Shooting of Michael Brown
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The shooting of Michael Brown occurred on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white police officer. The disputed circumstances of the shooting and the resultant protests and civil unrest received considerable attention in the United States and abroad, and have sparked debate about Use of Force Doctrine in Missouri.
Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were walking down the middle of the street when Wilson drove up and told them to move to the sidewalk. Brown and Wilson struggled through the window of the police vehicle until Wilson’s gun was fired as a result of the struggle. Brown and Johnson then fled in different directions, with Wilson in pursuit of Brown. Wilson shot Brown six times, killing him. Witness reports differ as to whether and when Brown had his hands raised, and whether he was moving toward Wilson, when the final shots were fired.
The shooting sparked protests and unrest in Ferguson, in part due to the belief among many that Brown was surrendering, as well as longstanding racial tensions between the majority-black Ferguson community and the majority-white city government and police.[2] Protests, both peaceful and violent, along with vandalism and looting, continued for more than a week, resulting in night curfews. The response of area police agencies in dealing with the protests received significant criticism from the media and politicians. There were concerns over insensitivity, tactics and a militarized response. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon ordered local police organizations to cede much of their authority to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Mainly peaceful protests continued for several weeks.
A few days after the shooting, the Ferguson Police Department released a video of a convenience store robbery that occurred only minutes before the shooting. It showed Brown taking cigarillos and shoving a store employee who tried to prevent him from leaving. The timing of the video release received criticism from some media, the Brown family, and some public officials, who viewed the release as an attempt to impeach Brown. Others said the video was informative as to Brown’s state of mind, with the shooting incident coming so shortly after the robbery. There is conflicting evidence as to whether Officer Wilson knew of Brown’s involvement in the robbery.[3][4]
The events surrounding the shooting were investigated by a county grand jury. In a press conference on November 24, 2014, the St. Louis County Prosecutor announced that the jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson for his actions.[5] The Department of Justice is reviewing Ferguson Police Department’s internal investigations of use of force during the last four years.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
More Reasons why Wisconsinites Should Be “Angry” about the Actions and In-actions of their Governor!
While speaking at a Republican Party field office in Waukesha last week, Republican National Committee co-chair Sharon Day was searching for an answer as to why the governor’s race seemed so close this year in Wisconsin and the need for all republicans to get to the polls on November 4th and re-elect Scott Walker. “It’s not going to be an easy election”, Day told the audience, “it’s a close election. Like I said, much closer than I can even understand why.
“I don’t want to say anything about your Wisconsin voters but, some of them might not be as sharp as a knife.”
[as reported by Bill Glauber of the Journal Sentinel Oct. 20, 2014] Then again maybe it’s so close because Wisconsin voters are all too well informed of the impacts of their governor’s decisions over the last 4 years on Wisconsin’s environment and the inability of the Walker administration to follow a sustainable course to the future.
Wisconsin’s voters have always been well respected and admired for electing public officials who went beyond the call of duty and sometimes went outside the preferences of their own party to ensure Wisconsin’s many fine natural resources were always well protected. Wisconsin became a model in the 1960 and 1970s that other states emulated to protect their own natural and human resources. It never did mattered much which political party was in the majority in the state Legislature, nor the party affiliation of the governor. What mattered most was that Wisconsin’s rich natural resource and its healthy population was protected no matter what.
Even Gaylord Nelson ran as a Progressive Republican his first attempt at being a representative in the Wisconsin Legislature (he lost). Two years later, in 1948, he ran for the state Senate as a Democrat in 1948 and won. He then served ten years in the state Legislature before being elected Wisconsin Governor in 1958. He became a U.S. Senator in 1962 and championed several other environmental protection laws throughout his 18 years in the U.S. Senate, cooperating regularly with fellow democrats and republicans alike. That’s how it pretty much was in Wisconsin for a number of decades regardless of there being a democratic or republican governor. democratic
However, in 2010, Wisconsin voters elected Republican Scott Walker to be their governor. Moreover, Republican filled the majority of both the Wisconsin Assembly and the State Senate. Things changed. Beginning in 2010, it mattered a great deal whether a person in the government was a democrat or a republican. It mattered for the environment, too, as Governor Scott Walker had promised 250,000 new jobs should he be elected and he has not been able to keep that promise. What’s worse, neither he nor his party’s other officials in the State Assembly and the State Senate have shown any regard for protecting Wisconsin’s current and future environment from harm. Nor have they taken any meaningful action reins of government to really help the middle and lower income families and individuals in Wisconsin the last 4 years.
After being sworn into office on January 3, 2011, like a bolt from the blue, Scott Walker introduced a controversial budget repair plan which eliminated many collective bargaining rights for most public employees and made over $1 billion in cuts to the state’s biennial education budget and $500 million in cuts from the state’s biennial Medicaid budget. The budget cuts led to significant protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol and sparked a recall vote of Walker in June 2012, which he won with just 53% of the vote.
Wisconsin’s environment has been under attack by the republicans in the state Legislature and by Governor Scott Walker since they took the reins of Wisconsin’s government in January 2010. Wisconsin will never be the same. But things could get even worse with four more years of republican controlled government and Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor.
According to Editor emeritus of The Capital Times, “They’ve [Wisconsin’s republicans] been intent on tearing down the state’s traditions, dating all the way back to another Republican governor, Robert M. La Follette. They’ve weakened La Follette’s famed civil service rules. They’ve made drastic cuts to the Nelson-Knowles public land purchases and rolled back environmental rules to make it easier to build on wetlands or construct open pit mines in recreational areas. They’ve vigorously fought gay marriage equality until the U.S. Supreme Court finally told them to stop.
And all the while they’ve unabashedly worked to change the rules to give them an advantage at election time to stay in power to continue tearing down what their predecessors from both parties have built. They’ve relentlessly pushed voter ID under the guise of stopping what experts agree is nonexistent voter fraud. They’ve made it harder for people in urban areas, where many Democrats live, to vote absentee. They’ve gerrymandered legislative districts like they’ve never been gerrymandered before. No other Republican administration would have ever thought of being so brazen…”
“Contrast that with previous Republican administrations. Warren Knowles brought in the likes of respected governmental experts like James Morgan, Paul Hassett and Wayne McGown. Lee Dreyfus surrounded himself with stalwarts like Bill Kraus, Mike Musolf and the incomparable “Stone” Williams. Tommy Thompson reached into the Democratic caucus and made state Sen. Tim Cullen a key cabinet member and made class acts like Mark Bugher a key player. There was always one goal in mind: Make Wisconsin government work for all the people, not the special few. That, sadly, isn’t the case with those who call themselves Republicans in state government these days.”
“If they’re returned to office next week, the destruction of what was once Wisconsin will continue.”
In perhaps no other subject area has Wisconsin lost ground in the last four years than that of clean energy production and reducing Wisconsin’s global footprint. In April 2007, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed Executive Order 191 establishing the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming (GTF). The Task Force brought together members of the business, industry, government and environmental consulting communities to create a plan of action for the state of Wisconsin that addresses issues related to climate change. Doyle commissioned the Task Force to identify actionable public policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Wisconsin while ensuring that the state remains competitive in the global economy.
The Task Force’s final report to the governor, entitled “Wisconsin’s Strategy for Reducing Global Warming,” was released in July 2008. The report recommended the state reduce its GHG emissions “to 2005 levels by 2014”, “22% below 2005 levels by 2022”, and “75% below 2005 levels by 2050”. The GHG emission mitigation options recommended were similar to those recommended by other states.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s Lee Bergquist and Thomas Content, “only a few years ago, fighting global warming was a front burner topic among state policy makers. But the issue has been largely ignored in Wisconsin since 2010 with the collapse of legislation that would have required a big shift to renewable power.”
After an intense focus on climate change under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature devoted little attention to the issue. Shortly after taking office in 2011, Walker canceled plans to burn renewable biomass at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The school’s power plant had come under fire for high construction costs and other problems.
In moves directed by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC, 2 of its 3 commission are appointees of Governor Scott Walker), the state’s Focus on Energy program suspended incentives for solar panel projects twice in the past three years. More recently, Wisconsin utility companies, including Madison Gas and Electric Company (MGE), have submitted proposals to the PSC which would allow them to cut back further on incentives for customers to install solar panels. MGE recently submitted plans to increase monthly baseline charges and reduce per kilowatt rates, making residential and commercial investments in solar energy less economically advantageous in the future. For example, under MGE’s proposal this fall, the fixed charge for connecting to the power grid would increase from about $10 to $19 a month, while the energy usage rates would drop from 14.4 cents to 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour. Much greater increases in the fixed charges were announced for years beginning in 2016.
According to Michael Vickerman, the program and policy director for RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide group that advocates for renewable energy, the proposed rates would result in cost increases on an unprecedented scale, putting Madison’s electricity rates among the highest in the region. “What they’re proposing is practically double what is the norm in the upper Midwest,” he told Madison’s weekly newspaper, ISTHMUS.
“If MGE’s rate changes go through, the results could have ramifications across the entire nation. This sets a very bad precedent,” said Michael Noble, the executive director of Fresh Energy, a nationwide renewable energy coalition.
Vickerman said the proposed changes would have an impact on solar installation in Wisconsin, “which is already falling behind the rest of the nation”. Feelings of insecurity from the current rate debate may have had a hand in that drop, he argued. “It is the lowering of the [energy] rate that is the most unsettling for the solar industry,” he said. Property owners might be less inclined to invest in solar, since such investments usually take several years to be paid back.
The proposed plans have met with widespread public opposition at PSC’s public hearings. Yet the Walker administration has been strangely silent on this issue. The PSC is expected to announce its decision on MG&E’s proposed changes to its rate structure in December.
The transportation is the second most major source of U.S. greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, second to only electricity generating coal and natural gas powered electricity generating plants. Most of the greenhouse gas are emitted by flying and driving motor vehicles.
Since January 2011, Governor Walker has spent nearly $1 million in campaign funds on air travel, according Jessie Opoien, writing for The Capital Times. The majority of his flights out of state are taken on private, chartered jet – by far the worse way to travel as far as the environment is concerned because per passenger emissions are at their highest compared to other travel modes.
Walker has also done nothing to reduce the vehicle miles traveled on Wisconsin roads and bridges, which is the other part of transportation’s large annual slug of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide that remains in the atmosphere (other quantities of it are absorbed into the oceans, causing the oceans to become 30% more acidic than during the early 20th century) may remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation reports that the annual number of vehicle miles traveled on Wisconsin roads has now “leveled off” at 59.5 billion miles. That is roughly double the vehicle miles traveled on Wisconsin roads in 1975 and even the 1975 levels of 30 billion miles traveled per year is unsustainable if we are going to do anything timely on the release of greenhouse gases from transportation in Wisconsin. For every gallon of gasoline burn in an internal combustion chamber, 20 pound of carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere.
Women’s rights, taking health care decision out of women’s hands, and countering overpopulation have also been under attack by the Walker administration. One of the first things Governor Walker did was repeal the Equal Pay Protection Act in Wisconsin which will set women financially in reverse compared to men.
State republicans and Governor Scott Walker have gutted Wisconsin family planning and women’s reproductive health care centers in Wisconsin. This September, the Fond du Lac Planned Parenthood clinic shut its doors, marking the fifth Planned Parenthood closure in Wisconsin to directly result from Walker’s decision to eliminate family planning dollars in the state budget. This action is short-sited.
In a report by Kate Golden, writing in the Wisconsin State Journal Monday, Rep. Chris Taylor of Madison, a former public policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, is reported to have said she is suspicious because Gov. Scott Walker ‘s administration and the Republican-controlled Legislature have been “hostile to birth control”.
The problem of unwanted pregnancies in Wisconsin and elsewhere has profoundly negative social, economic and environmental consequences for Wisconsin and the sustainability of our entire planet, which makes it imperative that unwanted pregnancies are prevented. That is a primary mission of Planned Parenthood and will mean a lot in terms of unnecessary greenhouse gases and the cost of social programs. It is already a tragedy that program funds have been cut and clinics had to close.
The reasons for Wisconsinites’ anger with Governor Walker over the last 4 years are nearly endless. Environmental writer Bill Berry’s observation on Walker’s environmental record following Berry’s four decades of covering the environment in Wisconsin should suffice: “Scoot Walker has by far the worst environmental record of all Wisconsin governors of that time”. [from Berry’s opinion plece in the October 8-14, 2014 edition of The Capital Times.]
IPCC Releases Final Report on Global Warming and Climate Change
In a word: “dire” – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The window of opportunity for doing something positive about it – closing. The time to start action on quickly reducing human causes releases of greenhouse gases – NOW!
From the Huffington Post (November 3, 2014):
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.’s panel on climate science said Sunday.
The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s giant climate assessment offered no surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three reports released in the past 13 months.
But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous.
The IPCC didn’t say exactly what such a world would look like but it would likely require a massive shift to renewable sources to power homes, cars and industries combined with new technologies to suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
The report warned that failure to reduce emissions could lock the world on a trajectory with “irreversible” impact on people and the environment. Some impacts already being observed included rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.
The science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report’s launch in Copenhagen.
Amid its grim projections, the report said the tools are there to set the world on a low-emissions path and break the addiction to burning oil, coal and gas which pollute the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas.
“All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that most of the warming seen since the 1950s is man-made. The IPCC’s best estimate is that just about all of it is man-made, but it can’t say that with the same degree of certainty.
Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.
Global Climate Change, a NASA website, says 97 percent of climate scientists agree that warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.
The American public isn’t as convinced. A year-old survey by Pew Research showed 67 percent of Americans believed global warming is occurring and 44 percent said the earth is warming mostly because of human activity. More recently, a New York Times poll said 42 percent of Republicans say global warming won’t have a serious impact, a view held by 12 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of independents.
Sleep-deprived delegates approved the final documents Saturday after a weeklong line-by-line review that underscored that the IPCC process is not just about science. The reports must be approved both by scientists and governments, which means political issues from U.N. climate negotiations, which are nearing a 2015 deadline for a global agreement, inevitably affect the outcome.
The rift between developed and developing countries in the U.N. talks opened up in Copenhagen over a passage on what levels of warming could be considered dangerous. After a protracted battle, the text was dropped from a key summary for policy-makers — to the disappointment of some scientists.
“If the governments are going to expect the IPCC to do their job,” said Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author of the IPCC’s second report, they shouldn’t “get caught up in fights that have nothing to do with the IPCC.”
The omission meant the word “dangerous” disappeared from the summary altogether. It appeared only twice in a longer underlying report compared to seven times in a draft produced before the Copenhagen session. The less loaded word “risk” was mentioned 65 times in the final 40-page summary.
“Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification, increase the risk of severe, pervasive, and in some cases irreversible detrimental impacts,” the report said.
World governments in 2009 set a goal of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) compared to before the industrial revolution. Temperatures have gone up about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since the 19th century.
Emissions have risen so fast in recent years that the world has used up two-thirds of its carbon budget, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to have a likely chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming, the IPCC report said.
“This report makes it clear that if you are serious about the 2-degree goal … there is nowhere to hide,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “You can’t wait several decades to address this issue.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the report demands “ambitious, decisive and immediate action.”
“Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids,” Kerry said in a statement.
The IPCC said the cost of actions such as shifting to solar and wind power and other renewable sources and improving energy efficiency would reduce economic growth only by 0.06 percent annually.
Pachauri said that should be measured against the implications of doing nothing, putting “all species that live on this planet” at peril.
The report is meant as a scientific roadmap for the U.N. climate negotiations, which continue next month in Lima, Peru. That’s the last major conference before a summit in Paris next year, where a global agreement on climate action is supposed to be adopted.
The biggest hurdle is deciding who should do what. Rich countries are calling on China and other major developing countries to set ambitious targets; developing countries saying the rich have a historical responsibility to lead the fight against warming and to help poorer nations cope with its impacts. The IPCC avoided taking sides, saying the risks of climate change “are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.”
AP: By KARL RITTER
Posted: 11/02/2014 7:35 am EST Updated: 11/03/2014 12:59 pm EST
IPCC Sounds Fresh Alarm as Fossil Fuel Interests Tighten Grip on Congress
The leading international network of climate scientists is urging a rapid shift away from fossil fuels, just as allies of coal, oil and natural gas industries in the United States appear poised to tighten their grip on Congress—where opposition to cleaner energy is already entrenched.
That outcome of Tuesday’s midterm election would spell trouble for advocates of a strong international climate accord. Treaty negotiations are supposed to pick up in the next few months and culminate in Paris just over a year from now.
This weekend, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a synthesis report that sums up its years-long review of the climate crisis and what to do about it. The report called for the near-complete elimination of fossil fuel-burning by the end of the century. This, it said, is what is needed to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the most severe risks of man-made changes to the world’s climate.
Nothing could be further from the agenda of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the coal-state Republican who on the eve of the election appears to have significantly better than even odds of becoming the next majority leader. (Though, as the IPCC might put it, until the last votes are tallied any forecast of which party will prevail deserves only “medium confidence.”)
Even if the Republicans don’t gain a majority in the Senate on Nov. 4, they are likely to gain strength in that chamber as well as in the House—an election outcome that would undermine President Obama’s entire climate agenda, not just his influence in the Paris talks.
From the Keystone XL pipeline decision and so-called “war on coal,” to a carbon tax and the very foundations of climate science, Congressional Republicans have opposed Obama on anything having to do with global warming from his first days in office.
Just last year, on the day the IPCC released one of three exhaustive treatments that formed the basis of this week’s synthesis report, McConnell co-sponsored an amendment to block the EPA from regulating fossil fuels in electric power plants, the largest single source of carbon emissions in this country.
His co-sponsor, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, offered another amendment at the same time. It would have prohibited the administration from participating in international climate negotiations “unless the U.S. offers an addendum to the latest IPCC report stating that anthropogenic climate change is a scientifically unproven theory.” Inhofe, who reportedly aspires to be chairman of the environment committee in a Republican Senate, calls the whole IPCC enterprisea “conspiracy” and “a hoax.”
Their ascent would alarm participants in the climate talks who agree with IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, that the climate crisis could be solved if action is quick and decisive. “All we need,” Pachauri said as he released the new synthesis report, “is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change.”
Emissions must fall by 40 to 70 percent between 2010 and 2050, and then to zero by 2100, he explained at a news conference.
Those are fighting words to anyone committed to defending the coal industry in Kentucky, the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma, or campaigning in any fossil fuel stronghold—from the Marcellus shale to the Bakken light oil play. And it helps explain why the politics of carbon are a feature of so many swing elections in states like West Virginia, Colorado, Louisiana and Alaska.
The contrast between this increasingly partisan American political divide and the increasingly solid international scientific consensus could hardly be starker.
“The scientists have done their jobs and then some,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has tracked the negotiations for decades. “Politicians can either dramatically reduce emissions or they can spend the rest of their careers running from climate disaster to climate disaster.”
Other environmental advocates, too, issued statements emphasizing that the synthesis report—including its summary for policymakers, expressly designed to guide them toward early action —was as significant politically as it was scientifically.
“The report is alarming and should be a wake-up call to government leaders,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a group that encourages businesses to show leadership on climate issues. Her statement called on them to “ramp up the pressure…especially in Washington.”
“The critical missing link is the oil and gas industry, which is doing its best to thwart concrete action,” she said.
The Sierra Club’s Michael Brune aimed a jibe at the Koch brothers and their favored candidates, saying that “we don’t have any more time to coddle fossil fuel billionaires or politicians who will eschew responsibility at every corner.”
Big environmental groups have spent heavily in this campaign, too—$85 million on state and federal races, according to Daniel Weiss of the League of Conservation Voters, including $40 million on just six key Senate races. And in the closing days, they were knocking on millions of doors to bring out a green vote.
The organizations released results from a Hart Research Associates poll taken in late October in swing states suggesting that the climate issue could break in their favor.
“The survey suggests that Republican candidates are losing ground as a result of their climate science denial and opposition to climate pollution reductions,” Hart reported. “This is true among independent swing voters, and particularly among women and younger voters.”
But only about 40 percent of those surveyed said they had heard much of candidates’ views on climate. A majority had heard about energy issues, but far more about abortion, jobs and Obamacare.
Leaked Final Draft Of U.N. Climate Report Shows Dire Global Warming Predictions
BY ARI PHILLIPS, POSTED ON OCTOBER 27, 2014
Delegates from more than 100 governments and many of the world’s top climate scientists are meeting in Copenhagen this week to finalize a report that will be used as a foundation for important upcoming climate summits. The leaked United Nations draft report, due to be published on Nov. 2nd, says climate change may have “serious, pervasive and irreversible” impacts on human society and nature.
Hopes are set on a new, post-Kyoto Protocol global climate agreement to be reached at the Paris summit at the end of 2015. There will a major climate meeting in Lima, Peru at the end of this year to help set the framework for the 2015 gathering.
“The report will be a guide for us,” Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, told Reuters.
This final report is a synthesis of three comprehensive IPCC reports published over the course of the last year. Those reports focused on the physical science; impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and mitigation. This flagship report received over 2,000 comments from government officials relating to changes to be made prior to publication.
According to a Reuters analysis, many governments want the draft to be written in a more clear and accessible manner with a focus on extreme weather events such as storms, heat waves, and floods. The U.S. wrote that the report needs to be useful for those without deep technical knowledge of climate issues.
“What about drought? Cyclones? Wildfires? Policymakers care deeply about extreme events,” the U.S. team wrote. “After all, in many ways it is how extreme events will change that will determine many of the (near-term, at least) impacts from climate change. As such, the authors should strongly consider saying more about the projected changes in extreme events.”
>U.S. commenters also wrote that the report should stress impacts on rich countries more, saying “there are very few references to the vulnerability of wealthier countries to climate change.”
The E.U. team wrote that “the key messages should contain more substance that can help guide policy makers rather than general overarching statements,” and that “the overall storyline … is sometimes not clear and still looks fragmented.”
While the report warns of the dire consequences of the continued rise of GHGs, it also says the worst impacts can still be avoided. It states that a combination of adaptation and substantial, sustained reductions in GHGs can limit climate change risks and reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation.
Over the past five years some 2,000 scientists worked on the fifth iteration of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change’s Assessment Report. With leaders gathering to finalize the report this week, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, urged world governments not to be overcome by hopelessness as they engage in negotiations.
“May I humbly suggest that policymakers avoid being overcome by the seeming hopelessness of addressing climate change,” he said. “Tremendous strides are being made in alternative sources of clean energy. There is much we can do to use energy more efficiently. Reducing and ultimately eliminating deforestation provides additional avenues for action.”
In one hopeful indication, last week leaders of the European Union agreed to cut emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. European leaders hope this will build momentum for when the bloc hosts the critical Paris climate summit next year, and that it will encourage other major emitters yet to make pledges — such as the U.S. and China — to rise to the occasion. Countries have until early next year to announce the targets they intend to negotiate with at the Paris summit.
Wisconsinites Should Be “Angry” about the Actions and In-actions of their Governor!
Republican Gov. Scott Walker kicked up a hornets nest in Madison last Thursday, October 23, 2014, when he told a gathering of news reporters at the morning briefing that people living in Madison are driven by anger. “There are many people in Madison who are angry and they’re going to vote no (against Walker) [no] matter what, Walker said in his morning briefing.
What does he expect?
Shortly after he took office, Governor Walker surprised the citizens of Wisconsin with his now infamous “Act 10”, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair bill, ridding public unions of their rights to collective bargaining and deeply reducing the take home pay of all public employees, including all the public school teachers in the state. The bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Finance who then held a public hearing the same day.
When it became clear the passage of the bill was inevitable, all 14 Senate Democrats left the state to prevent Republicans from passing the measure in the Senate.
Twenty senators had to be present to hold a vote on the bill and Republicans had just 19 seats. Walker immediately advocated for taking that requirement out of the bill, so Republicans could pass it without the Democrats being present, according to an online report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and became law in Wisconsin on June 29, 2011.
“It’s had a devastating effect on our union,”, said Wisconsin Union of State Employees Marty Beil in a report by the New York Times . It brought tens of thousands of protesters out to the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in frigid February weather in protest.
Wisconsin had been the first state in the country to grant public unions the right to negotiate contracts with their employers, after former Governor Gaylord Nelson established the rights for all labor unions, public and private, to bargain collectively.
Nelson subsequently became a U.S. Senator, where he helped passed numerous environmental legislation, and where he famously founded “Earth Day”, a day celebrated in many public schools and communities around the world with the purpose of learning about the importance of keeping a healthy environment every April 22nd. According to Nelson: “Some people who talk about the environment talk about it as though it involved only a question of clean air and clean water. The environment involves the whole broad spectrum of man’s relationship to all other living creatures, including other human beings. It involves the environment in its broadest and deepest sense. It involves the environment of the ghetto which is the worst environment, where the worst pollution, the worst noise, the worst housing, the worst situation in this country — that has to be a critical part of our concern and consideration in talking and cleaning up the environment.”
The aftermath of schools having to abide by Governor Walker’s Act 10 has deeply affected public education throughout Wisconsin. As the 2014-15 school year unfolds, Wisconsin has seen class sizes in its public schools grow faster than the national average, a rise in the number of students living in poverty, coupled with a reduction in state support for public education.
Public schools have long been an engine of our state’s economic growth, according to The Wisconsin Budget Project, an initiative of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families and the State Priorities Partnership, formed in 1999, who’s mission is to engage in nonpartisan and independent analysis and provide education on state budget and tax issues, particularly those relating to low- and moderate-income families.
The Partnership is coordinated by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. According to The Wisconsin Budget Project, “Wisconsin has depended on a well-educated workforce, shaped by excellent public schools, to lay the foundation for our prosperity. To ensure that Wisconsin is competitive in the future, our schools must have the resources to offer students a high-quality education. Only then can we create a future workforce that is well-qualified and globally competitive”.
However, three and 1/2 years following Act 10’s passage into law, Wisconsin classrooms have fewer teachers, resulting in more crowded classrooms and less individualized attention for students. Over the last seven years, the number of teachers in Wisconsin public schools has fallen significantly. In the 2011-2012 year alone, there was a 7.1% in the number of full-time equivalents (FTEs) teachers in Wisconsin public schools to 56,200 FTE teachers, down from 60,500 FTE public school teachers in the 2004-05 school year, even as student enrollment has increased slightly.
The decline in the number of teachers in Wisconsin has resulted in higher student-to-teacher ratios in Wisconsin. Having fewer students for each teacher helps students learn better, but in Wisconsin the trend is going in the opposite direction. In 2004-05, Wisconsin had 14.3 students per teacher; that number had risen to 15.5 students by 2011-12.
There has been a rising tide of children living in poverty in Wisconsin and attending public schools. The number of Wisconsin children who are from low-income families has climbed for ten straight years, according to Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction.
According to the Wisconsin Budget Project, the rising number of low-income students presents challenges for Wisconsin schools. Children from low-income families lag their peers in educational achievement. They also are less likely to graduate from high school and become well-educated, healthy members of Wisconsin’s skilled workforce.
In the 2013-14 school year, 43% of Wisconsin children in public schools — or 359,000 children — were eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches, A decade earlier, only 30% of students qualified for free or reduced lunches.
In each of Wisconsin’s five largest school districts — Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha, Green Bay, and Racine — more than half the students are from low-income families and qualified for assistance for school meals. More than 8 out of 10 students in Milwaukee Public Schools were from low-income families in the 2013-14 school year. Put another way, about 69,000 children in Milwaukee Public Schools received assistance to help pay for school lunches.
Wisconsin’s public education cuts under Scott Walker are among the deepest in the country. When measured as dollars lost per student, Wisconsin’s cuts to public education over this period are second only to Alabama. Wisconsin provided $1,038 per student less in state support for public schools in 2014 than in 2008.
Changes to the state retirement system and collective bargaining rules made in 2011 forced school districts to cut compensation for teachers and other school employees and scale back academic programs. Some school districts have been forced to eliminate courses in core subject areas.
At the same time lawmakers were cutting state support for schools, they passed tax cuts that add up to $1.9 billion over four years. The tax cuts didn’t do much to lower tax bills for Wisconsin’s lowest-wage earners, but they did drain revenue that could be used for education or other priorities.
Cuts in state aid and uncertainties about future funding have caused turmoil in Wisconsin schools.
Yet while Walker’s actions have caused increased hardships on Wisconsin’s public employees, teachers and its student population, particularly for poor minority families, additional adverse impact is resulting from Governor Walker’s lack of positive environmental action.
In a recent article, Bill Lueders quotes Matt Neumann, president of the trade group Wisconsin Solar Energy Industries Association, as saying he needs only one word to describe Wisconsin’s recent record on renewable energy. He calls it “rotten.”
Neumann is equally concise in ascribing blame: “The big change happened in 2010, when the Republicans took control of the governorship and Legislature.”
Such criticism may have greater weight given that Neumann is a self-described conservative who a few years back launched SunVest, a Pewaukee-based solar installation company, with his father, Mark.
Matt Neumann says the economics of solar power have improved dramatically in recent years, to where government subsidies are no longer needed. “But we still need policies that support the ability to install solar,” he says, adding that the state is missing opportunities to grow this sector of its economy.
Renew Wisconsin, a nonprofit advocacy group, has tallied that the number of new solar electric installations in Wisconsin fell from 339 in 2010 to 136 in 2012, then rose slightly to 194 in 2013. Meanwhile, new solar installations nationally grew by leaps and bounds. More than 150,000 were added last year, about three times as many as in 2010.
For wind power, Renew Wisconsin reports that the number of commercial turbines placed in service plunged from 215 in 2008 to just 10 in 2012. Wind power in Wisconsin has since “flatlined,” according to Michael Vickerman, the group’s program and policy director. No new turbines were added in 2013 and 2014, and none are planned by state utilities, he says.
“We’re definitely falling behind,” says Gary Radloff, a researcher with the Wisconsin Energy Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s pretty remarkable and measurable.” Wisconsin had been seeing growth in this area before “this massive drop-off in the last few years.”
A recent poll by a bipartisan research team found that more than 80% of Wisconsin voters support raising the state’s use of various forms of renewable energy, including solar, wind and biomass.
Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate for governor, has blasted Walker for his record on renewable energy and pledged to boost state investment in wind power, biofuels and digester technologies that turn waste to watts.
Walker’s true colors of being anti-environmental were shown when it was reported he received $700,000 from a mining firm who was subsequently allowed to rewrite Wisconsin’s once strong metallic mining law to allow it to have the largest open pit mine in North America, which will wipe out an area of significant natural beauty and high natural habitat quality which is a local tribe finds irreplaceable.
Further evidence of the low priority the Walker administration has given to environmental values is its unwillingness to create rules to limit small particle pollution from power plants, forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to write such rules for Wisconsin. Wisconsin, the home of the late Gaylord Nelson, was once said to be a strong leader for other states to follow in protecting our environment. That can no longer be said now because of the blatant disregard for the environment the last three and one-half years by Governor Scott Walker. It’s no wonder Madison residents and undoubtedly many other residents of communities and rural areas throughout Wisconsin appear angry to Governor Walker. They’re furious – and they are saving their stingers for the voting booth on November 4th.
Source: Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Earth’s About to Lose What Little Chance It Had – Unless We Act Now!
Who’s Gonna Stand Up
Neil Young’s Who’s Gonna Stand Up (and Save the Earth)
Protect the wild, tomorrow’s child
Protect the land from the greed of man
Take down the dams, stand up to oil
Protect the plants, and renew the soil
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?
Who’s gonna take on the big machine?
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
This all starts with you and me
Damn the dams, save the rivers
Starve the takers and feed the givers
Build a dream, save the world
We’re the people know as earth
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?
Who’s gonna take on the big machine?
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
This all starts with you and me
Ban fossil fuel, draw the line
Before we build, one more pipeline
Ban fracking now, save the waters
And build a life, for our sons and daughters
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?
Who’s gonna take on the big machine?
Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth?
This all starts with you and me
Who’s gonna stand up
Who’s gonna stand up
Who’s gonna stand up
Who’s gonna stand up
Who’s gonna stand up
Who’s Gonna Stand Up (and Save the Earth)?
(full orchestra & choir version)
Start here. Sign “Conserve NOW Petition to President Obama, U.S. Congress, Wisconsin Governor Walker and Wisconsin Legislature to Enact and Fund Climate Change Legislation” (September 16th post on this blog) or;
I’ve also started the petition “U.S. Congress: Enact and Fund Legislation to Pay Families and Individuals who Use Less Fossil Fuel Energy Annually on Changeorg
Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here’s the link:
Here’s why it’s important:
Using money that now goes to subsidize the fossil fuel industries (coal, oil, natural gas), instead offer that money to those who limit their driving, flying and household use of fossil fuel devived energy. This would helpslow global warming and sea level rises and would negate the need for raising the minimum wage and foodstamps.
You can sign my petition by clicking here.
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Thanks
Follow – Up to Labor Day WORT Radio Show: “Plant Earth -It Needs our Help Now More The Ever”
I broadcast my second show on finding a solution to the global warming and income disparity problems this past Labor Day Monday, September 1, on the weekly “Access Hour”, 7-8 pm, on Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT-FM at 89.9 (HD) radio station. With the friendly assistance of Access Hour engineer Ken Rineer, I was able to provide what I hope listener found to be an informational and enjoyable listening experience, on a problem of serous consequence to the habitability of our planet in the future. If you missed the Labor Day show, for the next 60-days, anyone in the world having access to the Internet can listen to the archived show from WORT-FM September 2, 2014 here.
Those who wish to sign a petition for the U.S. Congress and state governors and Legislatures to petition the government to enact legislation to provide positive monetary incentives to individual and families who minimize their global footprint can sign the petition here.
Conserve, NOW! Planet Earth Needs Our Help Now More Than Ever
On this Labor Day (September 1, 2014) Community Radio Station WORT-FM, 89.9 will broadcast a special program on its weekly show “The Access Hour”, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM. The Labor Day show is called: “Planet Earth: It Needs Our Help Now More Than Ever!”. The show can be heard live on radio in the listening area – south central Wisconsin including Madison, Wisconsin where it originates. The show can also be listened to anywhere in the world at http://www.wortfm.org. All earthlings are invited to listen in then, or on the archive of the WORTFM.org website at their convenience.
The program will consist of both music and dialog, appropriate to issues that confront many of us and those important to all of us and future generations.
Accordingly, I have initiated a petition drive to demand our federal and state legislative leaders to take immediate and major actions that will jointly confront these issues. If you wish to read and sign the petition, please do so. It’s sorely needed. Please send me an email to MTNeuman@gmail.com requesting it and I’ll forward the link to use for signing the petition.
The program being advanced advocating is designed to minimize our fossil burning before it’s too late, by telling our government to establish a program that provides positive financial incentives – supplemental income – for all individuals and families who burn less fuel annually: (1) by driving less or no miles (more $ for not at all); (2) by not flying in that year; and (3) by using less fossil fuel derived energy in heating, cooling and using electricity derived from burning fossil fuel in the year than the average household in a year. Money can be earned by doing (1), more by doing (2) and even more by doing (3), yearly,
Money used to finance this program could come from a number sources:
1) Money the U.S. Department of Transportation and states SAVE (billions of dollars) by not paving even more lanes of highways and bridges on the landscape with cement and asphalt (both require fossil fuel burning) to accommodate more driving of motor vehicles;
2) Money the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration would SAVE (more billions of dollars) by requiring the commercial airlines pay air flight controllers, instead of the federal government (U.S. citizens) providing these employees for the exclusive financial interests of commercial airlines and aviation fuel suppliers.
3) Money from levying a tax on all carbon emitted by electrical power generation plants in the U.S. which burn fossil fuels (more billions of dollars), and emitted by the transportation sector (jets, cars, motorcycles, trucks, trains and buses, work vehicles and fossil fueled equipment, and recreational vehicles, including but not limited to ATVs, motor boats, snowmobiles, jet skis).
4) Money from other extravagant federal expenditures, such as the billions of dollars paid to private defense contractors, at home and abroad, and also the billions of dollars of subsidies the U.S. government (American taxpayers) presently awards to the fossil fuel industry (coal, oil, natural gas) operating in the U.S..
Only individuals and families in the U.S. who conserve energy (emit fewer greenhouse gases) by driving less (or no) miles; by not flying; and by using less fossil fuel derived energy in their home during a year would earn the REWARDS.
More detailed information on this proposal can be viewed on the Conserve, NOW! post of August 16. 2014.
Conserve, NOW: Goverment Would Pay Families and Individuals to Limit Their Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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I wrote this proposal in November 2000, after my twin brother, Pat, and I had first become concerned about the seriousness and scientific evidence surrounding the issue of global warming. Pat was a senior employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service’s (NWS) Midwest Regional Office located in Chanhassen, Minnesota, and was assigned to forecast snow melt and flooding levels for rivers, lakes and stream in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota. Prior to working for the NWS’s Midwest Regional Office, Pat worked for the NWS’s Kansas City office for a number of years.
I worked for the Wisconsin Departmental Resources Natural (DNR) in several different capacities from 1974 to 2008 and in 2000 was the DNR’s environmental liaison coordinator for Wisconsin Department of Transportation long range plans and proposed highway construction projects. Both Pat and I decided it was important to let others know of our concerns, in particular our employers, who we agreed should both be informing the public of the problems of a continuously warming environment, how it might impact future public and private human and natural resources, what the Government should be doing now to better incorporate the likely reality of global warming into its plans and policies for the future, and what might be done to reduce the causes behind it.
To view my currently proposed “Conserve, NOW plan, which I delivered to the Wisconsin Legislature at a public hearing at the State Capitol in February 2014, read on. A threefold expansion of the 2000 plan has now become necessary due to a continuing reluctance of our governmental representatives in Wisconsin, the U. S. and other countries, as well as ourselves, to take the necessary actions to meaningfully reduce our additions to the growing quantities of global warming gases in our atmosphere and the oceans.
My proposed Conserve NOW program would be administered by Government (preferably at the state level), and it would not discriminate on the basis of color, creed, physical or mental ability, sex or sexual orientation, age, nationality or an individual’s or family’s level of income. Participation would be voluntary, and there would be ample sources of money to fund it, with the overall purpose being to minimize the county’s greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning – in transportation; electricity use and household heating – yearly. Due to the worsening income inequality in this city, state and nation, which has undoubtedly adversely affected our African-American population the hardest, African-Americans should be eligible for up to 4 times the original per person suggested in the 2000 Conserve, NOW proposal each year, as reparation for slavery, which is clearly long overdue and still woefully inadequate.
Under this revision, African-Americans would be eligible to earn a maximum of $30,400 per year rather than the otherwise applicable maximum of $22,800 per year ($22,800 would still be the maximum available as a positive financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emission and other cost for all others that are not of African-American descent) – provided they don’t drive, fly or use fossil fuel-derived energy in their home during the designated year of their voluntary enrollment.
At the same time, as part of my responsibilities working for the DNR, I was responsible for assessing the environmental impacts of transportation alternatives proposed by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) to address the mounting highway congestion that was expected on Wisconsin’s highway system for the oncoming decades. Predictably, and based on its projected and so-called “need” to accommodate the increase in projected driving, the DOT would accordingly nearly always propose solutions to congested highway and freeways that would add lanes of concrete and right-of-ways at the expense of the loss of productive agricultural lands, environmentally sensitive wetlands, prairies and woodlands, many times building the entire expanded highway segment around communities, as well as leaving the old highway through the communities in place. In some cases, the expanded highway system would create additional demands on the newly constructed highways, resulting in increased traffic, more air emissions (including greenhouse gas from fossil fuel burning) from the increased traffic, as well as the emissions resulting from grading the land and manufacturing cement and asphalt laid to create the new highway lanes and interchanges. Of course all these options necessitated the “investment” of billion of dollars of the public’s money into the highway system, with most of the money paid to private road and bridge building and consulting companies to build the new lanes of highways and wider or new bridges. The Wisconsin DOT thus predicted there would continue to be an increased need for more and more lanes of highways, throughout the state, and that the “needs” for the continuously expanded highway system would continue to grow. requiring that an even larger quantity of the state’s dwindling acres or agricultural land, wetlands, prairies and forests. I said to the DOT and highway and bridge construction representative that this assumption of continuous growth in the state’s highway system was unsustainable, both from a financial as well as from an environmental standpoint, and that they had to change things. I offered my plan for changing things to them at a systems planning meeting in December 1999.
I said I had developed a transportation plan that, instead of continuously expanding the highway system, the instead would direct the State of Wisconsin to offer financial incentives to Wisconsinites who drove fewer miles on the state’s highway system over the year. I said that, assuming enough Wisconsinites participated in the rewards program, and signed up for the reduced driving (or no driving) program, that there doing that would reduce the traffic on the highway system by a sufficient amount to save the money that would have otherwise gone into building the many new and costly highways, freeways and bridges that the construction industry wanted to see the Wisconsin Legislature and the Wisconsin DOT fund to them. I argued that not only would my reduced-driving strategy result in fewer lanes of steel, cement and asphalt needing to be laid on the Wisconsin landscape, at a considerable and perhaps unsustainable amount of public financial cost, but also the financial and natural resource costs of the resources lost to the highway construction (such as prime agricultural land, wetlands, woodlands and prairies, as well as the wildlife species dependent on those), the the potentially human costs of increased volumes of particulates and greenhouse gases and other emissions that would result from the increase in motorized use of the new highways in Wisconsin each year. Under my proposal, fewer miles would be driven on the stat’s highways over time, assuming Wisconsinite’s followed through by reducing or eliminating their need to drive on the state’s highway system during the year, thus making them eligible to receive their annual low-driving rebate.
I decided to add a similar approach to reduce the number of airline miles traveled in a year by each person, since aircraft emissions also cause significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from Wisconsin. Finally, I included an incentive for individuals and families to use less fossil fuel derived energy in their home, per capita, and to reward those individual and families who used lower energy amounts over the year with annual rebates.
I sent copies of my proposal (Conserve, NOW!) to all my elected governmental officials at the time, and I met with my two elected state legislators to ask them them if this was something they would like to support it. Unfortunately, I received no legislative support for the proposal, as well as no indication of support by the governor of the idea.
Now we have lost 14 years of fighting global warming because no action was taken to reduce greenhouse gases from the state in a significant way, and the amount of paved highways and airport runways has continued to grow;. Reducing compounding and rising greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere back to a safe level (350 ppm carbon dioxide (CO2), for example) will be that much more difficult now as a large majority of the greenhouse gases have projected lifespans exceeding hundreds of years. Worse yet, the greenhouse gas “Methane”, which is also called natural gas, while it burns cleaner and more efficiently than coal, the process of burning it produces more carbon dioxide, and that which escapes un-burned, is 37 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas when it is released to the atmosphere as methane.
The country is now seeing a boom in mining for natural gas as a result of the new technology of frac mining of shale at many locations in the U.S.. This kind of natural gas mining can also result in the release of methane (not burned) to the atmosphere. The unintended consequences of increased frac sand mining and processing in the U.S. upon local communities, and the additional emissions of greenhouse gases and other particles of combustion to the atmosphere from frac sand and water transport, and the eventual distribution of the natural gas to the eventual user, may also be significant. (For a more detailed discussion of natural gas mining in the U.S., please see the December 2012 and March 2013 issues of the National Geographic magazine.)
Unfortunately, the U.S. government and its states and municipalities lag behind many countries of the world (such as Denmark and Germany) in widely implementing technologies and government policies that result in reduced-fossil fuel burning by its people, municipalities, and industries. Rather than build and/or fund large scale solar, wind or other emerging renewable energies, our government continues to fund more new multi-lane highway projects, new airport runways and modern airline terminal projects. It’s publicly funded high speed rail projects are extremely expensive, and the trains still rely on heavily on the burning of fossil fuels for locomotion. Ultimately, these projects and subsidies will deplete our public budgets and worse. They will add to the immense global warming burden we know we are now imposing on all our world’s future generations, and have been for some time now.
Most U.S. communities are lacking in having sound land use policies that reduce the need for people to do long-distance commuting to their place of work or doing other business. Our U.S. government and states all fail to offer financial incentives that would otherwise encourage people of the U.S. to reduce their heavy reliance on expensive, heavy ecological footprint causing and excessively subsidized airplane flying, highway travel and rail transit. Our U.S. federal government also provides massive public subsidies to the fossil fuel industries in the U.S., which only serves to encourage more and more fossil fuel burning and faster global warming because it keeps the price of those fuels artificially low than it otherwise would have been had it not been for the subsidies. dump massive amounts (millions of tons) of very potent greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere from fossil fuel burning, annually, which, together with the increasingly large volumes of greenhouse gases that are being released to the atmosphere as a result of “positive global warming feed backs” – which occur naturally in the earth’s systems – such as the melting going on at the North polar ice cap that results in a less reflective snow cap being replaced by darker ocean water, which absorbs more sunlight energy, and thereby causes the oceans’ water to warm and expand. In addition, the sea level is rising as a result of the melting of thousands and thousands of cubic miles of snow and ice that are located on land surfaces which were once in a permanently frozen condition but are now melting ever more rapidly (eg. Greenland ice sheet, Antarctica and the vast majority of the earth’s glaciers and mountain tops such as Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain.
The combustion of fossil fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel oil to transport people and goods is the second largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity in the U.S., accounting for about 31% of total U.S. CO2 emissions and 26% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2011. This includes transportation sources such as highway vehicles, air travel, marine transportation, and rail.
In lieu of not receiving funds elsewhere, my proposed solution would be for our Government: (1) to levee a carbon tax on burning the burning of all fossil fuels – gasoline, jet fuel, natural gas, diesel fuel, fuel oil, etc., and electricity produce in burning coal and natural gas, and using other things that, when used, (eg. free-on from air conditioning sources) result in the release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; and then (2) to take all that money that is collected from these sources and use that money to fund a program that REWARDS individuals and families via giving annual rebates to individual and families who add only minor amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, by their minimal (or no) annual driving, flying, and consumption of heating fuel and electricity that is generated from burning fossil fuels.
Measuring annual driving, flying and use of energy over the year would be done through car and truck odometers and home/business the FAA, and electric country metering.This program would solve a lot of other problems (global warming, highway congestion, air pollution, fossil fuel supplies and development and transportation and possibly urban sprawl), in addition to the food crisis situation. Legislation that increases the price we all have to pay for carbon-based fuels would encourage us to better insulate our homes and businesses, drive more efficient cars and use fewer products depended on the burning of fossil fuels. It might even encourage some of us to drive and fly less, activities which require the large scale burning of fossil fuels in the aggregate in this country.
Revenue collected from the added price (tax) on carbon fuels should be returned to households. In particular, this money should be awarded back to those members of the public who drive and fly less miles, annually, and who use less energy that is derived from fossil fuel burning energy in their homes over a year. Enacting such legislation would ensure the public is on board with this approach and is also well aware of its importance – which is to slow down the warming of our climate. Our legislators should enact this plan into law as soon as possible. Other states and countries should then ideally follow suit. We all need to be working toward the goal of reducing our carbon emissions and other known greenhouse gases before our climate gets completely out of wack!
Call for Action on Climate Change by Renown Chemistry Professors’ Bell and Shakhashiri
In the March 17, 2014 Issue of Chemical and Engineering News, Volume 92 Issue 11, two renown educational scientists decided to co-author an editorial in the prestigious magazine to alert the public and politicians about the facts, causes, implications, and yes, the danger of unmitigated acceleration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the need for immediate action to stem the growing changes to the earth’s climate. Their names are Jerry A. Bell and Bassam Z. Shakhashiri .
Dr. Bell is an emeritus professor in the department of chemistry at Simmons College, Boston, and chair of the American Chemical Society’s Presidential Working Group on Climate Science. After deciding on a career in science, Bell earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry followed by a PhD in Chemistry, both from Harvard University. During his time at Harvard, he worked as volunteer tutoring students in math and science.
Dr. Bell went on to hold teaching and research positions at colleges across the country, including UW-Madison, the University of California-Riverside, Brandeis University and Simmons College. He served at the National Science Foundation as director of the Division for Teacher Preparation and Enhancement (1984-1986), as director of the UW-Madison Institute for Chemical Education (1986-1989). He was director for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992-1999), and was a senior scientist with the Education Division at the American Chemical Society (1999-2009) where he continues to serve as a consultant. He is widely recognized for his outstanding contributions to science education by many major awards including the ACS George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education (2000), the ACS James Flack Norris in Chemistry Education (1992) and the Chemical Manufacturers Catalyst Award (1977), and he travels to Wisconsin to work on programs of the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy (WISL), founded by Dr. Shakashiri in 2002 who serves as its director. Bells work on behalf of the WISL in the Washington, DC area includes activities with educational groups and laboratory research in the chemistry department at the University of Maryland-College Park.He lives in Silver Springs, MD, with his wife, Mary Ann.
Bassam Z. Shakhashiri is the first holder of the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at UW-Madison. He is well known internationally for his effective leadership in promoting excellence in science education at all levels, and for his development and use of demonstrations in the teaching of chemistry in classrooms as well as in less formal settings, such as museums, convention centers, shopping malls and retirement homes. The Encyclopedia Britannica sites him as the “dean of lecture demonstrators in America.” His scholarly publications, including the multi-volume series, Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, are models of learning and instruction that have been translated into several languages. He is an advocate for policies to advance knowledge and to use science and technology to serve society. He promotes the exploration and establishment of links between science, the arts and the humanities, and the elevation of discourse on significant societal issues related to science, religion, politics, the economy, and ethics. Professor Shakhashiri was the 2012 president of the American Chemical Society, and will serve a one-year term as immediate past president in 2013.
A native of (Anfe, El-Koura) Lebanon, Professor Shakhashiri is the son of the late Dr. Zekin A. Shakhashiri, a pioneer in public health at the American University of Beirut, and the late Adma N. Shakhashiri, an alumna of what is now Lebanese American University. The Shakhashiris — father, mother, son and two daughters, Amal and Maha — came to the United States in 1957 when Bassam was 17 years old with one year of college (at the American University of Beirut) behind him. He completed undergraduate work at Boston University (Class of ’60) with an A. B. degree in chemistry, served as a teaching fellow at Bowdoin College for one academic year and then earned M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry at the University of Maryland (’64 and ’68, respectively).
After a year of post-doctoral research and two years as a junior member of the chemistry faculty at the University of Illinois-Urbana, Professor Shakhashiri joined the faculty of the UW-Madison in 1970, a position he still holds. In 1977 he became the founding chair of the UW System Undergraduate Teaching Improvement Council, now called the Office of Professional and Instructional Development. In 1983 he founded the Institute for Chemical Education (ICE) and served as its first director. His work with ICE inspired the establishment of the Center for Biology Education, the Merck Institute for Science Education, the Miami University (of Ohio) Center for Chemical Education, the Sacred Heart University SMART Center, and others. In 2002 he founded the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy (WISL) and continues to serve as its director.
From 1984 to 1990 Professor Shakhashiri served as Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for Science and Engineering Education. As the NSF chief education officer he presided over the rebuilding of all the NSF efforts in science and engineering education after they had been essentially eliminated in the early 1980’s. His leadership and effectiveness in developing and implementing national programs in science and engineering education have helped set the annual NSF education budget at its current level of over $900 million. His NSF strategic plan launched the systemic initiatives and most of the other NSF education programs of the last two decades.
Professor Shakhashiri has given over 1400 invited lectures and presentations in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and South America. He has been featured in newspapers, magazines, national and local radio and television; these include the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, the German-language Business Week, NBC Nightly News, National Public Radio, CNN, and the Larry King show. He appears as a regular guest on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio.
Professor Shakhashiri is the recipient of over 35 awards, including Outstanding Lecturer of the Year in General Chemistry, University of Illinois (1969 and 1970), the 1977 Kiekhofer Distinguished Teaching Award from UW-Madison, and the 1979 Manufacturing Chemists Association Catalyst Award. He is the youngest recipient of two of the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) most coveted recognitions — the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry (1983) and the ACS George Pimentel Award in Chemical Education (1986); he has been a member of the ACS since 1962. In 1982 he was given the Ron Gibbs Award of the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers for “outstanding contributions to science education at the local, regional, national, and international levels.” In 1987, he was cited for distinguished public service by the District of Columbia Science Education Association, the National Science Teachers Association, the South Carolina Academy of Science, and the Boston University General Alumni Association.
He received the 2002 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology, “for his tireless efforts to communicate science to the general public, and especially children.” In 2004 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the national chemistry fraternity Alpha Chi Sigma. In 2005 he received the Madison Metropolitan School District Distinguished Service Award for a Citizen, the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists, the ACS Helen M. Free Award for Public Outreach for “lifelong accomplishments and for explaining and demonstrating science with charisma and passion.”In 2006 he received the Rotary Senior Service Award from the Rotary Club of Madison. In 2007 he received the National Science Board Public Service Award and was cited for “extraordinary contributions to promote science literacy and cultivate the intellectual and emotional links between science and the arts for the public.” In 2008 he received the inaugural Emerson Science Advocacy Medal from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and was cited for “distinguished, sustained, and lasting contributions in the development of the sciences.”
Professor Shakhashiri is an elected fellow of the South Carolina Academy of Science, the Alabama Academy of Science, the New York Academy of Science, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of honorary doctoral degrees from George Washington University, Illinois State University, Ripon College, University of Colorado, Grand Valley State University, University of South Carolina and Lebanese American University. He is a national and international consultant to government agencies, academic institutions, industry, and private foundations on policy and practice matters related to science and to education at all levels. Professor Shakhashiri and his wife, June, live in Madison.
In the March 17, 2014 Issue of Chemical and Engineering News, Volume 92 Issue 11, the two renown educational and chemical scientists decided to join forces and co-author an editorial about the urgent need for climate action. A reproduction of that editorial follows.
“Action On Climate Change”
By Jerry A. Bell, Bassam Z. Shakhashiri
In Chemical and Engineering News
Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases are increasing. The well-known greenhouse effect caused by these gases traps solar energy, warming Earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans and melting its ice. Thermal expansion of ocean water and liquid from melting land ice are raising sea levels, and dissolution of more carbon dioxide is lowering ocean pH. These observed changes are largely caused by human activities. The burning of fossil fuels drove the Industrial Revolution, which enormously raised the standard of living of much of the world, but it is also changing the climate.
Large increases in the amount of energy in Earth’s climate system of necessity produce changes, such as more water vapor in the air and more intense storms. The extent of these effects is not yet well characterized. But, as the system gains more energy, climate changes are likely to be larger and more lifestyle disruptive. Because the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases are responsible for the buildup of energy in the climate system, actions to reduce emission of these gases are needed now.
Actions by individuals and society as a whole, which includes scientific professional organizations such as the American Chemical Society (ACS), are required. Individuals, for example, can use more efficient lighting and appliances, make greater use of public transportation, drive low-emission vehicles, teleconference more and travel less, support efforts to mitigate the undesired consequences of climate change, and encourage government representatives to do the same. ACS has implemented approaches such as these in its headquarters buildings, which have been awarded platinum certification by the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Chemists and other scientists can reinforce their knowledge of climate science by using the ACS Climate Science Toolkit. The tool kit provides scientists with the background and incentive to engage others in discourse on the issues raised by climate change and the need to take action. Individual actions have small effects on energy consumption, but inaction has zero effect.
Individuals acting collectively—that is, society working through the social contract—can implement even more effective measures to mitigate climate change. But because the effects of collective action are larger and may affect individuals differently, these actions are more controversial, even when based on sound scientific and economic principles. An example of such a measure is a revenue-neutral carbon tax imposed at the source—the wellhead, mine, or port of entry. As the cost of the carbon is passed along, individuals have an incentive to lower their carbon footprint. As they do so, the value of their share of the tax proceeds that are distributed is maximized, and overall energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. In practice, the political will of the collective is required to enact any such approach, as is agreement that continued climate change will result in the severe consequences that climate scientists expect.
A responsibility of ACS is to further support and fortify its members in their efforts to communicate the science and effects of climate change. ACS has done this with its Climate Science Challenge Grants that local sections have received. ACS must continue to promote the ACS policy on global climate change developed by the Committee on Environmental Improvement and approved by the ACS Board of Directors. The policy provides credibility for members as they interact with others, including elected representatives, about the consequences of climate change. ACS should energize its members and affirm its commitment as a leader among scientific professional associations to advocate for local, national, and international actions that reduce the effects of climate change for the benefit of Earth and its people.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society
Despite the excellent presentation of the facts and the implications by these renown scientists, our U.S. Congress, state Legislatures and governors, and the governments of other countries have been taken little or no timely action to meaningfully attack the source of this growing world calamity.
Putting off expensive measures to curb climate change will only cost the United States more in the long run. “Each decade we delay acting results in an added cost of dealing with the problem of an extra 40 percent,” said Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.”We know way more than enough to justify acting today,” Furman told reporters, drawing her conclusions from 16 recent economic studies that modeled the costs of climate change. The report was being released as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held public hearings on its plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants – the centerpiece of Obama’s climate action plan, in June 2014.
It’s not just the Obama administration that has been issuing these dire projections to detail the likely results of continuing the status quo of “business as usual” societal practices.
In June, a bipartisan report commissioned by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and environmentalist Tom Steyer forecast a multibillion-dollar price tag for climate costs, such as property losses from storms, declining crop yields and soaring power bills during heatwaves. Their jointly prepared report Risky Business found the U.S. faces significant economic risks from climate change. Former HHS Sec. Donna Shalala and Johns Hopkins Dean Emeritus Dr. Alfred Sommer: “Imagine if we experienced multiple Chicago heat waves every summer, in cities all across the country. That is the direction we are headed unless we change course and take strong, decisive action to curb climate change.” “Everything that is challenging about producing more food for a world that is more populous, more urban and more affluent becomes more so when faced with a changing climate”, said Greg Page, executive chairman of Cargill Inc., the company headquartered in suburban Minneapolis that provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services throughout the world in his article “Agriculture must engage in climate change discussion” in the August 10, 2014 Des Moines Register. We’ve already seen what climate change has brought to the most populous state in the country: California.
The following is by Ian James, The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun (in USA Today)
Cracks spread across the dry bed of parched percolation pond one at the Whitewater Groundwater Replenishment Facility near Palm Springs on Wednesday. / Crystal Chatham/The Desert Sun
In California, record heat is adding to extreme drought. The first half of 2014 was by far the hottest in California in 120 years of record-keeping, and that heat is exacerbating one of the most devastating droughts in state history along with massive, too numerous to count major wildfires.
Month after month, the red and burgundy patches on the California drought map have been spreading, with 82 percent of the state now classified as being in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought on the U.S. Drought Monitor website.
Reservoirs have been shrinking, aquifers have been declining, and an estimated 5 percent of the state’s irrigated farmland, from the Central Valley to Southern California, has been left dry and withering.
The increasingly dire water situation across California is being compounded by unusual heat. Long-term weather records maintained by the National Climatic Data Center show that California had its warmest January-June period since record-keeping began in 1895, with the average temperature 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average and more than 1 degree warmer than the previous record, set in 1934. July figures have yet to be released.
“In the business of climate science, this is a shattering of a record,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of geosciences and co-director of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment. “We are fairly certain that the unusual warmth is mostly due to human-caused global warming.”
For climate scientists, it can be difficult to trace the influence of climate change in the weather patterns of a year or two. But after decades with average temperatures on the rise, Overpeck said the extraordinary heat during this drought makes it a “global warming drought” that is indicative of the hotter dry spells expected in the future.
While California and the West is naturally prone to drought and have experienced long-lasting mega-droughts in the past, scientists say the long-term trend of rising average temperatures is now packing an extra punch. Hotter temperatures worsen droughts by reducing mountain snowpack and causing more evaporation from streams and reservoirs. Heat also draws more moisture from plants and the soil, and increases the amounts of water needed to irrigate crops and vegetation.
Meteorologist Richard Heim, a drought expert with the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, said he has been amazed as high temperature records have been blown away this year in California.
“I’m just, ‘Wow,’ looking at these trends. Can it get any worse? Well, the models say yeah,” Heim said. “But how much more can we take as a society, as individual people? And how much more of this can the infrastructure and policies that have been put in place to deal with this at the state level, federal level, local level, how much more of this can you guys take?”
High pressure turns up heat
The main weather feature behind the drought and record temperatures has been a persistent high-pressure ridge over the West and the eastern Pacific Ocean. It has been called the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” since Stanford University graduate student Daniel Swain coined that term on his California Weather Blog last year, and the ridge has been keeping storms away from the region.
There is also a two-way relationship between the drought and heat, Heim explained. While the hotter temperatures are contributing to drier conditions, those same dry conditions are in turn amplifying the higher temperatures a bit. This occurs because dry ground tends to heat up faster than wet ground, adding more heat to the air.
In Sacramento as well as Washington, lawmakers have been debating measures that proponents say are aimed at coping with the drought and helping the West become more resilient to face growing water scarcity.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Rancho Mirage, for instance, has recently backed legislation focused on addressing the drought and the impacts of climate change.
“As far back as 1995, climate scientists have predicted that increasing global temperatures would lead to more severe droughts in some regions of the world. We know that climate change is linked to the type of intense, record-breaking droughts that we are experiencing in California,” Boxer said by email. “The intensity and frequency of droughts will continue to worsen unless we take steps to address climate change by reducing carbon pollution.”
In addition to promoting President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, Boxer touted the recently-passed Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which she said will help California respond to the deepening drought. The law will enable communities to obtain financing for projects such as water recycling, desalination and repairs of old water infrastructure.
Boxer, who leads the Environment and Public Works Committee, recently introduced another bill that would back local investments in water recycling and groundwater management, expand grants and rebates for water conservation, invest in water-related research, and create an open water data system. She said the measure would “help local communities take steps to become better prepared for drought.”
El Nino reprieve unlikely
Earlier this year, predictions of an El Nino raised hopes that a strong warming of the tropical Pacific could lead to drought-ending rains in California and the West. But in the past week, the National Weather Service updated its forecast and said the chance of an El Nino forming has decreased from about 80 percent to 65 percent during the fall and early winter.
State Climatologist Michael Anderson said, however, that an El Nino wouldn’t necessarily mean relief because both the wettest year and the driest year in the past 60 years were El Nino years.
“For Northern California, El Nino by itself is not a strong predictor,” Anderson said. “So we’ll have to look elsewhere.”
One wet winter could go a long way toward refilling many of the state’s dwindling reservoirs. But the depletion of the state’s aquifers is a much deeper problem.
“It will probably take a number of wet years,” Anderson said, “to make up some of the groundwater deficits that have been incurred.”
Groundwater vanishing
In many areas of California and the Southwest, groundwater levels have been declining for years as water has been heavily pumped for farmland and expanding development. The drought has added significantly to those strains.
In a new study, NASA and UC Irvine scientists used satellite data to track changes in the Colorado River Basin and determined that since late 2004, the region has lost nearly 53 million acre-feet of water. That’s almost double the volume of water that can be held in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. The researchers also found that more than three-quarters of the water extracted was groundwater.
“That really forces you to raise your eyebrows and think about how long we can keep doing this, how long we can keep depleting groundwater at that rate,” said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the study’s authors.
Famiglietti said the era of abundant water is clearly over in the West, and that the rapid declines of many aquifers point to a need for better management and additional studies to determine how much groundwater remains.
“We can see that we’re using a lot of it and so now we need to figure out how much is left,” Famiglietti said. “We need to do these explorations that need to be done – as if it were oil.”
Dramatic declines in the level of Lake Mead offer a glimpse of larger changes in water supplies taking place underground and across the region. The reservoir last month dropped to a record low, driven down by a 14-year drought that scientists say is one of the most severe to hit the Colorado River in more than 1,200 years. The lake, which supplies water to about 25 million people in three states, now stands about 39 percent full.
Rising costs
In the Central Valley, the heart of California’s $45 billion agriculture industry, water tables have declined dramatically for years – in some areas so much that the ground has been sinking by nearly 1 foot a year. And in times of drought, farms have been relying more heavily on groundwater to make up for diminished flows of water from the Sierra Nevada and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
A recent study by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences estimated that the drought is costing the state $2.2 million this year, including $1.5 billion in direct costs to agriculture. That includes losses of farm revenues as well as higher costs to pump water.
Those costs are likely to gradually climb as the drought persists. And with aquifers declining in many areas, there have been increasing calls for regulation of groundwater.
Unlike nearly all other Western states, California doesn’t have a statewide program for managing groundwater. The lack of statewide oversight has meant that owners of private wells can often pump as much as they wish, while some local water districts have permitted their aquifers to decline dramatically.
State lawmakers are now considering groundwater proposals that would strengthen local management procedures while giving the state new authority to step in when necessary as a “backstop” to safeguard water supplies.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have also been debating proposals for a state water bond to go before voters. An $11.1 billion water bond is on the November ballot, but Gov. Jerry Brown has instead called for a “no-frills” $6 billion plan that would support projects ranging from water recycling to water efficiency improvements. Some of the money would also go to projects to protect and restore water habitats.
Water restrictions
As the drought persists, the effects on wildlife are also likely to grow more severe. Already, researchers in some parts of Southern California have been finding that birds of prey such as hawks seem to be reproducing less because they are finding less to eat.
“We’ve been seeing raptors that have not been breeding successfully, some of them showing signs of starvation, and that’s an indicator,” said Michael Lynes, director of public policy for the National Audubon Society in California.
The latest Monthly Drought Outlook from the National Weather Service predicts that in the coming weeks, the drought will likely persist or intensify across California and much of the West, with the heat also continuing. That will probably lead to increasing calls from the state and local water districts for Californians to cut back on water use.
The State Water Resources Control Board last month announced mandatory water restrictions, barring the washing of driveways and yard watering that creates runoff, among other things, and calling for fines of up to $500.
The state also instructed local agencies to activate water shortage contingency plans and restrict outdoor watering. Drought-plagued California set the record for the warmest first seven months of the year since records began there in 1895. The National Climatic Data Center found that the statewide average temperature was 60.9 degrees Fahrenheit, which was 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
This beat the previous record warm January-to-July period by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a huge margin in the climate data world, where records are often set or missed by tenths of a degree.
Cracked earth is visible on what used to be the bottom of the Camanche Reservoir on August 8, 2014 in Ione, California. As the severe drought in California continues to worsen, the majority of the State’s major reservoirs are at or below 50 percent of capacity.
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