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The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Bankrolling the Paris Climate Talks

by JoanFranz5073065 Posted on December 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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You might not expect fossil fuel companies to pay for a conference designed to shrink their industry. But in Paris, that’s precisely what’s happening.

This week and next, roughly 40,000 diplomats, activists, policy experts, and journalists are gathering in the French capital for a round of high-stakes negotiations aimed at slowing climate change. They’re packed into a regional airport that, as described by our Climate Desk partners at the New Republic, has been converted to resemble a cross between the United Nations headquarters building, Disney World’s Epcot Center, and a natural history museum.

For two weeks, all these people need to be fed, housed, transported, entertained, and equipped with space to work. Unsurprisingly, it’s an expensive undertaking—budgeted by the French government at nearly $200 million, according to EurActiv France. About one-fifth of that tab is being picked up by private corporations.

Big international conferences frequently have corporate sponsors, but given the basic aim of the Paris talks—to dramatically reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions—some of the event’s sponsors are drawing criticism for their close ties to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, some of the companies paying to keep the lights on and the coffee flowing at the vital climate summit may have a vested interest in limiting the scope of the international agreement.

The event (known as COP21, short for 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) has more than 50 corporate sponsors. They include the likes of Google, 3M, Puma, and IKEA. In exchange for providing the conference organizers an undisclosed sum of money, corporate sponsors get their logo splashed across high-profile surfaces—from billboards to banners to handouts—and priority access to spaces to hold branded events. Corporate participants can also get direct access to top-tier diplomats. At last year’s COP in Peru, for example, a lobbying group representing a handful of fossil fuel companies—including Shell and Chevron—hosted more than a dozen events, including one featuring UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

According to a new report from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, several of the Paris COP’s corporate sponsors have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry, and, the group argues, a conflict of interest when it comes to the purported goals of the summit.

“It’s greenwashing,” CAI spokesperson Jesse Bragg said. “Those corporations are able to say they’re part of the solution just because they write a check.”

In particular, CAI’s report calls out three COP21 sponsors: Engie, a European electric utility company that is the continent’s largest importer of natural gas; EDF, a French electric utility that operates several major coal-fired power plants; and BNP Paribas, a multinational bank with billions of dollars invested in coal mines and coal-fired power plants. All three have massive greenhouse gas footprints, according to the report. CAI also points out that the utility companies have participated in lobbying organizations that promote the use of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, another activist group has taken aim at corporate greenwashing with a slate of billboard ads across Paris mocking energy and transportation companies that purport to be progressive, while continuing to pollute:

Courtesy Brandalism

Beyond greenwashing, Bragg said it’s unlikely that these companies will be able to have a direct impact on the policy outcome of this COP, given how many of the nuts and bolts were worked out by diplomats in advance. But he cautioned that the creeping influence of corporations over the last two decades of climate negotiations has made diplomats overly sensitive to business-friendly solutions.

“We need to make sure these policies are created with the environment as the primary concern,” he said. “With corporations involved, you move further and further from that target.”

Spokespeople for EDF and Engie dismissed Bragg’s assertions. EDF said that its electricity portfolio contains more renewable energy than any other European utility and that it plows hundreds of millions of euros each year into clean energy R&D. Axelle Lima, a spokesperson for Engie, pointed out that the company has recently committed to stop any new investments in coal and has publicly campaigned for a price on carbon emissions.

“We have to think of solutions with governments to replace coal with another kind of energy,” Lima said. “And together we want to find a climate solution.”

Lima said it was “natural” for Engie to be a partner at the COP, given its role in the energy sector that is being reformed. She declined to specify how much money Engie had donated. BNP Paribas did not return a request for comment.

Erik Conway, a science historian who co-authored a recent book on the fossil fuel industry’s climate science subterfuge with Naomi Oreskes, said that corporate infiltration of climate summits is less important than the lobbying that goes on behind the scenes back home.

“Of course corporate sponsorship is a conflict of interest, just as it is a conflict of interest to have fossil fuel producing nations participating in the COP,” he said. But “I don’t think the presence of fossil-fuel producing corporations at COP meetings has had much to do with their failure to achieve meaningful agreements. It’s their economic sway with individual governments that’s the actual problem.”

To that end, Bragg thinks the UN’s climate organization could take a cue from the World Health Organization’s efforts to block tobacco lobbyists from influencing regulation of that industry. The WHO, in its international agreement on tobacco control, adopted specific protocols that require signatory countries to insulate their public health laws from tobacco industry “interference.” The climate agreement currently being hammered out in Paris could include similar language, Bragg suggested.

“The first step is the official recognition, in text, of this conflict of interest,” he said. “Then we figure out how we can mitigate that.”

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The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Bankrolling the Paris Climate Talks

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Worried About the Planet? These Condoms Are Your Ticket to Guilt-Free Sex

by AletheaClibborn Posted on November 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Twenty years ago, when the eco-home products company Seventh Generation was in its heyday, co-founder and then-CEO Jeffrey Hollender trademarked the name Rainforest Rubbers, assuming that, as with cleaning and parenting products, people would be into sustainably-produced condoms. Nothing came of that idea, until Hollender’s millennial-aged and business-school-educated daughter, angered by how so few women her age wanted to buy condoms and frustrated by the dearth of sex products with natural ingredients, decided to get involved.

So decades after its conception, the father-daughter duo finally brought Hollender’s idea to fruition, dumping his name for something sleeker and creating a condom that’s sustainably produced, lacks the carcinogenic chemicals found in the standard brand, and is marketed specifically for women. Their Sustain Natural condoms brand, which has been on the market for just a year and a half, is one of a handful of eco- and body-friendly condom brands that have cropped up in recent years. The new wave of condoms include brands that take a more hipster, less macho tack to advertising, one that delivers condoms by bike and one that named their company after unicorns, for example.

Since founding Sustain, the Hollenders have gone beyond their flagship product, which boasts a long list of certifications and perks—they now also manufacture and sell “post-play wipes” and lube. And Jeffrey’s wife runs the companies charitable arm, which donates 10 percent of its condom and lube proceeds to women’s health care organizations such as Planned Parenthood.

Meika and her father, whom she calls “Jeffrey,” chatted with Mother Jones about latex allergies, lube, and what it’s like creating a condom company with your dad.

Mother Jones: What makes your condoms environmentally friendly?

Jeffrey: If you look at the life cycle of the condom, you start with the fact that they’re made from the sap of the rubber tree, like maple syrup is from a maple tree. We were lucky enough to find the world’s only fair trade certified rubber plantation. The plantation provides free education for 1,000 people in southern India. They built a hospital that provides 100 percent free medical care to employees and a discount to the whole community. And they provide free housing. It’s the only one certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which means they’re managing the biological diversity on the plantation, the use of chemicals and pesticides. We took that through to the factory—changing the way the product is made. We reduced the protein content in the latex, which is what causes allergies. Most condoms are contaminated with a carcinogen called nitrosamine. We removed casein, which makes it ok for vegans to use. It’s the only non-GMO-certified condom in the United States. But the more important part of the story is that condoms help women plan the size of their families. When women plan the size of their families they have a better socioeconomic outcome. There’s a lot we can do without, but we need condoms. The world’s most sustainable, responsible, condoms.

MJ: How is the standard condom made?

Jeffrey: Mostly there’s children working on the plantation. If you look at the living conditions of most rubber capitals and their income relative to other people in those countries, they’re at the lower end of the spectrum. That’s invisible to most consumers. There’s been way more progress in the labor conditions of fair trade coffee, but condom production is a whole world that people have not shined a light on.

MJ: Why does Sustain focus on women’s condom use instead of men’s?

Meika: Our goal in the condom space is to get more young women to be using condoms, period. We have to get more women to use condoms over time which is going to take education.

Meika and Jeffrey Hollender Courtesy of Sustain Natural

Jeffrey: It’s scary how few women use condoms. The average woman who graduates from her first year in college, 25 percent will have an STD because they aren’t using condoms. In Sacramento today and New York until a year ago you could be arrested for carrying condoms. We’ve been supporting a group of women in Sacramento to help change that law. You shouldn’t be searching and arresting them because they carry a condom. It also sends a terrible message to young women about what it means when you do.

MJ: On the website you talk specifically about gay women and men. Will non-straight relationships be a focus of yours?

Jeffrey: We have not been as focused on the LGBT market as we should be, and we see a real opportunity. Particularly with lubricants, it’s a huge issue for gay men, and the health issues with lubricants are very significant for both sexes.

Meika: You don’t want to use anything that has parabens or glycerin. And you don’t want petroleum-based lube. What happens with the petroleum when it enters your body is it damages the cell tissue in that area and makes you more susceptible to contracting an STI. That combined with bacterial vaginosis, which can also be caused by petroleum or silicone-based lubricant, makes you 13 times more likely to contract an STI. So the health benefits were so obvious to us. And women in general are moving in a direction of wanting more natural condoms.

MJ: What kind of stereotypes do you two experience as a father-daughter condom company?

Meika: In the original round of investing, Jeffrey was raising money from friends, like upper class white men who thought the idea of starting a condom company with your daughter is a little uncomfortable. But we draw a line. People have been like, “Why don’t you do eco sex toys?” honestly that to me is something we wouldn’t want to do together. It’s a sensitive relationship and condoms is more of a public health category. If something does make us uncomfortable, most things don’t, but we do draw a line.

Jeffrey: There’s no child I know of who says, “When I grow up I want to be a condom salesman!” I say to Meika, “You have to be brave to do this.” People think it’s a weird thing for a father and daughter to be doing because it’ not something we talk about openly enough and that people have fears and secrets about. So from my perspective it’s a great way to shift those attitudes for us to be in business about it. No one should think twice about it.

MJ: How many people assume that sustainable condoms means they are biodegradable?

Meika: At least 60 percent.

Jeffrey: Nobody wants a biodegradable condom.

MJ: How will Sustain condoms increase the number of women buying condoms?

Meika: One is just through packaging, branding, and design. The condoms on the market were all extremely male oriented, and women felt like they had no brand loyalty because they weren’t targeted at them. So that was a low bar for us we just thought we could create something that’s more beautiful, that has more functional benefits and attributes, like the sustainability piece.

Jeffrey: Tactically, we’re helping to overturn these laws around women carrying around condoms is also foundational. It continues to reinforce these attitudes that are so dangerous. We haven’t met anyone that has the magic solution to changing these attitudes. We know there’s an absence of dialogue with families and pediatricians. There’s not one point you can focus on that will change this.

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Worried About the Planet? These Condoms Are Your Ticket to Guilt-Free Sex

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

by GayAbdullah Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video above, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works.

The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds.

But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security.

Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement.

Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail.

Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go.

So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations.

At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned.

This story has been revised.

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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Russia Is Paying a Price for Vladimir Putin’s Napoleon Complex

by FRXJaneen858603 Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Russia says its pilot received no warning before Turkey shot down one of its fighters on Tuesday. Turkey says it gave plenty of warning. Here’s the New York Times today:

A United States military spokesman, Col. Steven Warren, confirmed on Tuesday that Turkish pilots had warned the Russian pilot 10 times, but that the Russian jet ignored the warnings….At the emergency NATO meeting, Turkish officials played recordings of the warnings Turkish F-16 pilots had issued to the Russian aircraft. The Russian pilots did not reply.

The fact that the US says this doesn’t automatically make it true. On the other hand, I wouldn’t believe Vladimir Putin without checking for myself if he told me the sky was blue. So while it’s entirely likely that both sides have been testing each other for the past couple of weeks, my best guess at this point is that Russia has flown over the Hatay peninsula repeatedly and been warned about it, but continued doing it anyway. This kind of provocation is pretty common in Putin’s Russia. This time, though, he did it to a country headed by a guy much like himself, and he paid the price for it.

So what happens now? “We’re not going to war against Turkey,” the Russian foreign minister said today, but Russia will probably announce some kind of symbolic reprisal soon. And that will be that. Putin is discovering to his sorrow that Syria is not quite the same as Crimea or South Ossetia. It’s all great when you can show off your shiny new cruise missiles on the nightly news, but this isn’t a war that will be over in a few weeks because there’s nobody to fight back. It’s a never-ending quagmire, and there’s not really much in it for Russia.

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Russia Is Paying a Price for Vladimir Putin’s Napoleon Complex

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President Obama Has a Different Job Than President Hollande

by MarcyEllington Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dana Milbank was unimpressed by the contrast Barack Obama made yesterday during his press conference with French president François Hollande. Hollande was animated and can-do about destroying ISIS, while Obama was….a little more realistic about things:

Tough talk won’t defeat terrorists — but it will rally a nation. It’s no mere coincidence that the unpopular Hollande’s support has increased during his forceful response to the attacks, while Obama’s poll numbers are down.

The importance of language was very clear at the White House on Tuesday, even in translation. There was little difference in their strategies for fighting the Islamic State, but Hollande was upbeat and can-do, while Obama was discouraging and lawyerly. It was as if the smoke-’em-out spirit of George W. Bush had been transplanted into the body of a short, pudgy, bespectacled French socialist with wrinkled suit-pants.

….Hollande spoke of a new era. “There is a new mind-set now,” Hollande said. “And those who believed that we could wait” now realize “the risk is everywhere . . . . We, therefore, must act.”

Then came President Oh-bummer. “Syria has broken down,” he said. “And it is going to be a difficult, long, methodical process to bring back together various factions within Syria to maintain a Syrian state.”

Maybe you can motivate people when you sound so discouraging. But it’s hard.

Aside from the fact that Milbank is cherry picking a bit here, I think he misses a few things. First is the most obvious: France is the country that was just attacked. Of course its president is the more emotional one. Hollande would seem more emotional than pretty much anyone he was paired up with. Have you ever seen Angela Merkel at a press conference?

Second, let’s face facts: over the past year France has probably conducted a few hundred airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. It only started strikes against ISIS in Syria last month. When Hollande says “we must act,” he’s basically asking the United States to act.

Third and most important: Obama isn’t trying to rally a nation. Just the opposite, maybe. He’s been down this road before, and he’s well aware that revving up the public for a splendid little war requires no effort at all—especially during campaign season. When reporters demand to know why we can’t just “take out the bastards,” it’s obvious that Obama has a different job than Hollande. He’s not trying to rally a nation, he’s trying to keep everyone grounded about exactly what we can do. And for that I say: good for him. It’s harder and less satisfying than preaching fire and brimstone, but in the long run it’s better for the country.

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President Obama Has a Different Job Than President Hollande

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Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

by OTHLeannez Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you’ve ever purchased seafood or pet food from Nestlé, you may have unwittingly contributed to the abuse of migrant workers in Southeast Asia.

On Monday, Nestlé admitted that it had found indications of forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor in its supply chain in Thailand, where the Switzerland-based company sources some of the seafood that it sells in supermarkets around the world, including in the United States. The findings came after an internal investigation that was launched by Nestlé in December last year, following reports by media and NGOs that linked the company’s shrimp, prawns, and Purina brand pet foods with abusive working conditions.

Many of the workers in question are migrants from Thailand’s less developed neighbors, Burma and Cambodia, who are tricked into laboring on fishing boats after fleeing persecution and poverty at home, according to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Verité, which at Nestlé’s request interviewed workers at six of the company’s production sites in Thailand. Workers “had been subjected to deceptive recruitment practices that started in their home countries, transported to Thailand under inhumane conditions, charged with excessive fees leading to debt bondage in some cases, exposed to exploitative and hazardous working conditions, and, at the time of assessment, were living under sub-par to degrading conditions,” Verité wrote in its report.

But Nestlé isn’t the only one with a tainted supply chain: The mistreatment of migrants is systematic in Thailand’s fishing sector, Verité found, meaning that other American and European companies that buy seafood from the country are likely complicit in similar labor abuses. These abuses have been highlighted by the US State Department, which last year downgraded Thailand to the lowest level in its annual report on human trafficking, and they underpin several lawsuits that have been filed recently against retailers including Nestlé and Costco Wholesale Corp. Steve Berman, managing partner of the law firm Hagens Berman, which in August filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé, told the New York Times that the company’s report on Monday was “a step in the right direction,” but added that “our litigation will go forward because Nestlé Purina still fails to disclose on its products, as is required by law, that slave labor was used in its making.”

For its part, Nestlé has vowed to publish a strategy to protect workers in Thailand, including by bringing in outside auditors and training boat owners about human rights. “This will be neither a quick nor an easy endeavour, but we look forward to making significant progress in the months ahead,” Magdi Batato, Nestlé’s executive vice president in charge of operations, said in a statement.

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Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

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America’s Addiction to Prescription Pills Is Way Deadlier Than You Thought

by VirgilioBuckner Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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A troubling poll published Tuesday shows the extent of America’s addiction to prescription painkillers. More than half of Americans now report a personal connection to painkiller abuse, 16 percent know someone who has died from an overdose, and 9 percent have seen a family member or close friend die.

“It shows that the issue affects a large share of people, over half the population,” says Bianca DiJulio, associate director for public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducted the survey. “And half say that it should be a top priority for their lawmakers.”

Researchers spoke by phone this month with more than 1,300 people aged 18 years and older across the United States, who were selected to match the demographic makeup of the country. White Americans were the most likely to report personal experience with the abuse of prescription painkillers, which include opioids such as Vicodin and OxyContin and benzodiazepines such as Xanax. Sixty-three percent of white respondents, 44 percent of black respondents, and 37 percent of Hispanics said they had either personally abused painkillers or knew someone who had taken painkillers without a prescription, been addicted to painkillers, or died of an overdose.

Overall, 56 percent of respondents reported a personal connection to painkiller abuse, with young and middle-aged Americans more likely to report familiarity with painkiller abuse than Americans aged 65 and older.

Kaiser Family Foundation

The United States is caught in “a prescription painkiller overdose epidemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans abused prescription painkillers in 2013, with 44 people dying from an overdose each day.

Drug overdoses, including deaths from prescription drug use, were the leading cause of accidental death in the United States in 2013. Among the respondents, “half thought the leading cause of accidental deaths was car accidents,” DiJulio says.

The issue, along with rampant heroin addiction, has reached such proportions that President Barack Obama last month announced steps to increase training for doctors who prescribe painkillers and expand access to treatment for drug addicts.

But Kaiser’s survey shows that, even as many Americans agree the government should act, there is no agreement as to how. Republicans in the survey were significantly more likely to say state governments should be in charge of responding to the epidemic, while Democrats saw this as the responsibility of the federal government.

Kaiser Family Foundation

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America’s Addiction to Prescription Pills Is Way Deadlier Than You Thought

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France Goes to War on Civil Liberties

by DrusillJnb Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, many in France have said they finally understand what things were like for Americans just after September 11, 2001. The attacks have emboldened France’s conservatives, and pushed liberal and moderate factions rightward. On Friday, the French parliament voted to extend a nationwide state of emergency for another three months, granting authorities broad powers to limit civil liberties in the name of combating terrorism. The French public overwhelmingly supports the move.

The rise of a police state in France may come as a surprise to Americans old enough to remember when France stood out as Europe’s greatest critic of President George W. Bush’s War on Terror—a spat that peaked in 2003 when, in response to French opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the House of Representatives cafeteria rebranded its French fries “Freedom Fries.”

Nowadays, of course, just about everyone looks with disfavor on that war, which is credited with giving ISIS a foothold. Though France bombed targets in Syria on November 15, it has so far stopped short of sending in ground troops against ISIS. And, while it’s too early to tell, there’s no evidence its intelligence services are abducting or torturing terror suspects.

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France Goes to War on Civil Liberties

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Egypt’s Nile River Delta Is Sinking Into the Sea

by TamieLawyer Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Abdullah Salam walks up and down his narrow plot, tossing fistfuls of wheat seeds with a light flick of his wrist as the soil squishes beneath his bare feet. “Elhamdullillah,” he says—praise God—a strong rain just came through and softened the ground. A month ago, this earth was as hard as asphalt.

These days, it feels to Salam like his soil is fighting him. It’s quick to dry out, turning hard and gray. The seeds don’t seem to like it: No matter how much money he spends on fertilizers, he’s getting slightly lower yields every harvest. And no matter how much he irrigates the land, it’s always thirsty. Always.

But there’s nothing to be done about it, and there’s no one to complain to here in Kafr el-Sheikh, in the center of Egypt’s Nile Delta, so Salam carries on planting. He, his wife and his 15-year-old son, Mohammed, scatter the wheat seeds around his 2-acre field. Their neighbor then drives his tractor through it, tilling the soil and pushing the seeds deep into the ground. Once that’s done, they all have tea and wait.

“The harvest will be in five or six months, inshallah God willing,” Salam says. “One acre used to yield 18 or 20 ardab worth about $1,000. But now we’ll probably only get 10.” Salam will sell half of that at market for about $250, and the other half his wife will mill into flour and bake into bread. But it’s nearly impossible to make such a small amount of flour stretch until the next harvest, she says.

This land, where the Nile spreads out to meet the sea, once grew enough wheat to feed everyone from Cairo to Rome—the breadbasket of the world, they called it. Today, the delta barely feeds the farmers who cultivate it. Salam blames his diminishing returns on rising fertilizer prices and bad luck.

But it’s not bad luck—it’s the sea. It’s warming, rising and expanding onto the low-lying, delta lands and seeping into the water that feeds them. By the end of the century, 60 percent of the delta region—including Salam’s field—will be so saturated with salt as to be barely farmable. As much as 20 percent of this once-fertile land will be covered in water. When this happens, two-thirds of Egypt’s food will drown and two-thirds of the country’s population will be left homeless and hungry.

The Salt Shakedown

Sadek Mahmoud has been working the plot next to Salam’s for 65 years. He remembers when the Nile used to flood his irrigation canals every year with clear, nutrient-rich water. “I used to drink from the Nile right here. And I never ever got sick,” Mahmoud says.

For centuries, farmers relied solely on the Nile to water their cropland, digging a complex network of irrigation canals to connect the entire delta region to the river and its tributaries. But as Egypt’s population has soared, so has its water consumption; and as factories, power plants and megacities have emerged along the Nile’s banks, the clear, rich water of Mahmoud’s youth has been fouled by all manner of human, chemical and industrial waste. Nowadays, by the time the Nile reaches Salam and Mahmoud’s fields, it has been reduced to a brown, toxic trickle.

To compensate, the farmers in the area have dug a well. Salam and Mahmoud, along with about a dozen of their neighbors, take turns running a fuel-powered pump to flood their respective irrigation canals with water from the Nile Delta aquifer, a massive underground reservoir, spanning from Cairo to the Mediterranean Sea. On the surface, this seems like a good solution to the delta’s water shortage problem, but this sort of pumping is accelerating the region’s demise, according to Badr Mabrouk, a hydrology professor at Zagazig University. “When you draw the water up from the deep aquifers, it creates pressure and it draws the sea in,” Mabrouk said.

Rising sea levels had already put the Nile Delta aquifer in peril before farmers began deep-well pumping, Mabrouk explained, but they have made it worse. The way coastal aquifers work is that they meet and hold back the sea underground at a point called the transition zone: The higher density saltwater sinks and gets pulled back toward the ocean and the freshwater remains on top. As long as sea levels—and aquifer levels—remain stable, this meeting point doesn’t move.

But if either the sea rises or the fresh water recedes, this point moves farther inland: The sea advances underground. In the case of the Nile Delta, both are happening and they’re happening quickly, Mabrouk said. As the ocean warms and its waters expand, sea levels in Egypt are rising, and the land is sinking at a rate of 0.1 inches per year as a result, according to the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Program. Meanwhile, excessive pumping is draining the aquifer faster than rainfall can refill it.

Massive cement tetrapods lie along the beach in Baltim, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The huge blocks are a stopgap to prevent erosion, but the sea is steadily overtaking them. The first stages of this wall have been almost completely overtaken by sand; only their moss-covered tops remain visible. Without action, the other rows will soon disappear as well. Nicholas Linn for Newsweek

Climate scientists and geologists have been warning of the danger of saltwater intrusion in Egypt’s Delta for decades. But in a country riven with political upheaval and economic insecurity, the environment has never been the government’s priority—and still isn’t, according to Hassan Husseiny, a water management specialist for the American University in Cairo’s Research Institute for Sustainable Environment. “Studies say climate change could begin to have a real effect after 20 years,” Husseiny says. “The government doesn’t look that far ahead.”

But up in the northern Delta region, sea-level rise is no longer a matter of looking ahead: On a daily basis, the sea is pounding away at the populous cities of Alexandria, Damietta and Port Said. If the sea rises by even 20 inches (which a 2014 National Climate Assessment projects will likely occur by 2100) 30 percent of Alexandria, a city of 5 million, will be inundated.

In the popular coastal resort town of Baltim, about 30 miles north of Kafr el-Sheikh, mango farmer Mossad Abu Ghali has seen the sea advancing. “I remember when they had to build a new boardwalk because the old one got ruined by the sea,” Abu Ghali says. “That was a long time ago though. Inshallah, the sea is not advancing anymore.” Baltim built a seawall in 1992 out of large, concrete tetrapod blocks. This has slowed—but not stopped—the sea’s advance. This type of structure, known as a revetment, has an average life span of 30 to 50 years. Already the wall is half-buried in sand.

All along the coast, cities and towns like Baltim have constructed sea walls to try and hold back the water, but even with these measures in place, Husseiny predicted that no fewer than 10 million people would be displaced in the next 30 years.

The Delta’s Eleventh Hour

In 1972, Egypt launched the Coastal Research Institute (CORI) to “monitor and protect” the Egyptian coast, but to date, its work has focused far more on monitoring than protecting. “There has yet to be any action taken in the delta that I know of,” Husseiny said. “There have been conferences and meetings and discussions but no action.”

The institute’s current flagship program is a joint venture started in 2009 with the United Nations Development Program and Global Environment Facility. The project is to create “integrated coastal zone management systems” on Egypt’s coasts by building sea barriers out of natural materials. Six years and $4 million later, they have managed to “select a pilot site,” design an “adaptation technique” and solicit bids from contractors to work on a pilot site—but have yet to build a single sea barrier.

Aymen el-Gamal, CORI’s deputy director, works out of an office less than half a mile from the sea, and he doesn’t deny the sea levels are rising. But, he says, there is little use in trying to predict the rate at which it will rise—and there’s no sense in planning more than one or two years ahead. Most existing models are just alarmist and unhelpful, el-Gamal says. He’s also unconvinced human-induced climate change is real. “The Earth is very clever. It can take in energy and emit it,” el-Gamal says. “There are those who say there is the greenhouse effect and the ozone—no, the Earth is bigger than all of this.” His smile is confident and kind. “So the climate change from my point of view is a normal phenomenon.” Which is why he sees his role as one of simply monitoring sea-level rise and adapting to the data as it comes in.

For farmers like Salam, Mahmoud and Abu Ghali, however, that won’t work. The hour is late for the delta. “The land is slowly, slowly running out of time,” Mabrouk said. Egypt’s primary food source is sinking into the sea while its government—and the international community—watches on.

Global leaders are gearing up for the landmark COP21 climate change summit in Paris, where they are hoping to reach consensus on a new set of regulations for greenhouse gas emissions to replace the current Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2020. But even the most aggressive of global reforms won’t do a thing to save Egypt’s Nile Delta. Even if global leaders succeed in their goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels (an ambitious goal to begin with), the seas are expected to continue rising for decades to come, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Land loss and damage from climate change are on the agenda for the summit, but it’s unlikely that Egypt’s case will be discussed specifically. Ultimately, the United Nations Framework for Climate Change has left it to individual countries to develop their own National Adaptation Plans. Egypt’s prime minister formed a National Committee on Climate Change in July to draft an up-to-date national strategy for combatting the problem, but a copy of this strategy has not been made public (if indeed it has been fully drafted).

In the meantime, there has been little if any international pressure on Egypt to update its national strategy expediently. All international critiques of Egypt tend to focus on the country’s national security problems, human rights abuses and poor democratic governance. As long as climate change remains a second-tier issue for the international community, the Egyptian state—and its people—will also regard it as one.

Even Abu Ghali, whose mango trees could be floating in saltwater within his lifetime, believes tackling climate change should come second to tightening security and restoring the economy. He has full confidence his president will help him in due time. “The government is under a lot of pressure,” Abu Ghali says. “We can’t expect everything to come all at once. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi needs to first give jobs to people who need them. Later, he will help us.” Inshallah.

Partial funding for this piece was provided by the Earth Journalism Network.

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Egypt’s Nile River Delta Is Sinking Into the Sea

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Donald Trump’s Hatemongering Moves on to African-Americans

by Sheena25Szik Posted on November 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Having already played the hate card against Mexicans and Muslims—and getting crackerjack results—Donald Trump has apparently decided to move on to African-Americans. I don’t know what the “Crime Statistics Bureau” in San Francisco is, and I don’t think I want to know, but one of the most well-established facts about murder in the United States is that it’s pretty racially segregated. Whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, etc. But today Trump decided to tweet the CSB graphic on the right, for no readily apparent reason. And wouldn’t you know it: it contains a wee racial error. It claims that most whites are killed by blacks, but in 2014, which is the latest full-year homicide data available from the FBI, 82 percent of whites were killed by other whites and only 15 percent were killed by blacks.

Trump’s tweeted graphic swaps the the numbers for the offender’s race—but only for white victims. For black victims, the numbers in the graphic are roughly correct. This makes it look like blacks kill everyone. And just in case these numbers are too subtle for you, it includes a stereotypical black thug to make sure you get the picture. Donald Trump has found his audience, and he knows what they want. So he’s giving it to them.

UPDATE: Come on, folks. This graphic is not “controversial” and it’s not “questionable.” It’s wrong. Period. The numbers for white victims are swapped in a grossly obvious way intended to make a racist point. FFS.

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Donald Trump’s Hatemongering Moves on to African-Americans

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