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batboyblog · 11 months ago

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The United States is experiencing scorching new levels of heat fueled by climate change this summer, with dozens of people dying in the West, millions sweating under heat advisories and nearly three-quarters of Americans saying the government must prioritize global warming.

But as the Republican Party opens its national convention in Milwaukee with a prime-time focus on energy on Monday night, the party has no plan to address climate change.

While many Republicans no longer deny the overwhelming scientific consensus that the planet is warming, party leaders do not see it as a problem that needs to be addressed.

“I don’t know that there is a Republican approach to climate change as an organizing issue,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group focused on energy. “I don’t think President Trump sees reducing greenhouse gases, using the government to do so, as an imperative.”

When former President Donald J. Trump mentions climate change at all, it is mockingly.

“Can you imagine, this guy says global warming is the greatest threat to our country?” Mr. Trump said, referring to President Biden as he addressed a rally in Chesapeake, Va., last month, the hottest June in recorded history across the globe. “Global warming is fine. In fact, I heard it was going to be very warm today. It’s fine.”

He went on to dismiss the scientific evidence that melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are causing seas to rise, threatening coastal communities around the world. He said it would result in “more waterfront property, if you’re lucky enough to own.” And he lapsed into familiar rants against windmills and electric vehicles.

At the televised debate with Mr. Biden in June, Mr. Trump was asked if he would take any action as president to slow the climate crisis. “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it,” Mr. Trump responded, without answering the question.

Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, later declined to clarify the former president’s position or discuss any actions he would take regarding climate change, saying only that he wants “energy dominance.”

The United States last year pumped more crude oil than any country in history and is now the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas.

A clear majority of Americans, 65 percent, wants the country to focus on increasing solar, wind and other renewable energy and not fossil fuels, according to a May survey by the Pew Research Center. But just 38 percent of Republicans surveyed said renewable energy should be prioritized, while 61 percent said the country should focus on developing more oil, gas and coal.

“Their No. 1 agenda is to continue producing fossil fuels,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M University. “Once you understand their main goal is to entrench fossil fuels regardless of anything else, everything makes sense.”

The party platform, issued last week, makes no mention of climate change. Instead, it encourages more production of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously driving up global temperatures. “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL,” it says, referring to oil as “liquid gold.”

By contrast, Mr. Biden has taken the most aggressive action of any president to cut emissions from coal, oil and gas and encourage a transition to wind, solar and other carbon-free energy. He has directed every federal agency from the Agriculture Department to the Pentagon to consider how climate change is affecting their core missions.

If Mr. Biden has taken an all-of-government approach to fighting climate change, Mr. Trump and his allies would adopt the opposite: scrubbing “climate” from all federal functions and promoting fossil fuels.

Mr. Trump and his allies want to end federal subsidies for electric vehicles, battery development and the wind and solar industries, preferring instead to open up the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling, encourage more offshore drilling and expand gas export terminals.

Project 2025, a lengthy manual filled with specific proposals for a next Republican administration, calls for erasing any mention of climate change across the government. While Mr. Trump has recently sought to distance himself from Project 2025, he has praised its architects at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization, and much of the plan was written by people who were top advisers during his first term and could serve in prominent roles if he wins in November.

When pressed to discuss climate change, some Republicans say the country should produce more natural gas and sell it to other countries as a cleaner replacement for coal.

While natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, it remains one of the sources of the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Scientists say that countries must stop burning coal, oil and gas to keep global warming to relatively safe levels. Last year, at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the United States and nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.

But if elected, Mr. Trump has indicated he would pull back from the global fight against climate change, as he did when he announced in 2017 that the United States would be the first and only country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. (The United States subsequently rejoined under Mr. Biden.)

And it’s possible he would go even further. Mr. Trump’s former aides said that if he wins in November, he would remove the country altogether from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international body that works on climate policy and created the 2015 Paris deal.

When it comes to international relations, Project 2025 calls for an end to spending federal funds to help the world’s poorest countries transition to wind, solar and other renewable energy.

The blueprint also calls for erasing climate change as a national security concern, despite research showing rising sea levels, extreme weather and other consequences of global temperature rise are destabilizing areas of the world, affecting migration and threatening American military installations.

Federal research into climate change would slow or disappear under Project 2025, which recommends dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts some of the world’s leading climate research and is also responsible for weather forecasting and tracking the path of hurricanes and other storms.

NOAA, according to the authors of Project 2025, is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” At the agency’s research operation, which include a network of research laboratories, an undersea research center, and several joint research institutes with universities, “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the blueprint said.

Project 2025 also calls for the president to issue an executive order to “reshape” the program that convenes 13 federal agencies every four years to produce the National Climate Assessment, the country’s most authoritative analysis of climate knowledge. The report is required by Congress and details the impacts and risks of climate change to a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, health care and transportation. It is used by the public, researchers and officials around the country to inform decisions about strategies and spending.

Project 2025 also calls for the elimination of offices at the Department of Energy dedicated to developing wind, solar and other renewable energy.

Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who is now at the University of Colorado Boulder, said downgrading climate science would be a disservice to the nation. “That’s a loss of four years in pursuit of creative solutions,” he said.

As president, Mr. Trump tried to replace top officials with political appointees who denied the existence of climate change and put pressure on federal scientists to water down their conclusions. Scientists refused to change their findings and attempts by the Trump administration to bury climate research were also not successful.

“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” Thomas Armstrong, who led the National Climate Assessment program under the Obama administration, said at the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, adding, “It could have been a lot worse.”

Next time, they would know how to run the government, Mr. Trump’s former officials said. “The difference between the last time and this time is, Donald Trump was president for four years,” Mr. Pyle said. “He will be more prepared.”

#climate change #climate action #global warming #Donald Trump #Trump #politics #us politics #american politics #election 2024 #Republicans don't just not have a plan to fight climate change #they have a plan to make it much worse #the planet is on the line people

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hedgewitchgarden · 4 years ago

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In 1992, a Canadian ecologist named William Rees coined the term “ecological footprint,” a measurement of how much any entity was impacting the planet’s ecology. A decade later, British Petroleum started promoting a new term: “carbon footprint.” In a splashy ad campaign, the company unveiled the first of its many carbon footprint calculators as a way for individuals to measure how their daily actions—what they eat, where they work, how they heat their home—impact global warming.

BP did not adopt the footprint imagery by accident. In the 30 years prior to the carbon footprint campaign, polluting companies had been using advertising to link pollution and climate change to personal choices. These campaigns, most notably the long-running Keep America Beautiful campaign, imply that individuals, rather than corporations, bear the responsibility for change.

“It was done so intentionally,” says Susan Hassol, director of the nonprofit science outreach group Climate Communication. “It’s a deflection.”

The universal adoption of the term “carbon footprint” hasn’t just changed how we speak about climate change. It’s changed how we think about it. Climate change has become an individual problem, caused by our insatiable appetite for consumption, and therefore a war that must be waged on our dinner plates and gas tanks, a hero’s journey from consumer to conservationist.

Yet the reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. Fossil fuel giants are funding climate change skepticism while simultaneously lobbying for tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Big corporate names like Costco and Netflix are loudly committing to reduce emissions but unable to set meaningful targets or put plans in place. The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules and regulations.

The reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact.

The same way that you give your child a toy to play with so you can finish your task uninterrupted, everyday citizens are busy changing out lightbulbs and buying electric cars while the true cause of global warming continues uninterrupted: a civilization dependent on fossil fuels. As Mike Tidwell, the executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, wrote in a 2007 op-ed, “every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief.” A complete paradigm shift is needed—both in the way we conceptualize our individual climate impact and in the ways we calculate the emission impacts of those ultimately responsible: corporations and governmental systems.

One of the challenges with the carbon footprint measurement is how few of the factors an individual controls. Most of us have limited options for where we live, how far we have to commute to get to work, what kind of energy is available to heat our homes, etc. If we don’t own our home (and more than 30% of Americans don’t), we may not be able to properly insulate or install high-efficiency appliances. One research report from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that roughly one third of a city dweller’s carbon footprint is determined by public transportation options and building infrastructure. “We build our cities this way,” Hassol says. “It’s system change that’s really needed so that people have better choices.”

The inadequacy of our carbon footprint as a driver of change is painfully highlighted when you look at single-use plastics. Much attention has been given to how much plastic Americans consume (35.3 million tons per year, enough to fill the 104 million-cubic-foot AT&T Stadium in Dallas every 16 hours) and how each individual should be changing their behavior to help combat this waste. Everywhere you look, there’s a campaign to recycle more, or use metal straws, or bring your own bag to the grocery store.

In contrast, there are no public campaigns about the fact that packaging, an area where consumer control is limited, is the top driver of plastic production by a significant margin. The emissions impact of plastic manufacturing itself is rarely mentioned, along with the fact that much of our recycling still ends up in landfills. Some of the poorest nations are left to deal with hundreds of thousands of tons of soft drink bottles. The plastics are often just incinerated, creating serious environmental and health consequences. It’s a question as to whose carbon footprint is making a deeper impact on the environment: the family whose lettuce comes sealed in plastic (and who pays, not only for the product, but also for the waste collection and management services), or the company that is continuing to package food products in plastic materials, and then opting out of responsibility for their disposal.

Even if we just wanted to measure individual impact on climate change, the carbon footprint falls painfully short: “The current concept of a carbon footprint is too narrowly drawn,” Hassol explains. “It’s only the things I’m actively using and doing in my personal life and it doesn’t draw on other actions that are perhaps more important in the big picture as far as addressing climate change.”

For example, the average American has a carbon footprint of 16 tons. The average individual footprint globally is 4 tons. But that calculation doesn’t include who you vote for, how you invest your money, who you work for (and how much you travel for work, versus for leisure), or how you talk about climate change and influence others to get involved. “All of that should be part of the way we conceptualize our impact,” Hassol says.

Instead of obsessing over a single metric, Cameron Brick, a social psychologist from the University of Amsterdam, says he urges people to have an ongoing and evolving conversation between themselves and their chosen lifestyle. “It’s not a single number, because anytime you pick a metric, then we will begin to game it,” he says. Instead, a minimal-carbon lifestyle is a process—one that involves community-building and continuing to make improvements over time, he says. “My lifestyle is not perfect either, but probably better each year.”

Hassol points out that one of the most important ways that an individual can impact emissions on a wider scale is also the hardest to calculate: social contagion. “When people do something, it affects others around them and their emissions,” she says.

Studies have shown that energy-related behaviors are heavily influenced by peer groups, even more than cost or convenience. A study in California showed that every time a solar panel was installed within a certain ZIP code, the probability of another installation in that area increased by 0.78%. Similarly, if you know somebody who has given up flying because of climate change, you are 50% more likely to also reduce your own air travel.

“Your individual footprint is not the full measure of your contribution because you’re encouraging other people through your personal actions,” explains Hassol. She recommends that people who want to do more should research community solar options and ways to buy into clean energy in their communities, and then publicize those options among their families, friends and social networks, in order to create that initial momentum for change.

But what could system change look like? For starters, using measurements that actually hold the decision makers responsible for their emissions impacts, for the entire lifecycle of their product or service. That might look like Big Soda being held accountable not only for the manufacturing and transportation of their single-use plastics, but also for each and every bottle that ends up in somebody’s recycling bin (Coca-Cola is the top producer of plastic waste in the world). The shift also might look like emissions information being printed on product labels and unbiased regulatory bodies certifying the accuracy of corporate emissions reports.

On the policy level, interest in a carbon tax is growing. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act was reintroduced in Congress this year (as Senate bill 984 and House Resolution 2238), and would force a temporary moratorium on virgin plastic production, require minimum recycled content, and ban some single-use plastic food service items. Many states already have some form of a producer responsibility program, where the producer of hard-to-dispose products such as paints, batteries, and other hazardous materials, must finance proper disposal. This creates an incentive to design reusable or less-toxic products.

When we shift the focus from changing consumer behavior to changing producer behavior, we see where true change happens: in corporate boardrooms and among political leaders. The irony of the carbon footprint is that individual action does have the power to change the world, just not on the lightbulb and recycling level.

“This problem is too big to solve voluntarily one person at a time,” Hassol says. “We need to change the system and you have a role in changing that system.”

#The Fallacy of Our Carbon Footprint #big oil #plastics #environmentalism

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rjzimmerman · 5 years ago

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Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Police violence and pollution are more connected than you might realize — and they have financial ties too. A new investigation documents how the fossil fuel industry finances police groups in major U.S. cities while polluting majority Black and brown communities.

The report from the Public Accountability Initiative and LittleSis, a nonprofit corporate and government accountability research institute, details how oil and gas companies are funding police foundations around the country, from New Orleans to Detroit. In some states, the fossil fuel industry has also supported laws to criminalize pipeline protests.

According to the report, the oil giant Chevron is a “Corporate Partner of the Police” for the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation and a board member of police foundations in Houston and Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, community members in Richmond, California, a city that is disproportionately Black, have been fighting against pollution produced by one of Chevron’s biggest refineries.

It’s not just oil and gas companies; the report also looks into private utilities and financial institutions with fossil fuel investments. Exelon, the country’s largest utility company, which in 2019 settled a pollution lawsuit in the Chesapeake Bay for $200 million, has donated to police foundations in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. JPMorgan Chase, the top global bank financing fossil fuels, is also a corporate partner for the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation, and in 2011 donated $4.6 million to the NYC Police Foundation. Wells Fargo, the second biggest financier of fossil fuels, has ties to police foundations in Charlotte, Seattle, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City.

These police foundations raise money to buy weapons, equipment, and surveillance technology for police departments. That funding comes on top of the $100 billion spent nationally on policing every year; major cities in America typically spend 20 to 47 percent of their general budgets on police departments. Because they’re nonprofits, police foundations generally receive less scrutiny — the lack of transparency around these donations makes it hard to tell exactly which companies are giving to police foundations and how much. The new report is based on information from companies’ charitable giving reports, press releases, tax forms, and materials from police foundations.

#police #fossil fuel industry

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phroyd · 6 years ago

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A federal judge in Alaska has declared that President Trump’s order revoking a sweeping ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal, putting 128 million acres of federal waters off limits to energy exploration.

The decision late Friday by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason is the third legal setback this week to Trump’s energy and environmental policies. The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2012, also on Friday blocked a land swap the Interior Department had arranged that would pave the way for constructing a road through wilderness in a major national wildlife refuge in Alaska.

Earlier in the week, U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock, who was appointed by President Reagan, ruled that Interior's Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service illegally approved two gas drilling plans in western Colorado. The judge said officials did not adequately analyze wildlife and climate impacts in their plans — which were challenged by a coalition of environmental groups — to drill 171 wells in North Fork Valley, which provides key habitat for elk and mule deer.

Trump’s rollbacks of Obama-era conservation policies have suffered nearly two dozen setbacks in federal court, largely on procedural grounds. Though the administration is appealing many of these decisions and holds an advantage if the cases reach the Supreme Court, the rulings have slowed the president’s drive to expand fossil fuel production in the United States.

Earlier this month, for example, a federal judge halted drilling on more than 300,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Wyoming. Friday’s decision on offshore drilling could affect a five-year leasing plan the administration intends to issue in the summer, as well as block the six offshore lease sales it proposed to schedule in the Arctic Ocean starting as early as this year. The decision Friday applies to 98% of the Arctic Ocean, as well as undersea canyons in the Atlantic spanning 3.8 million acres, stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to New England.

“President Trump’s lawlessness is catching up with him,” Erik Grafe of Earthjustice said in a statement Friday. Grafe was the lead attorney from the environmental law organization who argued to reinstate Obama’s leasing withdrawals in the Arctic and Atlantic.

“The judge’s ruling today shows that the president cannot just trample on the Constitution to do the bidding of his cronies in the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our oceans, wildlife, and climate,” he said.

Industry officials, however, said the administration could forge ahead with its offshore drilling process as litigation continued. They also noted that the withdrawals did not cover the entire Eastern Seaboard.

“While we disagree with the decision, our nation still has a significant opportunity before us in the development of the next offshore leasing plan to truly embrace our nation’s energy potential and ensure American consumers and businesses continue to benefit from U.S. energy leadership,” said Erik Milito, vice president of upstream and industry operations for the American Petroleum Institute.

But Grafe noted that the five-year plan the administration intends to issue this year sets a schedule for lease sales, which is now barred in the areas designated by Obama.

"I think they'd have a hard time scheduling a lease sale in a place that's now permanently off-limits," he said.

The Interior Department declined to comment Saturday.

In her Friday ruling, Gleason wrote that the law in which Congress gave the president authority over offshore drilling — the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act — expressly allows for leasing withdrawals but does not state that a subsequent president can revoke those withdrawals without congressional approval.

“As a result, the previous three withdrawals issued on January 27, 2015 and December 20, 2016 will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress,” she wrote.

Rebecca Logan, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, said in an email that members of her oil and gas trade group did not see the decision as the final word.

"Anything done by administrative action can be undone by administrative action," Logan said.

In a separate decision earlier in the day, Gleason found that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not provide sufficient justification for reversing the government’s stance on whether to allow a small, remote Alaska town to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

Residents of King Cove have argued for years that they need to bisect the refuge, which has been protected for decades and provides a crucial rest stop for migratory waterfowl, for medical evacuations under rough weather.

In a statement Friday, local leaders there vowed to continue their fight.

“The people of King Cove deserve to have access to a higher level of care, especially when the unforgiving weather prevents them from traveling from their isolated community by air or boat,” said Aleutians East Borough Mayor Alvin Osterback. “This land exchange would have accomplished that.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also promised to continue pushing for building the road, which otherwise would be prohibited in a wilderness area. “I will never stop until this road is a reality and the nearly 1,000 residents of this isolated community have a lifeline for emergency medical care,” she said.

Opponents counter that the federal government has provided millions of dollars in funding to give town residents alternative forms of transport, and warn that a road would fragment critical habitat. They also cite expert testimony that any road through the refuge would be impassable during snowstorms.

“Here, the Secretary’s failure to acknowledge the change in agency policy and his failure to provide a reasoned explanation for that change in policy are serious errors,” Gleason wrote.

Phroyd

#donald trump #barack obama #lisa murkowski #environmentalism

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 6 years ago

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As Risky Finances Alienate Investors, Fracking Companies Look to Retirement Funds for Cash

Digital Elixir As Risky Finances Alienate Investors, Fracking Companies Look to Retirement Funds for Cash

Jerri-Lynn here. Just the latest installment in DeSmogBlog’s ongoing coverage of fracking follies. The still unprofitable industry now turns to pension funds and private equity for capital. What could possibly go wrong?

By Sharon Kelly, an attorney and freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She has reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, National Wildlife, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other publications. Originally published at DeSmogBlog.

A year ago, Chesapeake Energy, at one time the nation’s largest natural gas producer, announced it was selling off its Ohio Utica shale drilling rights in a $2 billion deal with a little-known private company based in Houston, Texas, Encino Acquisition Partners.

For Chesapeake, the deal offered a way to pay off some of its debts, incurred as its former CEO, “Shale King“Aubrey McClendon, led Chesapeake on a disastrous shale drilling spree. Shares of Chesapeake Energy, which in the early days of the fracking boom traded in the $20 to $30 a share range, are now valued at a little more than $1.50.

Encino has marketed itself as a stable source of long-term returns (something the industry overall has struggled so far to create), attracting the managers of one of the world’s largest pension funds to drill and frack the land that Chesapeake sold off to repay its enormous debts from fracking nationwide.

A Unique Model’ for Shale Drillers

Chesapeake, of course, is not alone in discovering that shale drilling can be financially disastrous for investors. In 2018, the top 29 shale producers spent $6.69 billion more than they earned from operations, an April report by Reuters concluded — a spending record racked up two years after investors began pushing shale drillers to start turning a profit. In December 2017, the Wall Street Journal found that shale producers had spent $280 billion more than the oil and gas they sold was worth between 2007 and 2017, the first 10 years of the shale drilling rush.

“We lost the growth investors,” Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield recently told the Journal. “Now we’ve got to attract a whole other set of investors.”

Encino, which bought up Chesapeake Energy’s 900,000 acres of drilling rights in Ohio’s Utica shale in that $2 billion deal, may have found its “other” investors: the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which manages retirement funds on behalf of the Canada Pension Plan.

Ray Walker, Encino Energy, starts the #DUGEast Conference off in a fireside chat with host Richard Mason. Walker says the Utica will really surprise people going forward. Encino has 900,000 acres in Ohio. “We have a lot of running room.” pic.twitter.com/SA0l3PgnCS

— Hart Energy Events (@HartEnergyConf) 19 June 2019

“We’re not your typical private equity company in that the Canada pension plan is I think the third largest pension plan in the world,” Ray Walker, Encino’s chief operating officer, told attendees at last month’s DUG East shale industry conference in Pittsburgh. “They have a long-term view on capital and they don’t expect their funds to start declining — in other words more people [in Canada] are putting in today than will be taking out, and they don’t expect that to flip til 2050-plus.”

“So, it’s a unique model and it’s something I had not ever run across in the industry,” Walker, who served as chief operating officer for the gas drilling company Range Resources until early 2018, added. “It’s what really attracted me to come out of retirement, to do something different and a little bit more exciting and a long-term — really long-term view.”

“Patient money,” responded moderator Richard Mason.

“Yeah,” Walker replied with a laugh.

“Who’d have ever thought, right?” said Mason.

Long-Term Investments as the Climate Changes

The Canada Pension Plan — often compared to the U.S.Social Security system — is funded by mandatory contributions from workers’ wages that generally begin at age 18 and end at age 65. The CPPIBinvests that money on behalf of the plan.

Last May, Mark Machin, the chief executive officer of the CPPIB, pledged to start taking the risks associated with climate change more seriously.

“We’re going to make a huge push on it this year,” he told the Calgary Herald. “We want to do a much better job of being able to understand the risks that we’re taking on in each investment and the risks we have embedded in the portfolio, and make sure we’re being paid for them.”

As part of our climate change work, we’re a strong Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures supporter and one of two stand-alone pension fund managers that are members. Their new report shows nearly 800 organizations support TCFD’s recommendations. https://t.co/cC2O0GYyaY

— CPPIB (@cppib) 7 June 2019

As the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt around the globe, watchdog groups have pushed pension fund managers to keep in mind the ways that climate change will impact the global economy in the coming years and decades.

“Pension funds have legal obligations related to their fiduciary duties, to consider long and medium-term risks, such as those related to climate change that could have adverse effects on their investments,” the Global Initiative for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights wrote in an April 17 report. “Such risks include physical impacts of climate change on pension fund assets and investments, but also the increasingly evident risk of stranded assets and the associated legal risks of failing to address the climate-related risks.”

Other large pension funds have concluded that the oil and gas industry carries too much economic risk to make for a sound long-term investment — even without taking climate change into account. This March, Norway’s $1 trillion Government Pension Fund Global announced that it would be divesting from oil and gas exploration firms, a move affecting $7.125 billion worth of its holdings.

“The objective is to reduce the vulnerability of our common wealth to a permanent oil price decline,”Norway’s finance minister, Siv Jensen, told The Guardian as the move was announced.

Most of the money in Norway’s sovereign wealth fund comes from the profits it derives from oil and gas production. The decision to drop certain oil & gas investments isn’t based on climate change but fear of price volatility in oil and gas stocks. https://t.co/WDqG0Yy43r

— Mark Hand (@MarkFHand) 11 March 2019

Outside observers have specifically warned that pension plans that invest in shale companies might wind up with regrets.

While the shale drilling industry’s financial instability may not be so large as to pose an overall risk to the financial system, “I think there’s risk to pension plans that are pouring their money into private equity firms, which in turn are pouring billions into shale companies,” Bethany McLean, author of the book Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It’s Changing the World, told E&E News in a September 2018 interview. McLean is also widely credited as the first financial reporter to take a critical look at energy company Enron before its collapse.

In addition to the long-term risks that all fossil fuel companies face from the drive to keep oil, coal, and gas in the ground and prevent catastrophic climate change, shale drilling companies face some unique long-term risks.

Many shale drillers told investors that they plan to drill multiple wells — in some cases 20 or more wells — from the same well-pad. But the industry has discovered that those later wells, called “child” wells, often perform worse than the first well drilled, called a “parent” well.

“It’s something we’re all trying to synthesize,” Encino’s Walker said in Pittsburgh as he discussed parent-child well interference. “There’s still a whole lot of learning curve to go through. But I think the one thing that everybody is noticing, probably even more so in West Texas than up here, is that parent-child relationship is playing a huge role in the recoverable reserves. In other words, the second, third, fourth well are not anywhere near as good as the first well.”

A Gamble on Shale

The stock markets and banks have become increasing unfriendly places for shale drilling companies as the oil and gas industry has under-performed compared to other parts of the economy. This has left drilling companies hunting for capital to fund continued drilling — and they are increasingly turning to so-called private equity — a category covering both private investors like Warren Buffett and asset managers like pension funds.

Drilling companies plan to source 40 percent of their capital for 2019 from private equity funds, according to a recent survey by Haynes and Boone, compared to 26 percent from selling the oil and gas they produce, 21 percent borrowed from banks, and 12 percent in debt and equity from capital markets like Wall Street.

Privately held companies like Encino are more opaque than publicly traded oil and gas companies because they generally are not required to make their financial information public. That means there’s little publicly available information about how private shale drilling companies have performed over the past decade. And every shale drilling company has unique financial prospects, based on a broad array of factors that include the amount it spent to acquire drilling rights, its drilling and fracking costs, and the amount of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids it can tap.

Encino did not respond to questions sent by DeSmog. “Our assets generate strong cash flow, we have modest debt, and we support our development activities with a robust commodity hedging program,” the company says on its website.

A wellpad in Carroll County, Ohio. Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance

Canada’s pension fund praised Encino’s acquisition of Chesapeake Energy’s acreage in Ohio when that deal was announced. “We are pleased to support EAP’s [Encino Acquisition Partners’] acquisition of these highly attractive Utica shale assets, which provides CPPIB with meaningful exposure to a leading North American natural gas play and aligns with the growing focus on energy transition,” said Avik Dey, managing director and head of energy and resources at the CPPIB.

Others saw the deal as carrying a significant degree of risk. Moody’s Investor Services rated debt associated with Encino’s Utica deal at B2. “A B2 rating is deep into junk status and means there’s a very significant chance you’ll end up in default,” Axios explains. Moody’s rated the overall probability of default one notch higher at B1.

For its part, Encino predicts that it can do better in the Utica than Chesapeake Energy could — not just in terms of individual well performance, but also in avoiding the boom-bust cycle for which the oil and gas industry is notorious.

“All of that is part of a longer-term strategy to run this as a normal business that needs to be profitable, less volatile, and therefore better for its shareholders, its employees, and the community,” Encino CEO Hardy Murchison told an Ohio newspaper after a talk at Kent State University in March.

Chief operating officer Walker sounded a similar note at the DUG East conference this June.

“Pretty excited about what we’re seeing, the economics are very favorable,” Walker said at the industry conference. “So, Chesapeake did a great job of setting this up, but we’ve got a lot of running room going forward.”

As Risky Finances Alienate Investors, Fracking Companies Look to Retirement Funds for Cash

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Small Donations Aiming to Make a Large Splash Brett Howell, a program supervisor at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, has discovered a method to make use of his small household basis to tackle environmental points which have a huge impact. He was one of many leaders of a 2019 mission to scrub up Henderson Island, an atoll within the South Pacific that has the best focus of plastic air pollution on the planet. The island, a U.N. world historic website, is uninhabited however sits in the midst of a present that carries ocean particles. Mr. Howell additionally began a means of working with different organizations to determine the right way to maintain the plastic from filling up the seashore once more. “I got here at this from the method of I do know a ton about this, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work,” he stated. “Plastic air pollution within the ocean is a visible picture of local weather change.” The difficulty of local weather change could appear too overwhelming for people to have a lot affect. Certain, folks can recycle, perhaps dial again the thermostat to avoid wasting warmth. However even governments with limitless sources wrestle to take significant steps. But some smaller foundations, just like the Howell Conservation Fund, try to problem this narrative and focus their vitality and sources on one small space of the atmosphere within the hope that it’ll have a significant affect. “Philanthropy is a lot greater than cash,” stated Henry Berman, the chief government of Exponent Philanthropy, which works with small foundations. “Relationships, experience, pulling folks collectively — these are all components of the puzzle to make issues work. You don’t must be Invoice Gates or Mike Bloomberg to make it work.” Mr. Howell contributed simply 10 % of the 2019 operation’s $300,000 value — the return journey this 12 months was canceled. However he introduced folks along with more cash and totally different experience. “For those who’re hyper-focused, you possibly can punch above your weight,” he stated. A number of rules unite these small foundations of their efforts to gradual local weather change or make a distinction in an area ecosystem. Believing in and speaking concerning the science behind local weather change is, not stunning, the start line. However these smaller foundations have typically discovered that they must take a job in bringing collectively different teams of all sizes. The Campbell Basis, which is predicated in Baltimore, has centered on the poor well being of the Chesapeake Bay for over 20 years. Final 12 months, it made $18 million in grants to some 200 organizations, however it additionally recurrently brings collectively the varied pursuits across the waterway, together with farmers, fishermen and conservationists. One large situation has been the runoff into the water from rooster waste. “It’s me going round and assembly folks,” stated Sarah Campbell, the president of the inspiration, which her father began. “That form of effort to listen to all sides actually counts. “I say it’s not simply conservation for conservation’s sake,” she added. “It’s about the advantages to folks of a wholesome atmosphere.” As the one American on the expedition to Henderson Island, Mr. Howell needed to do one thing comparable. “You must convey collectively very disparate teams,” he stated. Enterprise & Economic system Up to date Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ET Different members of the expedition staff centered on analysis to know the place the plastic was coming from and the right way to recycle a few of it. And a few centered on getting out the phrase on how a pristine island was overwhelmed by plastic. Some smaller environmental organizations additionally attempt to educate folks outdoors environmental circles. Ms. Campbell acknowledges that her group’s efforts haven’t essentially improved areas of the Chesapeake Bay, however she reveals that with out training efforts, it may have been a lot worse. “There are a variety of stressors on the bay,” she stated. “However it will be worse if we hadn’t been there. It’s not an empty Chesapeake Bay space. It’s a vibrant area with a lot of folks.” And foundations which are deeply educated, and care, a couple of particular situation can elevate it to native and state authorities officers. The Virginia Environmental Endowment was created out of a authorized settlement over a pollutant that was illegally discharged into the James River within the Nineteen Seventies. That pollutant shut down fishing on the river for over a decade. Joseph H. Maroon, the endowment’s government director, stated it used its grants to spotlight what different nonprofit teams had been doing. It additionally makes use of its sources to foyer on environmental points within the state, significantly involving its waterways. “We haven’t been afraid to be engaged in public coverage points,” Mr. Maroon stated. Foundations can even push for change at giant, publicly traded corporations by investing property after which submitting motions as a shareholder in an organization. “Small foundations are sometimes the named shareholders in shareholder advocacy proposals,” stated Sada Geuss, an funding supervisor at Trillium Asset Administration, which has a shareholder advocacy division that works with purchasers to create these motions. Ms. Geuss stated typical areas included filings to scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions and to replace the kind of chemical substances an organization makes use of. Trillium’s basis purchasers had been named on motions a couple of years in the past to push House Depot to promote extra sustainable lumber and to cease utilizing on crops it bought a chemical that has been linked to the decline of bee colonies, she stated. “For a few of these smaller organizations, they’ll discuss to their donors about this engagement,” Ms. Geuss stated. “It’s one thing they’ll dangle their hat on. We’ve seen them speak about how they’re amplifying their affect in fund-raising pitches.” The shareholder actions, when profitable, can have a major affect — think about how a lot lumber and what number of crops House Depot sells. The cash utilized in such campaigns may in any other case have sat in an endowment. Even foundations that don’t need to develop into a part of a shareholder movement can take steps to make sure that their investments align with their values. These steps might be as direct as investing in clean-energy corporations or extra oblique, like investing in corporations that make merchandise that can assist different corporations develop into extra environment friendly. Foundations can develop into selective in the kind of fixed-income investments they purchase, paying specific consideration to what the proceeds from the sale of those bonds are used for. “Our analyst who covers fossil fuels all the time reminds us that the transition goes to be financed by debt,” Ms. Geuss stated. “Increasingly, we are able to focus in on inexperienced bonds and sustainable bonds to amplify affect.” Beth Renner, head of philanthropic companies for Wells Fargo Personal Financial institution, stated her group was reaching out to purchasers to debate these choices earlier than the purchasers requested about them. One factor a basis of any dimension can do is take advantage of “5 and 95,” Ms. Renner stated. Foundations are required to make grants of a minimum of 5 % of their property annually, however they’ll assume simply as strategically concerning the 95 % of their property which are invested. “How do the property that sit in investments assist additional the mission and the realm of focus?” she stated. “It’s a better degree of consciousness in philanthropy proper now.” The Edwards Mom Earth Basis in Seattle has been utilizing that technique for years. With $35 million in property, it makes grants of about $2 million a 12 months. However the basis, which focuses on slowing local weather change, has its portfolio of private and non-private investments in areas like clear tech and sustainable agriculture. “There are 150 relations, they usually made a dedication to doing affect investing,” stated Bruce Reed, the inspiration’s operations director. “We’ve made bets on some early-stage clear tech corporations that we received’t know for one more decade or 15 years in the event that they’re going to work.” Mr. Howell stated he was capable of work inside Coca-Cola to push for using a trash lure that collects plastic waste earlier than it results in the ocean. Final fall, one was put in in a river in Atlanta. “I went to my boss at Coca-Cola, they usually let me run with it,” he stated. The lesson, he stated, from that was: “Don’t be afraid to begin one thing new.” Supply hyperlink #Aiming #Big #Donations #Small #splash

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infolibrary · 6 years ago

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Top 10 Fascinating Facts Gleaned From Old Teeth

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Top 10 Fascinating Facts Gleaned From Old Teeth

When looking for the ick factor, old teeth are the best. Nothing beats scores of cavity-ridden teeth inside the subway or fangs stitched into a Stone Age purse.

As curious as gruesome finds are, ancient teeth are not just about the gore. In recent times, they rewrote Egyptian jobs, proved that dinosaurs migrated, and finally gave scientists a bead on what our mysterious relatives, the extinct Denisovans, looked like.

10 The Subway Teeth

Photo credit: Live Science

In 2018, an excavation found teeth in Australia. It was not a dozen molars unearthed in a cave somewhere. All sorts littered a Melbourne subway, numbering over 1,000.

Thankfully, it was not a crime scene. The teeth had been discarded by several 20th-century dentists, including J.J. Forster who had an office at 11 Swanston Street. He pulled teeth from 1898 to the 1930s, a time when cocaine was used to make patients happy before an extraction. There were also dentures and a tooth patched with a gold filling.

Many showed the true reason for visiting the practice—enormous cavities. The holes must have been agonizing, but that was just the start. Despite Forster’s 1924 newspaper ad that promised to “[remove] teeth truthfully without pain,” dentists of the time approached a doomed tooth with forceps.

How did the teeth end up in the subway?

Their location was a good clue. Found inside an iron pipe and the surrounding soil, the dentists probably flushed the teeth down a drain to get rid of them.

9 The Megalodon Evolution Mystery

Photo credit: Live Science

A 2019 study examined an ancient predator that never fails to capture the imagination. Megalodon was the largest shark in existence, and its teeth were serrated nightmares.

The researchers were curious about how megalodon’s psychotic teeth became so perfect for the job. They turned to 359 fossil teeth. The collection hailed from Chesapeake Bay in Maryland where the land was once a prehistoric ocean. The study found that megalodon’s teeth were a slow acquisition. Remarkably, evolution designed it over millions of years.

The process went something like this. Otodus obliquus, the oldest ancestor of megalodon, terrorized the sea between 60 and 40 million years ago. Their jaws had “cusplets,” tiny teeth on both sides of larger teeth. It was basically a three-pronged affair that gripped and mutilated prey.[2]

Some of the Maryland teeth belonged to Carcharocles chubutensis, an immediate ancestor. Comparing their teeth to megalodon’s showed that the cusplets took millions of years to disappear while serrations evolved on the main tooth. Scientists still cannot explain why the process took so long or why the cusplet feature vanished.

8 Oldest Right-handedness

Photo credit: sciencealert.com

Around 1.8 million years ago, a hominid damaged its front teeth. The individual belonged to the species Homo habilis, a member of the human family tree. Its fossilized remains turned up in Tanzania in 1995. A later study from 2016 found that the dental damage championed an unusual trend—right-handedness.

The scientists who examined the grooves felt that they were caused by feeding habits. More precisely, the primate used its teeth to anchor food while gripping it in one hand and sawing away at it with a stone tool in the other. A few times, the tool overreached and scratched the enamel. The orientation of the marks suggested that the hand using the tool—thus the creature’s dominant hand—was the right one.

This is the oldest such evidence in the archaeological record and the first of many fossils that might prove that right-handedness has always been more prevalent. The researchers are tentatively hoping for more. Since genetics and certain brain regions determine “lefties” and “righties,” understanding more about the history of human hands and brains can perhaps solve why there are fewer left-handed people in the world.

7 A Mosasaur Scuffle

Photo credit: Live Science

Miners found an ancient predator in 2012. Discovered in Alberta, Canada, the creature was a mosasaur. These reptiles resembled dolphins and lived in the ocean. The specimen reached an intimidating 6.5 meters (21 ft) in length.

Scientists found a tooth stuck in the animal’s lower jaw that had come from another mosasaur. Around 75 million years ago, the two predators had a nasty encounter. The attacker came at an angle from below and bit its opponent’s face three times on the left side. One bite was so hard that a tooth got pulled and stayed behind in the wounded mosasaur’s jawbone.

Previous fossils showed that mosasaurs ate each other, but this lucky duck survived. It also represents the first nonfatal fight between mosasaurs in the fossil record. The wounds healed. However, another unidentified species bit the same mosasaur on the right side of the skull. The incomplete healing showed that it died shortly afterward.

6 Evidence For Dinosaur Migration

Photo credit: Fred Wierum

Theories suggested that some dinosaur species felt a seasonal urge to travel, but there was no evidence. In 2011, that changed. Scientists examined the teeth of sauropods, enormous herbivores that lost their snappers in Utah and Wyoming.

Both states are low-altitude regions. But when the researchers analyzed the teeth for oxygen-18 isotopes, they found something interesting. The signature of the isotopes came from a high-altitude environment.

During the sauropods’ lifetimes, western North America had wet and dry seasons. For an animal that was basically a giant, the dry period would not have provided enough food or water.

It would appear that the creatures migrated over 560 kilometers (350 mi) to find sustenance in the highlands. While staying there, the isotopes settled in their enamel.

The dinosaurs shed their teeth every five or six months, and in this case, the scientists were lucky to find the highlands’ isotopes in teeth lost at a low altitude. It gave the first direct evidence that certain dinosaurs migrated.

5 Humanity’s Ratlike Ancestors

Photo credit: sciencealert.com

In 2017, an undergraduate combed Dorset for inspiration for his dissertation. Mainly searching for fossils, he found and took two teeth to the University of Portsmouth for identification. Researchers at the university recognized them straight away and were more than a little shocked.

The teeth had come from mammals that lived 145 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. The creatures belonged to two new species, Durlstotherium newmani and Durlstodon ensomi. Their group, Eutheria, became the most successful mammal family that led to all placental mammals.

The newness of the two ratlike species was not the surprise. Instead, it was the age of the fossils. They resembled those of animals that lived 60 million years later. Despite being much older, the “rats” were not an underdeveloped prototype. The teeth showed that the mammals used their teeth like tools to cut and crush food. This was a highly advanced feature for the time.

The teeth also came from older adults, indicating how adept the species was at surviving. Interestingly, as the oldest undisputed Eutherians, they were also the earliest mammalian ancestors of humans ever found.

4 An Egyptian Craftswoman

Photo credit: sciencealert.com

The records of ancient Egypt are more detailed than most extinct cultures. As scholars studied texts, paintings, and other sources, they concluded that women had only seven professions. They included priestesses, dancers, singers, musicians, mourners, weavers, and midwives.

A 2019 study reviewed the body of a woman who died 4,000 years ago and was buried at Mendes, a city that was once ancient Egypt’s capital. Her high-status grave was originally found in the 1970s. The woman was around 50 years old when she died, and her teeth held a surprise for researchers.

On 16 of her teeth, there was damage unrelated to eating. Instead, it showed another profession open to Egyptian women. The lines were consistent with craftspeople, who used their teeth while working with plant material.

The analysis convinced the researchers that she was a highly respected craftswoman who probably shaped papyrus into vessels, curtains, mats, and sandals. Only the outer rind of the stalk was used to produce the items. If she used her teeth to remove the bark, it explained the marks.

3 The Eppelsheim Teeth

Photo credit: sciencealert.com

In 2016, two teeth turned up close to Eppelsheim. The German town was known for producing regional fossils, but this find was exceptional if only for the division it caused among experts.

The molar and canine tooth were well-preserved, a remarkable feat when considering the claim of those who said they were 10 million years old. If confirmed, the age and location will change our view of human history.

The canine tooth, in particular, resembles those of primitive human ancestors. Therein lies the controversy. Similar teeth had been found only in Africa, and those were millions of years younger.

The accepted timeline of human history states that people evolved in Africa and migrated to Asia and Europe around 100,000 years ago. The ancient pair suggested that an unknown branch of humanity evolved in Europe independently of Africa.

The archaeologists who found the teeth supported this theory and claimed that they were from the same individual. Experts in the other corner believe that the teeth came from two species belonging to a broader collection of primates instead of a mysterious human line.

2 A Tooth-Studded Purse

Photo credit: National Geographic

Modern accessories glitter with everything from gems to sequins. During Germany’s Stone Age, however, high fashion was more enamel and less emerald. Dog teeth graced necklaces and hair ornaments for men and women. But one artifact topped them all.

In 2012, an archaeological dig near Leipzig opened a grave and found what could be the world’s oldest purse. Although the original material or leather had decomposed, its gruesome decorations remained. Made between 2500 and 2200 BC, the designer added over 100 dog teeth from dozens of animals.

The pieces were tightly packed in rows and all pointing the same way. The arrangement’s shape suggested that the dental bling once decorated the bag’s flap. Even for a time when canine accessories were common, the handbag was a rare find.

However, it was not the first object studded in this manner. Other Stone Age graves have produced patterns of wolf and dog teeth that once studded blankets, which have since fallen apart and disappeared.

1 New Denisovan Information

Photo credit: taipeitimes.com

The Denisovans represent another branch on the human tree. Their existence only came to light when bone fragments and teeth were found a few years ago inside a Siberian cave. Although DNA showed they were once widespread in Asia and Europe, the species remained mysterious.

Discovering additional Denisovan remains became the grail for archaeologists, but few knew that a spectacular piece had already been found during the 1980s. A monk had entered a cave on the Tibetan plateau and saw a human jawbone. He passed it on to a living Buddha, who eventually gave it to the researchers. Their study was groundbreaking.

Released in 2019, it gave valuable information about the Denisovans after the team extracted proteins from one of the 160,000-year-old molars. The results showed that Denisovans had a more primitive appearance than Neanderthals. This was backed up by the powerful jaw and unusually robust teeth.

The most remarkable was the gene that allowed them to live at freezingly high altitudes without succumbing to hypoxia. This explains why certain Tibetan populations today inherited Denisovan genes and rarely suffer from low-oxygen conditions

#Ancestors #dinosaur #Eppelsheim #migration #Mosasaur #teeth

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2whatcom-blog · 6 years ago

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The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons

Fifty years in the past, College of California professor Garrett Hardin penned an influential essay within the journal Science. Hardin noticed all people as egocentric herders: we fear that our neighbors' cattle will graze one of the best grass. So, we ship extra of our cows out to eat that grass first. We take it first, earlier than another person steals our share. This creates a vicious cycle of environmental degradation that Hardin described because the "tragedy of the commons." It is exhausting to overstate Hardin's affect on trendy environmentalism. His views are taught throughout ecology, economics, political science and environmental research. His essay stays an instructional blockbuster, with nearly 40,000 citations. It nonetheless will get republished in outstanding environmental anthologies. However listed here are some inconvenient truths: Hardin was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe. He's listed by the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle as a identified white nationalist. His writings and political activism helped encourage the anti-immigrant hatred spilling throughout America as we speak. And he promoted an concept he known as "lifeboat ethics": since international sources are finite, Hardin believed the wealthy ought to throw poor individuals overboard to maintain their boat above water. To create a simply and vibrant local weather future, we have to as a substitute solid Hardin and his flawed metaphor overboard. Individuals who revisit Hardin's unique essay are in for a shock. Its six pages are full of fear-mongering. Subheadings proclaim that "freedom to breed is intolerable." It opines at size about the advantages if "children of improvident parents starve to death." Just a few paragraphs later Hardin writes: "If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." And on and on. Hardin virtually requires a fascist state to snuff out undesirable gene swimming pools. Or construct a wall to maintain immigrants out. Hardin was a virulent nativist whose concepts impressed a few of as we speak's ugliest anti-immigrant sentiment. He believed that solely racially homogenous societies may survive. He was additionally concerned with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a hate group that now cheers President Trump's racist insurance policies. Immediately, American neo-Nazis cite Hardin's theories to justify racial violence. These weren't mere phrases on paper. Hardin lobbied Congress towards sending meals assist to poor nations, as a result of he believed their populations had been threatening Earth's "carrying capacity." After all, loads of flawed individuals have left behind noble concepts. That Hardin's tragedy was superior as a part of a white nationalist undertaking mustn't routinely condemn its deserves. However the information aren't on Hardin's facet. For one, he obtained the historical past of the commons flawed. As Susan Cox identified, early pastures had been effectively regulated by native establishments. They weren't free-for-all grazing websites the place individuals took and took on the expense of everybody else. Many international commons have been equally sustained by means of group establishments. This placing discovering was the life's work of Elinor Ostrom, who received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics (technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel). Utilizing the instruments of science--rather than the instruments of hatred--Ostrom confirmed the variety of establishments people have created to handle our shared atmosphere. After all, people can deplete finite sources. This typically occurs once we lack acceptable establishments to handle them. However let's not credit score Hardin for that widespread perception. Hardin wasn't making an knowledgeable scientific case. As a substitute, he was utilizing issues about environmental shortage to justify racial discrimination. We should reject his pernicious concepts on each scientific and ethical grounds. Environmental sustainability can not exist with out environmental justice. Are we actually ready to comply with Hardin and say there are solely so many lead pipes we will substitute? Solely so many our bodies that needs to be shielded from cancer-causing pollution? Solely so many kids whose futures matter? That is significantly vital once we take care of local weather change. Regardless of what Hardin may need mentioned, the local weather disaster is just not a tragedy of the commons. The perpetrator is just not our particular person impulses to eat fossil fuels to the damage of all. And the answer is to not let small islands in Chesapeake Bay or entire nations within the Pacific sink into the previous, with out a seat on our planetary lifeboat. As a substitute, rejecting Hardin's analysis requires us to call the true perpetrator for the local weather disaster we now face. Thirty years in the past, a special future was obtainable. Gradual local weather insurance policies may have slowly steered our economic system in direction of gently declining carbon air pollution ranges. The prices to most Individuals would have been imperceptible. However that future was stolen from us. It was stolen by highly effective, carbon-polluting pursuits who blocked coverage reforms at each flip to protect their short-term earnings. They locked every of us into an economic system the place fossil gasoline consumption continues to be a necessity, not a alternative. That is what makes assaults on particular person habits so counterproductive. Sure, it is nice to drive an electrical car (for those who can afford it) and buy photo voltaic panels (if highly effective utilities in your state have not conspired to make renewable power dearer). However the level is that curiosity teams have structured the alternatives obtainable to us as we speak. People haven't got the company to steer our financial ship from the passenger deck. As Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes reminds us, " wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocrites ... it just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, and they knew it. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes." Or as Consultant Alexandria Ocasio Cortez tweeted: "Living in the world as it is isn't an argument against working towards a better future." The reality is that two-thirds of all of the carbon air pollution ever launched into the ambiance could be traced to the actions of simply ninety corporations. These firms' efforts to efficiently thwart local weather motion are the true tragedy. We're left with little or no time. We want political leaders to pilot our economic system by means of a interval of fast financial transformation, on a grand scale unseen because the Second World Struggle. And to get there, we're going to have ensure our leaders take heed to us, not--as my colleagues and I present in our research--fossil gasoline corporations. Hope requires us to start out from an unconditional dedication to at least one one other, as passengers aboard a typical lifeboat being rattled by heavy winds. The local weather motion wants extra individuals on this lifeboat, not fewer. We should make room for each human if we're going to construct the political energy essential to face down the looming oil tankers and coal barges that ship heavy waves in our path. This can be a dedication on the coronary heart of proposals just like the Inexperienced New Deal. Fifty years on, let's cease the senseless invocation of Hardin. Let's cease saying that we're all in charge as a result of all of us overuse shared sources. Let's cease championing insurance policies that privilege environmental safety for some human beings on the expense of others. And let's substitute Hardin's flawed metaphor with an inclusive imaginative and prescient for humanity--one based mostly on democratic governance and cooperation on this time of darkness. As a substitute of writing a tragedy, we should provide hope for each single human on Earth. Solely then will the general public rise as much as silence the highly effective carbon polluters making an attempt to steal our future. Read the full article

#2what.com #climate #economy #environmental #hardin #hardin’s #let’s

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janicecpitts · 6 years ago

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Calvert County Maryland Beaches Dameron

Contents

Southern maryland higher

County ownership guarantees future generations

Guarantees future generations

Bayside history museum; bayside history museum

Dameron ended thursday

Calvert pines senior center

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CROFTON, Md., March 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Caruso Homes, Inc. (www.CarusoHomes.com), one of the region’s leading luxury home builders headquartered in Crofton, Maryland, has acquired 44 home sites …

Breezy Point Beach and Campground was acquired by the Calvert County commissioners in January 1995 and is operated by Calvert County Parks and Recreation. county ownership guarantees future generations will always have a place to enjoy the riches of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay. Family Fun Bring the entire family for a fun-filled day at the beach.

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Breezy Point Beach and Campground was acquired by the Calvert County commissioners in January 1995 and is operated by Calvert County Parks and Recreation. County ownership guarantees future generations will always have a place to enjoy the riches of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay. Family Fun Bring the entire family for a fun-filled day at the beach.

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nothingman · 8 years ago

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Images via AP and Getty.

WASHINGTON, DC—For the past several weeks, whenever President Donald Trump’s (haha fuck) transition team would announce a new member of his cabinet, the nation would partake in a communal panic—about the nominee’s lack of qualifications, about their past scandals and conflicts of interest, about what the stakes are if they powerfully screw up.

But because of that, they’ve been hard to keep track of. So for future reference, here are all of those nominees in one place. Consume with several Xanax.

In the Cabinet:

Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State

Responsibilities: Arbiter of worldwide diplomacy for the United States Age: 64 Estimated net worth: $150 million Years in government: 0 Background: Tillerson began working for ExxonMobil in 1975, and was promoted to CEO in 2006. In the late 1990s, he became acquainted with Vladimir Putin while working out a deal to allow Exxon to drill for oil in Russia; their friendship (and mutual financial interest) became so tight that in 2013, Putin awarded him Russia’s Order of Friendship medal. Chilling anecdote: Aside from all the standard chilling characteristics of an oil baron—greed, self-interest, cronyism—under Tillerson’s watch from 2008 to 2015, Exxon donated over $6.5 million to groups that deny the link between fossil fuels and climate change.

Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury

Responsibilities: Determines financial policies; manages the national debt; acts as CFO for the government; decides tax policies that may or may not one day help hedge funds like Dune Capital Age: 54 Estimated net worth: $40 million Years in government: 0, but he did fund American Sniper which is kinda political. Background: Steve Mnuchin is the son of a Goldman Sachs banker who became a Goldman Sachs banker himself before forming his own fund, Dune Capital. He later purchased the failing bank OneWest, making a ton of money by foreclosing on thousands of homeowners caught up in the mortgage crisis. He eventually sold the company for more than 3 billion. As a producer, he is also responsible for the Lego Movie. Chilling anecdote: He accidentally forgot to report more than $100,000,000 in assets on his Senate Finance Committee disclosure documents. Fun fact: Mnuchin has been friends with Trump for at least 15 years, despite the fact that Trump sued him in 2008 over a building deal.

James Mattis, Secretary of Defense

Responsibilities: Top defense policy advisor to the president, and will help shape the Trump administration’s policies on Russia, the Islamic State, and other national security threats. Age: 66 Estimated net worth: Unknown Years in government: Mattis’ military career spans 41 years, but he has not served in a civilian role. Background: Mattis’s last post was as commander of U.S. Central Command, from which he retired in 2013 after clashing with the Obama administration over Iran policies. He’s led troops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and in his most recent role oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mattis is a defense hawk who’s made a few alarming comments, but he’s also widely respected and a bit more of a reader than his boss. Trump credits Mattis for convincing him that torture is ineffective, and he appears to be one of very few in the Trump administration to consider climate change a viable threat. Clashes between Mattis and the Trump transition team have already been reported. Since civilian control of the military is written into the Constitution and Mattis retired too recently, his confirmation hinged on a special waiver, which recently passed through Congress. Fun fact: Mattis’s most popular nickname is “Mad Dog,” and Trump fans love it! Unclear what will happen when they find out that he’s not insane.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General

Responsibilities: Advises the president on the laws of our country; enforces federal laws; determines which cases to prosecute; act as “the people’s lawyer” Age: 70 Estimated net worth: $7 million Years in government: 21 Background: Jeff Sessions started his career as a prosecutor, first as a U.S. Attorney and then as Attorney General of Alabama. He was elected to the Senate in 1996, where he proceeded to legislate against equal rights, and for the Iraq War. He opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and supported a measure to make same-sex marriage illegal. He’s also spoken out against climate change. Chilling Anecdote: Sessions was once declared too racist to be a federal judge, based in part on a voting rights case he pursued against black activists. Sessions has said he would prosecute that case again, given the opportunity. During his confirmation hearing, he was forced to denounce the KKK, a group he’d already allegedly denounced—not because of their politics, but because he heard they smoked weed. Fun facts: He was named “amnesty’s worst enemy” by the National Review.

Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior

Responsibilities: Oversees the management and conservation of federal land and resources, overseeing departments including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The Interior Secretary under Trump will probably be tasked with extracting natural resources from public lands, particularly those Obama has attempted to protect. Age: 55 Estimated net worth: $675,000 Years in government: 8 Background: Zinke is a Republican congressman from Montana who previously served as a Navy SEAL. A hunter and fisherman with a bachelor’s degree in geology, he’s a staunch supporter of public access to federal lands, but also once voted to return federal land to the states, which is confusing. He sometimes breaks rank to vote with environmentalists, but seems to be a big fan of the oil and gas industry, which is also confusing; he recently backed the Keystone XL Pipeline. Zinke believes in climate change, but also doesn’t. Chilling anecdote: It could be worse. Fun facts: Donald Trump, Jr., another avid hunter who is supposed to be running his dad’s company, reportedly played a big role in Zinke’s nomination.

Sonny Perdue, Agriculture Secretary

Responsibilities: The Department of Agriculture oversees the American farming industry, responsible for food safety, improving public nutrition, protecting natural resources, and meeting the needs of farmers and ranchers. Oh, and also the food stamp program, which will likely not stick around in its current form for much longer. Age: 70 Estimated net worth: Current net worth not available; in 2006 it was about $6 million. Years in government: 18 Background: Perdue, a conservative Republican, worked as a veterinarian and then ran a grain and fertilizer business; he later served as state senator in Georgia and as governor of Georgia from 2003-2011. One of his campaign promises included a referendum to reestablish the Confederate flag design on the state flag. Like Trump, Perdue did not put his assets in a blind trust as governor, and benefited from a tax break that he signed into law. “It’s certainly hard to imagine that a former fertilizer salesman will tackle the unregulated farm pollution that poisons our drinking water, turns Lake Erie green, and fouls the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico,” the Environmental Working Group said in a statement. Chilling anecdote: 10 years ago, when Georgia was in the middle of a historic drought, then-Gov. Perdue led a prayer service on the statehouse steps. “God, we need you,” Perdue said. “We need rain.” (It didn’t rain.)

Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary

Responsibilities: Besides overseeing the Trump administration’s plan to “upend” the U.S. trade policy—the least-terrifying way to phrase that—Ross will also head the Commerce Department’s weirdly broad set of responsibilities, which include departments that monitor the weather, the nation’s fisheries, and oversee patents and trademarks. Age: 79 Estimated net worth: $2.5 billion Years in government: 0 Background: Ross is an investor and former banker, who specializes in buying “distressed assets” and flipping them for profit. Like Trump, he hates trade agreements a lot. He also donated generously to Trump’s campaign, and so here we are. Chilling anecdote: Ross has a close business relationship with Viktor Vekselberg, a Putin ally and one of the richest men in Russia. Ross serves on the board of Bank of Cyprus, where Vekselberg is a shareholder. (Ross appears to be cutting his ties to Bank of Cyprus, according to Bloomberg.) Fun facts: Ross’s confirmation hearing was delayed because he hasn’t finished his ethics paperwork.

Andrew Puzder, Secretary of Labor

Responsibilities: As Secretary of Labor, Puzder will be in charge of protecting workers and enforcing labor laws. Age: 66 Estimated net worth: It’s unclear exactly what Puzder is worth but his annual salary ranges from $7 to $10 million and he owns a sizable percentage of a company valued at $25.6 million. He’s worth a lot of money. Years in government: A few months. Prior to becoming the CEO of Hardee’s Puzder spent a few months heading Missouri’s Task Force for Unborn Mothers and Unborn Children under then governor John Ashcroft. Background: In the late 1990s, Puzder became the Executive Vice President of CKE, a restaurant company that eventually bought Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. Puzder was named president of Hardee’s in 2000. Puzder is credited with turning Hardee’s, then a failing company, around with his memorable marketing strategy—namely, hot chicks eating burgers in bikinis. In 2013, he described Hardee’s as a “young, hungry guy brand” adding that the strategy worked on men of all ages. “I’m 62. I want to be a young, hungry guy,” Puzder told the Wall Street Journal. Though Puzder might have been successful at bringing hungry bros to Hardee’s, his workers say that as CEO, he engaged in widespread labor violations. He’s been critical of California labor laws, including mandatory breaks and paid out a multi-million dollar lawsuit after the company routinely broke that law. Puzder also opposes raising the minimum wage. Chilling anecdote: Before leaving for the greasy pastures of Hardee’s, Puzder was one a leading anti-abortion lawyer. He authored many Missouri laws on the topic, including one that prohibited the use of state funds for the procedure, the first of its kind. The law was appealed to the Supreme Court. In the resulting case, Webster v. Reproductive State Health Services, SCOTUS ruled that states were allowed to place restrictions on abortion. Then there are, of course, the numerous allegations of domestic violence made by his ex-wife which she has since retracted.

Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services

Responsibilities: The HHS secretary is the country’s top health official, and would be responsible for implementing federal health policy, including the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act Age: 62 Estimated net worth: An estimated $13.6 million as of 2014 Years in government: He has served a total of 10 terms thus far. Background: Price, a trained orthopaedic surgeon, has had a long career in the Tea Party, first serving four terms in the Georgia State Senate. He was elected to the House of Representatives for Georgia’s 6th district in November 2004, where he has served ever since, most recently serving as chair of the House Budget Committee.

Price is one of the leading advocates for dismantling the ACA. He also supports significantly altering Medicaid and Medicare, such that they would no longer be entitlements, but instead block grants to states. His plan has also suggested making “able-bodied” applicants meet work requirements before receiving benefits, according to the Washington Post.

He notably owned stock in several health companies including Aetna, drug makers Pfizer Inc and Eli Lilly and Co., and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., while co-sponsoring 35 health bills in the House—an oddly blatant potential conflict of interest that Sen. Elizabeth Warren said raised questions about his judgement. Fun facts: In Congress, Price opposed a law that would protect women from employment discrimination based on their use of birth control or getting an abortion, and sponsored a bill that would define life as beginning at conception.

Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Responsibilities: Implement and oversee laws relating to all aspects of housing, including mortgage markets, homelessness issues and public housing. Age: 65 Estimated net worth: $10 million Years in government: 0, though he did run for President of the United States Background: Carson, who often cites his upbringing in a single parent, working-poor home, began practicing neurosurgery in 1983, and became famous after separating conjoined twins in 1987. He launched his campaign for President in 2015, but bowed out after Super Tuesday 2016 after a disappointing showing. He has also been the author or co-author of ten books, including several self-help tomes and an autobiography entitled Gifted Hands. Chilling anecdote: Though he and his family was the recipient of public assistance growing up, including food stamps, but employs a myopic “bootstraps” mentality; in his confirmation hearings, he said he supported public assistance to a point, though did not rightly clarify beyond that. Fun fact: Lied about stabbing someone. Maybe lied about hitting his mother. Also, was once portrayed on the silver screen by Cuba Gooding Jr.

Elaine Chao, Transportation Secretary

Responsibilities: The Secretary of Transportation oversees national transportation systems, and will play a key role in the Trump administration’s loudly heralded infrastructure plan. Age: 63 Estimated net worth: $16.9 million Years in government: 14 Background: Chao was Deputy Secretary of Transportation under George H.W. Bush, and directed the Peace Corps from 1991-92. She served as Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush, serving both terms. The Government Accountability Office found that the Labor Dept. under Chao had left workers “vulnerable to wage theft.” She sits on the board of directors at Wells Fargo, and although expected to resign from all board positions if confirmed, she’ll continue to receive substantial stock payouts from Wells Fargo through 2021. Chilling anecdote: Chao’s husband is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who will not recuse himself from voting on her nomination. “I will be working to lock in the majority leader’s support tonight over dinner,” Chao joked at her very chummy confirmation hearing.

Rick Perry, Energy Secretary

Responsibilities: Overseeing our nuclear arsenal Age: 66 Estimated net worth: $2 million Years in government: 19 Background: Rick Perry governed the great state of Texas for 15 years, and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2012 and 2016. He is in favor of smaller government, a 20 percent flat tax, and job creation. A former boy scout, he enthusiastically encouraged the troops’ ban on homosexual members, and used to hunt with his dad at a deer lease called “Niggerhead.” Chilling anecdote: Our current Dept. of Energy head, Ernest Moniz, is a nuclear physicist and former MIT professor. His nuclear expertise allowed the United States to negotiate with Iran on a scientific level, which helped save the day on the Iranian deal. And Rick Perry’s qualifications? He wanted to be a vet but was advised to study animal sciences instead because his grades were so bad—he failed organic chemistry and ultimately attained a D in a class called “meats” at Texas A&M. Fun facts: Perry once forgot mid-debate the name of the federal department he wanted to eliminate. It was the Department of Energy.

Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary

Responsibilities: The Education Secretary is responsible for overseeing all Education-related federal policies and programs, including federal loans, Pell grants, and Title IX enforcement. Age: 59 Estimated net worth: Her father-in-law is worth $5.1 billion, and is the 88th richest man in the country. Years in government: She has served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, and supported a failed 2000 state bill to allow students to use vouchers to attend nonpublic schools. Background: DeVos is the chairman of the Windquest Group, an investment company, and also serves as chair of the board of the American Federation for Children, which works to empower parents to “choose the education they determine is best for their children,” and has been accused of inaccurately disclosing the amount of money donated to electing Republicans in Michigan.

She is a fervent advocate for charter schools and vouchers—a stance which many view as anti-public education. (The head of one of the largest teachers unions called her the “most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the start of the Department of Education.)

DeVos is also a philanthropist, and has donated thousands of dollars to a variety of questionable organizations—including one actively working to overturn an Obama Administration policy that would make it easier to discipline students accused of sexual harassment and assault. Fun facts: In her confirmation hearing, DeVos suggested she wasn’t sure if she thought schools should continue to have the same strict standards regarding sexual violence investigations, and argued that guns might be needed in schools to fend off grizzly bears.

David Shulkin, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Responsibilities: Overseeing the massive Veterans Affairs department, which both adminsters veterans’ benefits and runs medical facilities for vets. Age: 57 Estimated net worth: Not public Years in government: A little less than two Background: Shulkin is a doctor who was appointed as the undersecretary of veterans affairs for health by President Obama. He’s the only Obama holdover among the Trump appointees, and won praise from groups like the VFW, who seem relieved that someone has been appointed who knows what the hell he’s doing. Fun fact: Now we have to wait to see if Shulkin agrees with Trump’s proposal to privatize the VA, which would probably be an enormous disaster. That’s not really a “fun” fact is it? Well, none of this is fun and that’s just not our fault.

Marine General John F. Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security

Responsibilities: As Secretary of Homeland Security, Kelly would be charged with overseeing the third largest Cabinet department. A sprawling and often messy department, Homeland Security oversees everything from enforcing immigration laws to fighting terrorism and protecting the president. Under this administration, Kelly would likely be responsible for implementing Donald Trump’s controversial proposals on illegal immigration. Age: 66 Estimated net worth: $4 million Years in government: Kelly has spent his entire adult life in the Marine Corps. His service includes the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and a stint as the military assistant in Leon Panetta’s Department of Defense. Background: A retired four-star Marine general, Kelly rose through the ranks and, most recently, ran the United States Southern Command. While there, he oversaw operations across South and Central America and the Caribbean, including oversight of Guantánamo Bay. Kelly has a history of breaking with the Obama administration on issues like Guantánamo Bay, women in the military, and immigration.

As the head of Southern Command, he sought funds to renovate the military prison as President Obama was seeking to close the facility and questioned whether or not combat positions should be open to women. Kelly has also melodramatically sounded the alarm on illegal immigration, warning the Senate Armed Services Committee that “terrorist organizations” could exploit “smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States.” Despite this, there’s a general consensus that Kelly is a good choice for the job, his nomination was endorsed by Panetta. Fun Fact: When asked about the capability of the Iraqi Army, Kelly told reporters that “Baghdad ain’t shit.” Not fun, but worth noting: Kelly has the sad distinction of being the highest-ranking officer to lose a child in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2010, his son, Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan when he stepped on a landmine.

Cabinet-level:

Robert Lighthizer, U.S. Trade Representative

Image via YouTube

Responsibilities: The trade rep is the country’s chief trade negotiator and a top advisor to the president on trade issues. Age: 69 Estimated net worth: Not public Years in government: Unclear how many consecutive years he served, but Lighthizer was the chief of staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance and then a deputy United States trade representative during the Reagan administration. Background: The most eye-glazing Trump nominee, Lighthizer is a lawyer and establishment Republican whose main draw for Trump seems to be his hostility towards China. He’s widely believed to be very knowledgeable on trade issues, putting him light years ahead of most Trump nominees. Fun fact: Politico reports that Lighthizer has a potty mouth, according to one trade lawyer who’s worked with him: “His personal style is that, in meetings, he uses filthy humor and vulgar language to throw people off their stride, which can be side-splittingly funny and very effective.” Another thing he has in common with Trump, minus the “funny,” “effective,” or “humor” parts!

Linda McMahon, Small Business Secretary

Responsibilities: True to its name, the SBA supports enterpreneurs and small businesses, and McMahon will be responsible primarily for overseeing the loan and entrepreneurial development programs run by the SBA. Age: 68 Estimated net worth: $500 million Years in government: 1-ish, serving on the Connecticut Board of Education, plus two failed Senate runs in 2010 and 2012. Background: McMahon is the former CEO of the WWE, married to Vince McMahon, the current CEO of the WWE. Everyone and everything in McMahon’s life is connected to pro-wrestling (both of her kids married wrestling stars), which is why it was maybe a tad surprising when she was appointed to the Board of Education, then launched those two unsuccessful Senate bids. Chilling Anecdote: McMahon has also become a major, although rather secretive Republican donor, giving $5 million to the Trump Foundation and giving $200,000 to a PAC that ran anti-Bernie Sanders ads. Fun facts: Several complicated WWE storylines involve the McMahons fighting, physically, with fists and chairs and stuff.

Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Responsibilities: Helps President implement his plans within the budget Age: 49 Estimated net worth: Over $3 million (in 2013) Years in government: 10 Background: A former lawyer, this Tea Party Republican was elected to South Carolina Senate in 2006. After serving two terms there, he was elected to U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, though the latter campaign was accused of violating campaign finance laws. After his nomination to Trump’s Cabinet, the Ethics Committee found that he did not pay over $15,000 in taxes on a nanny he employed from 2000-2004. Chilling anecdote: Mulvaney was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, created in 2009, which represents some of the most far-right ideologies in the Republican party. They’re a leading voting bloc for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Responsibilities: The EPA is responsible for setting and enforcing standards and regulations to protect human health and the environment. But under the Trump administration, who knows? Age: 48 Estimated net worth: Unknown Years in government: 14 Background: Pruitt was a Republican Oklahoma state senator and is currently the Oklahoma attorney general, where he and other Republican AG’s have formed a secretive alliance with fossil fuel producers to push back against Obama-era EPA regulations. Devon Energy has literally drafted letters that Pruitt then sent to the EPA under his own name. He has sued the EPA 13 times, and won’t commit to recusing himself from handling those lawsuits as EPA administrator. Hs is skeptical about the completely settled science behind climate change, and when asked at his confirmation hearing if there’s any safe level of lead that can be absorbed by the human body (no), he said he had “not looked at the research.” Fun Fact: 2016 was the hottest year on record.

Executive Office of the President:

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff

Responsibilities: Chiefs of staff oversee the White House staff (hence the name) and sets White House strategy, as well as controlling access to the president by overseeing their schedule and meetings. Age: 44 Estimated net worth: Not public Years in government: 9 Background: Priebus is the career politician of the bunch, so to speak: He was elected chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party in 2007, then elected chair of the Republican National Committee in 2011. As Chief of Staff, he’ll play Establishment Republican to everybody else in the Trump’s administration Person Shouting At You About the Illuminati While Wearing a Colander. Chilling anecdote: Despite being a more, uh, normal person than several Trump picks, Priebus is still a diehard Trump loyalist. He defended him in the midst of Pussygate, although he did note that he didn’t “condone” those remarks. He defended the appointment of Steve Bannon. And now he’s merrily joining in vaguely threatening the head of the Office of Government Ethics, warning him to “be careful” about criticizing our new Cheeto King. Fun facts: The words “fun” and Reince Priebus do not appear in the same sentence even when we’re being extremely sarcastic.

Stephen Bannon, Chief Strategist

Responsibilities: Usually the chief strategist offers advice on domestic and foreign policy issues, but there’s no telling exactly how it’ll function in this administration. As the Wall Street Journal noted, Bannon is expected to have virtually equal power to the chief of staff. Age: 63 Estimated net worth: No reliable public estimates, but he’s believed to be a millionaire. Years in government: 0 Background: Bannon is best known as the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, although, as an excellent 2015 Bloomberg profile laid out, that was just the latest chapter in a career that took him from the Navy to investment banking to conservative filmmaking (he made The Undefeated, a very bad movie about Sarah Palin). And now, in an unlikely twist, he’s gone from what was a fringe conservative news outlet to being one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers. Chilling anecdote: Where do we start? Bannon was previously accused of both domestic violence and making anti-Semitic comments by his ex-wife, allegations he denies. He also denies being a racist or a white supremacist; it is indisputable, however, that Neo Nazis and white supremacists were very happy when he got the job. Fun facts: In a fairly ironic twist, Bannon earns royalties from Seinfeld, having purchased a share of them in 1993. Uh, also, Jezebel has attended a couple of Breitbart parties at the Conservative Political Action Conference, hosted by Bannon. They are populated by the same people who dot our nightmares.

Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President

Responsibilities: Conway, who served as Trump’s campaign manager and became famous for her nonsensical, postmodernist word salads, will continue to both advise Trump and craft the messaging of his administration’s legislative agenda. If that sounds a little vague, that’s because it is. In December, Conway told CNN’s New Day that the “portfolio will be whatever the President wants it to be,” and will include “data and strategy” in addition to communications. Age: 50 Estimated net worth: Not public, but her polling company took in around $1.9 million during the 2016 campaign, per Politico. Years in government: 0 Background: Conway started her own polling company—uncreatively called “The Polling Company”—in 1995, which focused on female consumers. She soon became a leading voice among Republican commentators, and through the firm worked with conservative politicians like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to help with voter outreach to women. She worked for Sen. Ted Cruz during the 2016 campaign before dumping him for Trump, and has been loyally defending Trump from criticism since then. Trump tapped Conway as campaign manager in August. Chilling anecdote: During a 2013 roundtable discussion about lifting the ban on women in the military, Conway said, “If we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist. You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off.” And now I shudder to imagine what Conway’s solution to ending sexual assault might be... Fun facts: Not sure how “fun” this fact is, but Conway made history as the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign, and will now serve as the highest ranking woman in Trump’s administration.

Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor

Responsibilities: As a top White House advisor, Kushner will be part of Trump’s inner circle and among the first to counsel him on pretty much anything. Kushner’s first priorities reportedly include rewriting international trade policy and a controversial plan to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city of Jerusalem. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was handed the position after a lawyer advised the campaign that Kushner’s appointment would not violate federal anti-nepotism laws. Age: 36 Estimated net worth: Kushner’s net worth is not public, but Forbes estimates that his family—his parents and his brother Josh—are worth at least $1.8 billion. Years in government: 0 Background: Kusher is a essentially a Rich kid of Instagram who came of age pre-Internet. He was an average student who curiously got into Harvard after daddy Charles Kushner, a rich real estate developer in New York, donated $2.5 million to the Ivy League school. He stayed in the family business, real estate development. Kushner’s main qualification as one of Trump’s closest confidantes seems to be the fact that he is married to Ivanka Trump. He became Trump’s right hand man during the transition process and, though he had no official role in the campaign, certainly had Trump’s ear. Chilling anecdote: After Trump published and deleted an anti-semitic tweet attacking Hillary Clinton, Kushner defended Trump against concerns brought by Jewish writer Dana Schwartz at the Observer. (Trump’s campaign later also an published anti-semitic ad, and regularly retweeted white supremacists). Kushner, who owned The Observer before selling his shares and stepping down as publisher for his new job, is an Orthodox Jew whose grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. Kushner invoked his grandfather’s history in his response to Shwartz, which was an unconvincing combination of “Trump’s not racist—trust me on this guys,” and “haters gonna hate.” His cousin Marc Kushner criticized the op-ed, writing in a Facebook post that he had a “different takeaway” from his family’s history, and wrote: “It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. Antisemitism or otherwise.” Fun facts: New Yorker writer and fellow Harvard classmate Lizzie Widdicombe recalls that Kushner wore “dress shirts and jeans from the then trendy label 7 for All Mankind” and drove a Range Rover. According to one classmate Widdicombe interviewed, Kushner didn’t have a sense of humor about it. “He did it, like, ‘I’m fucking rich.’”

Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor

Responsibilities: The National Security Advisor advises the President on national security issues (duh), and attends meetings with the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. They don’t have authority over the defense budget, but have the potential to hugely sway the President on national security issues, which, in this instance, is alarming. Age: 58 Estimated net worth: Not public Years in government: Two, as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Background: Flynn served in the U.S. Army from 1981 to 2014, but was forced into early retirement a year early as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency amid amid accusations from his critics that his management style was “chaotic” and his time there “turbulent,” as the Washington Post put it. Oh also he was fixedly and delusionally obsessed with Islamic terrorism, warning that Sharia law was creeping its way across the U.S. and making up so many “dubious assertions,” as the New York Times explained, that people at the DIA started calling them “Flynn facts.” Chilling anecdote: Flynn loves tweeting links to news stories ranging from kind of fake to extremely fake, like ones claiming that President Obama is a “jihadi” and that Hillary Clinton has engaged in the sex trafficking of children. Fun facts: That kind of thing runs in the family. As you might recall, Michael Flynn Jr. is also a big fan of the conspiracy theories, and was fired from a job with the Trump transition team after promoting and tweeting about and insisting that Pizzagate is real. You know: the conspiracy that claimed Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta runs a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza place. The one that led directly to a man busting into that pizza place and firing shots.

Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence

Responsibilities: The position, created in 2004, is supposed to help prevent terrorist attacks like 9/11 by coordinating between all of the country’s intelligence agencies. The DNI also advises the president and is in charge of the president’s daily briefing, which hasn’t gone so well thus far. Age: 73 Estimated net worth: Approximately $4.7 million Years in government: 27 Background: Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, served in the army in the 60’s, the House of Representatives in the ’80s, the Senate in the ’90s, as ambassador to Germany under Bush II, and the Senate again from 2010-2016. Coats is seen as a hawk on Russian issues—he was banned from Russia in 2014—and has warm bipartisan support. Chilling anecdote: Coats’ nomination was announced a few days after reports surfaced that the Trump team was seeking to overhaul the office of the DNI, potentially even leaving the post empty; Trump’s spokesman denied this. Fun fact: According to the New York Times, Coats enjoys visiting farm-to-table restaurants.

Others

Mike Pompeo, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Responsibilities: As head of the CIA, Pompeo will oversee intelligence gathering and provide President Trump with intelligent assessments, even those he might find “politically unappealing.” Age: 53 Estimated net worth: The poorest member of Trump’s Cabinet, Pompeo is valued at just over $267k. Years in government: 6 Background: A former Army officer who graduated from West Point, Pompeo was elected to the House of Representatives from Kansas’s fourth district during the Tea Party surge in 2010. He’s a standard Tea Party Republican: he opposes abortion, has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, supports the repeal of Obamacare, and picked up a sizable check from Koch Brothers during his 2010 election. On issues more pertinent to his new job, Pompeo also remains a conservative Republican. He’s a proponent of the NSA’s surveillance program and has advocated for its expansion. During his hearing, Pompeo remained politic on Russia, an issue that’s increasingly the source of tension between the CIA and the President Elect. As a member of Congress, Pompeo criticized a 2014 Senate report that found widespread abuses in the CIA’s handling of the so-called war on terror, including findings that the CIA was engaged in torture. “These men and women [of the CIA] are not torturers, they are patriots. The programs being used were within the law [and] within the Constitution,” he said at the time. It’s unclear whether or not he would bring back waterboarding or other forms of torture as Trump advocated on the campaign trail. Fun fact: Pompeo’s greatest claim to fame is yelling “Benghazi” at Hillary Clinton. Even after the House Select Committee found no wrongdoing, Pompeo loudly insisted that there was a “cover-up.”

Gov. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Responsibilities: Represents the USA in the broadest coalition of nations in existence, and ideally works for global justice and harmony within that. Age: 44 Estimated net worth: $1.6 million Years in government: 12 Background: Haley, a businessperson who served on the Orangeberg County Chamber of Commerce, was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2004, becoming the first Sikh Indian ever to serve in the state government. In 2010, she became South Carolina’s first woman governor. Chilling anecdote: Her foreign policy experience seems to be limited to family vacations!

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Trump Eases Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies, handing a victory to farmers, fossil fuel producers and real estate developers who said Obama-era rules had shackled them with onerous and unnecessary burdens.

From Day 1 of his administration, President Trump vowed to repeal President Barack Obama’s “Waters of the United States” regulation, which had frustrated rural landowners. His new rule, which will be implemented in the coming weeks, is the latest step in the Trump administration’s push to repeal or weaken nearly 100 environmental rules and laws, loosening or eliminating rules on climate change, clean air, chemical pollution, coal mining, oil drilling and endangered species protections.

Mr. Trump, whose own real estate and golf-course empires almost certainly ran into the Obama rule, has called the regulation “horrible,” “destructive” and “one of the worst examples of federal” overreach.

“I terminated one of the most ridiculous regulations of all: the last administration’s disastrous Waters of the United States rule,” Mr. Trump told the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention in Texas on Sunday, to rousing applause. He added, “That was a rule that basically took your property away from you.”

His administration had completed the first step of its demise in September with the rule’s repeal.

His replacement on Thursday will complete the process, not only rolling back 2015 rules that guaranteed protections under the 1972 Clean Water Act to certain wetlands and streams that run intermittently or run temporarily underground, but also relieves landowners of the need to seek permits that the Environmental Protection Agency had considered on a case-by-case basis before the Obama rule.

It also gives President Trump a major policy achievement to bring to his political base while his impeachment trial continues.

“Farmers coalesced against the E.P.A. being able to come onto their land, and he’s delivering,” said Jessica Flanagain, a Republican strategist in Lincoln, Neb. “This is bigger news for agricultural producers than whatever is happening with the sideshow in D.C.,” she added.

The new water rule will remove federal protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and hundreds of thousands of small waterways. That would for the first time in decades allow landowners and property developers to dump pollutants such as pesticides and fertilizers directly into many of those waterways, and to destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.

“This will be the biggest loss of clean water protection the country has ever seen,” said Blan Holman, a lawyer specializing in federal water policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This puts drinking water for millions of Americans at risk of contamination from unregulated pollution. This is not just undoing the Obama rule. This is stripping away protections that were put in place in the ’70s and ’80s that Americans have relied on for their health.”

Mr. Holman also said that the new rule exemplifies how the Trump administration has dismissed or marginalized scientific evidence. Last month, a government advisory board of scientists, many of whom were handpicked by the Trump administration, wrote that the proposed water rule “neglects established science.”

But farmers and fossil fuel groups supported the change.

“This is a big win for farmers, and this is the president delivering what he promised,” said Donald Parrish, senior director of regulatory affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had lobbied for years to weaken the Obama administration’s water rules.

Karen Harbert, chief executive officer of the American Gas Association, said the new rule “would restore the proper balance between federal and state regulation of our nation’s waters and protect our rivers, streams and lakes without stifling construction of important infrastructure.”

The Obama rule protected about 60 percent of the nation’s waterways, including large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and Puget Sound, and smaller headwaters, wetlands, seasonal streams and streams that run temporarily underground. It limited the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into those waters.

The new rule, written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, will retain federal protections of large bodies of water, as well as larger rivers and streams that flow into them and wetlands that lie adjacent to them. But it removes protections for many other waters, including wetlands that are not adjacent to large bodies of water, some seasonal streams that flow for only a portion of the year, “ephemeral” streams that only flow after rainstorms, and water that temporarily flows through underground passages.

Legal experts say that Mr. Trump’s replacement rule would go further than simply repealing and replacing the 2015 Obama rule — it would also eliminate protections to smaller headwaters that have been implemented for decades under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

“This is rolling back federal jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act further than it’s ever been before,” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School. “Waters that have been protected for almost 50 years will no longer be protected under the Clean Water Act.”

That could open millions of acres of pristine wetlands to pollution or destruction, and allow chemicals and other pollutants to be discharged into smaller headland waters that eventually drain into larger water bodies, experts in water management said. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.

Ean Thomas Tafoya, a Colorado-based clean water activist with the group GreenLatinos, said the new rule could harm the quality of the water in the Colorado River, which supplies water to 17 western states.

“We are a headwater state,” he said. “This rollback will affect almost every single stream that flows into the Colorado River.”

Mr. Tafoya said about 90 percent of the streams that supply the Colorado River run only after rainfall or snowmelt. Under the new Trump water rule, many of those streams will not qualify for federal pollution protection. But Mr. Tafoya said pollutants such as chemical pesticides that end up in those dry stream beds could nonetheless be swept into larger bodies of water when the streams begin running after the spring thaw of mountain snow.

“The toxics or poisons that lie dormant will still be there when the streams are reactivated,” he said. “They will still get into the larger bodies of water.”

Government scientists, even those appointed by the Trump administration, say those concerns are justified. The E.P.A.’s Scientific Advisory Board, a panel of 41 scientists responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, concluded that the new Trump water rule ignores science by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems.” They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations, concluding that pollutants from those smaller and seasonal bodies of water can still have a significant impact on the health of larger water systems.

Those scientific findings, although they are not reflected in the administration’s policy, could still play a role in the fate of the new rule. Several state attorneys general are expected to join with environmental groups to sue to overturn the Trump water rule, and those groups are likely to cite those findings as evidence that the rule is not legally sound.

“The legal standing all has to do with whether you have a rational basis for what you’re doing,” said Mr. Parenteau. “And when you have experts saying you’re not adhering to the science, that’s not rational, it’s arbitrary.”

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