going to Washington state.

At the moment, Gov. Inslee is waiting on his legislature’s approval to launch a greenhouse gas reduction plan — including a cap-and-trade program — that will help the state meet future targets that the legislature itself set in 2008.

There’s also a bigger picture: In 2013, governors of Washington, Oregon, and California, and a proxy for the premier of British Columbia, signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy. Steyer is a big supporter of the plan — he even helped broker it — but for it to be realized, he told the conservative Washington Examiner, governors will “need stronger majorities in Oregon and Washington.” Cue the dump trucks full of cash.

Other groups are fighting it out at the state level as well. The League of Conservation Voters has a network of state-level affiliates, which are active in this year’s election cycle (though, as is often the case with electoral money trails, we won’t know quite how active until long after the results of the elections are in). LCV’s Colorado affiliate is behind a big push to elect two state-level democrats in Colorado, one to the state Senate and one to the House. The Environmental Defense Action Fund, earlier this year, backed four candidates in the Kansas GOP primary who had supported the state’s mandate requiring utilities to use more renewables. And state-level political action committees like California’s Leadership for a Clean Economy have sprung up to help direct money to worthy politicians.

It’s a smart strategy. Conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network have long recognized that while Congress moves slowly — and, in recent years, has not really moved much at all — it’s very often at the state level that the policies that affect day-to-day life are debated and implemented. So fighting battles for the statehouse and city hall makes sense — and it’s much cheaper. Climate hawks appear to now have that page in their playbook too.

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The Tom Steyer campaigns you haven’t heard about yet

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The Weather Channel founder is the climate-denying grandpa you never had

by ModestoM47 Posted on November 3, 2014

Grumpier old men

The Weather Channel founder is the climate-denying grandpa you never had

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3 Nov 2014 5:18 PM

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Climate denier and The Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman has been getting a lot of media attention lately. It all started when Coleman appeared on Fox News’ The Kelly File, where he spouted off about climate change being a hoax. Watch the clip:

Didn’t feel like watching? Here’s a taste of his interview with Megyn Kelly:

There are 9,000 and 31 [thousand] scientists that have signed a petition that say that [CO2] is not a  significant greenhouse gas — oh, it’s a teeny, weeny itsy-bitsy greenhouse gas, but it’s not an any way significant — and we are sure of it. It’s not like something I’ve made up, or just thought of, I’ve studied and studied and studied.

We’re sure you have, John. And we’re also sure that those scientists who signed the petition you’re referring to — the now-discredited Oregon Petition — studied hard, too. I mean, Charles Darwin was on the list, after all, along with Ginger Spice and fictional characters from Star Wars.

Oy. Even though Coleman was dismissed from The Weather Channel just a year after helping get it started more than 30 years ago, we’re not surprised that the channel is still scrambling to distance itself from Coleman. In an effort to side-step this potential image-tainter, The Weather Channel publicly issued its position statement on climate change. Not that its position has changed; the organization has supported climate change science for years now. Or, in Coleman’s words, “they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.”

After the Fox interview, Coleman and the current CEO of The Weather Company, David Kenny, aired their opposing views in a debate on CNN. If you have 10 minutes to waste, you can watch Coleman deliver climate denial lines on (not-so) Reliable Sources:

Here’s a thorough debunking of Coleman’s talking points. Now, for the love of God, would someone please fetch Mr. Coleman a glass of Kool-Aid?

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Meet Another GOP Candidate Who’s Pretending He’s Pro-Choice

by Yvette6077 Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Over the past few weeks, a number of Republican candidates have run deceptive advertisements or used sneaky language to paper over their hardline views on reproductive rights. Pols who’ve done this include Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Senate hopeful Scott Brown in New Hampshire, and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez. Now you can add another name to the list of pro-life GOPers who are suddenly talking about choice: Oregon’s Dennis Richardson.

Richardson, a Republican state representative running for governor, cut an ad (watch it above) featuring a self-described “pro-choice Democrat” named Michelle Horgan. Speaking directly into the camera, Horgan says: “I trust Dennis. He’ll uphold Oregon’s laws to protect my right to choose, and he’ll work hard for Oregon families.”

The language in Richardson’s ad—”He’ll uphold Oregon’s laws to protect my right to choose”—hews closely to the rhetoric used by Walker, Brown, and Beauprez. All of those Republicans have previously sought to restrict women’s reproductive rights (Walker supports eliminating all abortions). But during this election season, they have each tried to strike a moderate tone on the issue.

Richardson’s ad is particularly brazen given his long record of opposing abortion rights. He wrote a letter to the Oregonian in 1990 saying that “a woman relinquishes her unfettered right to control her own body when her actions cause the conception of a baby.” As a state legislator, he sponsored legislation to give unborn fetuses the rights of humans and to require parental notification for abortions. In 2007, he voted against mandating that hospitals offer emergency contraception to women who have been sexually assaulted.

What’s more, Richardson has the endorsement and full-throated support of Oregon Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion-rights group. Oregon Right to Life’s PAC has donated $80,000 to Richardson’s campaign. (Right to Life’s $50,000 check in September remains the fourth-largest cash contribution of Richardson’s entire campaign.) In an email blast to its list, the group touted Richardson as “an excellent gubernatorial candidate” who, if elected, would offer the “opportunity to reclaim political ground and hopefully start changing the way Oregon politics treat the abortion issue. We might actually be able to end our ‘reign’ as the only state in America lacking a single restriction on abortion.”

No mistaking that message: In Richardson, the pro-life community sees an opportunity to finally start curbing abortion access in the state of Oregon. But you probably won’t see that message in Richardson’s campaign ads any time soon.

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Meet Another GOP Candidate Who’s Pretending He’s Pro-Choice

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