Tag Archives: states

Oklahoma Governor Vetoes "Insane" Abortion Bill

by WoodrowPantano Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Friday afternoon, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill that would have made performing most abortions a felony in the state. On Thursday, the Oklahoma Senate passed the bill 33-12, with no floor debate. During the voting process, Sen. Ervin Yen, the sole state senator who is a physician, called the measure “insane.”

As Mother Jones reported in April, the bill would make performing abortions, except for those intended to save a woman’s life, a felony punishable by a minimum of one year in prison.

If it is discovered that they have provided an abortion, doctors would be stripped of their state medical licenses. The only exception to these rules would be abortions to save the life of the mother, and the bill makes clear that the threat of suicide by a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t fulfill the “life” requirement.

Had the bill been signed into law by Gov. Fallin, it would most certainly have led to a protracted and costly legal battle over the bill’s constitutionality, since its near total ban on abortion goes against Roe v. Wade—the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. However, the prospect of litigation is not what Fallin took issue with when rejecting the bill. Instead, she said that the “life” exception provided in the bill was “vague.”

“The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ‘necessary to preserve the life of the mother,'” Fallin said. “While I consistently have and continue to support a re-examination of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, this legislation cannot accomplish that re-examination. In fact, the most direct path to a re-examination of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade is the appointment of a conservative, pro-life justice to the United States Supreme Court.”

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Oklahoma Governor Vetoes "Insane" Abortion Bill

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The US Wants to Send More Guns to Libya. No, Seriously.

by Justine61A Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2015, the United Nations Security Council expressed concern over the unchecked spread of weapons to militant groups plaguing Libya following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Fast-forward a year: The country has descended further into chaos, as dozens of militias, Al Qaeda and ISIS, and two rival governments backed by armed groups vie for power. So, naturally, the United States is ready to ease the UN arms embargo that was put in place in 2011.

The United States, along with many of its international partners, wants to be able to supply “necessary lethal arms” to Libya’s UN-backed interim Government of National Accord to fight ISIS and other terrorist organizations. “It’s a delicate balance. But we are, all of us here today, supportive of the fact that if you have a legitimate government and that legitimate government is fighting terrorism, that legitimate government should not be victimized by the embargo,” Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday.

The same day, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that our military doesn’t have a “great picture” of what is happening in Libya. And a day later, the chief of US Africa Command, Army Gen. David Rodriguez, told the Washington Post that it is difficult to determine which militia groups are aligned with the government that the United States hopes to arm. “We’re really dependent on the Government of National Accord to figure out who is with them and who is moving over toward them,” Rodriguez said. “They’ve only been there a month, and they’re still struggling to get established in Tripoli.”

The conditions in Libya are ripe for arms proliferation, and some observers are concerned that flooding the country with more small arms and ammunition, which is what Rodriguez said is most needed, will only fuel the conflict. “The West’s provision of arms into Libya has been devastating to the country for years,” Andrew Feinstein, the executive director of Corruption Watch, told the Washington-based Forum on the Arms Trade on Tuesday. “When NATO airstrikes were launched in support of rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi, they first had to target weapons, including ground to air missiles, that the West had supplied to Gaddafi. On the dictator’s overthrow, the huge number of surplus weapons provided to him soon found their way onto the black market. Will the West never learn that pouring weapons into an existing conflict only results in that conflict becoming bloodier and longer?”

At the same forum, Iain Overton, the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said, “We know that the Pentagon lost track of about 190,000 AK–type assault rifles and pistols in Iraq. We know that it lost track of more than 40 percent of the firearms provided to Afghanistan’s security forces. And we know that the Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in US military aid given to Yemen. What are the chances, then, of a headline in five years time stating that the Pentagon has lost millions of dollars worth of guns in Libya?”

The potential for losing control of American weapons has been highlighted in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has captured large quantities of US equipment—everything from M-16s and mortars to armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles. In June 2014 alone, ISIS captured enough weapons, ammunition, and vehicles to arm 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers, according to the UN Security Council. A year later, US-backed rebel forces entered Syria and handed over their arms to Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. In March, al-Nusra targeted another US-backed rebel group, detaining scores of fighters and stealing their weapons, including US-made anti-tank missiles.

“Controlling end users and end-use in a conflict setting, particularly the kind of chaotic, anarchic conflict that you have in states that are failed, is extraordinarily difficult, often impossible,” says Matt Schroeder, senior researcher at the Washington DC-based Small Arms Survey.

The announcement to ease the Libyan arms embargo drew skepticism not only from analysts, but from some lawmakers as well. House Armed Services member Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), expressed concern about “flooding Libya with American arms.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has proposed limiting weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, said, “This is an incredibly fragile government. I hope that we ask some very tough questions before we start arming a government that’s on ice that’s still pretty thin.”

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The US Wants to Send More Guns to Libya. No, Seriously.

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America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

by Steffen5482 Posted on May 18, 2016

Make Americans grate again

America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

By on May 18, 2016 5:00 amShare

Stop everything: The U.S. has been hoarding a massive stash of uneaten cheese weighing in at around 1.2 billion pounds — without telling you! To work off that surplus, the Wall Street Journal points out, everyone in the United States would have to eat an extra three pounds of cheese this year.

“No problem!” you say, rolling up your sleeves. But wait — before you take up your duty as a citizen and stuff your face with equal parts deep-fried mac and cheese and crêpes au fromage, consider this: That quantity of cheese consumption might contribute to global destruction.

We’re only being a bit hyperbolic, because it turns out that a block of muenster has a pretty monstrous climate impact. One study declared cheese the third-worst animal food product for greenhouse gas emissions, following beef and lamb. Chicken, tuna, and eggs all have lighter carbon footprints. Here’s why: To create cheese, you need a lot of milk — about 10 pounds of milk per pound of hard cheese, to be precise — and the dairy cows who produce that milk also produce a lot of climate-changing methane.

America’s cows are expected to produce a record-breaking 212.4 billion pounds of milk this year. Much of that will be sold to cheesemakers, who are currently hoarding big blocks of cheese in freezers and waiting for prices to rise.

Why? The Wall Street Journal reports that two years ago, farmers expanded their dairy operations to meet high demand, particularly from overseas. But now dairy prices have dropped and the dollar has climbed, so our friends around the globe aren’t buying as much of our queso dip anymore. But all those extra cows are still around, pumping out methane and milk. Mmm!

When it comes to America’s cheese situation, it looks like we just have too much of a … gouda thing.

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America’s hoarding a huge stash of uneaten cheese

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How Global Warming Is Making Some Diseases Even Scarier

by ModestoBrickhou Posted on May 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Americans should expect a surge in deaths from heat waves, flooding, and respiratory disease as the climate warms, according to a wide-ranging White House report released last month. And what spells disaster for humans could also be a boon to infectious microbes and the animals that transmit them.

The guest on this week’s episode of Inquiring Minds is Ben Beard, associate director for climate change at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He’s one of more than 100 researchers who contributed to the report, and his specialty is vector-borne diseases. These illnesses—which include Lyme disease, dengue fever, and Zika virus—are transmitted by other animals, especially insects such as mosquitos and ticks. Beard talks with co-host Indre Viskontas about how global warming is poised to alter their spread and whether the changes we’re already seeing can be attributed to climate change. “These diseases are emerging in the United States,” he says. “There are more and more cases every year.” You can listen to the full interview with Beard below:

It’s no coincidence that vector-borne illnesses are among the most “climate-sensitive” diseases, he adds, increasing in range and incidence when environmental conditions are favorable to the critters that harbor them. In some regions of the United States, recent decades have brought longer, warmer summers and shorter, milder winters. That’s played a role in the northward creep of tick-transmitted Lyme disease and seasonal flare-ups of the West Nile virus, which is carried by mosquitos. But the issue isn’t simply the expanding range of those diseases; at warmer temperatures, mosquitos can speed up their life cycles, Beard explains. Under hotter conditions, viruses like West Nile will typically replicate faster in the cold-blooded mosquito, making it more likely to be transmitted through each bite.

US Global Change Research Program

There’s also concern, Beard says, about local transmission of diseases typically associated with the tropics—he points to recent cases of dengue and chikungunya in Florida (both are transmitted by mosquitos). But he cautions that the precise causes remain poorly understood; the recent uptick could be linked as much to increases in global trade and travel as it is to changes in the climate.

But one takeaway is clear. “The brunt of this will be borne by the poorer, more tropical regions of the world,” Beard says. These are communities with climates that are already hospitable to disease-bearing insects, and in which the basic layers of prevention—from air conditioning to insect repellent—are scarce. They’re also less likely to have access to quick diagnosis and treatment, he says, which can increase the likelihood that mosquitos or other vectors will spread the illness from one infected individual to an entire household.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow, like us on Facebook, and check out show notes and other cool stuff on Tumblr.

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How Global Warming Is Making Some Diseases Even Scarier

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Here’s Another Crazy Thing Texas Republicans Are Voting on Today

by FrederiFad Posted on May 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Texas Republicans are convening today to cast their ballot on a number of matters close to the Lone Star state’s conservative heart. The most notable issue is whether or not to secede from the rest of the United States, as ardent nationalists in the party are hoping to do.

But buried in the long list of standard Republican agenda items includes the following gem, one that’s stereotypically reserved for members of the left wing:

Despite the unusual bipartisan paranoia, Republicans hoping to opt out of the government-backed meters are likely fresh out of luck: In 2014 the same proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by state lawmakers who were not persuaded that the technology was endangering the public.

Anyone in search for another issue with red and blue support should look no further than the aforementioned vote on Texas secession. As our own Josh Harkinson notes, that, too, has cheerleaders from both ends of the political spectrum.

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Here’s Another Crazy Thing Texas Republicans Are Voting on Today

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7 Consumer Items Being Banned Around the World

by PhillipMacFarlan Posted on May 11, 2016

There are a lot of everyday items that get introduced into our products that aren’t necessarily best for the environment. After research, some countries have decided to take action and ban certain products or items. For example, microbeads were a common ingredient in face wash that eventually got banned in the United States for their detrimental, polluting effects on waterways. This infographic from Quid Corner goes into detail about several of the items being banned around the world.

Infographic via Quid Corner

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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7 Consumer Items Being Banned Around the World

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Teenagers Are Having Fewer Kids—Here’s Why

by StephanHedgepeth Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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The number of teenage women having children has hit an all-time low, thanks in large part to increased contraceptive access and use among Hispanic and African American teenagers, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For decades, the United States has had higher rates of teen pregnancy than most other developed countries. But recent increases in access to contraception, particularly to long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) such as IUDs and implants, have helped women of all ages reduce the chances of unintended pregnancy. Since 2002, LARC use has increased five-fold, with most of that change being due to greater use of IUDs.

Though the CDC stopped short of completely attributing the drop in teen births to contraceptives like LARCs, according to the report “preliminary data” suggests that the use of evidence-based reproductive health services, including contraceptives, is what has led to the huge drop in childbirth among young women over the last ten years.

The drop was particularly notable among Hispanic and African American teenagers. Birth rates for young Hispanic women fell 51 percent since 2006, and for black teenagers 44 percent. That’s a big deal, because Hispanic and African American teenagers have historically had much higher rates of teen pregnancies than their white counterparts. Ten years ago, the birth rate for Hispanic teens was nearly 80 births per 1,000 women, but the rate for white teens was around 25. Now, the rate for Hispanic women is closer to 40.

Still, even though the number of white teens having children has also decreased, black and Hispanic teens still have twice as many pregnancies as their white peers. According to the report, that’s because social inequalities, like income and education, and employment opportunities, remain low in communities of color and influence rates of teen pregnancy.

“The United States has made remarkable progress in reducing both teen pregnancy and racial and ethnic differences,” CDC Director Tom Frieden told the Washington Post. “But the reality is, too many American teens are still having babies.”

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Teenagers Are Having Fewer Kids—Here’s Why

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Kansas Becomes the Latest State To Freak Out Over Syrian Refugees

by IssacG42rrwyqu Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback announced on Tuesday that Kansas is withdrawing from the federal government’s refugee resettlement program over concerns that Syrian refugees could be security threats.

“Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program,” Brownback said in a press release.

Brownback had already issued an executive order in November stating that “no department, commission, board, or agency of the government of the State of Kansas shall aid, cooperate with, or assist in any way the relocation of refugees from Syria to the State of Kansas.” Tuesday’s announcement would apply to refugees from any country. But while the move sounds drastic, it’s mostly a symbolic act that will have little on-the-ground impact for refugees or public safety.

For one, pulling out of the federal resettlement program doesn’t mean refugees won’t be allowed to live in Kansas. While Indiana and other states have tried to bar Syrians from entering their borders, they aren’t actually able to do so. Like any other visa holders, refugees are able to go anywhere the United States they’d like. It also doesn’t mean that support for refugees who are currently living in Kansas or may move there will dry up. The funds that state agencies use for refugee aid are almost entirely federal money, and the Department of Health and Human Services retains control over the funds even if state employees or agencies don’t take part. In those cases, Health and Human Services simply appoints another organization to administer the money. “This is the situation in some other states, usually because their resettlement program is very small,” says Stacie Blake, the director of government and community relations at the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of the nonprofit groups that resettles refugees. “The money is not ‘lost.'”

According to data from the State Department, only five Syrians have settled in Kansas since October of last year.

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Kansas Becomes the Latest State To Freak Out Over Syrian Refugees

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A top climate negotiator isn’t stressing out over the future of the Paris agreement

by GregoryLavater8 Posted on April 21, 2016

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern. REUTERS/Mandel Ngan/Pool

A top climate negotiator isn’t stressing out over the future of the Paris agreement

By on Apr 21, 2016commentsShare

Before the Paris climate agreement enters its next stage – getting signed by 155 countries at the United Nations headquarters on Friday – I caught up with the United States’ outgoing special envoy for climate change on the phone. Todd Stern, who has stepped down to pursue teaching and other projects, was digging himself out of seven years of paperwork in his State Department office.

Stern’s departure comes after he helped the Obama administration accomplish its goals at the Paris conference (COP 21) in December, laying the groundwork for the first global climate agreement to cover the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions.

The future of the Paris agreement is far from secure; 55 countries representing 55 percent of world emissions need to ratify it and its effectiveness relies on countries delivering on (and exceeding) their national pledges. And of course, the U.S. government’s position remains tenuous until the next president takes office.

Stern’s career in international climate politics dates back to the ill-fated Kyoto conference of 1997. His experience putting together deals at Kyoto and Copenhagen, and watching them unravel, could explain why Stern insists the Paris agreement will succeed despite all the challenges. In our recent interview, Stern said he doesn’t wring his hands and wonder, “Oh, my God, what if” the whole thing unravels, because he doesn’t see it happening. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.” After all these years of working in painstakingly incremental climate negotiations, Stern remains an optimist.

This interview is edited for clarity and length.

Q. How does it feel to be packing up?

A. I ended up staying, probably a lot longer than I originally intended when I started in 2009. At some level, we were officially working on this particular negotiation for four years [since the end of 2011] but were really working on the whole thing for seven. I wanted to stay and see it through to the end, and it worked better than anybody had hoped. So this is a good time for me to go.

Q. Do you have any regrets from how you approached the Paris talks and any regrets about the outcome?

A. With respect to Paris, I don’t think that I would say we had real regrets. Obviously, there’s a lot more to do. We made a start, and there’s a tremendous amount of follow-up to do, so it’s not like I’m saying Paris is the be-all and end-all, because that’s certainly not true, but in terms of what’s achievable in Paris, I think we did pretty well.

Q. Paris still left a lot of issues unclear. What needs to happen at the next United Nations climate conference in Marrakech, Morocco?

A. There are a set of different follow-up actions that are called for by the Paris agreement or the accompanying decision itself. You need guidelines for transparency; there are issues on accounting and finance.

All of those follow-up measures that are called for need to be negotiated and worked out over the course of the next few years. There are a small handful of things called for in Marrakech itself, but mostly, we’re talking about beyond Marrakech.

Q. What do future conferences need to accomplish to resolve outstanding issues?

A. In 2018, there’s going to be the first five-year global stock take of how countries are doing on the global emissions goals. Then, two years after each global stock take, there will be a review, with the first one happening in 2020.

Some countries have five-year targets, some countries have 10-year targets. Countries with five-year targets will be putting in a new target. Countries with 10-year targets might be putting in a new target in 2020; their target might still be running for an additional number of years, but they are required to take another look at it in light of science and technology development and make a determination as to whether they should increase it. They have to submit something in writing about whether they’re going to stay where they are or increase it. That’s the kind of ratcheting processes that are going to happen every five years.

Apart from the specifics of what happens in the COP [United Nations climate conference] process, the most important thing is what countries do nationally to drive the emission reductions, drive the transformation from high to low carbon that is required to solve the problem. A lot of it is going to happen at the national levels, even sub-national levels.

Q. What did you learn from your experience at other climate conferences that helped the U.S. position in Paris?

A. Going all the way back to the Kyoto and Buenos Aires conferences in ’97 and ’98 — my first exposure to this issue — one thing I took away was that it was going to be very important, diplomatically, to create a forum where the major players, both developed and developing, get together on a regular basis at a high level and have a civilized, calm, reflective, candid conversation about whatever the hard issues were at the moment.

Coming to the Obama administration, we took President Bush’s Major Economies Forum and we gave it a mission to advance the negotiations with high-level administrators coming together three or four times a year.

I think my sense of needing to do that came out of experiencing the kind of circus and cacophony of my first two U.N. climate conferences.

I always have tried to think both forward and backward. Whatever year you’re in, think about where you want to land, and then try to walk backward to how you’re going to get there. That’s an evolving process. What you think in March is not going to be the same thing that you think in May.

Somebody famous said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This is a slightly more diplomatic version of that. I’ve always tried to be very direct and candid with people, and I think that’s not a diplomatic lesson I’ve learned, I think that’s just my nature that I brought to the job.

When negotiating, I always wanted to have in mind, “We could go this far and we couldn’t go further.” You’re trying to find where the common ground is, where the landing zone is.

Q. How much does it affect negotiations when you have candidates for president who are actively undermining your message?

A. As the noise from the campaign gets louder and louder in this election year, obviously people are paying attention to what the candidates are saying, and I’ve been asked plenty of times about that. I mean, I’m still at the State Department, so I’m not gonna get political here. But I don’t believe any president is going to pull us out of Paris, because I think quite apart from climate change, the diplomatic fallout would be so serious.

Q. I saw you said that President George W. Bush took “lots and lots of diplomatic flak,” for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, but despite the fallout, we still didn’t see any progress on global climate action. While there would be fallout for pulling the U.S. from the Paris agreement, how does that ensure the next president might not do it anyway?

A.That’s a fair question, but I think it’s a different situation, really. You know, Kyoto was a good try, but Kyoto covered really a fairly [limited] number of nations around the world. It was a good effort, but it was also flawed.

I think what you have now is, first of all, a much broader understanding and realization of what this issue is about and what the risks are by countries all over the world. And you have a structure here which is designed to be long-lasting, designed to be inclusive. It would just be seen as a huge step backward for the United States to do this.

Even with respect to Kyoto, the United States took a really big diplomatic hit for doing that, and I think the diplomatic hit here would be just an order of magnitude larger than was true for Kyoto.

Q. Have you ever thought about what it would feel like to watch this unravel after years of effort?

A. No, I don’t think it’s going to. I honestly don’t think it’s going to. I think it’s enormously important that we charge faster forward, because if you look at what’s happening in the natural world, we don’t actually have that much time. But I don’t think about what’s going to happen if it unravels because I don’t think it’s going to unravel.

Q. OK, well, I don’t want to end on such a pessimistic note on my part.

A. I mean, honestly, I don’t, though, Rebecca. You asked me a straight-up question. I don’t go around wringing my hands about, “Oh, my God, what if” because I actually don’t think that that’s going to happen. Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.

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A top climate negotiator isn’t stressing out over the future of the Paris agreement

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Why World Leaders Are Terrified of Water Shortages

by AndersoKellett Posted on April 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Subscribe to the podcast and learn more at revealnews.org.

Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.

Classified US cables reviewed by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.

Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by US Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.

On September 22 of that year, Seche sent a stark message to the US State Department in Washington relaying the details of a conversation with Yemen’s minister of water, who “described Yemen’s water shortage as the ‘biggest threat to social stability in the near future.’ He noted that 70 percent of unofficial roadblocks stood up by angry citizens are due to water shortages, which are increasingly a cause of violent conflict.”

Seche soon cabled again, stating that 14 of the country’s 16 aquifers had run dry. At the time, Yemen wasn’t getting much news coverage, and there was little public mention that the country’s groundwater was running out.

These communications, along with similar cables sent from Syria, now seem eerily prescient, given the violent meltdowns in both countries that resulted in a flood of refugees to Europe.

Embed from Getty Images

Groundwater, which comes from deeply buried aquifers, supplies the bulk of freshwater in many regions, including Syria, Yemen and drought-plagued California. It is essential for agricultural production, especially in arid regions with little rainwater. When wells run dry, farmers are forced to fallow fields, and some people get hungry, thirsty and often very angry.

The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.

It’s not just government officials who are worried. In 2009, US Embassy officers visited Nestle’s headquarters in Switzerland, where company executives, who run the world’s largest food company and are dependent on freshwater to grow ingredients, provided a grim outlook of the coming years. An embassy official cabled Washington with the subject line, “Tour D’Horizon with Nestle: Forget the Global Financial Crisis, the World Is Running Out of Fresh Water.”

“Nestle thinks one-third of the world’s population will be affected by fresh water scarcity by 2025, with the situation only becoming more dire thereafter and potentially catastrophic by 2050,” according to a March 24, 2009, cable. “Problems will be severest in the Middle East, northern India, northern China, and the western United States.”

At the time of that meeting, government officials from Syria and Yemen already had started warning US officials that their countries were slipping into chaos as a result of water scarcity.

A confidential 2009 cable from Stephen Seche, the Unites States’ ambassador to Yemen, raised alarms about water scarcity. Wikileaks

By September 2009, Yemen’s water minister told the US ambassador that the water riots in his country were a “sign of the future” and predicted “that conflict between urban and rural areas over water will lead to violence,” according to the cables.

Less than two years later, rural tribesmen fought their way into Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and seized two buildings: the headquarters of the ruling General People’s Congress and the main offices of the water utility. The president was forced to resign, and a new government was formed. But water issues continued to amplify long-simmering tensions between various religious groups and tribesmen, which eventually led to a full-fledged civil war.

Reveal reviewed a cache of water-related documents that included Yemen, Nestle and Saudi Arabia among the diplomatic documents made public by Wikileaks in 2010. Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, found similar classified US cables sent from Syria. Those cables also describe how water scarcity destabilized the country and helped spark a war that has sent more than 1 million refugees fleeing into Europe, a connection Friedman has continued to report.

The water-fueled conflicts in the Middle East paint a dark picture of a future that many governments now worry could spread around the world as freshwater supplies become increasingly scarce. The CIA, the State Department and similar agencies in other countries are monitoring the situation.

In the past, global grain shortages have led to rapidly increasing food prices, which analysts have attributed to sparking the Arab Spring revolution in several countries, and in 2008 pushed about 150 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.

Water scarcity increasingly is driven by three major factors: Global warming is forecast to create more severe droughts around the world. Meat consumption, which requires significantly more water than a vegetarian or low-meat diet, is spiking as a growing middle class in countries such as China and India can afford to eat more pork, chicken and beef. And the world’s population continues to grow, with an expected 2 billion more stomachs to feed by 2050.

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The most troubling signs of the looming threat first appeared in the Middle East, where wells started running dry nearly 15 years ago. Having drained down their own water supplies, food companies from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere began searching overseas.

In Saudi Arabia, the push to scour the globe for water came from the top. King Abdullah decreed that grains such as wheat and hay would need to be imported to conserve what was left of the country’s groundwater. All wheat production in Saudi Arabia will cease this year, and other water-intensive crops such as hay are being phased out, too, the king ruled.

A classified US cable from Saudi Arabia in 2008 shows that King Abdullah directed Saudi food companies to search overseas for farmland with access to freshwater and promised to subsidize their operations. The head of the US Embassy in Riyadh concluded that the king’s goal was “maintaining political stability in the Kingdom.”

US intelligence sources are quick to caution that while water shortages played a significant factor in the dissolution of Syria and Yemen, the civil wars ultimately occurred as a result of weak governance, high unemployment, religious differences and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to water shortages.

For instance, the state of California has endured a record drought without suffering an armed coup to overthrow Gov. Jerry Brown.

But for less stable governments, severe water shortages are increasingly expected to cause political instability, according to the US intelligence community.

In a 2014 speech, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said food and water scarcity are contributing to the “most diverse array of threats and challenges as I’ve seen in my 50-plus years in the intel business.

“As time goes on, we’ll be confronting issues I call ‘basics’ resources—food, water, energy, and disease—more and more as an intelligence community,” he said.

A confidential 2008 cable from a US diplomat in Saudi Arabia Wikileaks

These problems are not just happening overseas, but already are leading to heated political issues in the United States. In the western part of the country, which Nestle forecast will suffer severe long-term shortages, tensions are heating up as Middle Eastern companies arrive to tap dwindling water supplies in California and Arizona.

Almarai, which is Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company and has publicly said it’s following the king’s directive, began pumping up billions of gallons of water in the Arizona desert in 2014 to grow hay that it exports back to the Middle East. Analysts refer to this as exporting “virtual water.” It is more cost effective to use the Arizona water to irrigate land in America and ship the hay to Saudi Arabia rather than filling a fleet of oil tankers with the water.

Arizonans living near Almarai’s hay operation say their groundwater is dropping fast as the Saudis and other foreign companies increase production. They are now worried their domestic wells might suffer the same fate as those in Syria and Yemen.

In January, more than 300 people packed into a community center in rural La Paz County to listen to the head of the state’s water department discuss how long their desert aquifer would last.

Five sheriff’s deputies stood guard at the event to ensure the meeting remained civil—the Arizona Department of Water Resources had requested extra law enforcement, according to county Supervisor Holly Irwin.

“Water can be a very angry issue,” she said. “With people’s wells drying up, it becomes very personal.”

Thomas Buschatzke, Arizona’s water director, defended the Saudi farm, saying it provides jobs and increases tax revenue. He added that “Arizona is part of the global economy; our agricultural industry generates billions of dollars annually to our state’s economy.”

But state officials admit they don’t know how long the area’s water will last, given the increased water pumping, and announced plans to study it.

“It’s gotten very emotional,” Irwin said. “When you see them drilling all over the place, I need to protect the little people.”

By buying land in America’s most productive ground for growing hay, which just happens to be a desert, Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company now can grow food for its cows back home—all year long. US Geological Survey/NASA Landsat

After the meeting, the state approved another two new wells for the Saudi company, each capable of pumping more than a billion gallons of water a year.

Back in Yemen in 2009, US Ambassador Seche described how as aquifers were drained, and groundwater levels dropped lower, rich landowners drilled deeper and deeper wells. But everyday citizens did not have the money to dig deeper, and as their wells ran dry, they were forced to leave their land and livelihoods behind.

“The effects of water scarcity will leave the rich and powerful largely unaffected,” Seche wrote in the classified 2009 cable. “These examples illustrate how the rich always have a creative way of getting water, which not only is unavailable to the poor, but also cuts into the unreplenishable resources.”

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Why World Leaders Are Terrified of Water Shortages

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