Tag Archives: 2016 presidential race

Climate change enjoyed its 2 seconds of fame in the final debate

Five minutes and twenty-seven seconds were spent on climate change and other environmental issues in the three presidential debates, 2 percent of the total time — and that was pretty much all Hillary Clinton talking. (Surprise, surprise.)

There wasn’t a single question on climate policy, and only one that directly related to energy — thank you, Ken Bone.

How does that compare to debates in past years? We ran the numbers on the past five election cycles to find out.

The high point for attention to green issues came in 2000, when Al Gore and George W. Bush spent just over 14 minutes talking about the environment over the course of three debates. The low point came in 2012, when climate change and other environmental issues got no time at all during the presidential debates. Some years, climate change came up during the vice presidential debates as well.

2016 total: 1 minute, 22 seconds in the first presidential debate, and 4 minutes, 3 seconds in the second. Climate got just a split-second in the vice presidential debate. Clinton only name-dropped climate change once in the final debate, adding a whole two seconds to the grand total.

2012: 0 minutes.

2008: 5 minutes, 18 seconds in two presidential debates. An additional 5 minutes, 48 seconds in a vice presidential debate.

2004: 5 minutes, 14 seconds in a single presidential debate.

2000: 14 minutes, 3 seconds in three presidential debates. 5 minutes, 21 seconds in a vice presidential debate.

In total, over the five election seasons we looked at, climate change and the environment got 37 minutes and 6 seconds on the prime-time stage during the presidential and vice presidential debates. That’s out of more than 1,500 minutes of debate. Not an impressive showing.

A note about how we arrived at these times:

We parsed questions asked of candidates and searched the transcripts for keywords like “climate,” “environment,” “energy,” and “warming.” We cross-referenced the transcripts with video of the debates. Only the mentions that pertained to fighting climate change, cleaning up the environment, and reducing emissions counted. President Obama’s passing reference to clean energy jobs in 2012 didn’t count, nor did discussions of energy security, because they were in the context of the economy and not fighting climate change.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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Climate change enjoyed its 2 seconds of fame in the final debate

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An alternative timeline of what the Clinton-Trump debates could have been.

Lower-income communities are getting shut out from bike-sharing programs, and New York City is an especially bad culprit.

The problem with Citibike, New York City’s program, is that it’s largely inaccessible in low-income neighborhoods, writes Noah Zuss on City & State New York, a local politics and policy website.

You can’t find Citibike stations in vast swaths of the city. The Bronx, the country’s poorest urban county, has none. Most of blue-collar Queens is also ignored, as is Manhattan’s least-affluent portion north of 110th Street.

The other problem is cost. Citbike runs $12 per day. It’s $14.95 a month for an annual membership, but you need to have a credit or debit card to sign up, which excludes many low-income New Yorkers. Even Citibike’s discount program for public-housing residents requires a credit or debit card.

It’s a similar story in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Denver: Bike-sharing programs are disproportionately used by affluent white people. Cities have responded with subsidized discount memberships for lower-income residents without much success yet.

What’s the solution? Last month, a report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials suggested month-to-month memberships and cash payments to make bike-sharing more accessible.

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An alternative timeline of what the Clinton-Trump debates could have been.

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The rest of the world is practically daring Trump to stop climate action now.

While methane from fracking and other fossil-fuel activity hasn’t increased over the last 10 years, agriculture, landfills, and wetlands are getting gassier, according to a new study in Nature.

From 2007 to 2013, methane emissions rose by about 28 million tons a year. No one knew why. Fires, fossil fuels, and microscopic archaea (which make methane by decomposing things, whether in a trash heap or a cow’s stomach) all release slightly different versions of the gas.

The new study found that around 2007, the mix of methane in the atmosphere suddenly featured a lot more from decomposing archaea — and that, it turns out, could be big.

“If the methane is mainly coming from cows or ag, then we could potentially do something about it,” lead scientist Stefan Schwietzke of NOAA said in a press release. “If it’s coming from decaying vegetation in wetlands or fresh waters, then … it could be part of a self-reinforcing feedback loop leading to more climate change. Those are big ifs.”

The latest findings reflect the most comprehensive information we have, but our understanding is still hazy. Bryan Duncan of NASA, unaffiliated with the study, summed it up: “There are too many [methane] sources and not enough data.”

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The rest of the world is practically daring Trump to stop climate action now.

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Sanders’ final win: Climate action in the Democratic platform

Sanders’ final win: Climate action in the Democratic platform

By on Jul 11, 2016 10:01 amShare

Pushed left by backers of Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic leaders adopted a draft platform over the weekend that commits the party to a more aggressive stance on climate change — more aggressive, in some areas, than the positions of the party’s presumptive nominee.

Appointees of Sanders and Hillary Clinton met in Orlando to hammer out the party’s policy goals in advance of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month, where the platform will be formally adopted by delegates.

The negotiating sessions went past midnight and were described by committee members as the most contentious in decades, due to Sanders’ stronger-than-expected showing in the primaries, which resulted in the party giving him unusual influence over the platform. The draft language agreed to Sunday morning includes an endorsement to support “every tool available to reduce emissions now,” which most significantly includes an endorsement for pricing carbon. “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals,” the draft reads.

A carbon tax was part of Sanders’ big push on climate policy during the primary race, while Clinton has resisted calling for anything that can be misconstrued as a tax hike in an election year.

Putting a price  on carbon isn’t controversial policy if you’re talking to an economist. But Clinton’s campaign has justified keeping its distance by saying climate change “is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation,” i.e., a carbon tax.

Clinton will be sticking to that reasoning regardless of what the party platform says. “Her plan is clearly articulated on her website,” Clinton Energy Policy Adviser Trevor Houser said this weekend, according to the Associated Press. “It’s not her plan.” The campaign did not return a request for comment.

That indicates the limited reach of the party platform. Although it’s designed to articulate the positions of the party as a whole, individual politicians — even the party’s standard-bearer — aren’t bound to it. But Sanders has indicated that one of his main goals is to push the party as a whole toward more dramatic action on issues like climate change, and the platform provides the best articulation yet of that direction.

The draft platform hammered out over the weekend includes a few other small nods to Sanders’ climate positions. It marks the official death among Democrats of the once-popular talking point that natural gas can be “a bridge fuel” to renewables. The platform now pits clean energy against gas, by incentivizing wind, solar, and renewables over new natural gas-fired power plants.

The draft also reflects a change in the left’s thinking after President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline last year, stating that Democrats should “ensure federal actions don’t ‘significantly exacerbate’ global warming” before supporting new infrastructure projects.

Progressive Democrats hardly got everything they wanted, particularly on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Obama strongly supports over the objections of many environmentalists, and a nationwide ban on fracking. The platform committee settled on Clinton’s proposal to regulate fracking’s methane emissions and impact on water quality, instead of calling for the Sanders-preferred nationwide ban.

Despite some mixed outcomes, Sanders feels he has won enough in the party’s platform to finally take himself out of the running for the Oval. He’s expected to endorse Clinton on Tuesday.

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Sanders’ final win: Climate action in the Democratic platform

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We pass the popcorn for the greatest climate hits of the Bernie-Hillary smackdown

We pass the popcorn for the greatest climate hits of the Bernie-Hillary smackdown

By on 15 Apr 2016commentsShare

What do Gristers do after the two remaining Democratic candidates for president spend a substantial chunk of time debating climate and energy issues? Pour a drink and obsess over the whole thing in an online chat, of course. The following transcript has been lightly edited.

Scott Dodd (executive editor): Wow, nine Democratic debates in and we got a whole — what, 15 minutes devoted to the most important issues affecting the future of human civilization? Was anybody surprised we got even that much?

Ben Adler (politics reporter): I was optimistic that they would ask some questions about climate change because it’s been a hot issue recently.

Scott: “Hot!” Ba dum ching.

Ben: Then I got pessimistic as they asked about the most unimportant campaign trivia during the first segment. So I was sort of half surprised when it finally happened.

Rebecca Leber (news editor): The funny thing is it didn’t even kick off with a particularly insightful question. Just Wolf Blitzer asking Clinton about Sanders’ attacks, and then “What are his lies?” But it got better. I felt like the moderators just let the candidates go at each other, only pushing back occasionally. By far the best moderation on climate we’ve seen in any of the debates.

Scott: Yeah, it often seems like the moderators focus on things only the political press really cares about, as opposed to the real issues. But I guess that’s a good question: We in the Grist offices were glued to our screens for the climate and energy stuff, but do voters care?

Clayton Aldern (senior fellow): I think this is something that Ben has touched on a good amount — that climate tends to rank reasonably low on the priority list across both parties, albeit more highly on the Democratic side of things. My understanding is that climate tends to be one of the issues that people love to harp on, but not one with which they vote.

Ben: Most voters form an opinion of which candidate they prefer based on broader themes and find proof in the issues to support them. It’s not what you say about the issues, it’s what the issues say about you. And climate doesn’t rank in the first tier.

Scott: Sanders compared them to 9/11 and WWII in terms of importance.

Ben: I appreciated that analogy. In general, it feels like your average liberal, and increasingly your average moderate and sometimes even conservative, realizes that climate change is a terrifying long-term threat. They support a transition to clean energy, but have no sense of immediate urgency. Sanders is trying to convey the urgency with which it should be treated.

Clayton: I think this is the first time we’ve seen anyone deploy that kind of rhetoric — the “enemy” rhetoric — for the security threat argument.

Rebecca: There are so many ways climate change can fit into the broader discussion, and not as a niche issue the political press usually treats it as. Sanders’ comments on combating an “enemy” got at that larger framework we’re usually missing.

Scott: So for those of us who do really care about climate, did we hear anything new last night from the candidates?

Rebecca: We got a sense of two different philosophies: Clinton pushing what Obama has already accomplished and how to expand on that, and Sanders wanting to go much further, condemning the status quo, by banning fracking and whatnot. I don’t think voters have heard much that would give them a sense of the candidates’ two visions before last night. Probably because previous debates mostly ignored it.

Scott: Ben, going back to Wolf’s first question to Clinton about her campaign donations from fossil fuel interests, which you wrote about this past week: Is that the kind of trivial stuff that just gets the candidates yelling at each other, or does it matter?

Ben: I think that to a certain segment of Sanders supporters, the fossil fuel dollars become one of those points that they glom onto because it reinforces their sense of Clinton as in hock to corporate interests. But I doubt any voters who were undecided between the candidates would choose Sanders when they find out Clinton has a handful of lobbyist donors who have fossil fuel corporations as clients. If you weren’t already a Sanders voter, why would that push you over? And that connects to my critique of that whole issue, which is that an enviro voter deciding between Clinton and Sanders should — and probably does — care more about their policy stances than their donors.

Scott: So then Rebecca, to your point about different philosophies, how much daylight is there really between Clinton and Sanders on climate and energy issues — and where are those major differences, if any?

Rebecca: Well, there were some surprising and not surprising differences highlighted yesterday — for one, Clinton repeating that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” and we “want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible.” Sanders certainly doesn’t agree it’s a bridge fuel. Also, Clinton not quite answering whether she supports a carbon tax and Sanders not quite answering how to make up for nuclear energy (which he wants to phase out) were easy-to-miss but important nuances. But on the basic point — do they think climate change is a problem that needs solving? — they agree.

Clayton: Clinton’s comment about natural gas as a bridge fuel — and bear in mind, she largely made the argument with respect to Europe, by which I assume she’s referring to Eastern Europe — is remarkably similar to the World Bank’s position on gas. If you’re looking for anything that epitomizes the “establishment” (read: incrementalist) approach to energy policy, it’s probably that.

Rebecca: True, Sanders and Clinton have different audiences in mind.

Ben: Yeah, Clinton is concerned about the general election and swing voters, Sanders isn’t. My strong suspicion is that Clinton doesn’t want to back a carbon tax because she fears being attacked for it in the fall. “Clinton would raise your electricity bills. You’d pay more to fill up your car,” etc.

Rebecca: Yes. I was confused at first (“baffled” was the word I used on Twitter) why Clinton didn’t come out and say she supports a carbon tax. A bunch of journalists on Twitter had a lot of smart things to say, basically that she has her eye on the general and doesn’t want to feature in an attack ad saying the word “tax” on endless loop. I think the same audiences apply for fracking — Clinton is thinking about the general; Sanders is thinking about his base.

Ben: I asked her campaign chair, John Podesta, about this in the spin room after the debate, and Jen Palmieri, a Clinton spokeswoman. They both said, essentially, that Clinton doesn’t support a carbon tax because she has other means of getting us to, in Podesta’s words, “deep decarbonization.” So they deny that it’s a political calculation, but I think it is — why open herself up to attacks with a policy proposal that won’t pass anyway?

Clayton: Clinton is all about the realm of political possibility — what can get through Congress, what offers the path of least resistance, etc. The bridge fuel argument says, “Let’s at least do better than coal.” Sanders doesn’t buy that argument, and says we need drastic change if we actually want to solve the climate crisis. (This is, of course, largely representative of their approaches to their campaigns more generally.)

Ben: Yeah, Sanders doesn’t care about any of that. He just endorses the optimal policy because he’s got to win a bunch more Dems to win the nomination, and that’s how he could do it.

Scott: So that seems to bring us to the place where Sanders struggled the most on energy last night, when the moderators challenged him on his all-out opposition to fracking, and whether that means we’d just have to go back to relying more on coal and nuclear. How do you think he came out there?

Rebecca: Oof, not good, though I don’t think it will matter to his supporters. He basically didn’t answer, only pointed to his 10 million rooftop solar initiative. This was as much a non-answer as Clinton’s was on a carbon tax.

Clayton: I mean, we have him saying, “We have got to lead the world in transforming our energy system, not tomorrow, but yesterday.” He’s right about that, but he also needs to deliver concrete policy solutions.

Scott: It was interesting how much Clinton tied herself to the Obama climate legacy — a legacy that, just a few years ago, many enviros considered a mixed bag at best. Is that a sign of how far the president has come on climate?

Rebecca: Well, this has been a broader strategy for her. She’s been tying herself to Obama’s legacy left and right. So I think it’s because he’s just very popular among Democrats, at about 87 percent approval rating. But maybe how far he’s come on climate is one of the reasons he’s so popular among Dems.

Clayton: I dunno. Clinton name-dropped Obama a lot, but she also softened the language she used on that front a bit. Compare last night’s “I worked with President Obama to bring China and India to the table for the very first time” to October’s “literally hunting for the Chinese.”

Ben: I agree with Rebecca. The other thing is that Clinton is trying to hint at is political feasibility. She’s trying to point out to Dem voters that they aren’t the whole electorate, that Republicans are suing to stop Obama’s Clean Power Plan, for instance, and that just protecting Obama’s progress will be enough of a challenge, and that more aggressive policies might run into legal challenges, or cost Democrats elections in swing states. But she doesn’t spell all that out, and I’m not sure why. It makes her sound timid instead of pragmatic.

Scott: This takes us beyond last night’s debate and looking ahead toward the general election: Do you think we’ve just hit the high-water mark for discussion of these issues?

Clayton: Well the nominee sure as hell isn’t going to have a more substantive conversation about energy policy with Trump.

Rebecca: I think this is the last engaging debate on climate we’ll see. Once we get to the general, whoever the Democratic nominee is will just have to highlight climate denial, not get into policy details of the what and how.

Scott: That’s depressing, isn’t it?

Rebecca: If you care about this issue, you get used to it.

Clayton: She said, depressed.

Ben: I actually think it’s possible general election debate moderators will ask about climate change because they like issues where the candidates disagree. They never ask about abortion in the Democratic primary debates, for example, because the candidates are both pro-choice. But I don’t think it will be nearly as serious a conversation about climate policy.

Scott: So let’s try to end on a high note: Anything last night that made you LOL — like you couldn’t believe that was coming out of a candidate’s mouth?

Ben: Nothing funny, but I was excited to see Sanders ask Clinton directly about a carbon tax. I wish debates were more direct interaction between candidates rather than each offering canned answers filled with irrelevant talking points to the moderators. They’re usually more like simultaneous interviews than actual debates.

Rebecca: Clinton burned Sanders pretty hard: “I don’t take a back seat to your legislation that you’ve introduced that you haven’t been able to get passed.”

Clayton: Re: Sanders not releasing his tax returns, she also said, “Well, you know, there are a lot of copy machines around.” Which was worth a small handful of lulz.

Scott: I was convinced Wolf was going to end the climate conversation after the first question, just like the moderators have in so many previous debates this election cycle. So the fact that it went on as long as it did and we got so much from the candidates on the issue made me smile.

Ben: I loved how rowdy the audience was. That was NY representing.

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We pass the popcorn for the greatest climate hits of the Bernie-Hillary smackdown

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

By on 4 Mar 2016commentsShare

It’s not that expectations were very high for the Republican debate in Detroit on Thursday night. Even so, the debate hardly paid attention to the city’s troubles with lead poisoning. Aside for brief comments from Marco Rubio (in which he defended Republican Gov. Rick Snyder), the GOP brushed the issue aside, while standing a mere 70 miles from Flint. Instead, we heard about more pressing topics — like presidential penises.

Democrats have their own debate in Flint on Sunday, when environmental justice activists have higher hopes for a substantive discussion on both race and the environment.

“If Flint is not the place that this happens, it probably is not going to happen in a controlled format with two presidential candidates, ever,” Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy and organizing director of Environmental Action, told Grist.

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A coalition of groups partnering with Environmental Action delivered a petition with 85,000 signatures that calls on the Democratic National Committee to focus solely on racial and environmental justice. Sierra Club, the NAACP, and local community leaders are holding their own event Sunday to draw attention to other “Flints” around the country.

Both Environmental Action and Sierra Club gave Grist separate lists of sample questions they’d like to hear answers to — the topics include hydraulic fracturing, the future of fossil fuels, and equitable policy to help communities of color.

Here’s what Environmental Action wants answers on:

1. Robert Bullard, known as the “father” of environmental justice in America, has said that climate change impacts communities of color “first and worst.” As president, what specific steps would you take to make sure your policies to fight global warming better protect communities of color on the front lines of this global crisis?

2. Secretary Clinton, you just released a bulletin that calls for more use of natural gas as well as carbon capture and sequestration. But wouldn’t this plan mean increased fracking across the country and the potential for drinking water sources to be tainted as it is right here in Flint? Is there a safe way to frack, and if so, what steps would you take to ensure safety and minimize disproportionate impacts to communities of color?

3. Last December, nearly 200 world leaders signed an agreement you both support to cap global warming at 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. To accomplish that goal, scientists tell us we must leave 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. As president, what specific policies would you implement to limit new oil, gas, and coal development and keep America under this “carbon budget”? Secretary Clinton, will you support Sen. Sanders’ plan to ban drilling and mining on public lands and waters, the so-called “Keep It In The Ground” act?

4. Sen. Sanders, how will you enforce a ban on fossil fuel extraction without the support of Congress — which has voted in favor of the Keystone pipeline, oil exports, gas exports, and other fossil fuel extraction in the last six months?

5. Solutions to climate change such as electric cars and efficient lightbulbs are predicated on economic resources that are unavailable to many low-wealth communities of color. What climate change strategies would each of you implement to ensure that people of all income levels can take part in and benefit from living sustainably?

6. Policies like President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, created to address environmental racism, have been never been ratified or implemented as a national law. If elected, how would you overcome political obstacles that stand in the way of equitable and efficient environmental policy?

7. Secretary Clinton, your past statements, referring to men of color as “super-predators,” and past polices that you supported that resulted in the mass incarceration of largely Latino and African American [men] have caused some to question your commitment to racial justice. Do you regret your previous statement and support of that policy, and how would you correct it as president?

8. The GI Bill, New Deal, and favorable housing policies created generational wealth for white Americans. These programs were largely not made available to people of color, which in part contributes to the vast wealth disparity between white people and people of color. What are some specific policies you would implement to not only increase incomes for people of color, but also allow them to generate similar generational wealth as their white counterparts?

9. Native Americans who live on sovereign land have seen treaties broken time and time again, which has exposed them to toxic air and water as well as unequal protection and due process. As president, what commitment will you make to ensure tribal sovereignty and that treaties are respected and maintained?

10. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have not only contributed to increased carbon emissions, but they have also had significant impacts on jobs in communities like Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, and others. Some studies have shown that communities of color were hit the hardest from jobs shipped overseas as a result of these agreements. Where do each of you stand on free trade agreements, and if you advocate for them, how will you ensure they have environmental standards and do not result in the loss of American jobs essential to maintaining the middle class?

11. Should immigration enforcement should be suspended until the 1,000+ undocumented people in Flint get the services and help they need, should the Border Patrol should continue setting up in and around the city while this crisis is ongoing?

Sierra Club added three questions of its own that its members on the ground in Michigan want answered:

12. Do you think emergency manager laws, like the one in Michigan, are compatible with democratic ideals?

13. How should the government ensure that rebuilding after a disaster like Flint provides good paying local jobs that help lift up the community?

14. How should the federal government get involved when a crisis like Flint occurs?

Hold out some hope that CNN, which is moderating the debate, is listening. Rogers-Wright spoke to a network representative earlier this week about the questions the network should ask on Sunday, so a couple of these may indeed get prime-time attention.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hopefully won’t need too much prompting, though: Ahead of Michigan’s primary next week, Clinton has drawn attention to Flint’s problems as a main focus of her campaign, and Sanders has also called on Snyder to resign.

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

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Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

By on 2 Mar 2016 12:44 pmcommentsShare

Bernie Sanders won four out of 13 Super Tuesday contests last night — his home state of Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Sanders knew the last three states, as well as Massachusetts (which he lost narrowly) were critical to remaining competitive with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. He had a natural advantage in these states, given that he polls better among white and blue-collar voters. But he had another secret weapon that gave him an additional edge: In battleground primaries, Sanders emphasized his firm position against hydraulic fracturing to drive a wedge between Clinton and Democratic voters.

Sanders staked out an early position against fracking, a controversial drilling process that extracts oil or natural gas from deep underground. Yet he didn’t do much to highlight this position before last month, in an effort to distinguish himself from Clinton’s environmental platform.  “I do not support fracking,” Sanders said in a statement a week ago. “I don’t need money from hedge fund managers and I don’t want money from those who profit off of the destruction of our planet.” Days before Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders launched an ad campaign in Minnesota and Colorado highlighting his opposition to fracking. If elected, Sanders would be limited in how much he could do to ban fracking outright, but my colleague Ben Adler outlined some of what he could do to reform it.

It’s no coincidence that fracking and its associated operations is controversial in three of the four states he won in. Oil production has doubled and tripled in Oklahoma and Colorado, respectively, since 2009. Besides local concerns over its impact on water quality, there’s also been a corresponding boom in minor earthquakes near fracking sites. Scientists are growing more and more certain the quakes are linked to the wastewater injected in the ground after drilling:

USGS

Minnesota, meanwhile, is a popular source for silica sand, or “frac sand,” a sediment needed to drill in nearby fracking hotbeds. Industry groups say these operations in Wisconsin and Minnesota have more than doubled over the past decade to 75 million metric tons, primarily driven by the oil and gas industry’s demand for frac sand. Silica dust is a carcinogen that causes lung problems.

Sanders emphasized more than just fracking in Minnesota. He drew attention to his opposition to two pipelines that would ship Canada tar sand crude oil across the border. Sanders emphasized his opposition to these pipelines, Enbridge’s Sandpiper and Alberta Clipper, which would ship 1.4 million barrels of oil a day, in a stump speech on Monday. He’d follow the same precedent set by the Keystone XL pipeline rejection, saying those “are exactly the same standards that we need to apply to the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper, and that is what I would do as president of the United States of America.”

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Now, Sanders didn’t win big in all major fracking territories. Texas, after all, went to Clinton, by 65 percent.

Tuesday night, Clinton might have unintentionally helped reinforce the contrast Sanders hopes to draw in her victory speech from a city that’s drowning from sea level rise — Miami, Fla. As Clinton now turns her attention to the general election, her Miami speech was light on climate change and environmental issues. Though there was one exception. Clinton adopted Flint’s lead-poisoned water crisis in her stump speech weeks ago, and took time at the end of her remarks to discuss it again. Flint is “a story of a community that’s been knocked down but refused to be knocked out. It is hundreds of union plumbers coming from across the country to help install new water fixtures. It is students raising funds for hundreds of deliveries of bottled water,” ” Clinton closed her speech with. “They’re not about to quit now.”

So, Clinton is championing clean water and Flint, while Sanders’ focus is on clean water and fracking. Expect both to hit on these issues again as we head into primaries in Michigan, North Carolina, and Louisiana, and western states.

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Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

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John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and it’s everything we hoped it would be

John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and it’s everything we hoped it would be

By on 29 Feb 2016commentsShare

After months of largely ignoring Donald Trump in the hopes that he would just go away, America’s best Brit John Oliver finally took on the apish rich kid (and future president?) in a brilliant 22-minute tirade on Last Week Tonight.

In addition to the usual criticisms — for instance, Trump is a vulgar, racist, corrupt and failed businessman whose largest vocabulary word is “great” — Oliver looked at Trump’s claim that he is self-funding his campaign, a myth he trots out to prove that he isn’t beholden to corporate interests. But, as Oliver pointed out:

While it is true that he hasn’t taken corporate money, the implication that he has personally spent $20 to 25 million is a bit of a stretch, because what he’s actually done is loaned his own campaign $17.5 million, and has personally given just $250,000. And that’s important because up until the convention, he can pay himself back for the loan with campaign funds.

He didn’t stop there. Trump — who recently blamed his refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan on a faulty headset — is also remarkably thin-skinned. In 1988, Oliver pointed out, Trump was called a “short-fingered vulgarian” by writer Graydon Carter, and he’s still pissed about it. To this day, Carter said he occasionally receives photographs in the mail from Trump, usually tear-sheets from magazines, with his hand circled in gold Sharpie and the message, “See? Not so short.”

It’s not the sort of behavior one really looks for in a presidential candidate, but like a Zika-infected mosquito who just won’t go away, Trump continues to beguile the American people — many of whom plan on voting for him, despite his refusal to acknowledge climate change, his endorsement of war crimes, and his utter lack of qualifications. A big part of his popularity is the idea that Trump is a successful businessman. But is he? Not according to Oliver:

Over the years, his name has been on some things that have arguably been very un-good, including Drumpf Shuttle, which no longer exists; Drumpf Vodka, which was discontinued; Drumpf Magazine, which folded; Drumpf World Magazine, which also folded; Drumpf University, over which he’s being sued; and of course, the travel-booking site GoTrump.com, whose brief existence was, I imagine, a real thorn in the side of anyone hoping GotRump.com featured a single thing worth masturbating to.

But Oliver has a plan to take down Donald Trump, and it starts with separating the man from his brand — and his name. According to Gwenda Blair, author of The Drumpfs: Three Generations That Built An Empire, the name Drumpf was originally the slightly less presidential sounding Drumpf. And as Oliver said:

Drumpf is much less magical. It’s the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of a foreclosed Old Navy. Drumpf. It’s the sound of a bottle of store-brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station minimart.

And while Oliver acknowledged that it might be odd to bring up Trump’s ancestral name, Trump deserves it, for the following tweet about Oliver’s former boss:

Oliver then informed the audience that he has registered the domain DonaldJDrumpf.com, where he will be selling hats (at cost!) reading Make Donald Drumpf Again and offering a web extension that will turn every instance of the word Trump on your internet browser into Drumpf.

“If you are thinking of voting for Donald Trump,” Oliver said, “the charismatic guy promising to make America great again, stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf, a litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who he can’t decide whether or not to condemn. Would you think he would make a good president, or is the spell now somewhat broken? That is why tonight I am asking America to make Donald Drumpf again.”

It may be too late to make Donald Drumpf again before Super Tuesday, but it’s still a long way to November. You can get your Drumpf hat here.

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John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and it’s everything we hoped it would be

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Sanders is destroying Clinton in coal country, despite backing climate action

Sanders is destroying Clinton in coal country, despite backing climate action

By on 25 Feb 2016commentsShare

In theory, Hillary Clinton should have no trouble appealing to primary voters in coal country. Last year, she put forward what amounts to a stimulus package for revitalizing Appalachia, proposing a $30 billion investment in job training, education, and health programs for hard-hit coal miners. She earned an early endorsement from pro-coal West Virginia Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin last fall. Recently, in a February presidential debate, Clinton made overtures to coal-sympathetic blue-collar voters by pointing back to her plan: “You know, coal miners and their families who helped turn on the lights and power our factories for generations are now wondering, has our country forgotten us?”

And yet, Clinton can’t catch a break in West Virginia. She’s losing to an opponent who says things like, “To hell with the fossil fuel industry” — and she’s losing by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

A MetroNews West Virginia poll conducted before the Nevada caucus and released this week shows Bernie Sanders leading Clinton, 57 percent to 29 percent among primary voters. Sanders performs strongest among young voters, 18-34, but he still leads Clinton 43 percent to 36 percent among senior-age voters.

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That’s quite a change from the last time Clinton ran for president. In 2008, Clinton won 67 percent of votes in West Virginia’s primary, compared to Barack Obama’s 28 percent.

West Virginia’s primary is late in the election season — in May — but Sanders’ rise may offer some interesting lessons nonetheless about whether a strong climate platform is a big deterrence. His strong endorsement of climate change policies like a carbon tax and interest in banning fossil fuel production would seem to be a turn-off for West Virginia. And his sympathy for coal miners sounds no different from Clinton’s. “What we have to say is, ‘Look, through no fault of your own, you’re working in an industry which is helping to cause climate change and in fact having a negative impact on the country and world,’” Sanders told The Washington Post last year. “What the government does have is an obligation to say: ‘We’ll protect you financially as we transition away from fossil fuel.”

Then why are pro-coal voters overlooking Sanders’ aggressive support for climate action?

One theory is that Clinton’s ties to Obama (who only had 24 percent support in West Virginia) and his plan to regulate carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants make her particularly unpopular there. The only problem with that theory is Sanders too backs regulating coal plants, and wants to go even further.

Another theory is that Sanders’ populist, anti-corporate message is resonating with young and blue-collar voters. Remember, this is a state that just fined and jailed Freedom Industries executives for a 2014 chemical spill. Sanders has used working-class economic concerns to appeal to West Virginia, saying in the fall, “We have millions of working-class people who are voting for Republican candidates whose views are diametrically opposite to what voters want. How many think it’s a great idea that we have trade policies that lead to plants in West Virginia being shut down? How many think there should be massive cuts in Pell grants or in Social Security? In my opinion, not too many people.”

A second, important, factor is that coal represents a shrinking portion of Appalachia’s economy. It means both pandering to coal miners and claims of a “war on coal” to stop climate change may resonate less today than they did a decade ago. A statewide survey in 2014 after the Freedom Industries’ spill showed that environmental issues like clean water are key priorities for West Virginians, as well. David Weigel also offers the theory that Clinton’s landslide in 2008 had more to do with white voters’ backlash to Obama than Clinton’s popularity.

If Sanders’ rise in coal territory shows one thing, it’s that candidates can embrace strong action on climate change and still manage to earn support in Appalachian counties.

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Sanders is destroying Clinton in coal country, despite backing climate action

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sanders is destroying Clinton in coal country, despite backing climate action