Tag Archives: world

China Slashes Coal Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Second Year in a Row

by Claudia58Q Posted on February 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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China is continuing to drag itself off coal—the dirty energy source that has made it the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. Figures published Sunday night by China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed coal consumption dropping 3.7 percent in 2015, marking the second year in a row that the country has slashed coal use and greenhouse gas emissions.

To put that in perspective, Greenpeace East Asia says China’s drop in coal use over the past two years is equal to Japan’s total annual coal consumption—a trend the environmental group says could “far surpass” China’s commitments enshrined in the Paris climate deal reached in December. Last year, China’s carbon emissions dropped 1-2 percent, Greenpeace says, a decline the group attributes to both falling economic output from China’s heavy industries and an upswing in renewable energy use. China is widely expected to meet or surpass its goal of “peaking” emissions (the point at which the country begins to permanently reduce its greenhouse gas emissions) by 2030.

But the shift away from coal will also hit the country’s workers hard: The government plans to slash 1.8 million jobs in the steel and coal industries—about 15 percent of the workforce in those sectors, according to Reuters. The government says it has a $15.27 billion plan over 10 years to relocate these workers.

Today’s news follows China’s promise of a three-year moratorium on all new coal mines. The country also plans to shutter 1,000 existing coal mines this year alone, with deeper cuts to come. All of this has been accompanied by massive investments in wind and solar that have made the country’s renewable energy firms world-leaders in clean power.

But with China—the world’s second largest economy—there is always a disclaimer. It’s right to be skeptical of official economic and energy statistics coming from China, which some experts say can be subject to political pressure.

Still, there are some undeniable signs of progress. The last major coal-fired power station in Beijing is expected to close this year, welcome news to residents of a city that is frequently blanketed in toxic smog.

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China Slashes Coal Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Second Year in a Row

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Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

by HYYLes421611432 Posted on February 26, 2016

Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

By on 26 Feb 2016commentsShare

If you’ve been paying attention to the 2016 presidential debates, you may have noticed one topic that has been absent. While the GOP candidates have discussed everything from the price of tractors in China to killing baby Hitler to Carly Fiorina’s face, they have been almost silent on the gravest global threat of our age: climate change.

Now, this isn’t entirely the candidates’ fault (although not accepting climate change science certainly is), since the moderators in charge have barely mentioned the environment during the debates. But even though the presidential hopefuls — and debate moderators — are ignoring climate change, one man is not: Bill Nye, The Science Guy. In an op-ed published on CNN (the network that hosted Thursday’s Republican debate in Houston, Texas), Nye lays out the questions that should have been asked. He writes:

Here’s hoping someone can manage to ask the candidates a question like: “Mr. _______, you’ve stated repeatedly that you feel that climate change and global warming are not things we need to worry about in the short or even long term; why do you disagree with the world’s science community and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?”

Then, I’m hoping that the same person or another citizen asks a follow-up: “Mr. _______, would you say that you believe your intuition and experience with weather are more scientifically correct than the research done by the world’s climate scientists, and do you believe that the world’s scientists are part of a conspiracy?”

Of course, neither question made it into the debate in Houston.

The one brief mention of the environment on Thursday night was in the context of the budget: CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer followed up with Donald Trump about his plan to eliminate the EPA in order to save the country $8 billion, though it still only accounts for roughly 0.2 percent of the federal budget. (Trump, by the way, also says he’s going to eliminate the Department of Education, so if you have plan on having school-aged children during the Trump reign, you may want to consider Cape Breton.)

But even if Blitzer or the other moderators had brought up climate change, four out of the five candidates onstage deny its very existence. This isn’t just terrifying for those of us who care about the planet; it should also be terrifying for those who care more about the economy than the Earth. The fossil fuel industry is facing intense turmoil: Coal-fired power plants are closing, oil prices are at record lows, natural gas extraction has a huge PR — and earthquake — problem, and the decreasing cost and increasing availability of solar and wind power means the future just isn’t dirty energy anymore: It’s in renewables. Or, at least, it should be.

But even though Texas is the home to a big oil and gas industry and wind industry, none of this came up in Houston. And if past performance is any indication, it won’t in the debates still to come. Until moderators and network hosts force the candidates to explain themselves, they’ll talk about fruit salad and building walls across North America and who would defund Planned Parenthood the fastest — and they’ll certainly bicker over each other like divorcing parents — but as for climate change? On that, they won’t say a word.

Unless, that is, Bill Nye gets to moderate.

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Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

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Mass extinction threatens the world’s pollinators — and its crops

by ElveraDelee369 Posted on February 26, 2016

Mass extinction threatens the world’s pollinators — and its crops

By on 26 Feb 2016commentsShare

Bees, butterflies, bats, and birds have three things in common: They all have names that start with ‘b’, they are all pollinators, and they are all in serious danger.

A United Nations-sponsored study released Friday reports that the world’s pollinators — and the crops that depend on them — are experiencing a trend of deep decline toward mass extinctions, with 2 out of 5 invertebrate species on their way to being completely wiped out. A meeting of representatives from 124 nations approved the research after it was presented by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The findings, drawn from over 3,000 scientific papers on pollinators, are dire: 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species (bees, butterflies) and 16 percent of vertebrate pollinators (bats and birds) are threatened with extinction. The causes are multiple and varied: pesticide use, habitat loss associated with development, pathogens, and global warming are all major factors preventing pollinators from thriving.

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A planet full of bee carcasses isn’t the only reason to worry about this news. The lives of birds and bees and bats are inextricably interwoven with the crops they pollinate — and with the food security of the people who depend on them. About 75 percent of the world’s staple crops, including coffee, cotton, almonds, and cacao, depend on pollination in some way.

“Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security,” the co-chair of the UN assessment, Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, said. “Their health is directly linked to our own well-being.”

The work done by these tiny insects, birds, and mammals can add up to a lot of money, too. According to the findings, the annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators is estimated at as much as $577 billion — a figure higher than the GDP of the United Arab Emirates.

The report comes laden with the requisite catastrophe warnings, but there may be a way to reverse some of the damage. Practices like conducting sustainable agriculture in diverse habitats, utilizing indigenous knowledge, reducing or replacing pesticide use, and improving disease control can help attract pollinators and allow them to flourish.

“[W]e have more than enough evidence to act,” Imperatriz-Fonseca said. Given that we all like to eat food, maybe the stakes are high enough that we actually will.

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Mass extinction threatens the world’s pollinators — and its crops

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The NSA spied on top-secret climate negotiations between world leaders

by LinEagarwvz Posted on February 24, 2016

The NSA spied on top-secret climate negotiations between world leaders

By on 24 Feb 2016commentsShare

Climate negotiations between the world’s powerhouses usually take place behind closed doors — unless, that is, the U.S. government is secretly listening in.

A batch of documents released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday reveal that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spied on communications regarding international climate change agreements, including negotiations in 2008 between United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom the NSA had reportedly been spying on for decades. The NSA listened in on a private meeting between the two leaders ahead of a 2009 conference in Copenhagen, and gleaned information about their hopes that the European Union play a major role in climate change mitigation, adding Merkel thought the “tough issue” would involve carbon trading.

An excerpt from one of the NSA memos reads:

Ban Ki-moon, in an exchange on 10 December with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pointed out that the world would be watching the EU with “keen interest” for reassurances that it will maintain its leadership role in combating climate change … Ban also maintained that since the new U.S. administration will have a very engaging and proactive attitude on the issue, the time is right for the EU and the whole world to create conditions necessary for reaching a meaningful deal at the 2009 UN Climate Talks … Merkel believed that the climate-change issue should be discussed at the heads-of-state level, otherwise it would not work.

In a statement, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused “a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies” of bugging Ki-moon’s efforts to save the planet.

It’s not the first time we’ve discovered that the NSA has attempted to spy on other countries’ efforts to combat climate change. In 2014, world governments were furious to learn from a batch of documents released by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA had monitored communications between leaders of Brazil, South Africa, India, China, and several other countries. The NSA funneled information about other countries’ positions on climate change issues to U.S. negotiators for the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen — a gathering widely considered to be a failure.

The newest climate memos, part of a larger group of WikiLeaks documents spanning 2007 to 2011, give rare insight into leaders’ hopes for the Copenhagen summit.

It’s not clear exactly what kind of advantage the U.S. managed to gain by intercepting communications between Ki-moon and Merkel, but it likely didn’t make the outcome of the Copenhagen conference any better. Just as we finally learn the full extent of the political maneuvering behind Copenhagen, the world has mostly moved on: In December, the world reached a new climate accord in Paris — one that, hopefully, will lead to real and lasting change.

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The NSA spied on top-secret climate negotiations between world leaders

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The Kids These Days Are…In Surprisingly High Spirits

by Palma1985tj Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Republican pollster and language guru Frank Luntz has a new poll out. The bottom line is that young people are pretty damn liberal, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. But considering the relentless parade of stories about how terrible life is for the kids these days, these three questions might very well surprise some people:

Optimistic about their “personal future”: 88 percent
Expect to be better off financially than their parents: 75 percent
Believe America’s best days are ahead of it: 61 percent

That doesn’t sound like a generation in the throes of existential angst and financial Armageddon. The last few decades—and the most recent one in particular—have been pretty lousy for a lot of people. But millennials haven’t done any worse than anyone else, and in some respects they’ve actually done a little better. Sometimes I wonder if we oldsters are projecting more of our own mopiness on them than they actually feel.

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The Kids These Days Are…In Surprisingly High Spirits

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When Did Americans Get So Gullible?

by MilagroX06 Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Once again last night, Donald Trump won a landslide victory. He didn’t win just “economically anxious” blue-collar voters; he won everybody:

Trump’s victory was propelled by a broad coalition of voters, including evangelicals, voters without a college education, and people who said they were looking for a candidate outside the Republican establishment.

Trump appealed to voters across the ideological spectrum. He won 38 percent of people who describe themselves as “very conservative,” beating Cruz in Cruz’s own territory. And he also led among voters who describe themselves as “somewhat conservative” and even “moderate.” Rubio came in second with both those groups…The broad scope of Trump’s victory paints a dire picture for Republican establishment types hoping his support can be confined to a particular demographic or corner of the country.

The thing that knits all these Trump supporters together isn’t low wages or jobs disappearing overseas or xenophobic fear of anyone nonwhite. You can find each of these qualities in some of Trump’s supporters, but not in all of them. As near as I can tell, the only thing that all of them seem to share is a desire for someone “tough.” Mostly they want someone who’s tough on foreigners of various stripes, but Trump also does well by insisting he’ll be tough on crime, tough on insurance companies, tough on hedge fund managers, and tough on a slew of other malingerers.

And…now I’m trying to think of what to say next. It’s not that I’m surprised toughness sells to a certain audience. What I’m surprised by is that so many people buy the idea that Trump is tough. To me, it looks like a reality show schtick. It’s so obviously phony that it barely seems conceivable that so many people are taken in by it. Is that really all you have to do? Just a lot of blustery talk and that’s that? When did so many Americans get that gullible?

It’s puzzling. Trump is hardly the first demagogue to become popular, so maybe I’m overthinking this. But it feels different this time, as if we’ve become so sucked in by reality TV that we now accept reality TV as reality itself. So that’s what we want: the faux toughness of a reality TV star.

Trump’s act seems so obviously childish to me that I have a hard time accepting the fact that so many people apparently take it seriously. But what else explains him?

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When Did Americans Get So Gullible?

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Clinton Derangement Syndrome Is Alive and Well

by BrandieRitz Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Memories:

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that top aides to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about her use of a private email server as secretary of state, raising new political and legal complications for Clinton as she tries to maintain momentum for her campaign.

….The judge said that months of piecemeal revelations to date about Clinton and the State Department’s handling of the email controversy created “at least a ‘reasonable suspicion’ ” that public access to official government records under the federal Freedom of Information Act was undermined. “There has been a constant drip, drip, drip of declarations. When does it stop?” said Sullivan, a 1994 Bill Clinton appointee who has overseen several politically sensitive FOIA cases. “This case is about the public’s right to know,” he said.

This is all courtesy of Judicial Watch, the Scaife-funded outfit that brought us so much endless Clinton paranoia in the 90s. To this day, most people—including an awful lot of reporters who ought to know better—still don’t realize just how deliberate and manufactured the effort to destroy Bill Clinton was back then. Despite thousands of hours and millions of dollars of investigation, virtually none of the “scandals” turned out to be real. They were just an extended effort to throw mud at the wall and see if something stuck. Ironically, the only one that did stick had nothing to do with any of the mud. It was just an old-fashioned sex scandal.

And now we’re back where we started. Hillary obviously blew it when she set up her own email server, but once again, thousands of hours of investigation have turned up nothing. It was dumb, but there’s no scandal, no national security threat, and no cabal of silence. Hillary Clinton has been required to make her entire email record public, something that’s never happened before to a secretary of state, and still there’s nothing. She’s undergone hours of House questioning, and still nothing. But the mud keeps coming. Maybe Huma Abedin will finally provide the smoking gun! Maybe if we demand to see her personal emails! Maybe if we recover bits and pieces from the server! There just has to be something there.

There isn’t. Hillary didn’t order the assassination of Vince Foster and she didn’t set up a personal email account so she could conceal her orders to stand down the rescue effort in Benghazi. But thanks to the obsessive Clinton hatred of Judicial Watch and the assistance of credulous judges like Emmet Sullivan, the “drip drip drip” will keep on coming. We never learn.

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Clinton Derangement Syndrome Is Alive and Well

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Republicans Decide to Boycott the Supreme Court Vacancy. Does This Remind You of Anyone?

by KarolynHDG Posted on February 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have officially announced that they aren’t willing to even hold hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee—no matter who it is.1 There’s all the usual argle bargle about needing to “protect the will of the American people” blah blah blah, but none of that matters. They’re doing this because they want to do it and they have the power to do it. I doubt that Democrats would act much differently under similar circumstances.

That said, you can add me to the huge crowd of observers who are puzzled by the political tactics here. The obvious question is: Why refuse to even hold hearings? That just makes Republicans look sullen and obstructionist. Why not hold hearings normally, drag them out a little bit, and then vote down whoever Obama nominates? The result is the same, but Republicans look more like senators and less like small children throwing a temper tantrum.

I suppose the answer is that this is a good way of firing up their base, and they think that’s more important than appealing to the center. Fair enough. But that raises another question: What’s the best way to fire up the Republican base? I’m not trying to troll anyone here, but it seems like the answer is to hold hearings. That would keep the whole Supreme Court issue front and center for months on end. The base would be faced almost daily with the prospect of what a liberal justice would do; talk radio would go nuts; and there would be endless chances to find specific problems with the nominee—many of which would coincidentally require the production of reams of files and records to trawl through.

Democrats, conversely, would have less to get fired up about. Sure, they’d be unhappy, but they wouldn’t be able to carp endlessly about Republican obstruction. Their guy is getting a hearing, after all.

So it seems like holding hearings normally would be a better way to fire up the GOP base and a better way to keep the Democratic base a little quieter. It probably wouldn’t make a huge difference either way, but it’s still a win-win. What am I missing here?

1After which they undoubtedly went out for a beer and shared their bewilderment about the fact that so many Republicans have been trained to vote for a guy like Donald Trump. What could possibly have driven them in such a direction?

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Republicans Decide to Boycott the Supreme Court Vacancy. Does This Remind You of Anyone?

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The Oklahoma Supreme Court Gave a Bizarre Explanation for Restricting the Abortion Pill

by RamonaWadham161 Posted on February 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld restrictions on the abortion pill, but the justices also noted that “by the state’s own evidentiary materials, more restrictions on abortions result in higher complication rates and in decreased women’s safety.”

Since the Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to mifepristone—a.k.a. the abortion pill—in 2000, more than 2 million women have ended their pregnancies using medication alone. The law in question, which went into effect in 2014, requires physicians to abide by a decade-old FDA protocol when administering abortion medication. That protocol includes high dosages of abortion drugs (mifepristone is one of two drugs used) and three visits to the doctor’s office—requirements that medical experts describe as unnecessary, as well as less effective and more expensive than the off-label use of these drugs. The FDA protocol also makes the medication harder to tolerate—failure rates more than double compared with those from off-label use, and almost every woman experiences at least one severe side effect like nausea, vomiting, or cramps.

That’s why, when prescribing abortion medication, over 80 percent of physicians follow an off-label method, developed by medical organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and supported by the World Health Organization. That regimen has fewer side effects and a lower failure rate than the FDA method. And it can be used later in pregnancy: Physicians typically prescribe abortion drugs until the ninth week of pregnancy, while the FDA regimen can only be used until the seventh week.

Abortion rights groups, including the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, sued Oklahoma in 2014, arguing that the law ignores medical evidence and harms women.

The court on Tuesday ultimately upheld the law and ruled that it doesn’t violate the constitution, even though it’s bad public health. And one justice, Douglas Combs, wrote an opinion in which he concurred with the court but questioned the law.

“Once again, those who do not practice medicine have determined to insert themselves between physicians and their patients, with the insistence they know what is best when it comes to the standard of care,” wrote Combs. “The medical community should take heed: now that the Legislature has declared itself willing to dictate medical protocol and practice within this limited context, what areas of the practice of medicine are next?”

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The Oklahoma Supreme Court Gave a Bizarre Explanation for Restricting the Abortion Pill

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Raw Data: Increase in Life Expectancy at Age 65

by NolanPopp7849 Posted on February 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Among advanced countries with high life expectancies already, how is the US doing at increasing the life expectancy of men and women once they reach age 65? Not so good! Raw data below.

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Raw Data: Increase in Life Expectancy at Age 65

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