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Climate Negotiators Are Working on History’s Most Important Mad Lib

by KeithMercer Posted on December 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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The latest round of United Nations climate negotiations kicked off today in Lima, Peru. For the next two weeks, delegates from 195 countries will hash out the framework for what they hope will become a major international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when negotiators reconvene in Paris next year. The Lima meeting will also be a chance to hear how far some major carbon-polluters—Brazil, India, Mexico, and more—are willing to go to slow global warming.

The goal of the Lima talks is to set a standard for how countries will formally submit their proposed emissions pledges in preparation for next year’s big summit. You can think of it like a climate action Mad Lib, where the story outline is now being drafted in Lima, and each country will fill in its blanks (but with emissions goals instead of nouns and verbs) before Paris. One of the big debates prior to Paris will be whether developed and developing countries will be required to meet the same criteria for setting those goals, and whether the goals will be legally binding.

This month’s talks will also be the first key test of President Obama’s climate pact with China, which was announced last month. The deal was important for a few key reasons. It set new carbon reductions goals: The US will reduce carbon emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, while China promised to peak its emissions by 2030. It includes a plan to jump-start clean energy trade between the two countries. But perhaps most importantly, it could be a powerful incentive for other countries to create their own ambitious targets.

“The mood music will change,” said Michael Jacobs, a former environmental advisor to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Jacobs, who is in Lima this week with a climate economics think tank run by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, added, “I think we will see…that if the US and China are both committed, then other countries will not want to look like they aren’t coming to the table.”

That’s a big deal, because widespread political participation is a prerequisite for the kind of global accord UN officials are hoping for in Paris. And it’s a big shift from past climate summits, like the 2009 one in Copenhagen, which have fallen apart thanks to a lack of cooperation from the US and China. Those two countries, the world’s top carbon emitters, have traditionally dragged their feet when it comes to global warming. Neither one of them ratified the last international climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

But climate hawks are optimistic that the US-China accord has already advanced the future Paris negotiations into uncharted waters. As the Harvard economist Robert Stavins pointed out, the Kyoto Protocol covered only about 14 percent of global carbon emissions. But the Paris agreement will be structured differently. Instead of a single unified treaty that every country is expected to sign on to (an approach seen as a political dead end), the Paris agreement will be built around a patchwork of “nationally-determined contributions.” The US-China pact essentially serves as both countries’ commitment, and combined with the European Union commitment announced in October, already more than 50 percent of global carbon emissions are covered.

Negotiators in Lima are also designing a system for the international community to review countries’ proposed contributions to ensure that their proposed carbon cuts are sufficiently aggressive and that their calculations make sense. This would be the first time a peer review process is used in international climate talks, said Jennifer Morgan, a senior analyst at the World Resources Institute. Pushing for a strong review framework is a top priority of the US delegation, she said, speaking this morning from Lima.

Countries have until the spring to announce their emissions reduction pledges, so it’s not yet clear if there will be more announcements from Lima. Many eyes are on India, the world’s third-biggest carbon polluter, whose emissions are projected by WRI to climb 70 percent above 2000 levels by 2025. Without cooperation from India, a global accord would be much weaker; Narendra Modi, the country’s new prime minister, has so far been lukewarm on climate action.

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Climate Negotiators Are Working on History’s Most Important Mad Lib

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This Article Has Been Retracted

by MichaelJZDV Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

This story included erroneous information. Waterford, NY, fire chief Donald Baldwin was not the commenter in question. We regret the error and are investigating.

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This Article Has Been Retracted

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The Looming Olive Oil Apocalypse

by Margene8108 Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

The world’s most celebrated olive oil comes from sun-drenched groves of Italy. But Italy is also a hotbed of olive oil subterfuge, counterfeit, and adulteration—and has been since Roman times, as Tom Muellar showed in an eye-opening 2007 New Yorker piece (which grew into a book called Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.) Next year, getting real olive oil from Italy is going to be even harder than usual. Here’s the LA Times’ Russ Parsons:

As a result of what the Italian newspaper La Repubblica is calling “The Black Year of Italian Olive Oil,” the olive harvest through much of Italy has been devastated—down 35% from last year.

The reason is a kind of perfect storm (so to speak) of rotten weather through the nation:

When the trees were turning flowers to fruit in the spring, freezing weather suddenly turned scorching, causing the trees to drop olives. Summer was hot and humid, leading to all sorts of problems. Then in mid-September, there was a major hail storm, knocking much of the fruit that remained onto the ground.

Other major olive oil-producing nations suffered similar calamities; Parsons reports that in Spain and Mediterranean neighbors, production is also “forecast to be far below last year’s.” And California, that big chunk of Mediterranean-like climate on our west coast, where excellent olive oil is produced? Parsons says the epochal drought is pinching production, and he quotes Muellar to the effect that “frankly, I hear about a lot of games being played there too, with labels and quality alike.” Sigh.

I find all of this distressing. I came of age as a cook in an era of olive oil hegemony. I treat it like the oil that powers my car, as something to be relied on casually, as if it appeared by magic from nowhere. (Nearly all my Tom’s Kitchen columns feature it.)

Once a staple of Mediterranean polyculture—farms and households would feature olive trees in mixed groves along with a multitude of other crops—olive oil production has long since industrialized. Here is The Ecologist from 2008:

Industrial olive farms grow their olive trees, planted at high densities, in massive irrigated orchards on lowland plains. The olives are harvested by machines that clamp around the tree’s trunk and shake it until the olives fall to the ground. Oil is then extracted by industrial-scale centrifuge, often at high temperatures. In contrast, small, traditional farms are often ancient, their trees typically planted on upland terraces. The farmers manage their groves with few or no agrochemicals, less water and less machinery. Olives are picked off the ground by hand and the oil extracted by grinding the olives in a millstone and press. Demand for cheap, mass-produced oil is making it a struggle for the smaller, traditional farms to be economically viable, however.

….

Intensive olive farming is a major cause of one of the biggest environmental problems affecting the EU: widespread soil erosion and desertification in Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal. In 2001, the European Commission ordered an independent study into the environmental impact of olive farming across the EU. The report concluded: ‘Soil erosion is probably the most serious environmental problem associated with olive farming.

I fear that next year’s olive oil crunch is a harbinger of things to come. I am officially in search of alternative cooking fats. One I’ve come to appreciate: lard from pasture-raised hogs. Lard’s rotten nutritional reputation is the result of outdated and discredited science. And it makes food taste really good, too.

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The Looming Olive Oil Apocalypse

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Will Obama Pull the Plug on Wind Energy?

by FrederiFad Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday President Obama threatened to veto a $440 billion package of tax breaks negotiated by a bipartisan group of legislators led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The bill, a White House spokesperson said, disproportionately benefits businesses over families. The bill excludes a child tax credit for the working poor that had been a top goal for Obama, but makes permanent a group of tax incentives for big businesses that had been provisional.

But if Obama does kill the deal, he’ll also create a casualty that seems odd for a president who in recent weeks has made climate change a central issue: The tax credit for wind energy, which Reid’s bill would resuscitate for a few years before phasing out in 2017.

The Production Tax Credit (PTC) provides wind energy developers a tax break of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour of energy their turbines produce for the first ten years of operation, which industry supporters say is a important lifeline to help wind compete against heavily-subsidized fossil fuel power sources. For over a decade, wind power has been locked in a boom-and-bust cycle as the PTC expires and then is re-upped by Congress: Every time the credit stalls or looks like it might disappear, contracts dry up, manufacturers shut down production, and jobs get cut. The same could happen again soon: The PTC expired again last year, and so the fate of Reid’s tax bill will be the fate of a cornerstone of America’s clean energy economy.

Any project that broke ground before the PTC expiration last year still got to keep the credit, so the wind industry is still on an up cycle. So far this year, wind accounts for 22 percent of new energy capacity, second only to natural gas, according to federal data. And with or without subsidies, wind is now one of the cheapest electricity sources out there. Those are critical pieces of the puzzle if the US is to meet President Obama’s new goal to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint 26-28 percent by 2025.

But wind’s halcyon days won’t last unless the PTC is extended soon, said Daniel Shury, a market analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“The momentum will peak next year, and then we’ll start to feel the effects,” Shury said. “Without the PTC extension, the main US manufacturers are going to start running out of orders by 2016.”

The Reid bill throws a bone to conservative lawmakers and advocacy groups who have called the PTC a handout for an industry that should be able to support itself by now: gradually phasing out the credit by 2017. The American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, has supported such a plan, saying it would give manufacturers, developers, and other wind investors a degree of certainty about future market conditions that they don’t currently have. Shurey agrees: The actual amount of the credit is far less important, he said, than a clear, consistent signal to frame contracts and investments around.

Whatever tax deal Congress ultimately passes will probably include the PTC, says Jim Marston, vice president of US energy policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. Some of the credit’s biggest proponents are powerful Republicans from windy states, such as Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who said on the Senate floor last week that gutting the PTC “would cost jobs, harm our economy, the environment and our national security.” But a veto could mean a long delay—and more of the uncertainty that the wind industry fears.

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Will Obama Pull the Plug on Wind Energy?

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16 Interesting Photos From the Ferguson Grand Jury Files

by JeannieHeberlin Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

After St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced Monday that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for killing Michael Brown, the county released a collection of documents from the grand jury proceedings. Among them were hundreds of photos from the investigation, depicting everything from the crime scene to Wilson at the hospital after the shooting. Here are just a few (all photos provided by the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office):

Wilson’s police SUV after the shooting. Brown’s hat lies next to it.

Brown’s hat.

The inside of the police SUV where the initial encounter between Wilson and Brown took place.

Shots were fired inside the car, and at least one went through the door.

The driver’s side door handle with what appears to be blood on it.

Wilson’s gun

A closer look shows what appears to be blood on the gun.

Blood on the street (presumably Brown’s)

Wilson, according witnesses and his own testimony, missed several times as he fired at Brown. Some of those bullets struck nearby buildings.

Where one of Wilson’s shots entered the wall of a nearby apartment building.

This shot narrowly missed a window.

There has been contention about the distance between Wilson’s car and Brown’s body. This shot shows Brown’s body behind a screen with Wilson’s SUV off further down the street.

Here’s the diagram of the entire crime scene. The New York Times created a color-coded version (see here).

Wilson said in his grand jury testimony that he only went to the hospital because a superior told him to. Here he is during his examination shortly after Brown’s death.

The left side of Wilson’s face.

The right.

A shot of Wilson taken Aug. 21 (according to the photo’s metadata), less than two weeks after the shooting.

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16 Interesting Photos From the Ferguson Grand Jury Files

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6 Revelations from the Michael Brown Grand Jury Documents

by IleneHinds Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

After Monday’s announcement that a grand jury would not indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch released the hundreds of pages of evidence that the grand jury considered. Following are six excerpts from the documents:

When grabbing Brown, Wilson says he felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan:

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Wilson says Brown charged at him with the look of a demon:

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Wilson’s emergency room medical report showed no sign of distress:

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Though much has been made of Brown’s size, Wilson was not much smaller:

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A witness’ journal entry recorded racist sentiment:

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The St. Louis County medical examiner didn’t take photos of the scene because his camera batteries died:

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6 Revelations from the Michael Brown Grand Jury Documents

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Chart: How Black Friday Invaded Thanksgiving

by VirginiGrills Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Remember the holiday formerly known as Thanksgiving? It had a pretty good run for about 390 years—until around 2011, when it began to be replaced with a shopping extravaganza. In the past few years, the traditional dividing line between Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the official start of the holiday retail season, has blurred. At many major retail stores, this Thursday won’t be a day of turkey and family time but a mad rush for XBoxes and iPhones. Here’s how Black Friday’s Thanksgiving creep became a full-blown takeover:

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Chart: How Black Friday Invaded Thanksgiving

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BREAKING: Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Will Not Be Charged for Killing Michael Brown, Grand Jury Decides

by GustavoE07 Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Grand jury decides not to indict: The grand jury reviewing Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson’s case in St. Louis County announced on Monday night that Wilson will not be charged in the shooting death of Michael Brown. The decision came more than three months after Wilson shot and killed Brown, the unarmed black teenager whose death on August 9 triggered weeks of protests that included sporadic violence and looting.

Twelve jurors—nine whites and three African Americans—reviewed Wilson’s case. Their decision continues a long-running pattern of police officers involved in fatal shootings going unprosecuted.

Brown family issues statement: Mike Brown’s parents released a statement following the grand jury decision asking protesters keep their actions peaceful:

Wilson’s lawyers issue statement: Wilson’s attorneys also released a statement, saying that “Law enforcement personnel must frequently make split-second and difficult decisions”:

Restricted air space: The Federal Aviation Administration confirms to Mother Jones that it restricted air space over Ferguson at 10:15 p.m. local time “due to gunfire.” The resrtiction was in effect from the surface to 3,000 feet above sea level (about 2,500 feet off the ground), so that’s why some news feeds were still working above the area.

President Obama reacts: Shortly after 10pm Eastern time, the president spoke, urging a peaceful response to the news. “Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone. We should be honoring their wishes.”

Attorney General issues statement: Attorney General Eric Holder has released the following statement, saying the federal investigation into the shooting is still ongoing. (Read more about the Department of Justice’s investigation here):

Photos of Wilson released: Meanwhile, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch said Wilson suffered “some swelling and redness to his face”:

More reactions: Some reactions from around the Ferguson area:

Several fires pop up: Multiple reports of fires started to roll in. Here are just a couple.

Real-time footage: Watch a livestream from the streets of Ferguson captured by Bassem Masri here:

Source – 

BREAKING: Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Will Not Be Charged for Killing Michael Brown, Grand Jury Decides

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Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Is Just the Latest to Go Unprosecuted for a Fatal Shooting

by Nan2817kwcxkqfc Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

After weeks of rising tension in Ferguson and the broader St. Louis region, the St. Louis County grand jury reviewing the death of Michael Brown has decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Brown on August 9. Reported leaks during the grand jury proceedings suggested there would be no indictment—and that outcome fits a long-standing pattern. Few police officers who shoot and kill citizens in St. Louis have been investigated by a grand jury, let alone charged by one, according to data from city and county prosecutors.

More MoJo coverage of the Michael Brown police shooting


10 Hours in Ferguson: A Visual Timeline of Michael Brown’s Death and Its Aftermath


Michael Brown’s Mom Laid Flowers Where He Was Shotâ&#128;&#148;and Police Crushed Them


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns


How Many Ways Can the City of Ferguson Slap You With Court Fees? We Counted


Here’s Why the Feds Are Investigating Ferguson

Between 2004 and 2014, there have been 14 fatal officer-involved shootings committed by St. Louis County PD officers alone, according to police data collected by David Klinger, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. That does not include fatal shootings by Ferguson police or by officers from various other law enforcement agencies within the county. Many officer-involved fatalities likely were not subject to grand jury investigations because they were deemed justified by police internal affairs or the local prosecutor’s office, Klinger says. Since 2000, only four cases in all of St. Louis County, including Wilson’s, have been investigated by a grand jury, according to a spokesperson for St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s office. McCulloch’s office declined to provide details to Mother Jones on the three other cases, which it says are closed.

In September, Heather Cole of Missouri Lawyers Weekly used news reports to identify five grand jury investigations of officer-involved fatalities prior to Wilson’s that took place during McCulloch’s tenure, which began in 1991. As with Wilson’s case, none led to an indictment:

Missouri Lawyers Weekly

McCulloch’s record and family ties to the police force sparked controversy in the wake of Brown’s death.

Statistics from the City of St. Louis paint a similar picture: A total of 39 people were fatally shot by police officers between 2003 and 2012; according to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s office, only one police officer has been indicted in such a case since 2000, and that officer was acquitted.

Roger Goldman, an expert on criminal procedure and constitutional law at the Saint Louis University School of Law, says that a long-standing Missouri statute gives police officers wide latitude to shoot to kill. The law states they are justified in doing so if they “reasonably believe” their target “has committed or attempted to commit a felony” and deadly force is “immediately necessary to effect the arrest.” According to Goldman, the existence of this law—despite a 1985 Supreme Court ruling suggesting it may be unconstitutional—is one reason why “it’s particularly difficult to get grand juries to indict or prosecutors to even take the case to the grand jury in the first place.”

But with a case like Wilson’s, weeks of high-profile public protests likely pressured the prosecutor’s office to present a case to a grand jury, says Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “This way the prosecutor cannot be accused of having made a unilateral biased decision.” Still, the prosecutor has a lot of sway in how a case is presented to the grand jury, she noted.

Prior to the decision in Wilson’s case, McCulloch said he would seek to release transcripts and audio from the grand jury investigation if it resulted in no indictment for Wilson. But it remains unclear whether a circuit court judge will approve that request for transparency.

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Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Is Just the Latest to Go Unprosecuted for a Fatal Shooting

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Media Goes Wild Over Hagel Firing But Not Obama’s Secret Afghanistan Reversal

by TommieC45wkj Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

There’s little the Washington-centric political-media universe loves more than the story of a fallen star. The defenestration of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has reporters and pundits in a schadenfreude-driven tizzy. Was he fired? Was he in over his head? OMG, look at how the White House is dumping on him, as he departs! Who’s passing nasty notes in class about him?

The presumably forced resignation of Hagel is indeed big news. The Obama administration is confronting a host of new national security challenges: ISIS, Ukraine, Ebola. So the guy (or gal) in charge of the Pentagon has to be nimble and able to handle this expanding and shifting to-do list. And Hagel, ever since his underwhelming performance at his confirmation hearing, has not been (at least in public) a confidence-inspiring Cabinet member. So perhaps President Barack Obama can do better—though the elbowing Hagel is receiving on the way out seems poor manners.

Yet here’s a useful exercise. Compare the red-hot media reaction to Hagel’s bye-bye to the response to the New York Times‘ eye-popping report that Obama signed a secret order to expand the US military mission in Afghanistan next year. The story about one man—yes, one of the cool kids in DC—is at least an order of magnitude higher on the MediaReax-ometer. Any tidbit from an anonymous source about de-Hagelization gets immediate attention from tweeting journos. But the story about this significant policy shift has prompted mostly a yawn.

In case you missed it—the story was posted online on Friday but appeared in Saturday’s dead-trees edition—the Times revealed that Obama, who last May said the United States would have no combat missions in Afghanistan in 2015 (and only train Afghan forces and hunt Al Qaeda “remnants”), had secretly authorized American forces

to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

This is a quasi-BFD—and the result of what the Times called “a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.”

In other words, Obama, for good or bad, has decided to extend the war he said he was ending. This report did not produce a cable news frenzy or a storm of tweets. But it’s just as important as who’s going to be in charge of implementing this major change of plans—if not more so.

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Media Goes Wild Over Hagel Firing But Not Obama’s Secret Afghanistan Reversal

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