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‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

by ChristieAndes Posted on September 13, 2019

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

WASHINGTON — Greta Thunberg, the famous 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist who kicked off a global movement of students leaving school to demand action on the climate crisis, joined other youth activists at a rally outside the White House on Friday.

A few hundred people, mostly teenagers and young children, gathered on the Ellipse south of the White House carrying signs that read “I want you to panic!” and “Why are we studying for a future we won’t have?” They chanted, “This is a crisis, act like it!” and “No more coal, no more oil, keep that carbon in the soil.” When someone mentioned President Donald Trump, the crowd booed and yelled “Shame!”

After marching a short distance toward the White House, numerous protesters lay down on the ground for an 11-minute “die-in” ― what one speaker called a “mass extinction.” The protest represented the 11 years that scientists say world governments have to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off potentially cataclysmic climate change.

“We are striking today to save tomorrow!” Nadia Nazar, the 17-year-old co-founder of the Zero Hour movement.

Trump has a long history of denying the threat of climate change, often arguing that spells of cold weather somehow disprove the long-term warming trend. His administration has taken an ax to a slew of environmental regulations meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions — all part of its so-called “energy dominance” agenda. Thunberg told CBS in an interview last month that she wouldn’t “waste time” talking to Trump if given the opportunity.

Thunberg spent most of the rally surrounded by peers and a throng of reporters wielding cameras. She quietly joined a series of chants, and when finally given a chance to speak, simply expressed her gratitude for such a large turnout.

“This is very overwhelming,” she said. “Never give up. We will continue.”

Jeff Hunt, a 28-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., was among those participating in Friday’s rally. He carried a sign that read, “When I grow up I want to be Greta Thunberg,” and told HuffPost that like Thunberg, he thinks Trump is a lost cause.

Instead, Hunt hopes the event helps sends a message to the rest of the country and world that we are nearing a dangerous tipping point and it is time to make radical, economy-wide changes that will protect future generations.

“I have high hopes that the generation beneath me will be much more plugged in,” he said. “I feel like my generation has kind of dropped the ball, if you look at our voting habits and our dedication to actually change our lifestyle.”

Thunberg rose to fame last year when she went on strike from school following Sweden’s hottest summer on record. For weeks, she sat outside her country’s Parliament, holding a “School strike for climate” sign and demanding that local politicians enact policies in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate action.

School strikes quickly popped up in other countries. And in March, an estimated 1.4 million young people in more than 100 countries mobilized for a global strike, part of what has come to be known as the Fridays for Future movement. Tuesday’s gathering outside the White House comes ahead of a weeklong global strike slated for the week of September 20.

Thunberg traveled to the United States by sailboat to reduce her carbon footprint. While in the United States, she’s expected to testify before Congress, speak outside the U.S. Supreme Court alongside youth suing the government over climate change, and attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.

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‘Never give up’: Greta Thunberg takes climate strike to the White House

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Here’s where all the official Democratic presidential candidates stand on climate

by rmac22221971 Posted on April 18, 2019

So far, 18 Democrats have announced bids to tussle with Donald Trump for the presidency in 2020, with more expected to throw their caps in the ring. In such a crowded field, it’s hard to decipher where each candidate stands on any issue, including climate change — a topic that was conspicuously absent in the 2016 election but appears will be front and center this time around. Luckily, the New York Times sent around a survey to each of the 18 declared Democratic candidates and got them all on the record about everything from a carbon tax to nuclear energy to renewables.

There are a few things that all of the candidates seem to agree on: The U.S. should stay in the Paris climate accord, reinstate President Obama’s climate legacy (which has suffered under Trump’s deregulation push), and invest in renewable energy. Some candidates said they would go even further in one or more of those issue areas, by adding their own flourishes to Obama’s Clean Power Plan or promising to work with the global community to strengthen the Paris pact.

Taking a look at where the candidates diverge yields a much more interesting analysis. Though there are many small distinctions between the 18 presidential hopefuls on climate policy, there are two issues where there is meaningful daylight between candidates.

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A carbon tax

A carbon tax is still controversial in the United States, despite its prominence in countries like Sweden and Norway, and the success of carbon-trading schemes in the state of California and the multi-state coalition named the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on the opposite seaboard. That’s in part because politicians don’t agree on what to do with the money generated by the tax — though most of the candidates said they’d at least be willing to consider a price on carbon.

Cory Booker, in his response to a survey question on whether he supports a carbon tax, said he would like to see the money from the tax go toward alleviating inequality. That progressive approach clashes with Pete Buttigieg’s response. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor said he supports a tax but advocates for returning the money generated by the fee to American families — a scheme favored by some Republicans.

Both the progressive and conservative versions of a carbon tax failed to pass in Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s deep-blue state. The self-described climate candidate has watched many iterations of such a tax fail, in spite of his state’s liberal voter base. Perhaps that’s why Inslee is still in the undecided camp when it comes to pricing emissions — there’s only so many times you can bang your head against the same wall.

Nuclear energy

Like it or not, nuclear energy will likely have to play a role in weaning the United States off of its oil and gas addiction. Any candidate who supports the Green New Deal (five senators and counting) will have a hard time achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 without leaning on nuclear, at least in the short-term.

Regardless of that inconvenient truth, the question on nuclear energy was the most divisive in the survey, according to the Times. Seven out of the 18 were in favor of new nuclear development, including Booker, Inslee, John Hickenlooper, and Amy Klobuchar. Bernie Sanders, one of the earlier proponents of the Green New Deal and the emissions target it centers around, is not in favor of new nuclear. Eight of the candidates either didn’t respond or had “strong reservations.”

“Nuclear energy is not ideal, by any stretch,” said Marianne Williamson, the spiritual healer who famously counseled Oprah Winfrey and is one of those with reservations. “But it is still head and shoulders above coal and natural gas.”

In such a crowded field, it’s these minute differences between candidates that will help climate-conscious voters decide who’s serious about tackling rampant warming, among the many other issues facing the nation. As a presidential candidate, it’s easy enough to say you’ll reenter a climate agreement that nearly every other global leader supports. It’s much more difficult to speak with literacy about controversial topics like nuclear energy, or thorny emission reduction plans like a federal carbon tax. As election season heats up, these candidates will have to expound on the ways they aim to cool the planet down.

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Here’s where all the official Democratic presidential candidates stand on climate

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School strikes over climate change continue to snowball

by reenokabeeno2005 Posted on January 26, 2019

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The 16-year-old activist behind the fast-growing School Strikes 4 Climate Action has taken her campaign to the streets of Davos, to confront world leaders and business chiefs about the global emissions crisis.

Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss school children in the ski resort on Friday — the final day of the World Economic Forum.

Thunberg traveled by train for 32 hours to reach Davos, and spent Wednesday night camped with climate scientists on the mountain slopes — where temperatures plunged to -18 degrees C (-0.4 degrees F).

Having already addressed the U.N. Climate Change COP 24 conference, Thunberg is rapidly becoming the voice for a generation who are demanding urgent action to slow the rise in global temperatures.

As she traveled down Davos’s funicular railway from the Arctic Base Camp — while more than 30,000 students were striking in Belgium — Thunberg said the rapid growth of her movement was “incredible.”

“There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.”

Thunberg started her protest by striking for three weeks outside the Swedish parliament, lobbying MPs to comply with the Paris Agreement. After the Swedish election, she continued to strike every Friday, where she is now joined by hundreds of people.

“This Friday I can’t be there,” she told the Guardian. “So I will have to do it here in Davos, and send a message that this is the only thing that matters.”

Students around the world have been inspired by Thunberg, with thousands skipping school in Australia in November. Last Friday there were strikes in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, where more than 20,000 students skipped school.

Missing gym class, geography, and religion each Friday is something of a sacrifice for Thunberg, who says she loves school and can’t pick a favorite subject.

“I like all subjects. I love learning, which people maybe don’t think about me.”

She’s also been forced to give up her hobbies, as climate change activism has taken more of her time. “I used to play theatre, sing, dance, play an instrument, ride horses, lots of things.”

She’s sanguine, though, pointing out that climate activism is much more important: “You have to see the bigger perspective.”

Thunberg said she would like more students to join her strike. “That would have a huge impact, but I’m not going to force anyone to do this.”

In the U.K., only a small number of students have so far begun strikes, including 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand in Fort William. But plans are now being made for a big strike on February 15. Thunberg predicts there will be protests in many locations.

She believes parents should be supportive if their children tell them they’re striking on Friday. “Everyone keeps saying that the young people should be more active, and they’re so lazy, but once we do something we get criticized.”

The world’s scientists warned in October that, without a dramatic ramping up of action to cut emissions, global temperatures would rise by more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, with severe consequences for humanity.

Thunberg believes the older generations need to acknowledge that they have failed to protect the environment.

“We need to hold the older generations accountable for the mess they have created, and expect us to live with. It is not fair that we have to pay for what they have caused,” she says.

Thunberg has also called on business leaders and politicians to commit to “real and bold climate action,” and focus on the “future living conditions of mankind” rather than economic goals and profits.

In a video address for leaders attending Davos, she says: “I ask you to stand on the right side of history. I ask you to pledge to do everything in your power to push your own business or government in line with a 1.5 C world.”

Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which she believes helps her see the problem of climate change clearly.

“My brain works a bit different and so I see things in black and white. Either we start a chain reaction with events beyond our control, or we don’t. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.”

The school strikes last Friday were by far the biggest to date. In Germany, an estimated 30,000 students left their schools in more than 50 cities to protest, carrying banners including: “Why learn without a future?” and “Grandpa, what is a snowman?” One 17-year-old student in Kiel, Moritz, told Deutsche Welle: “We want to help shape and secure our future so that there will be another world for us to live in in 60 years.”

In Belgium, 12,500 students went on strike last Thursday and plan to strike weekly until the E.U. elections in May. Some teachers were tolerant of the truancy. Patrick Lancksweerdt, in Brussels, said: “Education has to turn youngsters into mature citizens. By their actions, they proved that they are.”

School strikes also took place in 15 cities and towns in Switzerland. In Geneva, 12-year-old Selma Joly said: “Frankly, I would rather demand climate action than go to school. Otherwise, years from now, we may no longer be here.”

Janine O’Keeffe, who helps coordinate and keep track of the school strikes from her home in Stockholm, Sweden, was surprised at the scale of last week’s actions: “I am still in shock, actually — a nice kind of shock.”

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, says youth activism on climate change gives her hope. “The 15-year-olds just speak truth to power.”

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School strikes over climate change continue to snowball

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Team Trump promoted coal at the U.N. climate talks. Young activists busted it up.

by RussellCoverdal Posted on December 10, 2018

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KATOWICE, POLAND – In the middle of the Trump administration’s event to promote fossil fuels at the United Nations climate conference on Monday, the audience erupted into laughter. The laughter was the beginning of a protest, organized by a group of youth and indigenous organizations from the United States, a raucous response to yet another attempt by the Trump administration to tout fossil-fuels.

“Keep it in the ground!” protestors shouted, crowding the stage and blocking the panel — led by Wells Griffith, President Trump’s energy adviser — from view.

“My government has betrayed me,” said Vic Barrett, a 19-year-old protestor who is also one of the plaintiffs in the landmark climate lawsuit against the federal government. “They are perpetuating the global climate crisis.”

While Griffith and the rest of the men on the panel smirked and shifted awkwardly, a succession of young activists gave speeches, then marched out of the room, shouting “Shame on you.”

This was one of numerous protests launched by young activists over the past week. Along with the official delegations from almost 200 countries, young people from all around the globe have converged on Katowice to share strategies and plans for action.

“The reason that we’re out here is to encourage other youth across the world to take action and really care,” said Michael Charles, a member of the Diné tribe and the Navajo Nation.

Their lobbying, cajoling, and colorful, enthusiastic protests are in stark contrast to the painfully slow process of international negotiation. In many rooms of the Katowice’s gigantic Spodek conference center, suited delegates are grappling over hundreds of sometimes minute disagreements in the text of the new Paris “rulebook.”

These heads of state, diplomats, and dignitaries are trying to hash out their differences over what has been called “Paris 2.0.” The rulebook that they develop will guide how governments implement the landmark Paris agreement. The problem is, they rarely agree. They’re divided on questions of who will pay for what and how to measure and track emissions reductions. And they are still trying to address the terrifying gap between rapidly increasing emissions and slowly advancing efforts to curb them.

But the young attendees at COP 24 keep pushing forward and learning from one another. “I come from a country that does not really acknowledge climate change,” a medical student from Egypt told Grist. “It’s not a priority for us. So it’s a very unique experience to see all the negotiations, all the youth activists, and learn about the efforts they are doing in their home countries.”

In Sweden, a teenager named Greta Thunberg is going on strike from school every Friday. In Australia, thousands of students are protesting government inaction on climate change and the construction of a new coal mine in central Queensland.

Here in Katowice, young people have to walk a fine line between either supporting or disrupting the delegations of their home country. Some activists are at COP24 to lobby negotiators on specific policies, like including human rights in the agreement and providing increased adaptation funding for developing countries.

But they’re aware government negotiators may not respond to their lobbying. “They do like to talk to us, and they are very open — but we don’t actually know how much they take our voices into consideration,” said João Henrique Alves Cerqueira, a young activist from Brazil.

Even when government negotiators are open and available, they are restrained by political pressures. “There’s an acknowledgement that what they do is not national policy,” said Eilidh Robb of U.K. Youth Climate Coalition, referring to negotiators from the U.K. “And they negotiate currently in the EU block – so to an extent we’re limited in what we can push, because they’re limited by an entire continent of voices and opinions.”

When working with delegations fails or falls short, young people turn to protest. Loudly. Almost every day in the hallways of Spodek, amid suited politicians and dignitaries, activists sing and chant their way to a better future. Last week, a group of young people presented the People’s Demands for Climate Justice, calling for an end to fossil-fuel extraction and an increase in financial support for developing countries. Other protests have pointed to the health consequences of climate change and criticized the role of big corporations in negotiations.

Poland’s security forces have cracked down on demonstrations, setting special rules banning spontaneous protests during the conference. Activism within the conference center is tightly controlled — some groups were told that even taking a photo with matching shirts was in violation of policy.

On Saturday, when thousands of conference attendees and environmentalists from across Poland and the rest of the continent staged a climate march in Katowice, they were met by heavily armed police officers in full riot gear. “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” marchers chanted, as the officers paced the sidelines.

Meanwhile, inside the conference center, negotiators fought over whether to  “welcome” or “note” the recent, devastating IPCC report. When the U.S. and Russia (joined by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) refused to “welcome” the report, the text was dropped entirely.

It felt like two different conferences — one old and one new, a generation with power and a generation struggling to take any action possible. “Wake up! Wake up!” marchers shouted, waving flags and banners. “It’s time to save our home.”

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Team Trump promoted coal at the U.N. climate talks. Young activists busted it up.

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Chart of the Day: Health Care Spending as a Percentage of GDP

by AlishaFergusson Posted on June 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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This is apropos of nothing in particular. I was over at the World Bank site fiddling around with some stuff and happened to look at their chart for health care spending. There’s a good case to be made that as GDP rises, the share devoted to health care also rises. This is because richer countries have more “spare” income and health care is what they spend it on.

But Sweden and Switzerland have per-capita GDPs as high as ours, and they still spend a whole lot less. The sooner we start reining in the growth of health care spending the better.

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Chart of the Day: Health Care Spending as a Percentage of GDP

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Europe is going all in for batteries.

by ElvinLapp772187 Posted on May 22, 2017

Though the official release is planned for Tuesday, leaked versions of the 2018 budget proposal show dramatic funding cuts for environmental programs — even those supported by the president’s own party.

The budget, which still needs congressional approval, would cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 35 percent. It also slashes funding for cleanup programs like Superfund, but adds cash for water infrastructure.

After submitting an original budget blueprint, the Trump administration faced backlash from Democrats and environmental groups about the drastic cuts. But Republicans are wary of what President Trump might propose, too.

Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, has said she opposes the elimination of programs like Energy Star and ARPA-E, which funds energy technology research. Both were cut in the draft budget. Republicans have also defended regional water programs that Trump proposed cutting.

Murkowski, along with five other Republican senators, urged Trump to set aside money for the Department of Energy’s research in a May 18 letter. “Governing is about setting priorities, and the federal debt is not the result of Congress overspending on science and energy research each year,” they wrote.

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Europe is going all in for batteries.

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We Should Practice Truth in Statistics, Even When It Hurts

by TamelaPalladino Posted on February 19, 2017

Mother Jones

Donald Trump at his pep rally yesterday on immigration:

You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.

Nothing happened in Sweden last night, which has prompted lots of IKEA and ABBA joke memes. However, Zack Beauchamp thinks Trump was probably referring not to something that happened recently, but to the alleged “rape epidemic” in Sweden ever since they started taking in lots of Middle Eastern immigrants. This is apparently a staple of the Breitbart-o-sphere. Unfortunately, Beauchamp then says this:

The problem, though, is that this “rape epidemic” is as fake as the Bowling Green Massacre.

Canadian reporter Doug Saunders rigorously investigated the narrative, and concluded that it “falls apart as soon as you speak to anyone knowledgeable in Sweden.” Official Swedish statistics do indeed show a high rate of rape, but that’s because Swedish law has an extremely expansive definition of what qualifies as rape under the law.

….These panics about immigration, instead, reflect a long history of sexual panics in the West about non-white immigrants. Etc.

Whenever I see writing that carefully avoids providing comparative statistics, my BS detector goes off. Sure enough, Saunders didn’t “rigorously” do anything. He linked to an old report that tallies crime rates for the years 1997-2001—which is all but useless in 20171—and then glided quickly past his eventual acknowledgment that the foreign-born have “a higher rate of criminal charges than the native-born.” If you’re interested, here’s the actual data from the report (tables 3 and 6 in the appendix):

These are very big differences. Now, Saunders also links to a study which suggests that “half to three-quarters” of the difference can be accounted for by socioeconomic status. Maybe so. But crime is crime. If you’re the victim of assault from a Syrian refugee, you don’t really care if it happened because he’s Syrian or because he’s poorer than average.

Now, there’s plenty more to legitimately say about this. If poverty really is a causal factor, maybe it means Sweden needs to be more generous. Other statistics suggest that the children of the foreign-born have much lower crime rates than their parents. And as Beauchamp says, “rape” in Sweden is defined pretty broadly.

Still, if we bring up this subject at all, we have to present the statistics fairly. In the US, immigrants seem to commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. But Sweden is a different country, and the statistics suggest that foreign-born immigrants do indeed commit crimes there in much larger numbers than native Swedes.

1Apparently this is the most recent report that examines crime rates by area of origin. I don’t know why Sweden hasn’t done anything more recent.

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We Should Practice Truth in Statistics, Even When It Hurts

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Climate Change Is Shrinking Reindeer and Devastating Their Herders

by AngelaJNTN Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Reindeer are getting smaller and lighter as a result of climate change’s disruption to their food supply, researchers revealed during the British Ecological Society annual meeting in Liverpool this week.

The findings come by way of ecologists from the James Hutton Institute, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences who have been measuring reindeer in the high Arctic every winter since 1994. According to their measurements, adult reindeer have shown a 12 percent decrease in overall body mass over the years—from 121 pounds in 1994 to 106 pounds in 2010.

JellisV/iStock

Researchers believe the stunted growth of reindeer is directly tied to increasing temperatures in the Arctic—a region particularly vulnerable to warming—over the past two decades. Among several speculated reasons, all linked to climate change, warmer winter temperatures bring more rain, which freezes when it falls onto snow, making it more difficult for reindeer to access food below the ice. For pregnant females, the resultant starvation causes them to abort or give birth to malnourished calves. Over the long term, this could also lead to “extensive die-offs” in the reindeer population, according to lead researcher Steve Albon.

Reindeer aren’t the only victims of a rapidly shifting Arctic climate—those who herd them have also fallen prey. The Sami peoples of northern Scandinavia consider reindeer a linchpin of their cultural identity. Climate change—on top of the existing mental strains that indigenous herders face from social stigma—has contributed to a widespread mental health crisis and mounting suicide rate among the Sami in recent years. According to Sami psychologist and researcher Petter Stoor, half of Sami adults in Sweden suffer from anxiety and depression, and an astonishing one-third of young herders have contemplated or attempted suicide.

Sami herder brings food to reindeer. Dmitry Chulov/iStock

As climate change intensifies, the reindeer herders stand to lose not only their livelihood, but their culture. “We are the nature people,” Frøydis Nystad Nilsen, a Sami psychologist, told the health news site STAT. “When you lose your land, you lose your identity.”

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Climate Change Is Shrinking Reindeer and Devastating Their Herders

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Sweden plans to give tax breaks for fixing stuff instead of throwing it away.

by BlaineR36kbgn Posted on September 20, 2016

Despite the political and market forces arrayed against it, the coal industry is still clinging to life, pushing forward massive new mines, export terminals, railway lines, and power plants.

In a special report this week, Grist examines the struggling industry’s long game, including one company’s efforts to build a $700 million project on the Chuitna River in south-central Alaska. Here are seven other places where the American coal industry is trying to resuscitate itself at the expense of, well, the rest of us:

  1. Millennium Bulk Coal Terminal Longview, Washington

Even after major backer Arch Coal declared bankruptcy and dropped its stake in 2016, the $640 million export terminal won’t die.

  1. Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal Oakland, California

The city council and Gov. Jerry Brown oppose the $1.2 billion proposal, but developers are threatening legal action.

  1. Wishbone Hill Coal Mine Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska

The project had cleared most of its regulatory hurdles when members of the the nearby Chickaloon tribe filed a lawsuit.

  1. Coal Hollow Mine Kane County, Utah

A company with a history of cleanup violations wants an expansion that would double the mine’s annual output.

  1. Kayenta Mine Navajo County, Arizona

Located on reservation lands on Arizona’s Black Mesa, the Peabody-owned mine opened in 1973 but faces new opposition.

  1. Dos Republicas Mine Eagle Pass, Texas

Opened for business in November 2015, the mine on the U.S.-Mexico border threatens archaeological sites and burial grounds.

  1. Kemper County Energy Facility Kemper County, Mississippi

Mississippi’s $6.7 billion “clean coal” plant has been criticized as excessively expensive and too carbon-heavy, but officials say it could be operational by October.

Read our special report: Coal’s Last Gamble.

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Sweden plans to give tax breaks for fixing stuff instead of throwing it away.

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Underpaid, overworked farmworkers set to get liberal labor protections. Farmers grumble.

by LovieHealey106 Posted on September 2, 2016

A United Farm Workers march to City Hall in San Francisco REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

No justice, no peas

Underpaid, overworked farmworkers set to get liberal labor protections. Farmers grumble.

By on Sep 2, 2016 4:30 amShare

California’s legislature just passed a bill that’s a big win for farmworkers but a big defeat for farmers.

The bill, which comes after decades of campaigning by the United Farm Workers union, would make farms subject to the same rules for overtime pay as other businesses. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill into law, it would set a precedent for other states to follow. Farmworker advocates are cheering, along with green groups like the Sierra Club and the NRDC, but many farmers — including organic farmers who rely on manual labor in place of chemicals and mechanization — worry that the bill will push agriculture abroad.

The United Farm Workers union has argued that the bill corrects the injustice written into the federal Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938, which gave workers a minimum wage and a 44-hour work week but excluded farmworkers.

Farmworker Jose Adolfo Casares and his daughter at a migrant farm labour housing center in Bakersfield, Calif.REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

“The fact that the Fair Labor and Standards Act excluded farmworkers from collecting overtime pay is astounding considering the amount of outdoor physical labor they do,” said Julie Taylor, executive director of National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization that supports farmworkers.

“The whole world eats the food provided by California farmworkers, yet we don’t guarantee fair overtime pay for the backbreaking manual labor they put in to keep us fed,” said California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, in a statement.

Farmworkers aren’t totally unprotected. In the decades after passing the Fair Labor Standards Act, Congress ushered in laws extending them some protections. Agricultural workers are currently eligible for overtime pay after putting in 10 hours a day, and the California bill would lower that to eight hours. That may seem like a small change, but it has a lot of farmers scared.

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

“I’m down in Santa Cruz talking to farmers, and people are pretty freaked out,” said Dave Runsten, policy director for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a group that promotes small farms and sustainable food systems.

Worker pay is usually the biggest expense for the farmers Runsten works with, representing as much as half of their their costs. That’s likely to go up as California’s minimum wage rises to $15 an hour over the next six years. Some farmers will shift to less labor-intensive crops like almonds, some will replace workers with machinery (like these tomato harvesters), and some will move operations to Mexico, he said. But all those options are too expensive for many of the smaller farmers. “Those people are really looking down the barrel of a gun,” Runsten said.

Whenever we pass new regulations on farmers there’s always a danger that it will drive up food prices, and consumers will start buying from farmers elsewhere. That’s what happened in Sweden. The government passed sweeping animal welfare laws for pigs and in response Swedes started buying their pork from countries without those high standards. On the other hand, California farmers have managed to remain competitive despite the fact that the state has more agricultural regulations than others.

If we bring farming up to the same labor standards as other industries, it’s likely to follow the same trajectory as, say, the textile industry — the path of globalization and industrialization. Some agriculture will follow cheaper labor to other countries, and some will remain in the United States by going high tech and producing more with fewer workers. It’s all driven by our preference for the lowest price.

There’s another option: We could opt to pay more for better labor conditions. People tend to say they want small farms that rely on well-paid manual laborers, but when the time comes to pay the grocer we generally choose the cheaper tomato.

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Underpaid, overworked farmworkers set to get liberal labor protections. Farmers grumble.

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