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How to Dress Well—Without Ever Buying a Single Piece of Clothing

by AlfredNarvaez28 Posted on December 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last year, a friend of mine hosted a clothing swap. There were about 10 women and just a few rules: Bring clothes you want to get rid of. Take the items from your friends’ closets that you like, and the rest goes to the local thrift shop. The setup was an easy way to recycle the ridiculous number of garments in our millennial closets—we ditched items we hadn’t worn in months or even years and came away with some fresh, if worn-in, items, like the pair of American Apparel high-waisted cutoff jean shorts I left wearing.

I’m not as wardrobe-obsessed as the average American, who bought 64 articles of clothing and spent more than $1,100 on clothes and shoes in 2013. The average woman had just nine outfits in 1930. Today, her drawers are so stuffed she can wear a different getup every day of the month. Women only use about 20 percent of their wardrobes and typically wear an item just seven times before pushing it to the back of the closet. After that comes the landfill: Each of us discards about 80 pounds of textiles every year.

Fast-fashion stores like H&M and Forever 21 have made it easy to buy and dump outfits at record speed. In fact, between the time I wrote this story and when it hit the newsstands, the industry took women through upward of 10 new trends. This endless march of cheap off-the-shoulder blouses and oversize T-shirt dresses can also be bad for workers, as manufacturers have cut costs by outsourcing production to sweatshops abroad. Ninety-seven percent of our clothes are made abroad, sometimes in exploitative or even deadly conditions, points out Elizabeth L. Cline in her book, Overdressed. “If we’re going to shop in this way that’s so obsessed with novelty,” she says, “how can we do that in a way that’s not so destructive?”

So my friends and I were clearly on to something. And as it turns out, so is a small but growing corner of the fashion world. The best-known example may be Rent the Runway, a New York-based subscription company that lets you choose clothes you like online and ships them to your house. When you’re over an outfit, you mail it back, and it’s shipped out to the next person who’s had her eye on it.

Since it was founded in 2009, Rent the Runway—which started as a service just for formal wear but has since expanded to include office and casual outfits—has raised $126 million from venture capitalists. It recently moved into a 160,000-square-foot warehouse and now has more than 6 million members. It’s no surprise that a handful of competing companies have cropped up. Le Tote, an online shop that offers a similar clothing rental service, recently raised $27.5 million. An app called Curtsy lets you rent from your neighbor or classmate. These new clothiers are “asking customers to put their closets into the cloud,” says Jennifer Hyman, ceo and co-founder of Rent the Runway.

The so-called “Netflix for clothing” model clearly cuts down on waste—instead of 20 women buying identical shift dresses from Zara, they can all share one. And when Rent the Runway retires an outfit from rotation, the company sells it or donates it to charity instead of throwing it out.

But there are downsides, too: Fashion subscription services require repeated cleaning and shipping. Many companies dry-clean items between wearers; no one wants a shirt with the lingering smell of someone else’s BO or cigarettes. That process typically involves chemical solvents like perchloroethylene, which can leach into groundwater and has been linked to neurological problems, acute loss of coordination, and liver tumors in mice. The Environmental Protection Agency classifies this chemical solvent as a “likely” carcinogen. Rent the Runway claims its dry cleaning facility is the largest in the country, and that instead of perchloroethylene it uses a nonhazardous alternative. Brett Northart, the co-founder of Le Tote, told me that his company employs a cleaning technique somewhere between dry cleaning and laundry to reduce the volume of chemicals used, though he declined to divulge details.

The jury is still out on whether online shopping creates more carbon emissions than brick-and-mortar retailers, and fashion subscription services require double the shipping, since customers send their boxes back when they’re done. There’s also packaging to consider: When you buy a shirt online, more than half the carbon footprint is from the cardboard, tissue paper, or plastic used to ship it.

Rent the Runway sends its clothes in a reusable garment bag, which it says saves an estimated 287 tons of shipping waste each year. But the bigger win of the clothes-sharing model, says Cline, is how it changes the way we think about our closets. “It’s hard to imagine us getting back to a place where people only buy things they plan to wear for the rest of their lives,” she told me. But if we can kick the habit of wearing an outfit once and then tossing it, that’s major progress. “People are starting to use rental sites as a substitute for buying new, and that’s really huge.”

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How to Dress Well—Without Ever Buying a Single Piece of Clothing

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A Trump Tariff Wall Would Help a Little, But Hurt a Lot

by MarguerU84 Posted on December 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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So let’s suppose that Donald Trump really does impose a 10 or 15 percent tariff on all goods entering the United States. Or maybe only Chinese and Mexican goods.1 What would happen? Who would be the winners and losers?

The simplest way to think about this is to remember what happens when tariffs are reduced. Textbook economics says that overall GDP will grow, prices will go down, but certain groups of people will be disproportionately harmed. So if tariffs are increased, the opposite should happen. Economic growth would suffer, prices would go up for most people, but certain groups would benefit. It’s not always clear what those groups are, but generally speaking workers in the sectors most vulnerable to foreign competition would probably benefit: textiles, clothes, shoes, rubber products, computer assembly, and so forth.

That’s the theory, anyway. The reality is sometimes different. Free traders, for example, often point to the example of automobile tires. In 2009, President Obama slapped a huge tariff on Chinese tires in order to protect the US tire industry. The chart on the right shows what happened: other countries rushed to fill the void and tire imports skyrocketed. The usual estimate is that about 1,200 jobs were saved at a cost to US consumers of $1.1 billion. That’s $900,000 per job, which is obviously a bad deal, but it’s also a diffuse deal. Unions and tire workers were happy regardless of how things turned out, while consumers probably barely noticed that they were paying an extra dollar per tire.

If Trump enacted a tariff only on China, this is roughly what would happen: some of China’s business would move to other countries, and net US imports would stay about the same. China would lose, other countries would gain, and in America it would be a wash.

But what if Trump enacted a 10-15 percent tariff across the board on every country? Economically, that would act like a sales tax on foreign goods. Prices would go up, which would allow American companies to increase production in sectors where a 10-15 percent advantage was enough to make them competitive.2 The exact way this would shake out depends on the elasticity of demand for various goods, but in the end American workers in certain sectors would almost certainly make gains, while all American consumers would pay higher prices. Is this tradeoff worth it? I’d say no, but plenty of people would disagree.

That’s the 100-thousand-foot view, anyway. In real life, other countries would almost certainly retaliate—maybe via tariffs of their own, maybe in other ways. Boeing, for example, usually suffers when the Chinese get annoyed with us, because Chinese airlines develop a sudden fondness for Airbus planes. Or the authorities in Beijing could make life harder for American companies doing business in China. Or they could get nasty in any of a dozen other ways. Ditto for the rest of the world, which would appeal to the WTO at best and retaliate with their own trade barriers at worst.

And no matter what the rest of the world did, American companies would face headaches for years as they tried to rework their supply chains, which are global for nearly every product you can think of. American products use lots of parts made overseas, and lots of overseas products use parts (and services) from America. For example, a San Francisco Fed paper estimates that 55 percent of the value of Chinese goods is actually US content. To make this concrete, think about iPhones: If China ends up making fewer iPhones, that also means fewer jobs for the Apple sales force and lower sales for the plant in Texas that makes iPhone processors. The whole thing is a mess—and it’s especially a mess if companies have no assurance about how long the tariffs will stay around or what’s around the corner from the rest of the world as they figure out ways to get back at us.

The bottom line is this:

The impact on workers in certain sectors would be anything from negative (in the case of a big trade war) to fairly positive (if the tariffs worked and the rest of the world decided to ride it out).
Prices would go up for everyone. And since low-income workers buy more goods as a share of their income, higher prices would hit them the hardest.
Economic growth would almost certainly slow down.

Most likely, Trump’s tariffs would be a bad deal for nearly everyone, and maybe—maybe—a good deal for a few workers and CEOs in the sectors that have been hardest hit by foreign competition.

More generally, you can’t really talk about “trade” in the abstract. Basically, there’s China and there’s everyone else. China is our big problem, but the trouble with retaliating against China is that it’s too late. We have lost a lot of jobs to them, but the damage was mostly done years ago. By the time Obama took office there was little he could do, and there’s even less that Trump can do now. It’s also true that China was a bad actor on the world economic stage for a long time. But again, their worst practices are mostly in the past. Their export subsidies are fairly low these days, and their currency manipulation is mostly to push the yuan up, not down. This benefits America, not China.

There is one best-case scenario, though: Trump threatens the Chinese and ends up getting some concessions from them without ever enacting any tariffs. Is that likely? I guess that depends on how good a negotiator you think Trump is. Unfortunately, his record in the business world doesn’t give much cause for optimism on that front.

1Yes, he could do it. Details here.

2For example, if China makes clocks for $2 and America makes clocks for $3, a 15 percent tariff wouldn’t do anything for American clockmakers. Even at a Chinese price of $2.30, Americans still couldn’t compete. However, consumers would end up paying $2.30 for clocks instead of $2.

On the other hand, if China makes cars for $9,000 and America makes cars for $10,000, a tariff could have a big effect. Chinese cars would now cost $10,350, and that means consumers would buy a lot more American cars. Unless, of course, they really prefer the Chinese cars even at a higher price. It all depends, you see.

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A Trump Tariff Wall Would Help a Little, But Hurt a Lot

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Meet Mike Pence, America’s New Prime Minister

by HildaYcrekr Posted on December 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The front page of my morning LA Times happened to feature the headlines on the right. The headline on women reminds me of this Slate piece about how a lot of women who voted for Trump are now worried that he might defund Planned Parenthood. And of course, there’s yesterday’s news about all the business titans who are suddenly concerned that Trump might raise tariffs. Even on the right, it seems like everybody’s worried or alarmed or concerned these days.

We’ve seen dozens and dozens of headlines like this over the past few weeks. An awful lot of Trump backers seem sort of shocked by what’s going on. I mean, he wasn’t serious about all that stuff on the campaign trail, was he?

Who knows? But it looks to me like America has finally adopted a constitutional monarchy. The nice thing about this arrangement is that you have one person, the king or queen, who handles all the ribbon cuttings and so forth, and another person, the prime minister, who can then focus almost entirely on actual governing. In our case, Donald Trump is the new king of America, tweeting out nonsense, going on victory tours, and hobnobbing with famous people at Mar-a-Lago.

And then we have our new prime minister, Mike Pence. Freed from the demands of public appearances, he spends all his time behind closed doors running the country. He wants to kill Planned Parenthood. He wants to privatize the VA. He wants to immiserate millions of people on Obamacare.

Maybe Trump wants some of this stuff too. There’s no telling, really. As near as I can tell, he’s basically the guy tasked with distracting everyone while Pence fills the cabinet and chats with Paul Ryan about how to run the country. Among other things, this probably means that the business community doesn’t need to worry. Pence and Ryan will talk Trump out of the wall and the tariffs and the replacement for Obamacare. If he starts to balk, they’ll get Jared Kushner to whisper soothingly in his ear and then turn on the TV.

Welcome to the Mike Pence administration.

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Meet Mike Pence, America’s New Prime Minister

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Scientists May Have Finally Found a Way to Stop Ebola

by BrigidaPrevost0 Posted on December 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Scientists have developed a vaccine that could successfully prevent the spread of Ebola, according to a study published Thursday in The Lancet. The study was conducted in response to the West African Ebola crisis—the largest and deadliest recorded Ebola outbreak to date—and is the first to report a promising solution for the deadly virus.

Since December 2013, Ebola—a highly infectious virus that causes severe hemorrhagic fevers and has a 50 percent fatality rate—has killed over 11,300 people in West Africa. Considered a global health crisis, the outbreak took nearly two years to control and was complicated by a lack of international funding and widespread fear and mistrust of doctors among African locals. Though the virus was discovered in 1976, early attempts to develop vaccines stalled in the absence of financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies. Until 2014, Ebola outbreaks were rare and controlled relatively quickly.

“While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next Ebola outbreak hits, we will not be defenseless,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, and a lead author of the study, in a press release accompanying the study.

Amid the Ebola crisis, researchers from the WHO and more than a dozen other international partners, tested the new vaccine on 5,937 at-risk individuals in Guinea and found it was 100 percent effective when administered soon after exposure. None of the roughly 3,900 people vaccinated within three weeks of Ebola exposure ended up catching the virus 10 or more days after the vaccination. (Researchers discounted any individuals who got Ebola within 10 days—the typical incubation period for the virus—under the assumption that they had already contracted it prior to vaccination.) The vaccine appears to be less effective the longer the researches waited after an exposure: Of the roughly 2,000 people vaccinated more than three weeks after an exposure, 16 got Ebola.

To find people at risk of getting Ebola, researchers used a unique method, “ring vaccination,” inspired by the strategy used to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Each time a new Ebola case was confirmed, researchers traced all the people the patient had come in direct contact with, as well as the people who had come in contact with those people within the previous three weeks. The clusters, or “rings,” were then randomly assigned to either immediate or delayed vaccinations. After noticing positive results in the first few months, the researchers stopped the delayed vaccinations altogether. Eventually, the researchers began vaccinating children, which was also 100 percent effective.

The “ring vaccination” technique additionally had a positive impact on public health: Communities of those who were vaccinated were also less likely to get sick. That proved crucial not only in studying the vaccine, but also in quashing the outbreak itself.

The team still needs to do more research on the safety of the vaccine in children and other vulnerable populations, such as people with HIV. Other questions also remain about how long the protective effects of a single vaccination can last and whether it can be modified to reduce side effects without compromising efficacy.

In the meantime, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, a global health partnership that includes the WHO, gave $5 million to pharmaceutical giant Merck in January to procure the vaccine after its approval. Merck also committed to making 300,000 doses of the vaccine available, should an emergency arise in the interim.

“Ebola left a devastating legacy in our country,” Dr KeÏta Sakoba, coordinator of the Ebola response in Guinea, said in the press release. “We are proud that we have been able to contribute to developing a vaccine that will prevent other nations from enduring what we endured.”

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Scientists May Have Finally Found a Way to Stop Ebola

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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

by SherriD48gt Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at National Review, Tim Alberta ponders “Conservatism in the Era of Trump.” It’s not a pretty picture. There’s no one more conservative than the House Freedom Caucus, but they’ve already started to cave in to Trumpism:

Consider Trump’s stated intention to seek a $1 trillion dollar infrastructure package soon after taking office. At a conservative forum one week after the election, Raul Labrador told reporters that any such bill “has to be paid for” with spending cuts or revenues from elsewhere…But their thinking has shifted in the weeks since. According to several members, there has been informal talk of accepting a bill that’s only 50 percent paid for, with the rest of the borrowing being offset down the road by “economic growth.” It’s an arrangement Republicans would never have endorsed under a President Hillary Clinton, and a slippery slope to go down with Trump.

This is in addition to the tax cuts for the rich, which won’t be paid for at all. But why is the HFC already bending its adamantine principles against increasing the deficit? What are they afraid of? Rachael Bade tells us:

Since the election, numerous congressional Republicans have refused to publicly weigh in on any Trump proposal at odds with Republican orthodoxy, from his border wall to his massive infrastructure package. The most common reason, stated repeatedly but always privately: They’re afraid of being attacked by Breitbart or other big-name Trump supporters.

“Nobody wants to go first,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who received nasty phone calls, letters and tweets after he penned an August op-ed in The New York Times, calling on Trump to release his tax returns. “People are naturally reticent to be the first out of the block for fear of Sean Hannity, for fear of Breitbart, for fear of local folks.”

ZOMG! Phone calls, letters, and tweets, oh my! Who would have guessed that militant conservatives were so spineless? Here’s some news: I don’t get many phone calls, but I get lots of nasty emails and tweets too. So does everyone who comments on or practices politics. That’s America these days.

People often comment about how easily groups like Nazis and fascists came to power. This is how. But hell, at least in Germany and Italy people were cowed by real threats of real violence. It’s not especially heroic, but it’s understandable. In America, we’re heading down that path because people are afraid of unpleasant tweets.

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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

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How One Homeless Couple Finds and Prepares Their Meals

by SabrinaHearn959 Posted on December 17, 2016

Mother Jones

This article is part of the SF Homeless Project, a collaboration between nearly 70 media organizations to explore the state of homelessness in San Francisco.

The sun reaches down between the steel slats of a park bridge, its light flickering as a bicyclist glides overhead. Donna Ewing, 54, and her boyfriend, Louie, 52, watch him pass from below. They spent nearly a month digging out a space under the bridge, before adding walls made of plywood and sheet metal. Their new space is an upgrade from the tent they were living in before: It has a sturdy roof and much more privacy.

Donna and Louie have lived in Union Point, a small park near a boat marina in West Oakland, California, for about a year. They’re two of the city’s estimated 6,200 homeless residents, and part of the nearly 17 percent of Americans who don’t have enough to eat on a regular basis. Because of their makeshift living quarters, finding food and preparing the next meal can take up a significant part of the day.

On a Wednesday morning in early December, Louie pushes aside the pink tent he’s hung up in lieu of a front door and hops on his bike for a morning ride. While he’s gone, Donna eats a packaged donut and a few bites of cinnamon toast—the remnants of a bag of groceries Louie brought home from a food pantry a few days before. Donna turns on a hot plate to heat water for coffee, powered by a car battery, the couple’s primary power source. Then she spends the morning cleaning up camp, even though she says she knows she should rest. Her blood pressure is high and she’s in between chemo treatments. When Louie returns, he eats some oatmeal out of a paper cup, along with his favorite toppings—”lots of butter and lots of sugar.”

Some days, Louie rides his bike to a Presbyterian church nearby to collect bagged lunches that are handed out a few times a week. Other days he rides 25 minutes to the Alameda County Food Bank for some groceries. Finding healthy options nearby isn’t easy. Donna and Louie’s setup, like many homeless camps, is near an industrial park just off the freeway, an area seen as a food desert. There’s a McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza more than a few blocks away, and a FoodMax a bit farther, where Louie can find staples like chicken, coffee, oatmeal, and vegetables. Feeding America, a hunger relief organization, estimates that more than 232,000 people in Alameda County don’t have access to enough nutritious and affordable food. The Alameda County Food Bank feeds about 116,000 people each month.

The homeless are by no means the only population struggling to put dinner on the table: Last year, more than 42 million Americans reported living in households without adequate access to food. Recently, more organizations like Food Runners and Food Recovery Network have sprung up to try to divert cities’ colossal food waste to those in need.

A small bridge in a West Oakland provides shelter for Donna and Louie, a couple who have lived in the park for about a year. Photo by Jenny Luna

Since it’s the middle of the month, money isn’t as tight for Donna and Louie as it will be in two weeks, when nearly all of Donna’s Social Security check will be spent. So for lunch, they still have some bread and cold cuts for sandwiches. Donna keeps mayonnaise, celery, apples, and pork chops cold in a small blue ice chest. She sends Louie to a nearby Motel 6 every few days for more ice. All he has to do is ask, she says. People are usually very giving when you ask.

The couple met at the Walden House, a rehab facility in San Francisco, a little over a year ago. After treatment, they decided to head east to visit Donna’s son in Utah. They’d barely made it out of town when their car broke down. They haven’t been able to get on their feet since. Donna and Louie tell me this story from outside their encampment, Louie seated on a turned-over milk crate and Donna on a worn pink ottoman. “I don’t know how we got here,” Louie says, crying. “We’re stuck and we’re trying to stay positive,” Donna says.

Donna Ewing, 54, often cooks for everyone in the encampment. “We share what we have,” she said. Photo by Jenny Luna

Toward the end of the month, Donna and Louie will eat less meat and more cereal. They’ll mostly skip lunches, and when money thins even more, they’ll both go without breakfast. On the first of the month, Donna heads to the Social Security office to pick up her check, an amount that comes out to an average of about $150 per week. Louie contributes to the larder by working under the table for an Italian restaurant in the nearby town of Alameda. He sweeps, mops, and washes dishes in exchange for a few meals at the end of the night. He’ll get to bring home a to-go box of fries, spaghetti, or Donna’s favorite: salad.

At sunset, Union Point is quiet now that boat owners in the marina have gone for the day. Donna’s two cats, Malachi and Cali, emerge from the bushes and chase each other around camp. A neighbor, Dawn, comes by with some food to share—a bag of nearly thawed chicken nuggets and a plastic container full of tomato sauce for dipping.

Just before dark, Louie heads to the parking lot of an industrial complex across the railroad tracks. He comes back with a wooden pallet and a few moon pies and soda that the warehouse employees leave out from time to time. Since it’s about to rain, Donna wishes she could make soup: celery and carrots and chicken, something they can live off of for a couple of days. But their big soup pot got crushed a few weeks ago when the city cleared out camp. “They’re supposed to store them or something,” Donna says. “But everything got crushed. That was devastating.” Government agencies often do “sweeps” through homeless camps, sometimes destroying or confiscating any property.

Since they have some meat from Louie’s grocery vouchers, they’ll barbecue tonight instead. They’re out of fuel, so Louie stomps the palette into smaller pieces while Donna gathers a few branches from the bushes. She moves slowly in her sandals and black sweatpants, her fading blonde hair slicked back in a bun. On her wrist, she wears a rubber bracelet with the word “Love” on it.

Louie takes all the wood over to the park’s barbecue grills and puts a few pieces under the metal grate. Donna puts two pork chops on the grill. As the smell wafts off the meat, their neighbors Mike and Lucy, who live in tents in the marina parking lot, gather around with a bag of chips and some soda. The temperature drops as the sun sets further. Even though it’s cold, they start up a game of dominoes. Donna boils water for hot cocoa. “It’s a beautiful place,” Donna says. “It’s about the people being here; we’re all the same people.”

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How One Homeless Couple Finds and Prepares Their Meals

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Help Grist hold Trump and his media enablers accountable

by GiuseppeYrw Posted on December 13, 2016

Remember that time Donald Trump told the New York Times he would keep an open mind about climate change? It was just a couple of weeks ago, when he met with the paper’s top reporters and editors. Their tweets sparked a slew of news reports that Trump might be “changing his tune” on climate.

Except that Trump did nothing of the sort. When Grist’s Rebecca Leber pored over the full transcript, it became clear that the president-elect was his usual climate-denying self, and the pliant news media had once again been suckered into making him look mainstream.

“Trump spun his climate denial to the New York Times and lots of people fell for it,” our headline read. “Grist expertly called out” the mainstream media’s failure to hold Trump accountable, The Huffington Post proclaimed.

This real news is powered by you. Support Grist

We’re going to need a lot more headlines like that in the coming years. And Grist needs your support to keep up our honest reporting and commentary — the kind you won’t hear from this administration or the bamboozled media.

I joined Grist as executive editor nine months ago with a mission: Take a publication beloved for its irreverent and unorthodox approach to environmental journalism and fuse that sensibility with a focus on deeper reporting, sharp analysis, and stories that matter.

As part of Grist’s fall fundraising drive, we’ve just spent the past couple of weeks celebrating some of those results. We sent reporters to cover injustice in Alaska and Standing Rock, told the amazing true story of the slideshow that saved the world, uncovered black-and-white evidence of a huge Trump climate flip-flop, won awards for our fun video explainers, launched a mobile-friendly daily news product, even explored what it takes to be a non-judgmental vegan.

Now we’re asking for your support so we can do more. That’s what it takes to run an independent, nonprofit media shop that doesn’t answer to deep pockets and has the freedom to take on corporate and political power.

I didn’t anticipate the election of Donald Trump, but I’m proud to say that Grist has made significant headway in building a journalistic operation capable of providing tough, fearless coverage of the president-elect and his polluter pals, who are about to have all the power they ever wanted to gut environmental laws, plunder our natural resources, ignore the warnings of climate science, and increase the environmental burdens plaguing vulnerable communities.

It’s become a cliche in the past few weeks to say that strong, honest journalism is needed now more than ever — but cliches gain power because they’re true.

Grist doesn’t have the resources of the New York Times or Washington Post, or even Mother Jones or ProPublica. Those institutions will need your support, too, to cover the range of corruption and assaults on civil liberties that the Trump administration portends.

What Grist does have, though, is a dedicated and skilled staff that’s intensely focused on a set of issues that are about to come under immediate attack from the Trump administration. We understand them — and their impact on people and communities — like no other publication.

And don’t just take my word for it. (I am the editor, after all). Bill Moyers’ website tells readers that if they want “more and better media coverage of these issues” they should “contribute to specialized nonprofit online outlets like Grist. … Robust news coverage will matter more than ever during an administration led by the purveyors of fake news and anti-science propaganda.”

So if you care about safe air and water, sustainable food, livable cities, a clean, inclusive economy, a survivable climate, and environmental justice for all, Grist is the publication you’ll need to cling to in the coming years. We’ll ferret out fake news, seek and spotlight solutions, tell you where progress continues to happen and who is standing in the way, stand up for what’s right and just, reach across ideological lines, give you the tools and advice needed to make a difference, and bring big brains together to spark ideas and innovation.

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For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

by Chelsea7389 Posted on December 11, 2016

Mother Jones

Legendary rocker Neil Young continues to add to his 50-plus-year recording career with his just-released studio album Peace Trail. A shrewd collection of new songs, written and recorded quickly this past summer, the album is one of immediacy, with kinetic playing from a spare crew of Jim Keltner on drums and Paul Bushnell on bass. With bits of processed vocals added to the folk-rock core, and an amplified harmonica that sounds like Little Walter after a Marvel-esque dose of radiation, Young employs strategies meant to throw the whole thing off kilter and make you listen closer.

The songs cover the things on the singer’s mind right now, both within—old dreams broken and those newly forming—and in the world around him: Standing Rock, xenophobia, immigration, and technology. For an artist at 71, it’s beautifully charged, invigorated, and present work. While the call is urgent, Young doesn’t beat you over the head with the message so much as inject you with it. I spoke with Young over the phone while he was at his home in Colorado.

Mother Jones: Overall, it feels very much like this is an album about being present with things happening in the world, as well as with your own feelings. Tell us a bit about the emergence of this record.

Neil Young: I started writing “Peace Trail” here in Colorado, then I went back to California. I had a few other tunes going around in my head, so I had a couple of them finished after a few days and then I wanted to go into the studio. I like to go in right away as soon as I have things. I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I’ve been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I’m going, “Hey, I can’t wait. I should be doing this now!” My experience tells me that when it’s there, it’s there, and you can’t make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record.

MJ: Both of those guys, obviously, are experienced session musicians. Did you relate specific things to them or did you all kind of feel things out together?

NY: I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I’d basically break down an arrangement—I wouldn’t plan endings or beginnings—so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I’d written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. Most cases it’s Take 1 or Take 2 on that record. I think “Peace Trail” is one of the exceptions, where it’s a later take. It just happened really quickly. It’s the way I like to work for these kinds of songs. It was the right time of the month; everything was looking good.

MJ: I felt like the immediacy of the playing on this particular album, and some of the disruptive things you introduce, like the sound processing on the harmonica and vocals in places, make the listener pay more attention.

NY: The songs were written to have a certain simple form. Everything is minimal, and if it’s over, it’s over. We’re abrupt with things: in and out. Especially if it’s an overdub—it’s gone. It does something that’s not real. It’s not trying to be like it was there. I think the ultimate result of it is you can get inside the record. I do one take; I never overdubbed twice. I know there’s stuff that isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t matter: Nothing is perfect, and there is a magic there that is undeniable because of the fact that we don’t care about those things. We’re really more interested in what we’re saying than how we’re saying it.

MJ: On the song “Peace Trail,” you express a commitment to moving forward and a sense of optimism with the refrain, “Something new is growing.” Did the November election alter that outlook?

NY: Not really. I still feel the same about everything in there. There’s nothing I said that I would change or make different now. I’ve already gotten into the next record, so I started that on the 6th of November.

MJ: In the song “Can’t Stop Workin’,” you sing that work is “bad for the body but good for the soul.” What’s hard for you?

NY: I think it’s the constant work; performing and traveling. It gets to be a bit of a strain. But if you pace yourself, which I’ve managed to do, you can go pretty well. And now I’m at a point where I decided I’m going to be in the studio for a while, at least until I finish this record I’m working on now. I should have two, three, four of the sessions that I had that were similar to the sessions for Peace Trail before I have a complete record. But I’m off to a good start and it may happen faster. Who knows?

MJ: I had an unsettling feeling that the purpose of my own work as an artist should maybe change after this election, but I’m unsure how. You’ve lived through really turbulent times and have written some very powerful protest songs—”Ohio” and “Southern Man,” for example. So how do you view the responsibilities of being an artist in the years to come?

NY: This time is very similar to the ’60s, as far as I can tell. The artists always reflect the times, so there’s a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I’ve seen to the kind of ambience that made the ’60s happen. It’s not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine. It’s all going to be great. The youth of this country are not behind what is going on. We all know that. If you looked at a political map of the United States 25 and under, it’s all-revealing. It’s a unified map.

MJ: What scares me is this rift in our understanding of one another. You have viewpoints so far apart, so colored by anger and frustration, that it’s very hard to find common ground. Do you have thoughts for how we might connect?

NY: It’s gonna happen. We had the Vietnam War in the ’60s, and there was a draft. The students didn’t believe in it, and it unified them. That brought the people together and made the ’60s like they were. The youth were very unified against the status quo—against the old line and the new old line. It’s the same exact thing today. Social media and young people, art, music, all communications make this one of the most active times for activism. It will be a time of change.

MJ: Speaking of activism, there’s your new song “Indian Giver,” about Standing Rock. What’s your view on the standoff?

NY: It’s injustice. It’s wrong. The pipeline companies didn’t get the permission. They didn’t do the things they should have done in the first place. They tried to just bully their way through there and they got stopped. But they’re not really stopping.

MJ: It’s become a new point of reckoning in the history of how Native Americans are treated.

NY: Five hundred years later we’re still doing it. This is a moment where we’re either going to reaffirm that’s what we do, that’s who we are, or we’re going to start moving toward change. A change won’t come easy, because there’s a lot of big money that doesn’t care about any of this. Standing Rock is the beginning of something. It’s a moment in history. We really have to grab it and go with it. We may only be halfway through the actual “Standing Rock” part, but it’s more than that—it’s the lessons of Standing Rock, of what you can do. How much can you make change happen? How long can you slow things down? How much attention can you bring to things that are unjust, unfair, in many cases illegal? Just exposing it, that’s the job of the social media, the musicians, the people who care, the real protectors around the world. They don’t have to be at Standing Rock. They just have to say they’re with the people at Standing Rock, and tell other people that what’s going on there is wrong. Learn about it. See what happened. See what they actually did. You won’t see it on corporate media, you have to go to social media.

MJ: So, it looks like we’re out of time here. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

NY: We love Mother Jones. That’d be the last thing to say.

MJ: We love you, too.

Originally posted here: 

For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

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Trump will nominate ExxonMobil’s CEO to run U.S. foreign policy.

by LandonH3214 Posted on December 10, 2016

This may sound like a hyperbolic joke, but unfortunately it isn’t: Rex Tillerson will join Trump’s cabinet of corporate chieftains as secretary of state.

Much like Trump’s picks to run other key cabinet departments such as Treasury, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development, Tillerson has no experience in government.

What he does have is 41 years of experience working at our largest oil company, including 12 years running it. Tillerson typically maxes out in donations to Republican candidates and he has a cozy relationship with Trump’s favorite petrostate kleptocrat, Vladimir Putin.

Like Trump himself, Tillerson brings an array of potential conflicts of interest to his future job. Green groups are already raising questions about some of them.

How does he feel about U.S. sanctions on Russia, which cost his company lucrative drilling contracts? And what about the Paris agreement, which the U.S. State Department led the way in negotiating and which set carbon emission reduction goals that would force ExxonMobil to keep much of its massive oil and gas reserves in the ground? Trump opposes the climate deal anyway, but how might Tillerson’s oil business background influence the administration’s global climate policies?

Then there’s the fact that Tillerson’s company is currently under investigation from state attorneys general for allegedly lying to the public about the science of climate change. As 350.org Executive Director May Boeve put it in a statement, “Tillerson deserves a federal investigation, not federal office.”

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Trump will nominate ExxonMobil’s CEO to run U.S. foreign policy.

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Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by a whopping 29 percent this year — but there’s a way to slow it.

by ErnaHertzler Posted on December 1, 2016

For the first time in eight years, OPEC — you know, that cartel of 14 oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela — made a deal to curb production starting in January.

It’s partially a response to the worldwide glut of oil that has battered crude prices over recent years. OPEC’s profits from oil exports have plunged from a record $920 billion in 2012 to $341 billion this year. This puts countries that depend on oil exports (looking at you, Venezuela) between a shale rock and a hard place.

To push prices back up, OPEC members agreed to slash production, leading to an 8 percent spike in crude prices on Wednesday. Investors raced to buy shares of U.S. shale oil companies. Continental Resources  — founded by Harold Hamm, Trump’s energy advisor — jumped 25 percent after the announcement. Whiting Petroleum soared 32 percent, its biggest one-day jump in 13 years.

This celebration is sure to lead to a hangover. For one, OPEC countries have a hard time sticking to their agreements. And experts predict a long century of decline for oil as demand peaks in the next decade. Of course, those estimates assume countries will keep their pledges to combat climate change.

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Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by a whopping 29 percent this year — but there’s a way to slow it.

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