Tag Archives: partnership

The sea is rising three times faster than we thought.

by MargieLadner7 Posted on May 23, 2017

A lot of climate hawks spent late 2016 and early 2017 in reassessment or mourning. Meanwhile, Anthony Torres was busy channeling his fellow engaged millennials into direct action, including coordinated sit-ins at the offices of New York’s Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Minority Leader, and Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. The message: Do not play ball with the polluter-in-chief.

The son of a Nicaraguan immigrant father and a working-class New Yorker mother, Torres grew up with sea-level rise on his Long Island doorstep, and he understands how poverty, climate, and other social challenges are all knitted together. He’s proven especially adept at rallying peers to his side, both in an official capacity at the Sierra Club (where he helped coordinate communications and direct actions that aided in a defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership) and in extracurricular work with groups like #AllOfUs, a progressive collective aimed at organizing young people around threatened communities.

His advice on connecting different constituencies: “Activists need to create a story that is accessible to people who are not necessarily in our movements but who are in need of a bold and inspiring vision,” Torres says. “To me, it’s telling a story of America that intersects with race, gender, and class” and turning what might seem like differences into “a weapon in our arsenal that creates an America that never has happened before — a country for all of us.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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The sea is rising three times faster than we thought.

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Clinton Campaign Hopes Progressive Party Platform Will Finally End the Primary

by EsmeraldaDAlbert Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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As Hillary Clinton moves to unite the Democratic Party behind her presidential candidacy, her campaign is hoping a progressive party platform drafted this weekend will win over recalcitrant supporters of Bernie Sanders. But even though a number of top liberal priorities made it into the platform, Sanders says the fight over the party’s policy positions is not over yet—and, by extension, neither is the political battle for the support of the party’s left flank.

The draft platform embraces many progressive goals, including long-shot proposals that liberals have pushed for years. The platform supports a $15 minimum wage and an end to the death penalty. (Clinton supports the death penalty in rare cases.) It calls for a modern-day version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which erected a wall between commercial and investment banks until President Bill Clinton signed its repeal in 1999. It aims to impose a surtax on millionaires, expand Social Security, and repeal the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment.

Sanders had a significant say in the drafting process. He appointed five members of the 15-member Platform Drafting Committee. The Clinton campaign appointed six, and the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chose four. The draft was approved in St. Louis by 14 of the 15 members. One Sanders appointee, Cornel West, abstained.

The Clinton campaign, eager to win over Sanders supporters, quickly praised the platform. Clinton senior policy adviser Maya Harris called it “the most ambitious and progressive platform our party has ever seen” in a statement issued Saturday, and one that “reflects the issues Hillary Clinton has championed throughout this campaign.”

Sanders, on the other hand, was more tepid in his evaluation. In a statement released Sunday, he called it “a very good start,” but added that “there is no question that much more work remains to be done by the full Platform Committee when it meets in Orlando on July 8 and 9″—the next step in the process before the delegates vote on the platform at the Democratic National Convention that begins July 25 in Philadelphia. Sanders points to several priorities that were left out of the platform, including a ban on fracking, a carbon tax, and a provision opposing a congressional vote later this year on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. On these issues, Sanders says, the fight is not over yet. “We intend to do everything we can to rally support for our amendments in Orlando and if we fail there to take the fight to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia,” he said.

Sanders noted that Clinton’s appointees to the Platform Drafting Committee voted down a requirement that the United States run entirely on clean energy by 2050. The Clinton campaign, by contrast, praised the platform’s “ambitious” goal of “generating 50 percent of our electricity from clean sources within a decade.” On trade, Sanders’ slammed the decision by Clinton allies on the committee who voted down the anti-TPP provision. The Clinton campaign touted a different provision that did make it into the platform’s trade language, which calls for prioritizing workers’ rights, labor rights, and the environment. (Clinton now opposes TPP, but while it was still being hammered out, she called it “the gold standard in trade agreements.”)

“An amendment adopted yesterday further emphasized the fact that many Democrats oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership because ‘the agreement does not meet the standards set out in this platform,'” Harris, the Clinton aide, said in her statement. “Hillary Clinton is one of those Democrats, and has been strongly and unequivocally on the record opposing TPP. Just this week, she said, ‘We will defend American jobs and American workers by saying “no” to bad trade deals and unfair trade practices, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.'”

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Clinton Campaign Hopes Progressive Party Platform Will Finally End the Primary

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Almost Half of US Honeybee Hives Collapsed Last Year

by RigoberStGeorge Posted on May 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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About a decade ago, beekeepers began noticing unusually steep annual hive die-offs. At first, they’d find that bees had simply abandoned hives during the winter months—a phenomenon deemed “colony collapse disorder.” In more recent years, winter losses have continued at high levels, and summer-season colony collapses have spiked. The Bee Informed Partnership, a US Department of Agriculture-funded collaboration of research labs and universities nationwide, tracks this annual beepocolypse, and the latest results, for the year spanning April 2015 to April 2016, are a real buzzkill:

Bee Informed Partnership

“Acceptable winter loss” measures what beekeepers consider normal attrition. Last season, total losses were nearly triple the acceptable rate—forcing beekeepers to scramble to form new hives, an expensive and time-consuming process. They’re not the only ones with a big problem on their hands: About a third of the US diet comes from crops that rely on pollination, the great bulk of which comes from these beleaguered hives.

So far, researchers have not come up with one definitive reason for the dire state of bee health. Suspects swarm like characters in a drawing-room murder mystery. “A clear culprit is the varroa mite, a lethal parasite that can easily spread between colonies,” the report states. “Pesticides and malnutrition caused by changing land use patterns are also likely taking a toll, especially among commercial beekeepers.”

As I’ve written about in the past, neonicitinoid pesticides and a new class of fungicides likely share much of the blame for the vast honeybee die-offs; more here, here, and here. Unfortunately, these chemicals are still widely used on farm fields, and hotly promoted by agrichemical companies.

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Almost Half of US Honeybee Hives Collapsed Last Year

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

by NevilleSainthil Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The House is expected to vote today on the “fast track” trade authority bill that would allow the Obama administration to finish negotiating several major trade agreements now under discussion, including the divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

While every other president from Ford onward has been granted similar powers, today’s vote has turned out to be anything but routine. Critics who oppose the TPP and other pending agreements are working to stop the bill—and thwart the anticipated trade deals.

The fast-track process was set out in 1974’s Trade Act, which empowered Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority bills—like the one slated to be voted on today—that allow presidents to negotiate and sign trade deals with less involvement from the legislative branch. Congress still gets to vote yes or no on any final agreement, but amendments are generally prohibited. In exchange, TPA bills let legislators lay out trade priorities and negotiating objectives for the president, and set requirements on how and how often the administration must check in while negotiations are underway.

This TPA, if passed, will guide presidential trade negotiations through 2021. It builds upon a bill that expired in 2007, and is likely more complex than any other in history, expanding congressional oversight and consultation while including new provisions on intellectual property, cross-border data protection, and the environment and human rights. It also increases transparency, requiring presidential administrations to make agreements public 60 days before signing them.

Though it passed the Senate by a vote of 62 to 37 in May, today’s House vote is expected to be much closer. Some Republicans have said they may vote against fast-track authority because they aren’t eager to hand over more power to the Obama administration. Many Democrats are opposing the bill, citing concerns that it doesn’t do enough to prevent overly secret deals and the expanded corporate power that could come with them.

If the House does vote to reestablish fast-track authority, it would likely ease the finalization of several notable trade agreements, including the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a new agreement with the European Union; the Trade in Services Agreement, an initiative being negotiated between 23 economies focused specifically on service industries like telecommunications and tech; and, of course, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive trade agreement involving 12 countries that together account for 40 percent of global GDP.

Unions, environmentalists, digital rights advocates, and other advocacy groups have campaigned heavily against the Pacific deal—and the TPA that would allow negotiations to move forward. Critics have suggested the trade deal could bring environmental and labor abuses, reduce internet freedom, increase the cost of certain medications, and expand “investor-state-dispute settlements”—tribunals where companies can seek damages from taxpayers when US regulations interfere with their business. Backers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership insist that the agreement will be huge boon for the economy and increase the US national income by $77 billion annually.

Despite the opposition, House Republicans are confident the bill will pass. If it fails, its possible that negotiations on the TPP could continue—but not without major complications.

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

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Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest

by BreannaRoemer Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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The nation’s honeybee crisis has deepened, with colony die-offs rising sharply over last year’s levels, the latest survey from the US Department of Agriculture-funded Bee Informed Partnership shows. A decade or so ago, a mysterious winter-season phenomenon known as colony-collapse disorder emerged, in which bee populations would abandon their hives en masse. These heavy winter-season losses have tapered off somewhat, but now researchers are finding substantial summer-season losses, too. Here are the latest numbers.

Chart: Bee Informed Partnership/University of Maryland/Loretta Kuo

Note that total losses are more than double what beekeepers report as the “acceptable rate”—that is, the normal level of hive attrition. Losses above the acceptable level put beekeepers in a precarious economic position and suggest that something is awry with bee health. “We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, University of Maryland entomologist and director for the Bee Informed Partnership said in a press release. But now his team is also seeing massive summer die-offs. “Years ago, this was unheard of,” he added.

And here’s a map a map depicting where losses are heaviest:

Chart: Bee Informed Partnership/University of Maryland/Loretta Kuo

The survey report doesn’t delve into why the nation’s bees are under such severe strain, noting only, as USDA entomologist and survey co-coordinator Jeffrey Pettis put it, “the need to find better answers to the host of stresses that lead to both winter and summer colony losses.”

A growing weight of science implicated pesticides—particularly a ubiquitous class of insecticides called neonicitinoids, as well as certain fungicides—as likely factors.

Here are US Geological Survey maps of where two major neonics, imidacloprid and clothianidin, are grown. Note, too, the rapid rise in their use over the past decade.

Chart: USGS

Chart: USGS

A 2013 paper co-authored by the USDA’s Pettis and the University of Maryland’s vanEngelsdorp found that lows levels of two particular fungicides, chlorothalonil and pyraclostrobin, “had a pronounced effect” on bees’ ability to withstand a common pathogen. Here are the USGS’s maps for them.

Chart: USGS

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Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for June 20, 2014

by JaxonFinsch Posted on June 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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American, Japanese and Australian service members assemble for a photo in Cambodia at the start of the 2014 Pacific Partnership program to provide humanitarian and disaster relief preparedness aid to the Asia-Pacific region. (US Navy Photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Greg Badger)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for June 20, 2014

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