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Here’s Something Else Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong About

by TitusJ2088 Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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The only way to stop climate change is to drastically reduce, and ultimately eliminate, greenhouse gas emissions. If you want to know how well we’re doing on that goal, a good place to start is the Environmental Protection Agency’s official GHG database. And frankly, the picture isn’t very pretty.

The total level of US emissions in 2014 wasn’t very different than it was 30 years ago:

EPA

However, total emissions is a fairly misleading way to look at progress on climate change. Most of these emissions come from fossil fuels burned to make energy—either electricity from power plants or gas for cars and trucks. So emissions are heavily influenced by economic activity; a downturn in the economy would mean people drive less, factories use less electricity, etc., and the outcome would be lower emissions. At least, that’s the way things used to be.

Over the last few years, the United States and many other countries around the world have seen an unprecedented disconnect between gross domestic product and emissions. Thanks to an increasingly large share of energy coming from renewables and vast improvements to energy efficiency, emissions can now be increasingly “decoupled” from economic activity. In other words, it’s now possible to grow the economy without growing emissions.

A new analysis from the World Resources Institute illustrates how this trend is already playing out around the world. It’s a bit of good news, and a solid rebuttal to anyone who says saving the climate means killing the economy—looking at you, Donald Trump:

WRI

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Here’s Something Else Donald Trump Is Totally Wrong About

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Earthquakes caused by oil drillers are now so common that the government just assumes they’re coming

by YaniraHobson Posted on March 29, 2016

Earthquakes caused by oil drillers are now so common that the government just assumes they’re coming

By on 28 Mar 2016commentsShare

Earthquake risk is on the rise, and we mostly have ourselves to blame — or, more specifically, the oil and gas industry.

In a new report, the U.S. Geological Survey maps out earthquake hazards for the coming year, and for the first time, its assessment includes the risk of human-induced earthquakes. There’s now so much earthquake activity caused by the oil industry injecting wastewater underground that 7 million Americans in the central and eastern U.S. are at risk of experiencing a damaging tremor this year.

In parts of north-central Oklahoma and southern Kansas, the risk of dangerous shaking is now about 5–12 percent per year — a riskiness on par with traditionally earthquake-prone California. The difference, of course, is that the Californian quakes as we currently understand them mostly stem from natural processes.

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Fracking itself is not to blame for the increased earthquake risk, USGS says. Rather, it’s the oil and gas industry’s disposal of wastewater that can cause problems. Sometimes that wastewater is the result of fracking, and sometimes it’s the result of traditional drilling processes. After water is pumped into the earth to help extract oil and gas, it comes back up polluted, salty, and altogether undrinkable. To keep it away from people and other critters, it’s often injected back into the earth into deeper formations (below the aquifers we tap for drinking water). This kind of injection can lead to increased pressure at fault zones, which can cause the kind of slippage associated with earthquakes.

The following map shows the new distribution of risk for damaging earthquakes across the United States. Note that the portion on the right — the area updated in the USGS report — includes both natural and human-induced earthquakes, while the portion on the left includes only natural quakes (due to methodological differences).

Click to embiggen.

USGS

Assessing the risk of human-induced earthquakes is tricky because these quakes can potentially be influenced by policy decisions. For example, in Oklahoma — which has already experienced several large quakes this year, including a 5.1-magnitude event in February — regulators are taking steps to curb wastewater injection. It’s the kind of directive that could lead to a lower risk assessment in the future.

Between 1973 and 2008, the U.S. averaged only 24 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or larger each year. By 2015, that number had grown to 1,010 — about a 4,000 percent increase over that earlier average. Already by mid-March this year, the earthquake tally stands at 226 in the central United States alone.

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Earthquakes caused by oil drillers are now so common that the government just assumes they’re coming

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9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

by MaritaMontefior Posted on March 24, 2016

9 figures to help you understand the state of renewable energy

By on 24 Mar 2016 10:59 amcommentsShare

Today, you’ll see some headlines touting last year’s record investment in renewables. A new report from the Frankfurt School–UNEP Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows investment in clean energy grew to $286 billion globally in 2015 — a new world record! — up 5 percent from the previous year. Here’s what the global trend in renewable investment looks like since 2004:

Global new investment in renewable energy by asset class, 2004–2015, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

As a whole, investment in renewable capacity was more than twice that invested in coal- and gas-fired projects last year, and new clean generating capacity added was greater than all other kinds of new generating capacity combined. Note that coal and gas only make up about a third of the pie chart below:

New power generating capacity added in 2015 by main technology, gigawatts

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

But it would kind of be bonkers if that weren’t the case.

Investment in new renewable generating capacity has had a rocky history, but it has more or less been rising everywhere except Europe for the past decade. (Europe has notably seen a decline in investment since about 2011.)

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Still, total global renewable capacity — not just newly added renewable capacity — continues to make up just a small fraction of the energy mix. Total clean energy capacity grew to 16.2 percent of the global mix in 2015, an increase from 15.2 percent in 2014. Actual electricity generated by renewable sources (excluding large hydroelectric projects) grew to 10.3 percent. It’s encouraging growth, to be sure, but perhaps not the sunny picture painted by the phrase “new world record.”

Zooming the lens in a bit reveals a more interesting story. “There are so many numbers, it’s difficult to wrap them up in a few remarks,” cautioned Angus McCrone, lead author and chief editor on the report, on a press call. Indeed, there’s a lot going on in the UNEP report, but one of the things it does well is shine a shaft of light between the big numbers. Who, exactly, is spending all this money, and what kind of money are they spending? China — whose just-released Five-Year Plan has been heralded as its greenest ever — is pouring money into new renewable projects. But what kind of projects are we actually talking about?

China was No. 1 in renewable investment in 2015, responsible for 36 percent of the world’s total. Europe came in second; even its continued slide in investment left it with $4 billion more pumped into the renewable sector than the United States. Here’s the regional breakdown, in billions of dollars, of spending on renewables in 2015:

Global new investment in renewable energy by region, 2015, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

That’s not the whole story, though. While China experienced 81 percent growth last year in new small distributed capacity (solar projects with a capacity of less than 1 megawatt), Japan still smashed the rest of the world in that sector. In the bar graph below, note that even with declining investment in small distributed capacity, the U.S. still finished in second:

Small distributed capacity investment by country, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

China commissioned around 29 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity in 2015 and installed close to 16 GW of solar PV projects. The country’s investments are largely dominated by company borrowing for and spending on renewable projects: what UNEP calls asset finance. Asset finance mostly consists of what’s on company balance sheets, as well as loans and equity financing. Europe, too, invested more than the U.S. in terms of asset finance last year. Here’s the breakdown of how countries invested their renewable dollars in 2015:

New investment in renewable energy by country and asset class, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

So the UNEP report helps clarify the role China plays in the renewable sector: It’s mostly deploying utility-scale projects, and they’re mostly projects that are ready for asset finance. Globally speaking, though, here’s what asset finance for renewables looks like over time and space:

Asset finance investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

But asset finance comes relatively late in a renewable project’s life cycle; that is, at the point of roll-out. Earlier in the cycle, though, the funding landscape looks a little different. Funding from public markets, for example, might begin to trickle in at the point when a given company scales up manufacturing. The United States, which leads the world in terms of investment in publicly listed renewable companies, saw a 41 percent increase in this kind of funding in 2015, compared to the previous year. Note China’s 45 percent dip in this area in the following chart:

Public markets investment in renewable energy by company nationality, 2015, and growth on 2014, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

In terms of venture capital and private equity — the kind of investment that comes at an earlier stage in a company’s cycle — the United States also boasted the heaviest spend. Here’s the global distribution of venture capital spending since 2004, broken down by region:

Venture capital/private equity investment in renewable energy by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, UNEP

And the U.S. was responsible for more value in terms of mergers and acquisitions (including refinancings, takeovers, and buy-outs) in the renewables space than any other country last year. As the following chart shows, while China has seen modest growth in acquisitions over the past couple years, the country still makes up only a small chunk of total spending in this space:

Asset acquisitions and refinancings by region, 2004–2015, $bn

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

None of this is particularly surprising, but it is illuminating — and in many cases, sobering. Don’t forget that China brought more than 40 GW of coal and gas power online last year, too. Investment in the renewable sector continues to grow, but if countries are serious about the commitments they made at the Paris Climate Conference, they’ll have to wean themselves off fossil fuels a lot faster. “When you’re on a diet, it’s not enough to account for the salads you’re eating,” said Ulf Moslener, lead editor on the report, on a press call. “You also have to account for the ice cream.”

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Ted Cruz Calls for Security Patrols in America’s "Muslim Neighborhoods"

by GermanPkc735 Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wake of the Brussels terror attacks Tuesday morning, GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz suggested that the United States “empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

Here is the full statement from the Cruz campaign:

Cruz: We Can No Longer Surrender to the Enemy Through Political Correctness
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, presidential candidate Ted Cruz responded to the horrific terrorist attacks in Brussels:

“Today radical Islamic terrorists targeted the men and women of Brussels as they went to work on a spring morning. In a series of coordinated attacks they murdered and maimed dozens of innocent commuters at subway stations and travelers at the airport. For the terrorists, the identities of the victims were irrelevant. They –we—are all part of an intolerable culture that they have vowed to destroy.

“For years, the west has tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear. We can no longer afford either. Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods.

“We will do what we can to help them fight this scourge, and redouble our efforts to make sure it does not happen here. We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.

“We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are are at an end. Our country is at stake.”

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Ted Cruz Calls for Security Patrols in America’s "Muslim Neighborhoods"

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Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

by RobynJeffrey Posted on March 12, 2016

Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

By on 11 Mar 2016commentsShare

Five years ago this Friday, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami that reached heights of 50 feet and traveled six miles inland. The quake moved the main island of Japan 8 feet to the east and shifted the Earth on its axis. An estimated 18,000 people died.

That was the “natural” part of this disaster. What happened next was made exponentially worse by the human: Flooding from the tsunami led to power failures at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which led to a now-infamous meltdown. Over 150,000 people fled their homes, and over 100,000 of those have yet to return, many out of fear of radiation poisoning. Much of the land will be uninhabitable for generations. As Japan marks the anniversary, you might think: Could it happen here?

That depends on who you ask.

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In 2012, the American Nuclear Society’s Special Committee on Fukushima called the disaster a “complex story of mismanagement, culture, and sometimes even simple errors in translation.” In other words, it was human error. Experts from the Carnegie Endowment’s nuclear program agreed, writing in The New York Times that Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the plant’s owner, had been negligent: “Had Tepco and the nuclear safety agency followed international standards and best practice, the Fukushima accident would have been prevented.”

The Special Committee was optimistic about such a thing never happening in the United States. After a 30-year hiatus in nuclear plant construction, there are currently five reactors being built in the U.S, and they will be equipped with safety features that should prevent what happened at Fukushima.

But there are 99 existing reactors in the country that can’t be retrofitted with such features. David Lochbaum, a former nuclear industry whistleblower and director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes that “if exposed to similarly complex challenges, all 99 operating reactors in the United States would likely have similar outcomes. Worse,” he continues, “Japanese and U.S. regulators share a mindset that severe, supposedly ‘low probability’ accidents are unlikely and not worth the cost and time to protect against.”

Lochbaum and other scientists have also raised concern about a design flaw, reportedly present in almost every nuclear plant in the country, that could impact the emergency core cooling systems and lead to Fukushima-like meltdowns. In early March, the group petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to either immediately either fix the problem or shut down these plants. The industry did neither.

Of course, the United States isn’t Japan. Japan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of intense seismic activity. As many as 1,500 earthquakes are measured there each year, and the frequent underseas earthquakes make the island nation vulnerable to tsunamis. But even if earthquakes are less common in the U.S., there are plenty of other natural disasters to worry about.  

Take floods. Because nuclear reactors require water to operate, they’re often built in close proximity to lakes, rivers, or — in Fukushima’s case — the ocean. A dam burst upstream of a nuclear facility could cut off the power supply — which is exactly what happened in Fukushima. In 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found 35 reactors across the U.S. were vulnerable to flooding. That’s 35 potential disasters.

So could Fukushima happen here? Yes, it probably could. Nuclear energy is inherently dangerous. Even when sites are decommissioned, they require massive cleanup — and it’s massively expensive. After Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered nuclear facility owners to improve safety and expand protections by December of this year. Let’s just hope the big one doesn’t hit before then.

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Hillary Clinton’s Big Shift on Fracking

by Irving73Y91 Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A college student asked Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton a simple question at the Flint, Mich., debate on Sunday night: “Do you support fracking?”

And Bernie Sanders had a simple answer: “No, I do not support fracking.”

Read MoJo’s Investigation: How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World

Hillary Clinton, though, needed more time to outline three conditions in a more nuanced answer on fracking. She’s against it “when any locality or any state is against it,” “when the release of methane or contamination of water is present,” and “unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using.”

Until those conditions are met, “we’ve got to regulate everything that is currently underway, and we have to have a system in place that prevents further fracking.”

“By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she added.

Clinton offered qualified support for fracking well before Sanders even registered in the presidential race. Addressing the National Clean Energy Summit in 2014, Clinton said, “we have to face head-on the legitimate, pressing environmental concerns about some new extraction practices and their impacts on local water, soil, and air supplies. Methane leaks in the production and transportation of natural gas are particularly troubling. So it’s crucial that we put in place smart regulations and enforce them, including deciding not to drill when the risks are too high.”

Yet, she sounded much more rosy on natural gas and fracking years ago than she does now. “With the right safeguards in place, gas is cleaner than coal. And expanding production is creating tens of thousands of new jobs,” she said in 2014. “And lower costs are helping give the United States a big competitive advantage in energy-intensive energies.”

As secretary of state in 2010, Clinton argued in favor of gas as “the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today,” and said that “if developed, shale gas could make an important contribution to our region’s energy supply, just as it does now for the United States.” Her office, meanwhile, promoted fracking in developing nations.

After leaving the Obama administration in 2014, Clinton still emphasized the benefits of fracking, implying that strict limits on fracking should be the exception to the rule. In 2016, Clinton has flipped her emphasis, as Sanders has gained an edge from his anti-fracking stance: Now, she suggests it will be a rare, unlikely case when fracking should be allowed.

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Hillary Clinton’s Big Shift on Fracking

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Everyone Loves the Idea of Preschool, So Why Don’t All Our Kids Get to Go to One?

by LucieU73vymkaoj Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s hard to think of another education reform idea that has garnered as much support among advocates of various ideological stripes as early childhood education. California and New York liberals support it, and so do conservatives in Oklahoma and Florida. A 2015 national poll showed that 76 percent of voters support the idea of spending federal money to expand public preschool, and the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act includes more funding for early childhood. Helping the idea along is decades of research (which continues to pour in) that suggests effective preschools can benefit all children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. “We have better evidence that preschool works and has long-term effects than we do for any other social policy,” David L. Kirp, one of our country’s leading experts on early childhood education and a professor of public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, told Mother Jones.

But can we identify what a good preschool looks like and make that accessible to the kids most in need? That topic has been debated fiercely by parents, preschool advocates, and policymakers all over the country. This week, early childhood education experts and city chiefs of preschools came together in Sacramento, California, to talk about the latest research. As presenter Abbie Lieberman, an early-education policy analyst at New America, put it: “When we step into a preschool, how can we tell what is actually learning through play and what is true chaos?”

What the Studies Say:

The growing pile of evidence on the long-term benefits of high-quality preschool stretches all the way back to a 1961 Perry Preschool Study. Researchers at the HighScope Educational Research Foundation decided to follow 123 three- and four-year-olds from public housing projects in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Fifty-eight toddlers were randomly placed in a preschool class for two years; 65 kids from the neighborhood were left without preschool. Researchers then collected data on the students until they turned 40—an astonishingly long time in education research. They found that the kids in preschool were much more likely to have better grades and test scores and more likely to go to college, earn a higher income, and own a house. In fact, their income and other assets pushed them well above the poverty line, as Kirp documents in his book, The Sandbox Investment.

A similar study started in 1972, the Abecederian Project. It followed 111 infants in North Carolina until they turned 35. The results were similar, piquing the interest of economists. Steven Barnett, a professor of economics and the executive director of the National Institute on Early Childhood Research, eventually calculated that every $1 the government invests in high-quality early education can save more than $7 later on by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancies, and even reducing crime. Such arguments about long-term savings made preschool appealing to conservatives and big philanthropists in the business world.

More recently, other scholars were able to show the disparities between students who had some form of early childhood education and those who didn’t. Jane Woldfogel, a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University and the author of Too Many Children Left Behind, looked at the test scores of 8,000 students in the United States and found there was a huge gap in reading abilities before kids even arrived at first grade. “If we are going to give teachers a fighting chance at narrowing our achievement gaps later in school, our kids have to come in more equally prepared,” Woldfogel told Mother Jones.

So What Does a Good Preschool Look Like?

Marjorie Wechsler, an early-childhood-education researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, recently synthesized research from a number of preschool systems and identified 10 common foundational building blocks among programs that demonstrated positive impacts on a variety of measures. Wechsler, who presented her findings in Sacramento, found that the best preschools have college-educated teachers with specialized skills in child development; they also use curriculum that emphasizes problem-solving rather than unstructured play or “repeat-after-me” drills. Successful educators know how to teach cognitive, social-emotional, and physical skills. Plus, high-quality preschools support their teachers with experienced coaches, and classroom sizes don’t get bigger than 10 kids for every teacher.

The Roadblocks:

While expanding preschool for low-income students might have garnered more advocates than almost any other school reform idea in the country, there are inevitable problems: Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has pointed out that studies like the Perry Preschool research have only looked at small school programs that are difficult to replicate on a large scale. Other opponents point to a recent large-scale study looking at the impact of Tennessee’s state-funded preschool; the study found that by second grade, students who attended preschool actually performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers, however, blamed in part repetitive, poorly structured teaching for these results.

Steven Barnett, the director of the National Institute of Early Education Research, argued in the Hechinger Report that the Tennessee study mostly provides additional evidence that preschool on the cheap doesn’t work. Perry and Abecedarian students had highly trained and well-paid teachers, and these programs cost about $14,000 to $20,000 per child in today’s dollars, compared with $4,611 that Tennessee spends currently.

And unsurprisingly, the numbers and research bolster Barnett’s point: The strongest preschools have been well funded—some estimates vary between $8,000 and $10,000 per student. Barnett pointed to New Jersey, Boston, and Tulsa, Oklahoma—places that spend energy and money on highly trained teachers, coaching, and strong curriculum—as examples of where governments are serving children well.

Image courtesy of the National Institute of Early Education Research

Is There Hope?

The dollar figures show the United States has a long way to go. While the city of Boston spends $10,000 for each preschooler, in 2014 the average expenditure, nationwide, was $4,125 of government spending per kid. That’s not much more than the government was spending a decade earlier.

The good news is that after years of dismal cuts following the recession, a movement to increase funding and enrollment for preschool is regaining its momentum—driven mostly by local and state policymakers. What’s more, both the federal Every Children Succeeds Act and California’s state budget include more funding to increase the number of low-income kids in high-quality preschools.

Getting the United States all the way to universal preschool, of course, is a long road. The nation ranks 30th out of 44 for preschool enrollment among developed nations; 66 percent of American four-year-olds went to preschool in 2012. Of those, only 13 percent of low-income children were enrolled in high-quality early childhood programs, according to a study by RAND Corp.

“Six years ago, we started talking about what does quality look like? How does it work?” Camille Maben, the executive director of First 5 California, a state agency, said at the end of the Sacramento gathering. “We know now that quality works in all kinds of different ways. One size truly does not fit all. But when there are so many of us, changes are like turning an elephant in the bathtub. It’s an enormous challenge.”

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Everyone Loves the Idea of Preschool, So Why Don’t All Our Kids Get to Go to One?

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What Instagram reveals about your access to healthy food

by LouisBitner Posted on March 2, 2016

What Instagram reveals about your access to healthy food

By on 1 Mar 2016commentsShare

If you’ve ever stepped inside a convenience store to pick up some groceries, you may have noticed that it’s much easier to find Almond Joys than arugula.

Food deserts — places where fresh produce is not nearly as easy to come by as chips and candy — are home to millions in the United States. To see what these Americans are actually eating, a recent study turned to an unexpected source: Instagram. Researchers analyzed the content and location of 3 million public Instagram posts tagged with food words like “kale” and “Takis.”

In all regions of the U.S., Instagram posts from food deserts depicted grub that was 5 to 17 percent higher in cholesterol, sugar, and fat, even after controlling for cultural dietary variation by comparing each food desert to a non-desert of similar demographic and socioeconomic standing, The Atlantic points out. Even so, the distinction was so pronounced that the researchers could predict whether or not any given food post came from a food desert with 80 percent accuracy.

Each region of the United States had a unique Instagram food flair that differed inside and outside of food deserts. From The Atlantic:

… In the southeast U.S., food-desert dwellers posted a lot of bacon, brisket, and grits, while non-food-desert dwellers posted more peaches, beans, and collard greens. In the Midwest, food deserts were full of hamburgers, hot dogs, and the generic descriptor “meat,” while kale, turkey, and spinach were more popular outside of food deserts.

These findings suggest that people who live further from grocery stores are eating very differently from the rest of the country — and that’s a problem.

But the solution isn’t super-complicated: Studies have shown that if you open up farmers markets in areas accessible to low-income folks and have vendors accept food stamps, plenty of customers will come. 7-11 Slurpees just aren’t going to cut it when it comes to meeting America’s nutritional needs.

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Phil Robertson Says Vote for Ted Cruz Before We All Fall Into the Pit of Hell

by Glinda6958 Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson told conservative voters in South Carolina on Friday that “godly” Sen. Ted Cruz offered them the best chance at preventing the United States from becoming “hell on Earth.”

Appearing at a packed theater at the College of Charleston, Cruz was accompanied by a squad of conservative favorites the day before voters hit the polls in the critical South Carolina Republican presidential primary. This group of Cruz backers included Rush Limbaugh’s brother, David, and Rep. Mark Sanford, who was once governor of the state and famously caused a scandal when he disappeared to see a mistress but told his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Yet it was Robertson the audience came to see; some supporters even brought their own duck calls. Robertson tried to take front-runner Donald Trump down a notch by showing that Cruz has a reality television star of his own in his corner and, more important, God on his side.

Robertson’s endorsement of Cruz could almost fit in a tweet. As Fox News host Sean Hannity interviewed Cruz on the stage, Robertson, clutching a Bible, walked up in camo attire and declared, “I’m for Cruz because you see this in my hand? Bibles and guns brought us here. And it will be Bibles and guns that keeps us here. And this man owns them both.” Then Robertson picked up his camo backpack and walked back through the curtains.

About 15 minutes later, Robertson returned to the stage and read aloud from a book about presidents who pray. Prayer was the reason the United States won its independence, he explained, and it might be the only thing that could save the nation from its current fate. He expanded on his previous pitch for Cruz. “You say, ‘Phil, you either got mighty lucky or God blessed you,'” he said. “But you know something, South Carolina? Can all the money the money I evvvvver make, can it remove your sin, South Carolina? That money? What about all this fame I received—will it raise me from the dead? That’s why I follow Jesus. That’s why I vote for people who follow Jesus.”

Robertson continued: “We went with the atheists beginning about 50 years ago, and we’ve almost created in America a hell on Earth. Vote godly. I love you, and I love God. It’s the only way to roll.”

Cruz embraced Robertson warmly. In the past few days, Cruz has suggested that if he were elected president, he would nominate Utah tea party Sen. Mike Lee to the Supreme Court and ask Trump to build a wall on the Mexican border. Now he told the crowd there might also be a place for Robertson in his administration. “Can you imagine Phil Robertson as ambassador to the United Nations?” Cruz asked. “How much would you pay to see that?”

As the South Carolina contest hurdles toward its conclusion—and after Cruz has spent months hammering his opponents (especially Marco Rubio) on immigration—he is pushing a more fundamental message to voters on his final swing through the state: Vote for Cruz so that he can bring God back to America.

Cruz finished the event with a prayer. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,” Cruz said, reciting from memory 2 Chronicles 7:14, “then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins.”

The audience knew the rest and finished the prayer with him: “And I will heal their land.”

By the way, here’s a commercial that Robertson made with Cruz a few weeks ago:

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Phil Robertson Says Vote for Ted Cruz Before We All Fall Into the Pit of Hell

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The American State of Teenage Sex, in 3 Charts

by ValentiBernstei Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Back in 2002, the government funded a study that showed there was no evidence that abstinence programs increased a kid’s likelihood of abstaining from sex. In fact, no studies have found evidence that teaching abstinence works to prevent teenage pregnancies. And yet this year, the federal government will fund abstinence-only education to the tune of $85 million.

Last week, for the third year in a row, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal included cuts to some $10 million of that abstinence-only education funding. Obama has consistently taken an anti-abstinence-education stance over the course of his political career. Back on the campaign trail in 2008, he said he believes contraception should be part of sex education curricula. He wasn’t alone: In 2010, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) took a poll and found that 88 percent of parents of junior high school students and 85 percent of parents of high school students believe information about how to use and where to get contraceptives is an appropriate topic for sexuality education. Even Obama’s first budget as president aimed to make similar cuts to abstinence education funding. GOP members of Congress fought it, and the attempt ultimately failed. The same happened in 2010 and is pretty likely to happen this time, too.

All this means that over the past two decades, more than $1.8 billion in federal dollars have been funneled into abstinence-only education.

The Obama administration has had some victories. In 2010 and 2011, Obama and Congress agreed to eliminate two-thirds of funding for previously existing abstinence programs, and then allocated almost $190 million in new funding to initiatives aimed at preventing unintended teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Meanwhile, as the various wings of the government have been fighting over what dollars go where, teen pregnancy rates have plummeted to record lows over the past three years. What’s more, rates fell 51 percent between 1990 and 2010. The reasons for the decline are complicated and hard to pinpoint; some studies give credit to better contraception and more precise use of it.

But when it comes to American teens and sex, we still have a lot of problems to fix: According to a report by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 41 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds admit to knowing little or nothing about condoms. And more young people than ever—aged 15 to 24—are getting sexually transmitted diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 percent of chlamydia cases in 2014 were in 15- to 24-years-olds, as were 53 percent of gonorrhea cases. We don’t know which kids sat through abstinence classes, but this is the age group that received the most federal funding for abstinence education. (Although perhaps it’s fair to note that abstinence groups would attribute the increase in STDs to the rise of hookup culture and media representations of sex.)

From 2000 to 2014, the number of schools that required kids to learn about STD prevention dropped by 10 percent. To combat the rising rates of STDs and the lack of education, different states are taking different approaches. A Utah lawmaker is trying to persuade his colleagues to pass a law that allows kids to learn comprehensive sex education in schools—a tall order, considering the moral code of the state. To the west, California passed a law last year that requires comprehensive sex education in schools for 2016. San Francisco schools are considering making condoms available to students as early as sixth grade. They would not be the first California schools to do so; Oakland Unified schools implemented a similar policy in 2014. On the opposite end of the spectrum, last year Texas took $3 million from its state budget for HIV and STD prevention and reallocated it to abstinence education.

For a quick look at where the United States stands on abstinence education and teen sex, here are three charts from an upcoming Mother Jones feature story on abstinence education:

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The American State of Teenage Sex, in 3 Charts

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