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Theft in progress: Big Ag raids the treasury—with help from Congress

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Tom Laskawy. - Nov. 17 (News Analysis) - by Tom Laskawy. If the straight-up taxpayer swindle taking place in the supercommittee isn’t making you angry, you’re probably not paying attention. I’m talking about the attempt by agribusiness and a group of willing farm-state representatives to put billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of industrial farmers during the ongoing super committee Farm Bill negotiations. According to The Hill , the moment of truth is upon us: The supercommittee is indeed poised to rewrite the Farm Bill behind closed doors and with no input from reform-minded congresspeople, let alone the public. Many of us have knew this was going on, but the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found some new developments that are nothing short of shocking. EWG reports that the new “shallow loss” subsidy which would protect commodity growers from small price drops via a “taxpayer-paid guarantee of getting no less than 90%[!!] of their income.” This new subsidy is now considered ...

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Rick Perry: The EPA ‘won’t know what hit ‘em’

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Stephen Lacey - Sep. 07 (News Report) - Speaking at a campaign stop in his home state Monday, Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry announced his intentions to make the Environmental Protection Agency unapologetically pro-pollution. His remarks were reported by the Houston Chronicle : “I’ll tell you one thing: The EPA officials we have an opportunity to put in place, they’re going to be pro-business, and there’s not going to be any apologies to anybody about it,” he said. “Those agencies won’t know what hit ‘em.” It’s not hard to see why Perry would want environmental regulations to be crafted by polluters, considering that he’s taken $11 million from the oil and gas industry since 1998. Meanwhile, Perry has stepped up his attacks on climate science by falsely claiming that researchers manipulated data for money. Perry attended the town hall meeting ...

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, climate crank, considering presidential run

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Lisa Hymas - May. 29 (News Report) - by Lisa Hymas. A weak field of GOP presidential candidates is weakening the resolve of politicians who’ve been insisting they don’t want to run. After saying for months that he had no interest in getting into the race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry changed his tune on Friday and told reporters , “I’m going to think about it.” While he thinks about whether to run, let us think about his record. In his recent book Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington , Perry writes that global warming is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.” His response to the drought and wildfires that have been plaguing his state? A proclamation to pray for rain . Jonathan Hiskes summed up Perry’s record in Grist last fall, when Perry was running for reelection: Perry relishes his role as a foe of national climate action. He lambasted the climate bill that passed the House [in 2009] as an “economic disaster.” He is ...

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Today's tsunami: This is what climate change looks like - Grist Magazine

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:50:12 -0800

Grist - Mar. 11 - Telegraph.co.ukToday's tsunami: This is what climate change looks likeGrist MagazineIn a little-heeded warning issued at a 2009 conference on the subject, experts outlined a range of mechanisms by which climate change could already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity. "When the ice is lost, the earth's crust ...Backgrounder: Relationship between earthquakes, tsunamisXinhuaall 11,597 news articles »

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Why you don’t want gas to get cheaper

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Christopher Mims - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - Americans would like to pay less at the pump. But what would that take? How about another economic crash—or perhaps you’d prefer an ecological one. However the next century shakes out, one thing’s for sure: the ever-growing gap between world oil supplies and demand is making itself felt, and the longer it takes us to break our addiction , the more painful the coming decades will be. The latest reminder: a State Department cable released by Wikileaks which quotes the former second in command of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company asserting that his country cannot save us from a decline in world oil supplies. Not that he hasn’t been saying this publicly since 2004 . Like climate change before it, “peak oil” is an issue that threatens so many of our most-cherished myths about never-ending prosperity and an automobile-dependent civilization that it takes a while to sink in. It’s not that we’re running out , say the ...

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GOP climate deniers vie to run House Energy Committee

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Brad Johnson. - Nov. 06 (News Report) - The House Energy Committee is seeing an intense leadership fight, as four different Republicans are vying to take over the influential post from Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), who shepherded progressive climate legislation through the House in 2009, before it foundered in the U.S. Senate. The four candidates—Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), John Shimkus (R-Ill.), Joe Barton (R-Texas), and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)—all want to reopen the floodgates for a deregulated fossil fuel industry. But precisely how reactionary the committee will become—whether investigations will be launched against climate scientists and all clean-energy efforts killed—could depend on which fossil-fueled Republican wins the intraparty fight. The frontrunner Upton is the only candidate who doesn’t explicitly question the science of manmade global warming, though he is opposed to any policy action.

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Climate denialism down, but so is caring about climate

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - Sep. 25 - by Jen Phillips. Scientific American and Nature recently published the results of a survey they undertook to understand how Americans feel about science. Unfortunately, because they solicited participation via their respective websites, the 21,000 respondents were above-average in scientific understanding: a whopping 19 percent had doctorates, versus around 1 percent of the general population. Predictably, the #1 source of trusted information for this reader group was ... wait for it ... scientists! The least trusted was “religious authorities.” Despite this bias, one encouraging finding was that climate denialism is shrinking, and the U.S. is not among the worst offenders. According to the survey, in the US 37 percent of people are “more certain” humans are changing the climate, while 14 percent were “more doubtful” of man-made climate change. In contrast, in Japan 22 percent were more doubtful, and in Brazil, ...

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Corn subsidies make unhealthy food choices the rational ones

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Donald Carr. - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - A big reason that food products derived from corn are so pervasive in America’s diet today is that for decades taxpayers have given corn growers incentives to grow as much as possible through the skewed federal farm subsidy system. The $73.8 billion lavished on corn since 1995 has helped to churn out a host of cheap and unhealthy foods—from chips to sugary sodas to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Hold on: Make that “corn sugar.” With consumers souring on HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association has embarked on a re-branding effort, as Tom Laskawy mocked, to prop up the lagging sales of the calorie-laden sweetener that’s found in nearly all cheap processed foods. Many of the factors that contribute to the nation’s broken food and farm system, like perverse subsidies for commodity grain growers, were exposed in a September 5 Denver Post article. In “Spoiled system: Eating healthier comes with a price for families,” reporter Karen Auge explored the factors that make fresh fruits and vegetables costlier than highly subsidized and less healthy foods based on corn and soy: The reasons fresh fruits and vegetables are so pricey compared with processed food in a carton are a complicated stew of government subsidies, politics and the whims of Mother Nature. But their combined might, say critics pushing for a change in the way money is doled out, moves us away from fruits and vegetables and toward meat, dairy products and the sugar- and sodium-loaded processed foods for which crops like corn and wheat serve as the raw ingredients. “We’ve made the unhealthy choice the rational choice,” said Merrick Weaver, who, as executive director of Partnership for Healthy Communities, works to improve nutrition among lower-income families in Commerce City [Colo.]. Weaver was echoing Michael Pollan, whose book The Omnivore’s Dilemma has become a manifesto for those trying to shift discussion about the country’s obesity epidemic to include the food-production infrastructure. In short, “You can buy more calories for your dollar if you buy bad foods,” Weaver said. There is no denying that America faces a health crisis with its simultaneous obesity and hunger epidemics. And right now is an especially good time to confront the issue. The law that guides federal food and agriculture policy—the Farm Bill—comes up for debate again in 2012, and deliberations have already begun. The corn refiners’ push to re-brand corn syrup is a clear response to the growing awareness among consumers not only of the environmental perils of modern industrial agriculture, but the heavy toll of our current food and farm system on the health of families and kids. If the death grip that agribusiness and its powerful lobby have had on the food and farm status quo is to be loosened, subsidy-friendly members of Congress must hear from people who want a system that serves them and their families. One important thing for consumers to note is that in 2009, $15.4 billion in subsidies were lavished on the growers of corn, cotton, rice, wheat, and soybeans.?In that same year, fruits, vegetables and organics received only $825 million in support from the federal government. And that money doesn’t go directly into fruit and vegetable growers’ pockets, but mostly goes toward procurement for schools, research and market promotion programs. We can agree with the subsidy lobby that eliminating the billions in grain subsidies tomorrow wouldn’t make much of a dent in the widespread availability of cheap chips and soda. What our maze of farm and risk management subsidies do is facilitate a highly risky agricultural business model that makes our industrial food system overly dependent on one or two grain crops. In the end, these? subsidies are not about producing food at all. They are about taking the financial risk out of a system that encourages fencerow-to-fencerow production of raw material for highly processed food—with deleterious effects on the environment and human health. A slick re-branding campaign for high-fructose corn syrup can’t obscure the reality that the commodity growers trot out contradictory messages as they fight to keep the subsidy spigot open: When crop subsidies are criticized for lavishing the bulk of their largesse on the largest and wealthiest farm operations, taxpayers are told by the agri-lobby? that those payments are critical to preserving the cheapest and most abundant food supply in the world. But when they’re challenged with the reality that subsidized corn, soybeans and wheat dump a glut of cheap, unhealthy calories on the market, agribusiness objects that “it’s desperately a myth in need of correction.” So which is it? Do subsidies make unhealthy food cheaper, or don’t they? Related Links: Carrot vending machines a surprise success Why is the FDA about to rubber-stamp GE salmon? Will the real conservatives please stand up?

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The right’s climate denialism is part of something much larger

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - The right's project over the last 30 years has been to dismantle the post-war liberal consensus by undermining trust in society's leading institutions. Experts are made elites; their presumption of expertise becomes self-damning. They think they're better than you. They talk down to you. They don't respect people like us, real Americans.

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Women's rights are the right way to approach the population

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Lisa Hymas - Jun. 30 (Interview) - Suzanne Ehlers, the new 36-year-old president of Population Action International, likes to talk about "the magic of family planning." If you give women around the world contraceptive tools and information, they'll limit the size of their families of their own free choice, and that makes their families healthier, wealthier, and better able to thrive in a climate-changed world.

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Obama signals need for new energy agenda

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Teryn Norris - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - If cap-and-trade is dead, then what's next? The only serious alternative that could attract bipartisan support is a comprehensive national strategy for clean energy competitiveness and innovation -- including substantial new federal investment in research, development, demonstration, deployment, and manufacturing -- to accelerate America's transition away from fossil fuels, build a strong and competitive clean energy industry, and rapidly drive down the price of low-carbon power and transportation technologies. These investments could potentially be included as part of a comprehensive energy package, building upon the proposed American Clean Energy Leadership Act.

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IEA stunner: global subsidies to dirty energy top $550 billion a year

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - Jun. 07 (News) - by David Roberts. File this one under “news that ought to be the top headline across the world but will likely be ignored.” An early draft of a comprehensive new study from the International Energy Agency reveals that total global subsidies to dirty fossil-fuel energy amount to $550 billion a year—about 75 percent more than previously thought. The Financial Times got a peak at the draft and covers it today, soliciting this absolutely fabulous quote from chief IEA economist Faith Birol: “I see fossil fuel subsidies as the appendicitis of the global energy system, which needs to be removed for a healthy, sustainable development future.” I’m stealing that one. Not only would removing these subsidies move us closer to the “free market” conservatives are fond of pretending we already have, it would immediately reduce energy use and carbon pollution: The IEA estimates that energy consumption could be reduced by 850m tonnes equivalent of oil—or the combined current consumption of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—if the subsidies are phased out between now and 2020. The consumption cut would save the equivalent of the current carbon dioxide emissions of Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, and Spain. Given the dim prospects of a serious cap on carbon, it seems to me that in the wake of the oil spill greens ought to be putting way more emphasis on removing these subsidies. Obama signed the statement at the G20 pledging to reduce them and reiterated that sentiment in his speech last week. It would be a crucial first step in unwinding the century-plus worth of advantages the fossil-fuel industry has accrued over its clean competitors. Oil companies battle the removal of these subsidies by calling them “new taxes.” But oil companies aren’t very popular right now. When will there ever be a better time? Related Links: Four oil-spill questions scientists can’t answer 10 years needed to agree on global climate action, says U.N. pointman Schumer says the climate bill is toast

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Who are the 22% of Americans who view BP favorably?

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Josh Nelson - Jun. 03 (Poll) - Citing a Rasmussen poll Greg Sargent took note of yesterday, which indicated that 22 percent of Americans currently have a favorable view of BP, Barbara Morrill at Daily Kos asks who these 22 percent of Americans are.

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What if the oil spill just can't be fixed?

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - May. 25 (Opinion) - People are casting about for away to compartmentalize the Gulf oil spill, cast it as an anomaly. But what if there's just nothing we can do about it? Even if the flow were stopped tomorrow, the damage to marshes, coral, and marine life is done. The Gulf of Mexico will become an ecological and economic dead zone. There's no real way to undo it.

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A bipartisan path forward on energy and climate

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Dave Roberts - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - Efficiency should be at the heart of any bipartisan effort: it saves consumers money, creates jobs, benefits every single congressional district, and can be achieved quickly. As a comprehensive new report from the World Economic Forum and IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates puts it: "Of all the energy options, [energy efficiency] can provide the biggest 'amount' of energy in the near and medium term while contributing to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions." Strong energy efficiency provisions can easily save consumers more money than a price on carbon would cost them; most people, particularly low- and middle-income Americans, would come out ahead.

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U.N. scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Joseph Romm - Jan. 26 (Investigative Report) - At the very least, anyone who was going to repeat this inflammatory charge—let alone draw any conclusions from it—ought to have made a simple phone call to Dr. Lal, don’t you think? But not Science News and U.S. News & World Report.

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Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Tom Laskawy - Nov. 03 (Review) - The conclusion: the brain responds to junk food the same way it does to heroin:

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House Republicans blow off biz leaders who want climate action

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Kate Sheppard - May. 05 (News Report) - On Tuesday, a group of key Republicans hosted a summit on Capitol Hill to bash the Waxman-Markey bill as an “energy tax” that would cost average Americans $3,100 a year (though that figure has been thoroughly debunked). “This legislation represents, and is tantamount to, an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals in Washington, D.C.,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who spearheaded the event. Representatives from industry groups that oppose the climate bill, like the National Association of Manufacturers, spoke at the summit, but there were no panelists from companies and business groups calling for a carbon cap.

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Population growth, climate change sparking water crisis: U.N.

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - Mar. 11 (Special Report) - Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste are placing the world's water supplies at threat, a landmark U.N. report said on Thursday. Compiled by 24 U.N. agencies, the 348-page document gave a grim assessment of the state of the planet's freshwater, especially in developing countries, and described the outlook for coming generations as deeply worrying. Water is part of the complex web of factors that determine prosperity and stability, it said. Lack of access to water helps drive poverty and deprivation and breeds the potential for unrest and conflict, it warned.

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You know the drill

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Kate Sheppard - Sep. 29 (News Report) - ... as of the stroke of midnight tomorrow, the moratorium currently barring drilling in the outer continental shelf that has been in place for 26 years will evaporate. There will also be no further moratorium on oil shale production in the West.

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Against cap-and-dividend

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Jim Barrett - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - Transportation and building heating/electricity are the two largest contributors to carbon emissions, accounting for well over half the total. The price elasticity on transportation fuels is very low, as we've seen. With gas prices up $2 per gallon in the last three years, we're now finally seeing small reductions in driving, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4%. $2 per gallon of gas is roughly the equivalent of $200 per ton of carbon, a price impact that the failed Lieberman Warner bill wouldn't have brought until beyond 2040, if then.

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Act now with clean energy or face 6 degrees warming

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:14:38 -0700

Grist - By Joseph Romm - Jun. 09 (Advocacy) - When the normally conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) agrees with both the middle of the road IPCC and more ... progressive voices like mine, it should be time for the world to get very serious, very fast on the clean energy transition. But when the media blows the story, the public and policymakers may miss the key messages of the stunning new IEA report, "Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008" (executive summary here). You may not have paid much attention to this new report once you saw the media's favorite headline for it: "$45 trillion needed to combat warming."

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It's not the size of the government, it's how you use it

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - Jun. 08 (Opinion) - McCain, by contrast, continues to offer virtually no action -- certainly no votes -- to substantiate his professed concern over climate change. His opposition to government interference in the market is selective at best, opportunistic at worst. He approaches energy with neither principled conservatism nor sincere environmentalism, but a largely cinematic series of poses.

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Solar land use: less than coal

Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Gar Lipow - May. 26 (Opinion) - Every now and then one hears complaints about solar energy: "but it takes too much land!". "An entire Idaho!" "Three Californias!"

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Bush swaps debt for nature

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:59:33 -0700

Grist - By Glenn Hurowitz - Oct. 17 (Opinion) - The Bush administration, Costa Rica, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy will today announce a "debt-for-nature" swap that could herald something bigger in the future. The United States will write off $12.6 million in debt owed it by Costa Rica. In exchange, Costa Rica will protect some of the most valuable rainforest wildlife habitat in the world.

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