Policy

Environmental Groups Oppose McAuliffe’s Energy Policies

June 21, 2016 Staff, www.newsadvance.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Policy

By Staff of Nelson County Times - A grassroots alliance of 57 groups chided Gov. Terry McAuliffe Wednesday for, in their view, turning a deaf ear to the concerns of communities facing impacts from natural gas pipelines, offshore drilling, coal ash, climate change and other potential threats to human health, property rights and the environment. The allied groups and supporters plan to take their message directly to McAuliffe in Richmond during a “March on the Mansion” scheduled for July 23 and billed as “the biggest rally for climate justice and clean energy Virginia has ever seen.”

BXE Hijacks Stage At VA Energy Policy Forum

June 18, 2016 Staff, www.beyondextremeenergy.org Resist! FERC, Fossil Fuels, Fracking, LNG, Policy, Virginia

By Staff of Beyond Extreme Energy - Activists from Beyond Extreme Energy interrupted the Virginia Energy Policy Forum in Hampton today to dramatize forcefully our conviction that current policies of the U.S. government, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Dominion Resources and others represented at the event are wrong-headed and dangerous. As U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was addressing the forum, BXEers Steve Norris and Lee Stewart walked in front of the stage carrying a banner that said: “NO LNG EXPORTS.” and “Guys, we ain’t asking … Clean Energy Now.”

Tipping Point On US Public Opinion On Climate Change

March 21, 2016 Oliver Milman, www.theguardian.com Educate! Climate Change, Policy, United States

By Oliver Milman for The Guardian - A record number of Americans believe global warming will pose a threat to their way of life, new polling data shows, amid strengthening public acceptance that rising temperatures are being driven by human activity. “I think a shift in public opinion and consciousness has been underway for several years now,” Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told the Guardian. A spokesman for 350 Action, the political arm of climate activist group 350.org, said meanwhile that politicians who cast doubt on climate science would soon have to take such polling into account.

Harmful Economic Policy Poisoned Flint Before Lead Did

February 23, 2016 Lori Hansen Riegle, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Contamination, Economics, Flint, Policy, Water

By Lori Hansen Riegle for The Huffington Post - The national spotlight is on Flint, Michigan as it struggles with a contaminated public water system that has been poisoning its people over the past two years. This happened because a state emergency manager appointed by Governor Rick Snyder ordered a change in the water supply to save money for the cash-strapped city. As the full scope of this avoidable human and economic crisis in Flint becomes clearer -- one must ask how such an iconic and historically vibrant American city -- could have been plunged into such extreme jeopardy?

Fossil Fuel Industry Pushing Exports Of Carbon Energy

February 9, 2016 Steve Horn, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Congress, Energy, Fossil Fuels, Policy

By Steve Horn for Counter Punch - As the U.S. presidential race dominates the media, it is easy to forget that both chambers of the U.S. Congress are currently in session. The U.S. Senate has put a major energy bill on the table, the first of its sort since 2007. The 237-page bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) —S. 2012, the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 — includes provisions that would expedite the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permitting process, heap subsidies on coal technology, and fund research geared toward discovering a way to tap into methane hydrate reserves.

#BlackLivesMatter Coalition Protest US Conference of Mayors

January 22, 2016 Staff, www.byp100.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Liberation, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Policy, Protests

By Staff of BYP100 - We are a united, decentralized, collaborative movement of Black organizations and Black people across the country working for the liberation of all Black people. We are the Movement for Black Lives. As DC organizers we stand in solidarity with Black people in Chicago who are organizing against the administration of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. Rahm Emmanuel has covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald for political gain, gutted Chicago public schools, dismantled city mental health infrastructure, authorized a city budget where 40% of public services funds are spent on policing...

2016 Will Be The Biggest Year Yet For Marijuana Policy Reform

December 31, 2015 Rob Kampia, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Marijuana, Policy

By Rob Kampia for The Huffington Post - I don't often use superlatives, but it's easy to say that 2016 will be the most significant year yet in the battle to repeal marijuana prohibition in the United States. Up until now, the two biggest years were 1996, when California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana, and 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and older. 2016 will likely comprise a cornucopia of cannabis policy advances, which I'll enumerate in the form of predictions.

Civil Rights Groups Are Unraveling Illegal Bail On The Poor

October 27, 2015 Mike Ludwig, www.truth-out.org Resist! Policy, Poverty

By Mike Ludwig for Truth Out - Like the majority of the nearly 750,000 people stuck in local jails across the United States, Rebecca Snow was not held in the Ascension Parish jail in central Louisiana because she had been convicted of a crime. The 33-year-old mother of three, who was charged with two nonviolent misdemeanors in late August, simply could not afford to post bail. If Snow had the $289 set for each charge, she could have gone home to her family instead of sitting in jail. Many others arrested in the parish are able to post bail and go home, but Snow didn't have the extra cash: She relies on public assistance and is indigent, according to a civil rights complaint filed against the parish's sheriff and top judge.

The President’s Trade Deal Struggles Because It’s Bad Policy

June 19, 2015 Stan Sorscher, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Free Trade, Policy, Politics, TPP

By Stan Sorscher in Huffington Post - The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a 12-country NAFTA-style trade deal with two serious problems. It doesn't work, and it's bad for democracy. First, everyone is in favor of trade. We can have good trade policy that raises living standards or bad trade policy that works fabulously well for a few, but very badly for everyone else. More than any other policy, trade policy creates winners and losers. For instance, pharmaceutical companies are big winners. Their expanded patent monopolies will cost everyone else billions. Nike is a winner because new investor protections will apply to its operations in Vietnam, where Nike already exploits the lowest cost labor they could find on earth.

Protests Build And Intensify People’s Views On Issues

December 15, 2014 Jennifer Hadden, www.washingtonpost.com Strategize! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Law, Policy

Bill McKibben suggested that the massive People’s Climate March in September had helped cause theUS-China climate announcement of a few weeks ago. He tweeted, “First reaction to US China climate news: We should do more of these big protest-type things, they seem useful.” But did the People’s Climate March actually cause these policy outcomes? Maybe. The truth is that it’s really difficult to assess the causal impact of protests. Many of the same things that drive people out to the streets also influence politicians to take actions in support of the movement’s cause. When the tide of public opinion shifts to support a movement, for example, we can expect to see both more protest and more favorable policy outcomes.

The UN’s New Report On Global Warming Is The Most Terrifying Yet

August 28, 2014 John Light, www.billmoyers.com Educate! Climate Change, Global Warming, Policy, UN

The New York Times and Bloomberg News got a look at a draft of a new UN report on climate change. It’s bleak, to say the least. From the Times: Runaway growth on the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report. Global warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a result of human emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control. The world may already be nearing a temperature at which the loss of the vast ice sheet covering Greenland would become inevitable, the report said. The actual melting would then take centuries, but it would be unstoppable and could result in a sea level rise of 23 feet, with additional increases from other sources like melting Antarctic ice, potentially flooding the world’s major cities.

Is Climate Policy Making Things Worse?

August 28, 2014 Bruce Melton, www.truth-out.org Educate! Climate Change, Global Warming, Policy

With This Decade's Climate Policy, Expect More Warming Than if Nothing Was Done at All. The fundamental climate change policy question today is not how much we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by when, but what will currently proposed carbon dioxide emissions reductions do to our climate in the near-term? In addition, what are the ramifications of short-lived climate pollutants that are discounted by the traditional long-term 100-year climate policy time frame? Our current policy has changed little from the dawning of the Kyoto Protocol era. This era dates back to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and embodied the roots of current climate policy extending back to the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC) in 1988. Currently proposed (June 2014) EPA regulations on carbon dioxide emissions reductions are only 13 percent more stringent than Kyoto's goals and do not address short-lived climate pollutants or the short-term climate time frame. (1)

Greek Cleaners Become Symbols Of Resistance

July 16, 2014 Maria Zepatou, www.youngist.org Resist! Europe, Greece, Policy, Resistance, Unions

It took nine months for the 396 cleaners that had been made redundant by the Greek Finance Ministry to gain their victory. Since September 2013, they have been on strike, selling T-shirts to survive and pay for banners and other activism materials, and facing police brutality. In May 2014, the court of Areios Pagos ruled that the women, who used to clean tax and customs offices across the country, should return to their posts immediately, since the layoffs were not supported by any study that proved them to be in the state’s best interests. However, this was only the beginning. The Greek government declined to comply with the court’s ruling, and applied for an appeal. The case will be transferred to a higher court in September, but, according to the cleaners’ lawyer, Yiannis Karouzos, the case can’t be re-examined, and the first decision will only be technically checked for legal errors. The Supreme Court that accepted the government’s request for an appeal issued the reasoning behind this decision, stating that “ensuring the continuation of the state’s financial policies (…) is linked with the general public interest, as opposed to the personal interest of each cleaner.”

Salvadoran Farmers Successfully Oppose Monsanto Seeds

July 10, 2014 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Resist! El Salvador, Food and Agriculture, Monsanto, Policy

Farmers across El Salvador united to block a stipulation in a US aid package to their country that would have indirectly required the purchase of Monsanto genetically modified (GM) seeds. Thousands of farmers, like 45-year-old farmer Juan Joaquin Luna Vides, prefer to source their seeds locally, and not to use Monsanto's GM seeds. "Transnational companies have been known to provide expired seeds that they weren’t able to distribute elsewhere," said Vides, who heads the Diversified Production program at the Mangrove Association, a community development organization that works in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador. "We would like the US embassy and the misinformed media outlets [that are pressuring the Salvadoran government to change their procurement procedure] to know more about the reality of national producers and recognize the food sovereignty of the country," he added. During the last two months, the US government has been attempting to pressure the government of El Salvador to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US foreign aid agency created during the presidency of George W. Bush.

New Study: Americans Not That Polarized

July 5, 2014 Voice Of The People, www.vop.org Educate! America, Policy, Politics, Survey

A new study finds remarkably little difference between the views of people who live in red (Republican) districts or states, and those who live in blue (Democratic) districts or states on questions about what policies the government should pursue. The study analyzed 388 questions asking what the government should do in regard to a wide range of policy issues and found that that most people living in red districts/states disagreed with most people in blue districts/states on only four percent of the questions. “A Not So Divided America,” contradicts the conventional wisdom that the political gridlock between Democrats and Republicans in Congress arises from deep disagreements over policy among the general public. The study was a joint project of Voice Of the People and the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), affiliated with the University of Maryland. “Clearly, the gridlock in Congress is not driven by the people,” said PPC Director Steven Kull, who led the study. “Although some research has shown partisan polarization in response to broad ideological slogans, on specific questions about what government should do, the study found hardly any difference between red and blue districts.”

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