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4 black women leaders on climate, justice, and the green ‘Promised Land’

by CharoleXSH Posted on February 27, 2019

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Black leaders have long been pioneers in protecting communities and the environment — from Harriet Tubman, who in the mid-1800s used her knowledge of the natural world to guide escaped slaves north, to landfill protesters in Warren County, North Carolina in 1982 who galvanized the modern environmental justice movement. Yet despite these contributions to the larger green movement, black activists and scholars are not always given their due.

It’s well documented that black neighborhoods and other communities of color are disproportionately affected by a changing climate, amplifying existing disparities related to race, gender, and class. And while environmental justice advocates have been active on the grassroots level for many years, resolutions like the Green New Deal are now shining a national spotlight on the need for a more socially holistic, dare we say “woke,” approach to shaping climate policy.

Grist’s Justice Desk reporters spoke with four leading black activists and scholars in the environmental movement about what this moment means for their communities:

Adrienne Hollis, Lead Climate Justice Analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists
Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program
Leslie Fields, Director- Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships at the Sierra Club
Mary Annaïse Heglar, Director Of Publications at the Natural Resources Defense Council

This discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

Grist: What does environmental justice mean to you? How does identity inform your work?

Adrienne: Environmental justice means protecting everyone; Minorities [and] communities of color have traditionally been disproportionately impacted by environmental threats [but have] traditionally had no voice in the environmental arena. I’m from Mobile, Alabama. I grew up in the shadow of paper mills during a time when there were certain places we as black people couldn’t go — certain beaches were off limits to us and the like. I bring that perspective to my work.

Mary: To me, environmental justice is just plain justice. I can’t imagine a type of justice that doesn’t include the environment. As a black woman from the Deep South, I’m drawn to tell the stories of the most vulnerable communities because I was very aware that if someone else is suffering, that’s not far away from me. If it’s not your problem now it will be at some point.

Leslie: I really love E.J. because you can be a kid, you can be a grandmama, an abuela, a professional person — anybody can do it. That makes it messy and complicated but that’s also what makes really beautiful: anybody can get involved to preserve their natural and cultural environment. The people in their communities, they know what they’re doing. We try really hard to do what we can to support them and they have the solutions on the ground. The problem is when they don’t get to lead.

Grist: Climate is increasingly on the national radar, including its justice lens. What are some of the challenges and successes you’re seeing at this moment?

Jacqueline: I am inspired by some of the work that’s happening at the local level connecting various social justice issues with environmental issues. The NAACP [along with groups Positive Impact and GRID Alternatives] worked with the Department of Corrections to do training in solar installation for folks while they were incarcerated. That resulted in people having skills to be placed in jobs as they came out of incarceration.

Leslie: There are so many communities [where issues] just keep piling on like Cancer Alley or Houston Ship Channel or down on the border. It’s all globalized. The impacts are very severe and then climate disruption is the threat multiplier, exacerbates all inequalities. What’s annoying with the mainstream environmental groups is that they have the privilege of not worrying about these other things because they’ve already got their good housing, they’ve already got good representation, they already got their good jobs.

Mary: I think that part of the problem with the environmental movement is it thinks of itself as a silo [from other movements]. I think of it as different heads of the same dragon. We need to build a more inclusive [environmental] movement that allows black people to bring their whole selves to the movement. So if I’m going to join the environmental movement, I need to be able to talk about Black Lives Matter. I need to be able to talk about reproductive rights. We need to be able to talk about all these other things that come to the forefront for me as a whole human being.

Adrienne: One of the big problems that I see is funding. There’s very little to no money going to groups that are trying to protect vulnerable communities.

Grist: Mary, your article “Sorry, Y’all, but Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat” really stuck with us. Can you say more about why you wrote this article now?

Mary: I was reading Martin Luther King and I saw like all of these parallels because I now see the world through climate-colored glasses. To me, the parallels are blinding.

Jacqueline: This is all part of the same dispossession, displacement, exploitation pattern that is happening with black and brown peoples, indigenous peoples, and the earth itself. I think making all those ties [in the article] was brilliant. We really do need to continue to hammer home that racism [as well as] the exploitation of the earth [are] part and parcel of the same dominating forces.

Mary: I’m also encouraged by the youth activists, the strikers all over the world, as well as the women of color in Congress right now because they are not taking any prisoners on their way to get climate action. I love it.

Leslie: We have to find balance and we have to take care of ourselves for the long haul. I’m optimistic about all these great young people who are gonna take us to the Promised Land. We got you to the mountaintop, you all got to take us to the Promised Land, speaking of Martin Luther King Jr.

Adrienne: I do have hope that, well, I didn’t think they were gonna take us all the way to the Promised Land but I’m glad that there are fresh voices and they are being heard. Unless things change (and I hope they do) — they’re going to be in this fight for a long time even after the older among us are gone.

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4 black women leaders on climate, justice, and the green ‘Promised Land’

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Their water became undrinkable. Then they were ordered to pay more for it.

by lizzycjoelson1956 Posted on November 24, 2018

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

In Martin County, Kentucky, residents are paying steep prices for water that sometimes comes out of the tap brown and foul-smelling—that is, when it comes out at all. The impoverished rural county is confronting an unprecedented water crisis: Its water system is on the brink of collapse and the Kentucky Public Service Commission has ordered the ailing water district to raise rates and seek outside management.

Nestled deep in Appalachia, home to just under 13,000 people, Martin County was once a booming coal region. Today, the median household income is $29,052, the unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, and 32 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The demands from the Public Service Commission may not be realistic, given that a county in such dire financial straits may not be able to handle the one-two punch of rate increases and privatization. The problem “has been decades in the making,” says Mary Grant, the director of the Public Water for All campaign at Food and Water Watch, a national advocacy group.

Originally built to serve Inez, the county seat, in the 1960s, the water system was later expanded to include other communities, some of which are in the mountains. Mary Cromer, a lawyer for the Martin County Concerned Citizens group tells Mother Jones,“It was done on the cheap, and it was done very poorly.”

And then disaster struck the already struggling water system. On October 11, 2000, a coal waste lagoon in Martin County broke, spilling more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into 100 of miles of waterways. The pollution, which contained toxic metals such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, killed the fish and wildlife in the water. The sludge seeped into the water treatment plant, clogging intake pipes, and poisoning the water supply in Martin County and surrounding area.

The federal investigation into the spill ended when George W. Bush took office in January 2001. The Mine Safety and Health Administration’s team of investigators were sidelined when their investigation was cut short by the new administration. Don Blankenship, the chair and CEO of Massey Energy, the now-defunct company responsible for the spill, had donated money to the Republican Party, and halting the investigation was seen as a way to thank him for his support. (Blankenship eventually spent a year in a federal prison for conspiring to commit mine-safety violations in West Virginia, prior to the deadliest mining disaster in decades.) Instead of the eight violations that the MSHA team were pursuing, Massey was charged with only two. The clean-up was superficial; the company scraped up the black sludge and planted grass and hayseed on the land that was affected, but they weren’t responsible for fixing the water system.

The effects of the crisis 18 years ago still haunt the community today. “The pipes are in such bad shape, they can’t get the pressure to reach all of the houses,” Cromer says. The system also suffers from extreme water loss, with 64 percent of their water leaking out before it can be used. Low pressure combined with leaky, aging pipes means that if the water makes it to the taps at all, it often comes out discolored or with a foul odor.

In January 2018, citing financial troubles and the need to let depleted storage tanks refill, the Martin County Water District began shutting off water in the evening and through the night. Some customers complained that these shut-offs had made bathing and cooking difficult, while others said their water was shut off for days at a time. The water board then requested a 50 percent water rate increase to help fix the rapidly deteriorating system.

Two months later, customers reported that their water frequently smelled like diesel fuel and was the same shade of blue as Gatorade. Local officials told residents that the alarming color of the water didn’t necessarily mean it was unsafe, but by then the low-income community often ignored official statements and spent a large portion of their funds on bottled water. One resident told the Los Angeles Times that he spent about $25 a week on water.

Before raising the rates in March, the average water bill was $39.90 for a customer using 4,000 gallons each month. But then, the PSC allowed the water district to issue an emergency rate increase, bringing the average monthly bill to $51.07. “It’s just so unjust that they’re paying for whatever they can’t cook or drink with,” Cromer says. Last week, the PSC granted a permanent rate increase that will add another $3.30 to the average water bill, bringing the total to $54.37. The order also allowed for a temporary surcharge of $4.19 that will pay off the utility’s debt of $1.1 million.

Such an increase in rates will be profoundly difficult for such a poverty-stricken area, where many residents are on fixed incomes. For those on social security, their checks can be less than $800 a month.

On top of rate increases, the PSC also ordered the Martin County Water District to obtain outside management. Water privatization can be alluring because for-profit companies can provide updates to an aging infrastructure, but it does come with some expensive downsides. In 2012, for instance, in order to replace its aging pipes, the city of Bayonne, New Jersey, contracted with a private equity firm to manage its water system. The company replaced the old pipes with new ones, but customers began complaining about water rate increases. According to the New York Times, rates increased by almost 28 percent. “I personally can’t imagine how privatization could work in the county,” Cromer says. “The people there cannot afford to pay a company to come in and make a profit.”

In fact, Martin County has unsuccessfully tried privatization once before. In 2002, the water district hired American Water Services to run its system for nearly $71,000 a month, not counting other expenses. The company left after two years because of nonpayment. “When communities can’t pay [these companies,]” Grant says, “they just cut and run. They’re businesses, not charities.”

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Their water became undrinkable. Then they were ordered to pay more for it.

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Dinosaurs Without Bones – Anthony J. Martin

by Myrna Posted on September 16, 2017

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Dinosaurs Without Bones

Dinosaur Lives Revealed by Their Trace Fossils

Anthony J. Martin

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: March 4, 2014

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


What if we woke up one morning all of the dinosaur bones in the world were gone? How would we know these iconic animals had a 165-million year history on earth, and had adapted to all land-based environments from pole to pole? What clues would be left to discern not only their presence, but also to learn about their sex lives, raising of young, social lives, combat, and who ate who? What would it take for us to know how fast dinosaurs moved, whether they lived underground, climbed trees, or went for a swim? Welcome to the world of ichnology, the study of traces and trace fossils—such as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, toothmarks, and other vestiges of behavior—and how through these remarkable clues, we can explore and intuit the rich and complicated lives of dinosaurs. With a unique, detective-like approach, interpreting the forensic clues of these long-extinct animals that leave a much richer legacy than bones, Martin brings the wild world of the Mesozoic to life for the twenty-first-century reader. Past Praise for Anthony J. Martin: “Martin shows how ancient trace fossils directly relate to modern traces and tracemakers, among them insects, crabs, shorebirds, alligators, and sea turtles. The result is an aesthetically appealing and scientifically accurate book.” — Birdbooker Report “The pedagogy is excellent, and the explanations of technical material are accessible.” —Raymond Freeman-Lynde, University of Georgia “Full of valuable and useful information.” — Geological Magazine Anthony J. Martin is a professor at Emory University, a paleontologist, geologist, and one of the world’s most accomplished ichnologists. He is the co-discoverer of the first known burrowing dinosaur, found the oldest dinosaur burrows in the geologic record, and documented the best assemblage of polar-dinosaur tracks in the Southern Hemisphere. He is the author of two textbooks on dinosaurs and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Dinosaurs Without Bones – Anthony J. Martin

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The F-18 vs. the F-35: ¿Quien Es Mas Macho?

by RoyJ3760379041 Posted on December 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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More brilliance from Donald Trump:

There is nothing that military buffs love more than nerding out about the F-18 vs. the F-35. The F-18 is cheaper! The F-35 is stealthier! The F-18 makes tighter turns! The F-35 is a one-seater! The F-18 is better in a dogfight! The F-35 has better avionics! The F-18 can be fitted with external fuel tanks for longer range! Denmark says the F-35 was a clear winner in its flight tests! Canada says it wants the F-18! This is the kind of argument that Trump fans adore.

But on a substantive level, Trump’s tweet is junior high school stuff. Boeing has been building new variants of the F-18 ever since it was introduced. They’ve already demonstrated upgraded Block III Super Hornets designed (they claim) to perform most of the missions envisioned for the F-35. In other words, they don’t need to “price-out” a “comparable” F-18. They’ve already done it, and everyone in the military is well aware of what Boeing has to offer. Besides, the F-18 will never be as stealthy as the F-35 and it will never have the same avionics, so there’s no way to ever make it truly comparable anyway.

As near as I can tell, once the F-35 is fully tested, the software constraints are tuned, and its pilots get enough flight hours behind them, the F-35 will be indisputably superior to the F-18 at nearly the same per-unit cost as the latest and greatest Super Hornet. Considering that the F-18 is forty years old, it sure ought to be. The program as a whole may have been an epic disaster, but now that it’s done the F-35 is going to be America’s primary multirole fighter for the next few decades. There’s no going back.

So what’s up? Is Trump just trying to make nice with Boeing after dissing the cost of the new Air Force Ones? Does he think this is a clever tactic to scare Lockheed Martin into offering the F-35 at a lower price? Did some admiral get his attention and gripe about the F-35 being a single-engine airframe? Is he just blowing hot air? As usual, no one knows.

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The F-18 vs. the F-35: ¿Quien Es Mas Macho?

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Bernie Sanders for Veep!

by QWGAidawveu Posted on November 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Spike Lee converses with Bernie Sanders in the Guardian today:

Lee: Were you ever offered the VP position, sir?

Sanders: No. Absolutely not.

Lee: Would you have taken it?

Sanders: Er. Probably, yes. But that’s again looking through the rear-view mirror.

Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Sanders say that before. Or has he? In any case, can you imagine what the office of VP would be like after eight years of Biden and then eight years of Sanders?

More seriously, I wonder what kind of ticket that would have been? The upsides are obvious, but there are downsides too. I’m not sure what the ultimate effect would have been.

BTW, in the same interview Sanders agrees with Lee that “it would be hard to suggest that the people of this country were enthusiastic about the Clinton campaign.” He’s getting a lot of crap for this on social media, but come on. My issues with Sanders are on the record, but it’s hard to deny that someone with unfavorables in the mid-50s didn’t generate a ton of enthusiasm. This wasn’t all Clinton’s fault, but it is what it is.

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Bernie Sanders for Veep!

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Proton Gradients and the Origin of Life

by MairaWallner Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Where did complex life originate? The New York Times reports on new research from a team led by William Martin of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf:

Their starting point was the known protein-coding genes of bacteria and archaea. Some six million such genes have accumulated over the last 20 years in DNA databanks….Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.

Genes are adapted to an organism’s environment. So Dr. Martin hoped that by pinpointing the genes likely to have been present in Luca, he would also get a glimpse of where and how Luca lived. “I was flabbergasted at the result, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

The 355 genes pointed quite precisely to an organism that lived in the conditions found in deep sea vents, the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor….The 355 genes ascribable to Luca include some that metabolize hydrogen as a source of energy as well as a gene for an enzyme called reverse gyrase, found only in microbes that live at extremely high temperatures.

About a year ago I read The Vital Question, by British biochemist Nick Lane, which was all about this theory. Roughly speaking, his entire book was about the energy needs of these ancient organisms, which is based on something called a proton gradient. This, it turns out, is a complex and highly unusual way of providing energy, but it’s also nearly universal in modern life, suggesting that it goes back to the very beginnings of life. But if it’s so unusual, how did it get its start?

In the beginning, it could only work in a high-energy environment like a deep-sea vent. In these places, there was a natural gradient between proton-poor water and proton-rich water, and that was the beginning of the proton gradient. It’s not the most efficient way of producing energy, but it was the only thing around 4 billion years ago. So willy nilly, life evolved to take advantage of this, and eventually evolved its own proton gradient inside cells.

Martin has been a longtime proponent of this idea as well, and now he’s produced yet more evidence that it’s likely to be true. The energy producing mitochondria in all of your cells are the result of this. Even 4 billion years later, they still depend on a proton gradient. Protons, it turns out, are the key to life.

POSTSCRIPT: And how is the book? It’s good, though fairly dense at times if you’re not already familiar with some basic chemistry and biology. And toward the end it gets rather speculative, so take it for what it’s worth. But overall? If you’re interested in the origins of complex life, it’s worth a read.

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Proton Gradients and the Origin of Life

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Key Moments From the Democratic Debate

by Joellen8952 Posted on December 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The third democratic presidential debate was held Saturday night at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, and it covered a wide range of issues, from terrorism and the heroin epidemic to family leave and student debt. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley ratcheted up his attacks on his rivals, while Hillary Clinton seemed more assured of her place as the presumptive Democratic nominee, training her fire on her Republican opponents. Sanders entered the debate with his campaign in damage-control mode over news that at least one of his staffers had improperly accessed the Clinton campaign’s voter date, but he still managed to mount a solid performance. Here are some of the most memorable moments from Saturday’s debate:

Bernie Sanders apologizes to Hillary Clinton for his campaign’s breach of her voter data: On Friday, news broke that a at least one Sanders campaign staffer had accessed portions of the Clinton campaign’s voter data when a firewall—maintained by a contractor—had temporarily failed. (See here for an explainer on the data flap.) The staffer that took advantage of this data breach was promptly fired by the campaign. Asked about the controversy, Sanders provided some brief background on the incident, but then promptly apologized to Clinton, a moment that garnered great applause from the audience. “I want to apologize to my supporters,” Sanders added. “This is not the type of campaign that we run, and if I find anybody else involved in this, they will also be fired.”

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O’Malley accuses Sanders and Clinton of flip-flopping on gun control: Moderator Martha Raddatz asked the candidates about a recent poll showing that more Americans believe that arming people, rather than stricter gun laws, is the best defense against terrorism. Clinton came down strong against this idea, and Sanders spoke in favor of strengthening background check laws and closing the gun show loophole. The exchange got testy when O’Malley forced his way into the exchange, over the protests of the moderators, to talk about his record of passing an assault weapons ban in Maryland. He accused Sanders of voting against gun control policies in the past and Hillary Clinton of flip-flopping on the issue. Sanders and Hillary were not pleased with that characterization:

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, lets calm down a little bit Martin,” said Sanders. “Yes, lets tell the truth, Martin,” Clinton said. She added: “I actually agree with Governor O’Malley about the need for common sense gun safety measures. And I applaud his record in Maryland. I just wish he wouldn’t misrepresent mine.” Here’s the full exchange:

Hillary’s empty podium: After a short first commercial break, ABC news turned back to debate coverage before Hillary Clinton had returned to her podium. Several of the initial shots of the stage showed her empty podium in the middle of the stage—a move that flouts general debate coverage etiquette. Clinton returned to the podium less than a minute after the coverage began and said “sorry.”

“Should corporate America love Hillary?” Moderator David Muir asked Clinton about her record with corporate America—last time she ran for president, Fortune featured her on its cover with the tagline “Business Loves Hillary.” Muir asked, “should corporate America love Hillary?” Hillary answered with a smile, “Everybody should!” Asked the same question—”will corporate America love a President Sanders?”—the senator responded quite differently. “No, I think they won’t,” Sanders said matter-of-factly. “The CEOs of large multinationals may like Hillary. They ain’t going to like me and Wall Street is going to like me even less.”

Bernie Sanders dodges question on racial profiling of Muslims: Muir asked Sanders to discuss racial profiling of Muslims. He pointed to the couple behind the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, whose neighbors said they grew suspicious after seeing packages being delivered to the couple’s home, but did not report them for fear of being accused of profiling. Muir asked Sanders what he would say to Americans who “are afraid to profile.” Sanders delivered a glib response: “Well, the answer is, obviously, if you see suspicious activity, you report it,” said Sanders. “That’s kind of a no-brainer. You know, somebody is loading guns and ammunition into a house, I think it’s a good idea to call 911. Do it.” When pressed to answer the question about racial profiling, Sanders instead spoke about his economic policies.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t really understand how encryption works: In light of the alleged use of encrypted communications in planning the Paris terrorist attacks, moderator Raddatz asked Clinton whether she would pass a law requiring tech companies to give the government access to encryption keys—a move that Silicon Valley opposes. Clinton responded with something of a non-answer, admitting that she doesn’t understand how encryption technology works and calling for a middle ground between encryption and non-encryption: “I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they’re not adversaries, they’ve got to be partners.”

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Key Moments From the Democratic Debate

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

by NataliaBrunning Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Elanco, the animal-health division of the pharma giant Eli Lilly, makes one of the world’s most controversial growth-promoting chemicals for meat production: ractopamine, marketed as Optaflexx for cattle, Paylean for pigs, and Topmax for turkeys.

A member of the class of medicines known as beta-agonists, which are also given to asthmatic people to help relax their airway muscles, ractopamine makes animals rapidly put on lean weight—but it also mimics stress hormones and makes their hearts beat faster. Studies suggest that it makes livestock more vulnerable to heat. Ractopamine is banned in the European Union, China, and more than 100 other countries, and it faces mounting criticism here in the United States.

To clean up his company’s image, Elanco’s president, Jeff Simmons, has launched a “counteroffensive,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Andrew Martin. In addition to his responsibilities operating a $2.3 billion-dollar global animal-drug business, Simmons runs an initiative called ENOUGH Movement, which calls itself a “global community working together to ensure everyone has access to nutritious, affordable food—today and in the coming decades.” Combating global hunger is one of ENOUGH’S major themes. Simmons uses a “grainy photo of himself carrying a small African child on his back” as his Twitter avatar, Martin reports.

Elanco served as the primary underwriter of The Atlantic magazine’s 2015 Food Summit, held last week in Washington, D.C. Simmons delivered a sponsored presentation at the event. In it, he complained that a group he labeled the “fringe 1 percent,” agitating for increased regulation on meat producers, is driving the national debate around food. Simmons also regaled the crowd with ENOUGH’s core messages: The world needs to produce 60 percent more meat, eggs, and dairy by 2050; doing so will require “innovative farming techniques that increase efficiency;” and organic methods—which forbid growth-boosting chemicals for animals—aren’t going to cut it. Instead, ENOUGH insists, “we must leverage the innovations and technological advances that will allow us to produce more food without using more resources.”

One can see why an exec operating in the meat industry might be feeling defensive. Industrial-scale meat production has been linked to the rise of antibiotic resistance in human medicine (which claims at least 700,000 lives per year globally); ecological ruin; increased risk of cancer; and the hollowing out of communities where it alights. Insult to injury, US consumers have been cutting back on meat consumption overall, and turning increasingly to drug-free, pasture-raised product.

And Simmons has rushed into the fray. In short, Martin shows, Simmons is taking a page from the agrichemical/GMO industry playbook: present your industry as crucial to “feeding the world” as global population grows to 9 billion by 2050, and paint your critics as out-of-touch elitists who are indifferent to hunger and poverty.

“Simmons doesn’t directly pitch Elanco products during his speeches on hunger, saying he has a higher purpose: alleviating world hunger and changing a conversation that’s been hijacked by a vocal fringe of activists,” Businessweek’s Martin writes. “If the arguments sound familiar, it’s because Monsanto and other proponents of genetically modified foods made similar claims.”

One key part of the strategy to avoid discussion of existing products, and point instead to future innovation. Generally speaking, Monsanto execs prefer to talk about still-in-development crops rather than current offerings, which are riddled by weeds and insects that have evolved to resist them. Likewise, Simmons doesn’t say much on the stump about the company’s best-known product, ractopamine.

A 2014 study from Texas Tech and Kansas State researchers found that it nearly doubled the mortality rate of cows fed on it in the weeks before slaughter. As for pigs, the drug has “triggered more adverse reports in pigs than any other animal drug on the market,” a 2012 investigation by journalist Helena Bottemiller found. “Pigs suffered from hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk, and death, according to FDA reports released under a Freedom of Information Act request.”

Rather than ponder such troubles, Simmons urges us to imagine a future where meat is abundant and the scourge of malnutrition has been defeated, all driven by “innovation” and “science.” Whether or not that vision comes to pass, this much seems clear: We’re on the verge of a loud campaign by the meat industry, particularly its pharma sector, to portray its critics as a privileged fringe, untroubled by global hunger.

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Prefer Your Meat Drug-Free? You’re the "Fringe 1 Percent"

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George Zimmerman Posted a Photo of Trayvon Martin’s Dead Body

by Bobbie07Ynuwisj Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the weekend, George Zimmerman retweeted an image of Trayvon Martin’s dead body. The image was first tweeted to him by a fan who wrote, “Z-Man is a one man army.”

After the tweet was deleted, apparently by Twitter, Zimmerman posted a tweet directing media inquiries to the phone number of a car audio shop. When I called it, a disgruntled man said it was not affiliated with Zimmerman. I asked what he meant, and he said, “It’s pretty cut and dry, dude. Do you understand English?” Then he hung up. The number, it turns out, belongs to a man Zimmerman has been waging a social media campaign against.

Twitter would not comment on why they took down the photo, but the company directed me to its policy, which states that users “may not publish or post threats of violence against others or promote violence against others.”

Previously, Zimmerman’s tweets have referred to black people as primates and “slime.”

In August, Zimmerman teamed up with the owner of a gun store with a no-Muslims-allowed policy to sell prints of his Confederate flag art, which he says “represents the hypocrisy of political correctness that is plaguing this nation.”

Link: 

George Zimmerman Posted a Photo of Trayvon Martin’s Dead Body

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Coal Is Dying and It’s Never Coming Back

by OmaRedefzlunub Posted on April 14, 2015

Mother Jones

Coal, the No. 1 cause of climate change, is dying. Last year saw a record number of coal plant retirements in the United States, and a study last week from Duke University found that since 2008, the coal industry shed nearly 50,000 jobs, while natural gas and renewable energy added four times that number. Even China, which produces and consumes more coal than the rest of the world put together, is expected to hit peak coal use within a decade, in order to meet its promise to President Barack Obama to reduce its carbon emissions starting in 2030.

According to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), this is all the fault of President Barack Obama’s “war on coal”—specifically the administration’s new limits for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which probably will force many power companies to burn less coal. If there is a war, McConnell has long been the field marshal of the defending army. His latest maneuver came last month when he called on state lawmakers to simply ignore the administration’s new rules, in order to resist Obama’s “attack on the middle class.”

His logic, apparently, is that if Kentucky can stave off Obama long enough, the coal industry still has a glorious future ahead. That logic is fundamentally flawed. While Obama’s tenure will probably speed up the country’s transition to cleaner energy, the scales had already tipped against coal long before he took office. Kentucky’s coal production peaked in 1990, and coal industry employment peaked all the way back in the 1920s. The scales won’t tip back after he leaves. The “war on coal” narrative isn’t simply misleading, it also distracts from the very real problem of how to prepare coal mining communities and energy consumers (i.e., everyone) for an approaching future in which coal is demoted to a bit role after a century at center stage.

That’s the conclusion of a sweeping new account of the coal industry, Coal Wars, authored by leading energy analyst Richard Martin. The book dives deep into a simple truth: As long as we’re still burning coal for the majority of our energy, all the solar panels, electric cars, and vegetarian diets in the world won’t do a thing to stop global warming. Saving the planet starts with getting off coal.

The good news, Martin reports, is that transition is already underway, regardless of stonewalling by congressional Republicans, and with or without Obama’s new regulations. Martin documents evidence of coal’s decline from the mountain villages of Kentucky to the open pit mines of Wyoming, and from lavish industry parties in Shanghai to boardrooms in Germany. Everywhere he looks, market forces (for instance, natural gas made cheap by the fracking boom), technological advances, and environmental laws are conspiring to favor cleaner forms of energy over coal. At the same time, Martin writes, more and more financial institutions and private investors are starting to factor climate change into their investment decisions, which “would be a death blow that no EPA regulation could equal.”

Whether the transition will happen fast enough to limit the damage of climate change is a different story. China still gets nearly three-quarters of its energy from coal. The United States, while substantially reducing its own coal consumption in recent years, still has huge amounts of coal, especially in the West, that can be profitably mined and shipped overseas. Many billions of dollars have been sunk into mines, power plants, shipping terminals, and other infrastructure that can’t simply be shut down overnight, especially when all that stuff forms the backbone of a basic commodity like electricity.

Still, for coal, there is no resurgence on the horizon. “There’s no question which way the curve is headed, and it is down,” Martin tells Climate Desk.

Much less clear than the fate of coal is what will happen in the countless communities, from the American Southeast to northern China, that have long depended on coal to put food on the table. Martin has managed to locate dozens of compelling personal narratives that show the human face of a debate that is too often reduced—by environmentalists as much as by the coal industry—to numbers and yawn-inducing energy wonkery. These include the head of a small coal mining company in Kentucky who was forced to sell off the business he inherited from his father and lay off workers who were also friends and neighbors. The manager of a coal town coffee shop in Colorado is also facing closure. In China, self-contained cities are built around coal mines, but young people there are unable to get work and have no other employment opportunities.

The environmental imperative to get off coal is obvious, and even if you think climate change is a hoax, basic economics are already driving the coal industry to contract. But so far, according to Martin, the United States has done a terrible job of helping coal industry workers and their families find life after coal.

There are many guilty parties here, including coal barons like Don Blankenship (who is currently facing charges in federal court for flagrant safety violations) and profit-hungry utility company execs who are keen to squash competition from solar and wind energy. But Martin saves his most damning critiques for leaders like McConnell who are hung up on pointless political squabbling rather than finding innovative ways to revitalize former coal economies.

“The presence of the coal industry has kept these communities in a state of dependence, and not allowed them to develop a real economy beyond coal,” Martin says. “Whether we pine for the days of these jobs or not, they’re not coming back. We have to get beyond this state of dependency.”

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Coal Is Dying and It’s Never Coming Back

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