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Why Donald Trump Will Fail to Make Good on One of His Biggest Campaign Promises

by HannaDabney Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Trump loves to boast that he’s going to bring back coal—he said as much again on Monday when he signed his Clean Power Plan executive order. But the economics just don’t work in his favor. King Coal has tumbled from its traditional throne as renewable energy prices have plunged and cheap, cleaner natural gas has flooded the markets. From 2000 to 2016, meanwhile, wind-power generation has increased 37-fold (to more than 2,100 trillion Btus). Solar, which accounts for a smaller part of the pie (335 trillion Btus) grew even faster: by a factor of 67! And that doesn’t even account for the growth in rooftop solar.

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In 2016, the American solar industry provided more jobs than its coal industry did, according to a recent report from the Department of Energy. And despite Trump’s coal talk, the Solar Foundation projects another 10 percent increase in solar employment this year.

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So will Trump keep his promise to put the miners back to work? Can he? Even Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies doubts it. “I really don’t know how far the coal industry can be brought back,” he conceded recently. Indeed, here are just a week’s worth of news highlights demonstrating why coal might have a tough time overcoming the nation’s momentum toward cleaner energy.

March 22: Abita Springs became the first city in Louisiana—one of the nation’s most energy intensive states—to pledge to using only renewable power sources by 2030. This “is a practical decision we’re making for our environment, our economy and for what our constituents want,” Mayor Greg Lemons noted back in January. (Abita Springs is part of St. Tammany Parish, 75 percent of whose voters backed Trump during the election.) Madison, Wisconsin announced its own 100 percent commitment the same day, bringing the total of cities making this pledge to 25. Prominent state policymakers, including the Republican governors of Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan, have also vowed to boost the percentage of renewables in their energy portfolios.

March 23: The share of electricity coming from renewable sources hit an all-time peak in California in late-morning, when renewables successfully met 57 percent of total demand—solar and wind accounted for 49 percent. The state is also ahead in meeting its 2030 goal of having renewables serve half of all energy consumption. A bill introduced by Democratic state Sen. Kevin de Leon last month would reset that deadline to 2025. Under De Leon’s bill, California would also follow Hawaii‘s lead and establish a target of 100 percent renewables by 2045. You want jobs? The Golden State’s solar industry employed more than 100,000 people last year, a 32 percent increase from 2015—and the rapid employment growth is projected to continue.

March 27: To the surprise of environmentalists, EPA boss Scott Pruitt signed off on a renewal of the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Program, which requires coal-fired plants near national parks and wilderness areas to install stringent pollution controls. The costs of complying with the ruling likely doomed one Arizona power plant, says Earthjustice attorney Michael Hiatt. By 2025, the plant must either transition to natural gas or be shut down entirely. “This is a powerful illustration of, try as the Trump administration might to keep burning coal, a lot of times it just doesn’t make any economic sense,” Hiatt says. “Because of this rule, the days for burning coal are numbered.” Since 2010, according to the Sierra Club, 175 US coal plants have ceased operation, and 73 are scheduled to retire by 2030.

March 28: Brewing giant Anheuser-Busch joined the ranks of nearly 100 other big businesses by committing to source all of its purchased electricity from renewables by 2025. “Climate change has profound implications for our company and for the communities where we live and work,” CEO Carlos Brito said in a statement. “Cutting back on fossil fuels is good for the environment and good for business.” Other companies committing to RE100—a global business initiative to increase the use of renewables—include Google, H&M, Walmart, and Goldman Sachs. Microsoft says it got to 100 percent renewable energy in 2014.

March 29: As Trump makes moves to sabotage the Paris accord, China is stepping in to take the lead as both the largest emitter of carbon and the largest investor in solar and wind power. “As a responsible developing country, China’s plan, determination and policy to tackle climate change is resolute,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said after Trump signed his order to roll back Obama-era climate rules. China isn’t the only country making strides: The UK set a new record for solar-electricity generation this past week, beating out coal-fired generation by six-fold. Australia, which relies on coal for two-thirds of its energy, is preparing for a major solar push as better technology drives down costs—seven large-scale projects were completed last year and more than a dozen are now under construction. Costa Rica is on track to be carbon-neutral by 2021. Last year, it met more than 98 percent of its energy demands with renewables. It seems the elusive Quetzal knows something that Donald Trump does not.

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Why Donald Trump Will Fail to Make Good on One of His Biggest Campaign Promises

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Are the Director and Star of "Obvious Child" Concerned About Anti-Abortion Backlash?

by HannaDabney Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Obvious Child is being widely described as an “abortion comedy“—a catchy, if inadequate, designation. The movie (directed and co-written by Gillian Robespierre, and starring Saturday Night Live alum Jenny Slate) does involve abortion and funny jokes, many of which are about abortion and farting, among other topics. But Obvious Child is much more than the “abortion comedy” designation might lead you to believe.

“We were confident that our take on this story was thoughtful, and heartfelt, and that the comedy was funny and not for shock value,” Slate tells Mother Jones.

The film follows New York-based comedian Donna Stern (played by Slate) who, after losing both her day job and her unfaithful boyfriend, engages in what she thinks is just a one-night stand—which leads to an unwanted pregnancy. She decides to have an abortion at Planned Parenthood, and she schedules it for Valentine’s Day. The result is a witty, honest, and affecting romantic comedy that addresses a charged issue with unexpected clarity. The Huffington Post called it, “the year’s most revolutionary film.”

Obvious Child does not push a political agenda, but there is little chance of that stopping anyone who is paid to be upset by this sort of thing from, well, being upset by it. “Has Hollywood hit a new low?” the Daily Caller asked. “Here’s a new oxymoron, even for the liberal media: abortion comedy,” NewsBusters decried. “Apparently nothing sounds funnier than an unplanned one-night stand and a courageous destruction of God’s most beautiful and most innocent creation,” Brent Bozell wrote at Townhall.com.

The film premiered in New York last week, and is getting a slow theatrical roll-out elsewhere starting this Friday. As it garners more attention, it’ll likely piss off more people. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be much of a concern for Robespierre or Slate. “Whatever other conversation occurs, we’re really excited,” Robespierre says. “Conservatives bashing Obvious Child haven’t seen the movie; they’re basing it on articles and trailers.”

“You know, we just set out to make this story. We weren’t thinking about anything but making this story,” Slate says. When I asked them if they were looking forward to the moment when Rush Limbaugh gets ahold of the movie, Slate replied, “We’re looking forward to people seeing our movie, and enjoying it.”

On the other side of the reproductive-rights debate, people are certainly enjoying, and endorsing, the film. “Honest portrayals about abortion in film and television are extremely rare, and that’s part of a much bigger lack of honest depictions of women’s lives, health, and sexuality,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “This film is a major breakthrough—not just because it shows a woman deciding to have an abortion but because it shows her as a full and complete person making the serious decision to end a pregnancy and still having a full and fun life.”

Planned Parenthood also consulted on the development and production of Obvious Child, vetting the script and allowing them to shoot in a clinic in New Rochelle, New York. “They were so supportive, a real friend of the film,” Robespierre says. “They read a draft of the script, they loved it, and they were so enthusiastic that we were making a movie that sort of takes away the stigma of the choice. The character is not hard on herself, and she’s not ashamed, and not judgmental. And it’s a positive, safe procedure.” Planned Parenthood then offered a few notes on the screenplay (what a nurse at one of their clinics would say to a patient, for instance). A few Planned Parenthood employees can be seen in the film as extras. “They were big fans of Jenny,” Robespierre recalls.

Robespierre became a big fan of Jenny after she saw her perform stand-up in Brooklyn in 2009, at a bar behind a record store. “We finished the script but hadn’t cast the role of Donna yet, and there she was, blowing us away with this confessional style of comedy,” Robespierre says. “She was talking about when she was a little girl she would hump furniture in her house.” The pair then made a 2009 short film, also called Obvious Child, which then became the feature they’re promoting today.

“We don’t describe our film as an ‘abortion comedy’; I don’t think that’s a thing, you know?” Slate says. “I understand that it’s something that might draw readers. But for us, it’s the funny, and heartwarming, and new story of one woman at this time in her life.”

“Yeah, we don’t like boring shit,” Slate continues, summing things up.

“Yeah, fuck that!” Robespierre says.

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Are the Director and Star of "Obvious Child" Concerned About Anti-Abortion Backlash?

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Big Oil Won’t Let the Developing World Kick the Habit

by HannaDabney Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

In the 1980s, encountering regulatory restrictions and public resistance to smoking in the United States, the giant tobacco companies came up with a particularly effective strategy for sustaining their profit levels: sell more cigarettes in the developing world, where demand was strong and anti-tobacco regulation weak or nonexistent. Now, the giant energy companies are taking a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook. As concern over climate change begins to lower the demand for fossil fuels in the United States and Europe, they are accelerating their sales to developing nations, where demand is strong and climate-control measures weak or nonexistent. That this will produce a colossal increase in climate-altering carbon emissions troubles them no more than the global spurt in smoking-related illnesses troubled the tobacco companies.

The tobacco industry’s shift from rich, developed nations to low- and middle-income countries has been well documented. “With tobacco use declining in wealthier countries, tobacco companies are spending tens of billions of dollars a year on advertising, marketing, and sponsorship, much of it to increase sales in… developing countries,” the New York Times noted in a 2008 editorial. To boost their sales, outfits like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco also brought their legal and financial clout to bear to block the implementation of anti-smoking regulations in such places. “They’re using litigation to threaten low- and middle-income countries,” Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of the Tobacco Free Initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the Times.

The fossil fuel companies—producers of oil, coal, and natural gas—are similarly expanding their operations in low- and middle-income countries where ensuring the growth of energy supplies is considered more critical than preventing climate catastrophe. “There is a clear long-run shift in energy growth from the OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of rich nations to the non-OECD,” oil giant BP noted in its Energy Outlook report for 2014. “Virtually all (95 percent) of the projected growth in energy consumption is in the non-OECD,” it added, using the polite new term for what used to be called the Third World.

As in the case of cigarette sales, the stepped-up delivery of fossil fuels to developing countries is doubly harmful. Their targeting by Big Tobacco has produced a sharp rise in smoking-related illnesses among the poor in places where health systems are particularly ill equipped for those in need. “If current trends continue,” the WHO reported in 2011, “by 2030 tobacco will kill more than 8 million people worldwide each year, with 80 percent of these premature deaths among people living in low- and middle-income countries.” In a similar fashion, an increase in carbon sales to such nations will help produce more intense storms and longer, more devastating droughts in places that are least prepared to withstand or cope with climate change’s perils.

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Big Oil Won’t Let the Developing World Kick the Habit

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Enviros urge U.S. to stop meddling in Indian solar affairs

by HannaDabney Posted on April 25, 2014

Enviros urge U.S. to stop meddling in Indian solar affairs

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A U.S. push to smash open India’s fast-growing solar market could end up hurting the climate.

That was the message from 15 U.S. environmental groups in a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, just days before his office plans to move forward with a World Trade Organization complaint against India’s solar rules.

As we’ve told you before, India is going gangbusters for solar – a commendable trend in a coal-reliant country. Solar installations doubled in 2013, driven largely by ambitious federal energy policies.

U.S. solar component producers, notably GE partner First Solar, want in on that action, but Indian officials are trying protect and nurture a domestic solar industry to help provide jobs for its impoverished populace.

Now American enviros are coming down heavily on India’s side in the dispute. “We are writing to express our grave concerns that the United States plans to increase uncertainty in the Indian solar market by asking the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish a panel to evaluate whether India’s national solar program violates international trade rules,” write the environmental groups, including 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace USA, and the Sierra Club.

“We believe this misguided claim could delay growth of the solar market in India and harm the future of solar deployment at a time when growth of renewable energy has never been more critical,” the letter continues. “Our global climate will remain in danger if only some countries develop renewable energy industries while others continue to rely on fossil fuels. In order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts, all countries must urgently be investing in renewable energy technologies.”

Froman’s office plans to move its complaint against India forward at the WTO on Friday, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, India has been investigating America’s own solar policies in anticipation of a potential counter-complaint.


Source
Green groups urge U.S. to drop solar trade case against India, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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