Extreme Weather Patterns, Mountaintop Removal, NAFTA Renegotiation

Texas Flood Linked with Extreme Weather Patterns Long Predicted by Climate Change Research
Interview with John H. Cushman Jr., managing editor of Inside Climate News, conducted by Scott Harris

As large sections of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, were inundated with floodwaters, driving tens of thousands of residents from their homes, the nation received yet another wake-up call regarding the increasing frequency of extreme weather events that have triggered a series of recent historic natural disasters. Since Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas coast on Aug. 25, parts of Houston have seen a record 50 inches of rainfall — more than the city usually receives in a year. The death toll stood at 11 on Aug. 29, but officials feared that number would likely rise. Federal agencies estimated that as many as 30,000 people have been forced to leave their homes for shelters and more than 450,000 people are likely to seek federal aid.

As the online publication Inside Climate News observed, “The immediate priorities—rescue operations, disaster assistance, flood insurance, and the like—will be followed by broader questions involving the vulnerability of infrastructure, the energy industry and communities to extreme weather and the need to balance mitigation of the pollution that causes climate change with adaptation to global warming’s inescapable impacts.“

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John H. Cushman Jr., managing editor of Inside Climate News, who examines the links between climate change and extreme weather patterns that brought devastating floods to southeast Texas, and the disconnect between public opinion that increasingly recognizes the destructive consequences of global warming – and conservative politicians who continue to dismiss climate change as a hoax. [Rush transcript.]
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JOHN H. CUSHMAN, JR.: Well, I think it’s safe to say that the consensus among scientists who study this closely is that we’re seeing increasingly clearly the manifestations of a climate change that has been brought on by a manmade pollution, principally of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, fuels, although there are other sources of global warming pollution, as well.

When I say that we’re seeing the manifestations of it, of course, there have been hurricanes for a long, long time, but scientists began to recognize 30 or 40 years ago – with increasing certainty over the past decade – that the blanket of carbon dioxide that we were surrounding our planet with was going to cause profound warming and that we understood that physics of this, and scientists began to examine more and more closely what the symptoms would be.

And among the symptoms of a warming atmosphere would be more intense rainfalls and the largest storms. Among the symptoms of warming oceanwaters, would be intensification of some hurricanes. Among the symptoms of global warming would be the melting of the world’s ice, which would lead to sea level rise and of course, sea level rise would also be exacerbated by the warming of the oceans.

And so, when you combine these things together, what you see is an increasing risk that any particular storm will produce extreme results. In other words, the dice were being loaded for the kind of event that we’re seeing today. And that’s different than saying climate change caused this hurricane happen, but this hurricane’s characteristics are quite consistent with what the models have forecast for a long time. And it’s pretty discouraging to see that you know, that our lifetimes, we began to understand this, and yet we’re so far from the solutions that are needed to head off even more extreme events and our children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

BETWEEN THE LINES: John Cushman, one of the sad ironies here is that the fossil fuel industry, centered around Houston, one of the largest concentrations of oil refineries in the country is really the engine of economic growth in the Houston area and in Texas. And this is the area, of course, that now being devastated with the extreme rainfall that we’re seeing as a result of Hurricane Harvey. What can you say about what’s happening there to that particular region? How much of an impact do you think that has on folks who’ve benefited from the economic boom that’s taken place in that part of the country?

JOHN H. CUSHMAN, JR.: Right, and to a considerable degree, all of us have benefited from the fossil fuel era, when it was in full swing, and of course, the development of the United States as the world’s pre-eminent economy was largely related to the rise of this industry. The problem is that in developing the riches of fossil fuels, we had a mindset that the energy would be cheap but the pollution would be free. By which I mean that nobody was paying for the externalities – the costs that are associated with this carbon dioxide pollution.

And until we recognize the costs of climate change and incorporate it into the market price of fossil fuels we are not going to be able to steer ourselves successfully to alternative fuels. And the time for alternative fuels has now arrived.

BETWEEN THE LINES: With the greater frequency of these extreme weather crises and the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being allocated to help people in need who have lost their homes, their cars, what they depend on for everyday life, public opinion seems to be moving in the direction to rejecting the climate change denial that we see in the Trump administration, among the Cabinet officials, and of course, President Trump himself, who just withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. Where do you see public opinion in the United States headed given these extreme weather situations? And what effect is that going to have on U.S. politics, where we have one particular political party, the Republicans, who champion climate change denial?

JOHN H. CUSHMAN, JR.: Well, you’re asking me questions of which I have very little expertise or proficiency. But in this arena, I have seen, dating back for decades as a journalist, a persistent and dedicated attempt by many different actors to confuse the public. I found myself rereading articles that I’d written in the 1990s when I was covering the environment beat in Washington and which the petroleum industry was setting about forming committees who would make the public believe that there was too much uncertainty in the science of climate change to be able to be able to base any policy decisions on the science as it then existed, when it in fact the science had long progressed to the point – and it has continued to progress farther and farther in the direction of guiding policymakers – about how to deal with these risks. And they are risks. And there are uncertainties, but it’s very important to not allow uncertainty to become an excuse for inaction. That isn’t where the science points us.

For more information, visit Inside Climate News at insideclimatenews.org.

Trump Suspends Funds for Health Impact Study of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
Interview with Bo Webb, former board president and current member of the group Coal River Mountain Watch, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

For years, medical research in communities near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites, or MTR, has revealed higher incidences of birth defects, cancer and early mortality than in control communities. MTR blasts the tops off mountain ridges with dynamite, contaminating the air and impacting water quality. After years of grassroots organizing against MTR in southern West Virginia, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health requested help from the federal Office of Surface Mining to review the health studies. In the waning days of the Obama administration, the office – which is part of the Interior Department – allocated a million dollars for the review. However, on Aug. 20, the Trump administration’s Interior Department halted the study in order to review all grants over $100,000.

The organization leading the study, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, confirmed the Interior Department’s order and wrote: “The National Academies believes this is an important study and we stand ready to resume it as soon as the Department of the Interior review is completed.“ National environmental groups condemned the decision.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Bo Webb, a former board president and current member of the group Coal River Mountain Watch who lived in the heart of the coalfields for many years and is now a leader of the effort to pressure the government to research the health impacts of MTR. For the past several years, he has advocated congressional adoption of the ACHE Act – the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act – which would require a halt to mountaintop removal coal mining until studies can prove it is safe – something he’s confident could never be substantiated. Webb organized a protest in 2015 to push the legislation, and picks up the story from there.
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BO WEBB: And then the governor the next day said, “We have to take a look at all this research that’s out there. And so the head of the West Virginia Department of Health, we met with him maybe two weeks later, and he said West Virginia didn’t have the resources – the money or the people – to really do such a review of all this research. So, he contacted the Office of Surface Mining at Interior who we had dealt with before, the head of OSM – he went to the National Academy of Sciences and brought them in to do the review. What they were doing here was a review of all of the existing research. That’s all it was; it wasn’t anything new, it was just taking a look at all the research – I think it was 27 or 28 different research papers out there; it was going to take them two years to do it and cost a million dollars, and they put together a team. They brought independent scientists and they also brought in some ex-coal people that were scientists, supposedly. But they promised to hold public hearings, and they’ve been doing that, keeping us up to date, and then when they would have testimony from a scientist, they did it in Charleston (West Virginia); they just last week did it in Kentucky.

So they were in the middle of reviewing all the research, and then Trump just put the kibosh on it and shut it down. So, now, we know that people are getting sick and dying, so the Trump administration has basically decided to ignore all of that, and regardless of what the research has said, regardless of what people living there witnessing this say, it doesn’t matter. He’s basically given the green light to the coal industry to blow the mountains up, and if you kill the residents nearby, it’s okay. That’s really the bottom line, and this review thing could cause us some problems, so let’s stop it. Let’s just don’t do it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, Bo Webb, what do you think is the next step? Do you think you can get the funding restored?

BO WEBB: Well, that’s what I’m trying to work on now, and I’m hoping to go down to D.C. in a couple of weeks and meet with Sen. Sanders’ office. I spoke with him, but most of them are out on vacation. So I’m going to go down and talk with him and try to get some pressure applied in Congress, in the Senate, to say, “Don’t let them do that. A million bucks is a drop in the bucket, plus they’re probably 30 percent into the work already.” And you know what, Melinda? I know what’s going to come out of the review: They’re going to say, Well, the review, it’s valid science, but we need more research. I kind of caution on that; we don’t need more research. We need MTR to stop, and then do all the research that you want to do.

But all indications are the air that people are breathing in those communities is toxic and contaminated. The U.S. Geological Survey identified what’s in the dust and it boils down to silica and aluminum and molybdenum, which is a metal. My point is that we have so much research already that’s indicating that MTR is causing people to get sick and it definitely appears that it’s coming from the blasting and the work on these MTR sites that stirring up the dust. And the USGS, what they did, they showed this coming from the MTR sites; they showed it in the amount of dust they were collecting. When the mines were very active, there were huge amounts of silica and aluminum and such in the air, in fine particulates, which enters your lungs. You don’t have any defense against it; they’re real small, less than 2.5 microns. They showed that when the coal mines shut down and went on vacation, those fine particulates were not present. But when they start cranking it up and start blasting, those fine particulates are there again. So we know what’s in the air, we know where it’s coming from, and we know physical lab work that it’s causing the growth of tumors in human lungs. And it’s still going on.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You have been promoting the ACHE Act, which stands for Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act, since 2012, but it hasn’t caught fire yet in Congress. Do you think the publicity surrounding the cancellation or postponement or whatever it is of this study could jump-start support for the bill?

BO WEBB: Well, it will, it will if we – and when I say “we” I’m talking about myself and the people I work with, and nonprofits all over – jump on this. If we remain silent, if the people aren’t working on it, it’ll just die, it’ll disappear and go away. We need to get to D.C., and expose this and really harp on this and get this continued and bring about more awareness and hopefully just say, “We need to stop MTR, today.”

For more information, visit the website of Coal River Mountain Watch at crmw.org.


NAFTA Renegotiation Must Prioritize Public Interest Over Corporate Power

Interview with Melinda St. Louis, international campaigns director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, conducted by Scott Harris

After a contentious national debate, The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, came into force on Jan. 1, 1994. The trade treaty between the United States, Canada and Mexico, granted new powers and privileges to multinational corporations. Key provisions in NAFTA made it easier for U.S.-based corporations to outsource jobs to cheap labor markets overseas, where governments don’t protect workers’ rights. NAFTA also permits corporations to challenge government regulations that protect public health, consumer safety and the environment – and launch lawsuits to recover lost profits.

Economic studies conclude that NAFTA cost hundreds of thousands of good-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs, and played an important role in decimating America’s middle class. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in contrast to the pro-free trade Republican party, denounced NAFTA and pledged that if elected, he would either scrap or renegotiate NAFTA.

In office for seven months, the Trump administration recently completed a first round of talks to renegotiate the terms of NAFTA, and is scheduled to begin a second round Sept. 1 in Mexico City. In speeches, Trump regularly threatens to withdraw from NAFTA if Canada and Mexico refuse to sign on to provisions that would bring back American manufacturing jobs. Between The Lines Scott Harris spoke with Melinda St. Louis, international campaigns director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, who discusses what must be changed in NAFTA to restore the balance between corporate and public interest, and expresses doubts that the Trump agenda on transforming the treaty will benefit American workers.
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MELINDA ST. LOUIS: Progressives like us and the labor and environmental community, have been very critical of NAFTA since the beginning. And we have been very clear that we have a list of demands of things that must come out – such as these investor protections and incentivized job off-shoring, and what must go in, which is strong and enforceable labor, environmental and human rights protections. That has not been a part of it and a whole host of other things.

Now, Donald Trump has also said that NAFTA was a disaster. But, you know, he talks about this in terms of America First. He has scapegoated Mexicans in a whole host of areas – he talks about building a wall and also in the context of this, so this is antithetical to a progressive vision.

He has stated that his goal is to reduce the trade deficit, which is important in terms of helping to create jobs in the United States, particularly manufacturing and other jobs that have been hollowed out in in the NAFTA era. But unfortunately, what we’ve seen so far is the same closed process. We have not seen the texts that that they’re planning to put forward. The same closed process with 500 corporate advisers is intact while the public is being locked out and so what’s really important now is to call out in whose interest is this renegotiation going to happen?

We have been calling for NAFTA to be replaced since the beginning, but at this point it’s really important to look at the process and to make clear what the demands are – that a tweak of NAFTA is not going to cut it in any way. The devastation that NAFTA has wrought in terms incentivizing (jobs) offshore – we’ve seen more than 900,000 jobs that have been officially certified by the Department of Labor as being lost to NAFTA, and we know that’s a severe undercount because it’s a very narrow program.

And at the same time, there have been these provisions that allow multinational corporations to attack public health, safety, environmental safeguards and we’ve seen nearly $400 million of taxpayer money has been paid to corporations by these tribunals already under NAFTA.

So those are the things we need to watch to see. Are they going to eliminate these provisions that incentivize jobs offshore and allow corporations to attack our laws? Are they going to eliminate the provisions that undermine our “Buy American, Buy Local” policies that are in NAFTA? Are they going to eliminate the provisions that push this deregulatory agenda so we can’t regulate Wall Street and we can’t our food imports, etc. And will there really be the types of policies and strong standards in environment and labor that lift up standards in all three countries, instead of encouraging this race to the bottom that we have seen, particularly in Mexico?

BETWEEN THE LINES: Melinda, during the negotiations over the TransPacific Partnership Agreement, a very powerful coalition emerged made up of civil society groups, labor, environmental, human rights organizations all coming out in opposition to President Obama’s pushing the TPP. What’s the coalition look like now, that is pressuring the Trump administration and Congress to ensure the pro-worker planks are part of the NAFTA renegotiation here?

MELINDA ST. LOUIS: Well, you’re right that there was an unprecedented coalition opposing the TPP that was large both in its numbers and its breadth of different sectors. And that coalition has pivoted to NAFTA. Now I will say that in the Trump era, many of the organizations, like the environmental organizations, labor organizations, human rights groups and immigrants’ rights groups are under attack in a whole host of areas. That is a real problem because everyone’s having to fight on multiple fronts.

But I will say that same coalition – there’s the Citizen’s Trade Campaign that brings together family farm, environment, labor, faith groups, consumer groups – that coalition is mobilizing. There’s much more to do to counter this narrative that unfortunately has been pushed in this era, which is, either you are for free trade or you’re a protectionist. And what we need to be clear about is who have been the winners and who are writing the rules and for whom. And we need to make sure that it’s the public that is center there, and not just big corporations.


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