Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 157

The ExxonMobil Explosion That Nobody Is Talking About

TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA — Just before 9 a.m. on February 18, the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California exploded, shaking the surrounding community with the force of a 1.7 magnitude earthquake, and sending a quarter ton of sulfur oxide gas into the atmosphere. With the capacity to refine more than 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day, the facility supplies nearly 10 percent of the state’s gasoline supply, and its reduced capacity increased the cost of filling up a tank of gas in California by 6 to 10 cents per gallon.

My property is about 2 and 1/4 acres in size and 100 percent of it, I mean every square millimeter, was covered in the fallout.

Workers inside the refinery likened the incident to a “loud sonic boom,” and soon roughly 50 firefighters were battling a three-alarm fire. First responders initially feared the possibility of radioactive materials at the scene, though that concern was ruled out some three hours after the initial explosion.

“When you walk through that gate, you don’t know what’s gonna happen,” one unidentified worker told NBC News in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. “You don’t know if you’re gonna come back out alive; you don’t know if you’re gonna come back out with a limb missing.”

Outside the refinery, a chemical ash rained down on the community for the rest of the day, steadily falling on playgrounds, cars, and backyard gardens. The ash was ejected at such a violent rate that, less than 2 miles southwest of the facility, it blanketed the mobile home park owned by Brad Commiso.

“My property is about 2 and 1/4 acres in size,” Commiso told ThinkProgress, “and 100 percent of it, I mean every square millimeter, was covered in the fallout. My first thought was that it was ash from a fire. I quickly figured out that it wasn’t that, though; it had metallic fiberglass sheen to it. It had weight.”

Commiso quickly drove to the nearest fire station, knocking on the door and asking the officers who answered for an explanation behind the fallout and how to deal with its cleanup.

“They told me that they’d been instructed to send me to ExxonMobil,” said Commiso. “They told me that Exxon would tell me how to clean my property.”

Unsatisfied with this answer, Commiso left his phone number and demanded that a more senior officer contact him.

Regulators … fail to give people fair warning about how to protect themselves, or how to prevent the same thing happening again. This is entirely preventable.

“At about 11:30 that morning, an officer called and said ‘I talked to them; it’s okay, just wash it away.’ And no tests were done at 11:30 in the morning,” Commiso said. “A shelter in place was still active, but the fire department was telling me I could wash it down the storm drain.”

Michelle Kinman’s home sits almost 3 miles southwest of the refinery, and it, too, received a considerable dusting of chemical fallout on the day of the explosion. “My husband came in from outside at about 9 a.m.,” she remembered, “and he had it on his head and shoulders. Our patio was sprinkled with it; I can remember the contrast between the color of the ash and the color of the patio furniture. We didn’t touch it that day, and no one from the city or Exxon reached out to me to tell me how to handle it or clean it up. It rained twice in the weeks after, which is what eventually washed it away.”

Local and state agencies have so far concluded that the fallout was non-toxic. But with a federal investigation ongoing and many questions unanswered, residents in Torrance are still upset nearly two months after the accident, with what they see as a series of lapses in governmental response. Many Torrance citizens feel as though they don’t fully comprehend what, exactly, transpired on February 18, nor how it might still be impacting their health.

“It feels as though the people in charge, both the government and the refinery, are looking out more for their PR than anything else,” says Jennifer Richards, the director and co-founder of Children’s Montessori School, which also sits roughly 2 miles south of the refinery and suffered the same chemical fallout. “This doesn’t feel like a situation where they are genuinely concerned about the well being of the community.”

The explosion was the latest in a string of accidents in and around the ExxonMobil refinery. It was also the third of its kind at a United States refinery so far this year, setting a pace that, according to Congressman Ted Lieu, is three to four times higher than in Europe, revealing, “not just a local problem and not just a state problem, [but] also a national problem.”

In the accident’s aftermath, California state senators held public hearings on emergency coordination and the explosion’s effects on gas prices, and Rep. Lieu joined with Rep. Maxine Waters to successfully petition the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) to launch a federal investigation on safety conditions in the refinery.

In the preliminary opinions of some experts and observers, the mistakes made in the aftermath of the refinery’s explosion are modest yet numerous, reflecting an imperfect reaction to a dangerous scenario with potentially wide-ranging health and safety implications.

“While its true California often does better than most regarding environmental protections, we still fail miserably in several respects,” lamented Julia May, senior scientist at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE). “Regulators often take the word of the oil industry that substances blown over the community during explosions pose no hazards, and consequently they fail to give people fair warning about how to protect themselves, or how to prevent the same thing happening again. This is entirely preventable.”

Unknown Toxicity

Two days after the explosion, ExxonMobil hosted a town hall meeting for concerned Torrance residents. According to May, the information offered that day woefully undersold the chemical composition of the fallout.

“There should have been a more concerted effort to provide a more detailed evaluation by health experts regarding the overall risk from exposure to the ash,” she told ThinkProgress. “Rather than being told during the town hall meeting by ExxonMobil that the material was similar to dust that you find at home.”

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State Sen. Ben Hueso (left) talks to homeowner Brad Commiso, whose home was blanketed in ash, during a town hall meeting in Torrance.

CREDIT: Screenshot

Roughly 33 minutes into the meeting, a staff physician for the refinery fielded one of the evening’s countless questions on the chemical composition of the fallout. Mid-sentence, she is interrupted by an angry gentleman in the back of the room.

“Are there any rare earth elements… that’s what we’re asking,” he demanded. “Do you have any lanthanum? Do you have any other chemicals to increase the capacity of your catalyst? Because if it’s just aluminum and silicon, I can live with that. But if you’re adding [other rare earth elements] to that, it massively increases the toxicity, and we wanna know about it.”

“This is spent catalyst,” responded the physician, in a slightly exasperated tone, “It contains aluminum oxide, it contains amorphous silica, and it contains kaolin. That’s what FCC spent catalyst contains.”

But in the samples taken by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), aluminum, lanthanum, and cerium were each discovered to exist at excessive levels. According to Lenntech, a company that provides water and air purification systems for industrial facilities worldwide, these three elements can cause a host of health problems when people are exposed to them over prolonged periods.

The work done that day by SCAQMD offers the best public record of the fallout’s chemical composition. As outlined in Governor Jerry Brown’s Interagency Working Group on Refinery Safety, SCAQMD is the local agency responsible for monitoring and regulating air pollution. If arsenic or asbestos is suddenly spilled into the surrounding environment, it’s within their specific purview to identify it. SCAQMD is thus a critical actor in the aftermath of this sort of industrial accident; their work provides the bedrock information that other agencies, such as the fire department and county Hazmat teams, use to make larger decisions on public health threats and appropriate cleanup procedures.

The SCAQMD report on this makes a curious decision to benchmark their chemical findings against the mean concentrations of those same elements found in average U.S. soil samples. However, these powdered metals fell from the air, making it much easier for them to be carried by the wind, swept into sewers, and breathed into lungs. Regardless of that fact, according to SCAQMD, the level of aluminum found in the fallout was 245 percent above its norm, while the mean lanthanum and cerium readings were 32,667 percent and 8,277 percent of their respective benchmarks. Nothing in the report highlights or explains these findings. The conclusion that the accident didn’t significantly impact the city’s health is offered in spite of them.

For their part, SCAQMD admits that they aren’t completely sure how these metals might impact the community at large. “We just don’t have an adequate body of scientific information to say if they’re not toxic,” said Sam Atwood, media relations manager for the agency.

This admission has much do with the fact that, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, there are roughly 100,000 synthetic chemicals on the marketplace today, only a small fraction of which have ever been fully studied for their impacts on the human body. “Maybe 5 percent of these chemicals have been documented for their health consequences,” said Jonathan Borak, a clinical professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the Yale School of Public Health.

“On lanthanum and cerium, especially, there is probably very little information because these are very rare metals,” explained , associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “We might not be able to address the question of health impacts because we might not know the answer. Inhalation toxicity is difficult to consider; it’s an engineering problem. In order to understand it, you’d have to design a chamber, make and monitor the aerosol output and how it’s breathed. Getting an even distribution of metals in the air would be difficult and expensive, so you’d have to be very, very interested in these questions. If we were all exposed to this all the time, the government would do it, but we aren’t so we just don’t know.”

“There should have been a more concerted effort to provide a more detailed evaluation by health experts regarding the overall risk from exposure to the ash,” May, the scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, told ThinkProgress. “Rather than being told during the town hall meeting by ExxonMobil that the material was similar to dust that you find at home.”

Delayed Response

The most concise timeline for the public response to the explosion is also found in the SCAQMD report.

On the day of the accident, SCAQMD reports that their monitoring staff, “arrived on scene … within an hour and a half of the incident, however, measurements did not proceed immediately upon arrival due to safety precautions related to reports about the potential release of radioactive materials at the scene. When confirmed that the radiation concern was indeed unfounded shortly before noon, near real time monitoring around the refinery began immediately.”

This three-hour lag time between the accident and the initiation of air monitoring presents two significant problems. The first is that SCAQMD was unable to perform their labor when the fallout was at peak concentration.

“With this type of explosion, you’d be most concerned with inhalation and possible skin exposure within the first few hours following the explosion,” explained , associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the results SCAQMD eventually published do not fully reflect the chemical concentrations that blanketed Commiso’s home and the Children’s Place Elementary School.

While experts such as Wattenberg do believe that the agency acted responsibly, both in heeding the initial warnings of possible radioactive material and also eventually executing their prescribed duties according to the methodology laid out in their final report, the three-hour gap reflects yet another problem. If the threat of radioactivity was serious enough to keep an integral government agency from doing its job at the most opportune moment, why wasn’t the community at large similarly alerted?

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, Exxon managers, in conjunction with the Torrance fire department, made a conscious choice not to sound the refinery alarm meant for public alert. The Torrance fire department declined ThinkProgress’ request to talk to the officer in charge that day, advising instead that Exxon would provide greater insight into the decision. For their part, Exxon simply stated that, “a joint command decision was made to not activate community warning systems due to the nature of the material released. The warning sirens are activated when the unified command determines there is a health risk to the community; in this incident it was determined that the material did not present such a risk.”

As the SCAQMD was unable to begin working until later in the day, the immediate decision on the public health risk was based off the Material Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) for the exploded part. This document is provided by the manufacturer of industrial products, and contains information on their potential hazards. It is an essential starting point for the development of a complete health and safety program, and the MSDS sheet for this particular part contains explicit instructions not to “touch or walk through spilled material,” to “avoid contact with skin,” and to “prevent entry into waterways, sewers, basements or confined areas.” These warnings were either not extended to the public, or were done on an imperfect basis.

At a state senate hearing two weeks after the accident, Dave Campbell, secretary for the local chapter of the United Steelworkers, testified that, “Spent FCC catalyst dust for us… can be toxic and hazardous. In fact, we are required by companies such as ExxonMobil to wear personal protective equipment when we are even sweeping up a spill.”

In the case of the city’s schools, the fire department did work quickly with the local superintendent to notify the teachers and children that were immediately downwind of the refinery. According to public testimony offered by Donald Stabler, the deputy superintendent for administrative services for the Torrance Unified School District (TUSD), the fire department notified his office of the explosion and fire at precisely 8:52 a.m. A “soft shelter in place” was issued for schools downwind of the refinery to the north and west, allowing some movement inside the buildings while forbidding anyone to wander outside.

At 10:03 a.m., the remaining public schools in central and southern Torrance were also told to shelter in place, though this order was lifted 16 minutes later at 10:19. Finally, at 11:39 a.m., the original warning for the schools in the north and west of the city was also lifted.

Per Deputy Superintendent Stabler’s testimony, there were two main concerns in the event’s aftermath. Although individual principles were notified via calls, texts, and emails, the new district shortwave radios that had been implemented specifically for these sorts of scenarios failed in certain sites. “The other [problem] had to do with ExxonMobil’s emergency notification via emergency warning system that we have in our offices,” remarked Stabler. “For some reason, that did not go off that day.”

ExxonMobil declined to elaborate on the decision not to activate the warning system referenced by Stabler. “As a matter of practice, we do not comment on third party comment or speculation,” replied the company when pressed for comment on this specific decision.

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Damage caused by an explosion at the ExxonMobil refinery.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Nick Ut

At first blush, Stabler’s accounting of the day’s events conveys a sense that adequate protections for schools were put in place. However, little explanation has been offered for the decision to delay, by more than an hour, the shelter in place for schools south of the refinery. Although they were upwind of the explosion, they, too, experienced chemical fallout of a then-undetermined composition, which Exxon’s own documents stress should not come into contact with human skin.

“For a while, we had no idea that anything had happened at all,” says Jennifer Richards about the morning’s events. “By chance, we’d brought our kids in at 8:30 that morning, but they’re usually out there longer than that. We had a teacher come in at 9:30 and tell us that it was snowing ash. That was the first we’d heard of it.”

When the notification to shelter in place came, it arrived in the form of a robo-call, and wasn’t actually lifted for Children’s Place Elementary until 7 p.m., long after faculty decided on their own to end the school day.

“I sure wish we’d found out sooner,” sighs Richards. “Because of the late notification, I don’t feel confident that we got the whole story. None of our families have reported any health problems since that day, but that feels like more a function of luck than anything else.”

Worker Safety

The Exxon refinery explosion occurred in the midst of the largest oil refinery workers strike since 1980. For most of February and part of March, some 5,200 workers from 11 plants, including nine refineries accounting for 13 percent of U.S. capacity, refused to work, primarily due to what they saw as unsafe conditions.

“This work stoppage is about onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it,” United Steel Workers International Vice President Gary Beevers said at the time.

The truth of the matter is that the only reason workers weren’t killed that day is because they were out on a coffee break.

While the unionized Exxon employees at the Torrance refinery never went on strike, their facility has a substantial history of accidents, putting it in the crosshairs of state and federal regulators. In 1987, a detonation of hydrofluoric acid sent a fireball 1,500 feet into the air, while injuring 10 and causing $17 million in damage. In 1994, an onsite gas explosion injured 20 people. A 2010 report issued by ExxonMobil on the refinery’s environmental and social programs claims that facility’s primary role is, “to safely provide reliable and affordable supplies of energy to Southern California and do so in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible manner. In the past 10 years, the Torrance Refinery has made enormous strides in our environmental performance.” However, as Liza Tucker of the website Consumer Watchdog notes, ExxonMobil “has paid more than $15 million in fines for violations of state and federal air standards at its Torrance refinery and terminals since 2005.”

According to Campbell, the local United Steelworkers representative, this particular accident could have been much worse. “The truth of the matter,” he told ThinkProgress, “is that the only reason workers weren’t killed that day is because they were out on a coffee break.”

The Chemical Safety Board’s investigation into the causes of the accident is ongoing; their preliminary findings won’t be ready for another few months. The organization’s work on the 2012 Chevron Refinery explosion in Richmond, California is widely cited by the activist community as a model for tracing the root causes and fallout from these sorts of incidents. CSB told ThinkProgress that their focus will be on the refinery’s safety as a whole, and what protocols are in place to prevent and contain accidents. Of particular interest to them, however, is the geographic location of this specific mishap.

“Our chairman and our board have said, over and over, that California has really become a model for our refinery systems,” said Hillary Cohen of CSB, by way of explaining part of the rational for her agency’s decision to investigate the incident. “The rest of the country looks to California for safety regulations in plants in general, and we believe that changes in California could affect refinery safety reform throughout the country.”

The post The ExxonMobil Explosion That Nobody Is Talking About appeared first on ThinkProgress.

The U.S. Will Soon No Longer Be The Leading Cause Of Modern Global Warming

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A coal station in Hong Kong.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

China is set to overtake the United States as the at some point within the next two years, a dangerous benchmark for a country that’s also aiming to curb its dependence on coal.

China is already the top emitter of greenhouse gases, having surpassed the United States in 2006, but two separate estimates now indicate that its cumulative emissions since 1990 are on pace to exceed those of the United States, which would make China the largest contributor to modern climate change.

, the Norway-based Center for International Climate and Environmental Research estimates that China’s cumulative emissions since 1990 will overtake the United States’ this year. Using “slightly different data,” the U.S.-based think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates China’s cumulative emissions will surpass the United States’ in 2016. According to the WRI, China’s 1990-2016 emissions will reach 151 billion tons in 2016, while the U.S. will total 147 billion.

In November, China pledged to begin reducing its carbon emissions by 2030, the same year that it promised to get at least a fifth of its power from renewable sources. One of the biggest hurdles to cutting emissions in China has been coal, which for years has fueled its growing economy.

But even as China is poised to become the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases since 1990, it’s beginning to show signs of curbing its dependence on coal, which currently supplies 70 percent of its energy. In the first three months of 2015, China’s coal imports fell 42 percent from last year — an especially notable drop considering that just two years ago, China imported more coal in a single year than any other country in history.

Some of that drop can be attributed to China’s slowing economy, which is growing at its slowest rate in 25 years. But stronger environmental regulations have also begun to take their toll on China’s coal use, as government agencies are beginning to encourage industries to move away from coal as an energy source.

According to the Guardian, China’s national development commission said in their annual report that they would begin creating policies aimed at reducing coal consumption, and would work to limit the number of energy-intensive projects developed in heavily polluted areas. As part of the U.S.-China climate agreement, China promised to cap its coal use by 2020 — though government officials have said they think it could happen much sooner.

In 2014, China’s coal consumption declined by 2.9 percent, the first time it dropped in the 21st century. And in late March, Beijing announced that it would close the last of its coal plants, reducing the city’s coal use by 9.2 million metric tons.

As coal use drops, and China’s economy continues to languish, the country might look to green jobs for a boost. According to the China Daily, China recently eased bond rules for seven “key investment sectors,” including clean energy projects. The deputy director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission has said that the seven investment areas are a clear indication of the country’s “direction for future investment,” and signals a commitment to more sustainable economic growth. In 2014, China spent $83.3 billion on renewable energy, the largest investment of any country that year.

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Electric Car Batteries Just Hit A Key Price Point

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U.S. plug-in electric vehicle cumulative sales have soared in the past few years, thanks in part to rapidly falling battery prices. Via Wikipedia.

Electric vehicle demand in the past five years has soared in this country. The same is true worldwide. By the end of 2014, more than 700,000 total plug-in vehicles had been sold worldwide (plug-in hybrids and pure battery electrics), up from about 400,000 at the end of 2013. As of 2015, dozens of models of electric cars and vans are available for purchase, mostly in Europe, the United States, Japan, and China.

A major reason for the rapid jump in EV sales is the rapid drop in the cost of their key component -– batteries. The energy stored in a battery is measured by kilowatt-hour (kWh). The more kWh stored, the further the car can go on one charge, so a key metric for battery economics is the cost per kWh. The lower the cost, the cheaper it is to build an electric car with a significant range.

In a major 2013 analysis, “Global EV Outlook: Understanding the Electric Vehicle Landscape to 2020,” the International Energy Agency estimated that electric vehicles would achieve cost parity with internal combustion engine vehicles when battery costs hit $300 per kWh of storage capacity. The analysis projected that would happen by 2020.

Yet a study last month in Nature Climate Change, “Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles” determined that “industry-wide cost estimates declined by approximately 14% annually between 2007 and 2014, from above US$1,000 per kWh to around US$410 per kWh.” The study, by Björn Nykvist and Måns Nilsson, also looked at battery electric vehicle (BEV) leaders, like Nissan’s LEAF and Tesla’s model S. They found, “the cost of battery packs used by market-leading BEV manufacturers are even lower, at US$300 per kWh.”

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So the best manufacturers have already reached the battery price needed for cost parity with conventional cars.

Last year, UBS, a leading Investment bank, found “the 3-year total cost of ownership (TCO) of a Tesla S model is similar to that of a comparable petrol combustion engine car such as an Audi A7,” in places like Germany.

Even more revolutionary, UBS projects that “the payback time for unsubsidised investment in electric vehicles plus rooftop solar plus battery storage will be as low as 6-8 years by 2020.” Of course, oil prices have been dropping, too (as have solar prices). The battery study from last month found that prices would need to drop under $250 per kWh for EVs to become competitive. Further, it concluded:

“If costs reach as low as $150 per kilowatt hour this means that electric vehicles will probably move beyond niche applications and begin to penetrate the market more widely, leading to a potential paradigm shift in vehicle technology.”

Can electric car batteries hit that price point? The study projects that costs will fall to some $230 per kilowatt hour in the 2017 to 2018 timeframe. Tesla Motors and Panasonic have started building a massive $5 billion plant capable of producing half a million battery packs (plus extra batteries for stationary applications) a year. It is expected to be completed in 2017. Tesla and Panasonic estimate this “Gigafactory” with 6,500 workers will lead to a 30 percent reduction in cost, which the recent Nature Climate Change study said is “a trajectory close to the trends projected in this paper.”

It may well be that $150 per kWh can be hit around 2020 without a major battery breakthrough but simply with continuing improvements in manufacturing, economies of scale, and general learning by industry. This seems especially likely if China continues its explosive growth in EV sales:

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The Issue That Could Derail Marco Rubio’s Presidential Chances With Latino Voters

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This May 17, 2014, file photo shows Blanca Mesa of Miami protesting against Sen. Marco Rubio’s statements on climate change as activists and beach-goers join hands in a Hands across the Sand demonstration in Miami Beach, Fla.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File

When Marco Rubio announces his bid for President Monday, he’ll become one of two candidates of Latino descent in the running. But Rubio’s history of denial of human-caused climate change isn’t likely to help his case among Latino voters, a group that, as a whole, is among the strongest supporters of U.S. action on climate change.

Rubio’s long been open about his doubt that climate change is being caused by humans. Last year, Rubio said that he didn’t agree that “somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate.” According to Rubio, the Earth’s climate “is always changing,” and in saying that climate change is real, scientists have taken “a handful of decades of research and — and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.”

These opinions not only put him in opposition to with the 97 percent of climate scientists that believe climate change is happening and is human-caused, they also directly conflict the views of most Latino voters. A 2014 poll found that nine out of 10 Latinos in the U.S. — including 68 percent of Republican Latinos — want the U.S. to take action against climate change. Matt Barreto, co-founder of polling firm Latino Decisions, said when the poll was announced that immigration was the only other issue where he’d seen such consistent support among Latinos.

A poll from this year found that Latinos were more likely than non-Hispanic whites to say that climate change was an issue that was “very important” to them personally, and were also more likely to say that climate change would end up hurting them personally.

This polling data is not surprising to Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente, a Latino-centric advocacy group. He told ThinkProgress that, because many Latinos live in regions of the U.S. that are among the most vulnerable to climate change — Florida with its rising seas, and the Southwest with its droughts and wildfires — they feel the effects of it first-hand. For Rubio — a politician from climate-vulnerable Florida who comes from a Cuban background — to deny that humans are causing climate change is “really an embarrassment,” Carmona said.

“To project policy positions that question the undeniable, unified position of the scientific community is pretty outrageous,” he said. “[Rubio] says he cant confirm the science…that’s a slimy position that is an embarrassment for the interests of Latino community.”

In addition to being vulnerable to the broader impacts of climate change, the Latino population is also among the most vulnerable to air pollution in the United States. Latinos are three times more likely to die from asthma than other racial or ethnic groups, and about half the country’s Latino population lives in regions that frequently violate clean air rules, according to the National Hispanic Medical Association. And as the climate warms, that vulnerability will only worsen: the increase in ozone levels associated with rising temperatures is predicted to drive up asthma-related U.S. hospital admissions.

Rubio also said in 2013 that efforts to combat climate change won’t make a difference because “government can’t change the weather,” and because countries like China and India are bigger polluters than the U.S. is now.

“They’re not going to stop doing what they’re doing,” he said. “America is a country, it’s not a planet. So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy.”

Carmona said statements like that are “absolutely” going to play into Latinos’ decisions on whether or not to vote for Rubio.

“The fact that he’s so out of touch with the views and positions of Latinos on key economic, immigration, and other issues including the environment, it will be a major reason why he will not connect with Latino voters,” Carmona said. “Latino voters will reject political candidates that don’t reflect their views.”

If Rubio wanted to get serious about attracting Latino voters, Carmona said, he could start by changing his message on climate change. He could show support for this year’s upcoming U.N. climate talks in Paris, and could support the federal government’s recent proposal to cut emissions from fossil fuel power plants. Given Rubio’s previous statements on climate change and federal action — he said Americans would “pay a terrible price” for executive actions like the Clean Power Plan — this about-face isn’t likely, however.

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This Is The Most Important Tweet About Hillary’s Announcement And Everyone Pretty Much Ignored It

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CREDIT: Screenshot

On Sunday, Hillary Clinton announced she’d run for president in 2016. Her intentions were hardly secret as key staff were already hired and a campaign headquarters was recently established in Brooklyn.

But that didn’t stop an avalanche of commentary on Twitter on whether her announcement was “late” and her new campaign logo. But the most important tweet, by her campaign chairman John Podesta*, was mostly ignored.

Podesta’s tweet was retweeted about 130 times in the first four hours but none of the retweets were by verified users, other than one ThinkProgress reporter — journalists at major media outlets typically have verified Twitter accounts. The tweet has also not been embedded in a news article by any major publication.

Helping working families succeed, building small businesses, tackling climate change & clean energy. Top of the agenda. #Hillary2016

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) April 12, 2015

This would make Hillary’s campaign the first major presidential campaign ever to make combating climate change a central issue.

Al Gore, who would go onto win a Nobel Prize for his advocacy of climate change, did not make it a key issue of his campaign for president in 2000. The environment section of John Kerry’s 2004 website did not mention climate change. (The issue gets one paragraph in a 14-page white paper on the campaign’s environmental policies.)

In 2008, Clinton and Obama more readily acknowledged climate change as a serious issue, but is was hardly a central policy issue in a campaign dominated by the fallout from the Iraq war and the emerging economic collapse.

In 2012, with no primary opponent for Obama and an opposition party that mostly refused to acknowledge climate science “neither Obama nor Mitt Romney was asked about the issue in any of the presidential debates, and it has not featured prominently in any of the plans for their presidencies.” (Ultimately, Obama embraced aggressive action on climate change during his second term including important new rules for power plants and a landmark agreement with China.)

Meanwhile, nearly all Republican candidates won’t acknowledge the existence of climate change or — if they do — suggest nothing should be done about it.

The world faces disastrous consequences from climate change in the coming years and ultimately the global response will succeed or fail based on the actions of the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China.

Podesta’s tweet signals that Clinton plans to make action on climate change a central part of her campaign. If Clinton were to win in 2016 with a mandate to take action on climate, it could save the planet from catastrophic warming.

But what do you think of her new logo?

*Disclosure: John Podesta founded the Center For American Progress Action Fund, which is the parent organization of ThinkProgress.

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Thousands March In Canada To Call For Action On Climate Change

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Canadians march for climate action in Quebec City on Saturday, April 11, 2015.

CREDIT: Robert van Waarden/Greenpeace

Thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Quebec City, Quebec on Saturday to call on their country to curb tar sands growth take action to address the threat of climate change.

The march, which was organized by the environmental and social coalition Act on Climate, drew about 25,000 participants from across Canada, including representatives from First Nations, environmental groups, unions, and student groups. The protesters’ march comes a few days before Canada plans to host a provincial summit on climate change in Quebec City, during which the country’s premiers will discuss their plans in the lead-up to the U.N. climate talks this November in Paris.

One of the messages the protesters wanted to send to the premiers was their opposition to proposed tar sands pipelines like Northern Gateway and Energy East. Those projects, opponents say, would endanger Canada’s land and water and accelerate the fossil fuel production that drives climate change.

“You can either protect our climate or you can develop the tar sands, but you cannot do both at the same time,” Karel Mayrand, Quebec director of the David Suzuki Foundation, told the Globe and Mail. “We’re worried that premiers will meet and say yes to protecting our climate and, at the same time, yes to oil infrastructure such as pipelines and expanding oil sands production.”

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CREDIT: Robert van Waarden/Greenpeace

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Activists create a human thermometer in Quebec City on Saturday, April 11, 2015.

CREDIT: Act on Climate

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CREDIT: Greenpeace/Robert van Waarden

Still, though the protesters were targeting the premiers ahead of their upcoming meeting, some stressed that provincial action on climate wouldn’t be enough to curb Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“We can’t see effective climate action in Canada without the federal government,” Adam Scott of Canada’s Environmental Defense told the Globe and Mail.

Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadians have seen little meaningful action on climate change. Harper’s been a staunch supporter of Canada’s tar sands industry since he assumed office in 2006. Under his administration, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol — an agreement the prime minister once called a “socialist scheme” — in 2011, and cut hundreds of jobs from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 2013.

The Harper administration has also been accused of trying to silence anti-tar sands activists and muzzle government scientists and meteorologists in an attempt to stop certain information on climate change and environmental issues from reaching the public.

A report from last month underscores the importance of Canada’s federal government taking climate change seriously. The report, which was published by 70 Canadian academics, found that Canada could get 100 percent of its electricity from low-carbon sources like wind, solar, and hydropower by 2035 and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. But, in order to do so, the federal government should implement major policy changes, including a nationwide tax on carbon and an elimination of fossil fuel subsidies — including those that go to the country’s tar sands industry.

That type of action isn’t likely under the Harper government. But Canada is holding its federal election in October, meaning that the country could soon have a prime minister who’s more committed than the current administration to taking serious action on climate change.

The post Thousands March In Canada To Call For Action On Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.

How Does Hillary Match Up With Other Dems On Climate Change?

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A worker mops the floor of the stage prior to the first Democratic presidential primary debate of the 2008 election hosted by the South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, SC., Thursday, April 26, 2007.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Dave Martin

On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce her decision to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. While the crowded Republican field has led to questions of how to fit all serious candidates on a debate stage, Democrats have the opposite problem. It’s possible there will be no debates at all.

But if there are, what will the candidates say when asked about climate change and America’s energy policy?

The choices the next president will make will decide what sort of climate confronts the world this century. The U.S. could double down on fossil fuels, encouraging other countries to do so, and wave any chance at a livable climate goodbye. It could stay the course that will ensure a business-as-usual scenario of a temperature rise of more than the 2°C that scientists say is the limit. Or it could lead by example, accelerating a commitment to renewables and an efficient energy system while dropping carbon pollution enough to keep global warming to a manageable level.

President Obama’s plan — tackling vehicle emissions through CAFE standards, investing in renewable energy development and research, negotiating for lower emissions at the international level, and more recently regulating carbon pollution from U.S. power plants — has largely been accomplished through the executive branch. This makes the next president’s priorities that much more important to know. The Republican side has been mostly trying to out-do itself in love for fossil fuels and contempt for acting to address climate change. What would the Democratic field do?

There isn’t a Democratic field — not like there was at this time in 2007 when more than a half-dozen serious candidates were preparing for their first debate in South Carolina. There’s barely a bench. But many Democrats would like one. A recent Bloomberg Politics national poll found that 72 percent of both Democrats and independents said it would be a good thing if Clinton faced a “serious” challenge for the nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently said there should be a “vigorous debate” suggesting that Clinton should make her positions clear on economic issues like the minimum wage, trade, and equal pay. Others want more clarity from her on climate and energy issues.

Clinton is by many definitions a climate hawk. Importantly, she has said the President’s use of the Clean Air Act to rein in carbon pollution from power plants, “must be protected at all costs” during a speech last year to the League of Conservation Voters. She has been critical of fossil fuel subsidies and supported boosting renewables. To her, climate change represents “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.”

“The science of climate change is unforgiving, no matter what the deniers may say, sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc,” she said.

But in other areas, she falls short of that hawkish moniker. She still advocates for domestic fossil fuel production, specifically natural gas, arguing it is cleaner than coal “with the right safeguards in place.” She said enforcing smart regulations is important, “including deciding not to drill when the risks are too high.” As Secretary of State, Clinton received criticism around the world for advocating global fossil fuel development, specifically fracking for shale gas in eastern Europe. Her successor, climate hawk John Kerry, has stuck with this strategy, viewing natural gas as a tool to use for fighting climate change. Clinton still frustrates greens refuses to comment on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the long and ongoing approval process for which she oversaw at the State Department.

So if a climate activist were still shopping around for a candidate, who else is there?

The shallow Democratic bench ranges from well-known figures that register in early polling like Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (who, respectively, have no formal political operation, and repeatedly insisted no desire to run), to more active potential candidates who are currently blips in the polls like former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican senator, independent Rhode Island governor, and current Democratic presidential primary exploratory committee former.

O’Malley

The two-term governor of Maryland may have low name recognition, barely registering in early polls. But he has assembled a political team and visited early primary and caucus states several times in recent months (including six to Iowa since June). His approach to a potential run for the Democratic nomination appears to be a populist one, providing progressives a viable option to progressives who are dissatisfied with Clinton.

O’Malley pushed Maryland to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2006 levels, announcing a comprehensive plan to do so in 2013. Last year, O’Malley vetoed a bill that would have effectively killed Maryland’s first big offshore wind project. In response to concerns that the wind turbines would threaten the use of a naval radar installation (despite Defense Department confirmation that it would be fine), he said “the real threat … is not an array of wind turbines on the lower Eastern Shore but rising sea levels caused by climate change.”

In 2011, he commissioned a study to look at the health impacts of fracking on Maryland. It concluded that the controversial drilling practice would pose a risk of harmful air pollution and bring jobs that could be dangerous for Maryland workers. The outgoing governor was criticized for saying he would then allow the practice in Western Maryland with strict safeguards. The state legislature passed bills last month to place a three-year moratorium on fracking, and to declare it an “ultrahazardous activity.” It’s unclear what will happen to the bills, because O’Malley’s chosen successor for the job, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, lost his election to Republican Larry Hogan. O’Malley got some concern troll grief for a comment on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos this month wherein he listed climate change as the most important “natural threat” facing the country — as opposed to man-made threats like extremism and a nuclear Iran.

Sanders

Sen. Sanders is an independent socialist from Vermont, a fierce climate hawk, and proud of it. Following the wave election of 2014 that put the GOP in charge of the Senate, Sanders pushed the chamber to go on the record as to whether climate change is happening, caused by human activity, and resulting in “devastating problems in the United States and around the world.” Last year he attended the People’s Climate March, telling Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that “This is a huge issue. It’s a planetary crisis. We’ve got to act, and we have to act boldly.” He’s pushed to get money out of politics and thinks that is the best way to combat climate change.

Sanders voted for the first major cap-and-trade bill considered by the Senate on June 6, 2008, but it could not overcome a Republican filibuster and failed (Clinton missed the vote, likely occupied with other things like meeting secretly with then-Senator Obama as the Democratic nomination wrapped up.) He pushed for Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman to strengthen their failed cap-and-trade bill in 2009, expressing “deep disappointment” with measures that pre-empted states already acting and featured nuclear energy, coal, and offshore drilling. In 2012, he said that it is not enough to stop subsidizing fossil fuel energy sources in an effort to get out of the business of picking wins and losers in the energy sector. Instead, to get serious about tackling climate change, Sanders said the government should pick the right winners: clean energy.

The socialist junior senator from Vermont may not have any clearer path to the nomination than Ron Paul did. But if he ran alongside Clinton and other candidates, he would likely prioritize climate action and clean energy, forcing responses from them that would help clarify the race for Democratic primary voters.

Webb

Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb formed an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic nomination in November, making him the first one to do so. He has since largely kept out of the public eye, though he’s visited Iowa and hired staff there. His record on energy and climate action is much different than the people with whom he would be sharing a debate stage. In 2011 he pushed to delay EPA greenhouse gas regulations, in part, because, as he said, “I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.”

As Mother Jones’ Patrick Caldwell and Grist’s Ben Adler pointed out after Webb’s announcement last year, he interfered with senate Democrats who pushed for a cap-and-trade bill in 2008 and 2010. He did vote for the doomed measure in 2008 alongside Sanders, but when a bill with a more serious chance of passing the Senate came before him, he said he would not support it.

Webb has been a serious advocate for fossil fuel extraction in all forms. He supported “clean coal” investment, approved of the Keystone XL pipeline, advocated for oil and gas drilling off the coast of Virginia, opposed Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium following the Deepwater Horizon spill, and even tried to undermine President Obama’s efforts to get a U.N. climate agreement in Copenhagen. None of these things will lead climate hawks to support Webb for president.

Chafee

The former Republican senator, elected as an independent governor of Rhode Island for one term, was not a standout on climate or clean energy issues in the Senate, though he was a more moderate member of his party. He established an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic nomination this week, which did not elicit much attention. Last year, Chafee signed his coastal state’s comprehensive climate legislation into law. The plan would help the state begin to prepare for the impacts of climate change, while also targeting an 80 percent emissions drop by 2050 form 1990 levels. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) marveled at the ease of which the bill passed, compared to the climate denial that grinds climate action to a halt at the national level. His prospects at the national level are compromised by the same reason he bowed out of running for re-election for Rhode Island governor: the Democratic primary race looked to be too competitive.

Warren

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, progressive heartthrob, has inspired movement to draft her into the race, though she has made it very clear she is not running. Warren, a fierce climate hawk, has equated the debate over economic inequality to the one about climate action. “I think climate change, like economic inequality, are both symptoms of the same problem,” she said. “The same problem of this with enough power writing the rules too much in their favor, and leaving everyone else behind.” She’s criticized the administration’s efforts to force the European Union to purchase tar sands oil.

Sen. Warren is speaking on Monday at the “Good Jobs, Green Jobs” conference in Washington, D.C. along with Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden

Unsurprisingly, there is little, if any, daylight between President Obama and Vice President Biden on how to deal with climate change and shift away from fossil fuels. “But it’s been hard to get our arms around, with this Congress, what you know you should be doing,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it’s cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that’s the realm in which we should be playing. In the meantime, the president is going to use his executive authority to, essentially, clean up the bad stuff, encourage the good stuff and promote private industry moving in that direction.”

It’s hard to know if he has any misgivings about the administration’s handling of fossil fuel development on public lands, offshore drilling, methane emissions, or other concerns climate advocates routinely note. Before he joined the ticket, he was not shy about the threats posed by coal pollution, nor the importance of shifting away from it.

In 2007 Bill Maher asked then-Senator Biden which was most likely to kill you, a terrorist attack, high-fructose corn syrup, or “air that has too much coal in it.” Biden answered the question: coal pollution, because casualties from terrorist attacks are unlikely while pollution from coal-fired power plants contribute to the deaths of thousands of Americans. Five years later, Mitt Romney was attacking him for saying that coal was more dangerous than terrorist attacks.

Last month, Biden got attacked by the right wing when he told Vice that “us moving away from coal because it’s such a polluter– there’s a lot of people [who are] gonna get hurt, good people, worked their whole life.” He said “it’s a national responsibility, in our view, to help them make that transition.”

* * *

Taking bold stands on climate change could be one way of getting disillusioned young progressives excited enough about a Clinton campaign to go knock on doors. On Monday, climate activists organized by 350.org Action will be outside Clinton’s campaign office protesting her stance on the Keystone XL pipeline instead.

Bold climate stands are what groups like Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity have in mind as they press Clinton for clarity on Keystone XL, fracking, and fossil fuel advocacy. More effective than environmental groups talking about environmental issues would be presidential candidates talking about environmental issues in productive ways.

The post How Does Hillary Match Up With Other Dems On Climate Change? appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Meet The World’s Expert On Climate Change And ‘Game Of Thrones’

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This publicity image released by HBO shows Emilia Clarke in a scene from “Game of Thrones.”

CREDIT: AP Photo/HBO, Keith Bernstein

For most people, the fifth season premiere of “Game of Thrones” on HBO Sunday means a return to a sweeping story of politics, intrigue, love, and death filled with nudity and violence. For a smaller group, it means a return to a sweeping parable of climate change, filled with nudity and violence.

In that smaller group, a leader has emerged. She is not Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons. She is Manjana Milkoreit, a post-doctoral Fellow with the Walton Sustainability Fellowship Program at Arizona State University.

For those unfamiliar with “Game of Thrones” and why many see it as a climate parable for Earth, here’s the story. The imminent climate change faced by the continent of Westeros is a long period of very cold weather (and various scary things associated with it, like the undead White Walkers). “Winter is Coming,” as the family motto of the noble House Stark in the north puts it. The defenders against the scary things are “The Night’s Watch.” The various factions who represent different parts of the country are too busy fighting for power to pay any attention to warnings about climate change and its grim consequences. Oh wait, maybe that’s America.

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

On Earth, the imminent climate change we face is a long period of increasingly hot weather. “Global warming is coming” as we’ve been warned for decades by the noble house of climate scientists, who generally get ignored, bullied, and even slaughtered at weddings. Oh wait, that’s the Starks. Maybe the scientists are more like the Night’s Watch, stoically defending against the climate science deniers and disinformers, whose undead talking points are almost almost impossible to kill.

If you are wondering how one becomes the world’s expert on climate change and “Game of Thrones” [aka GOT], the answer is two things. First, you write a 40-page scholarly paper, “Winter is Coming”: Can Game of Thrones change Climate Change Politics? Then you get Reuters to write a story about you, “Is ‘Game of Thrones’ aiding the global debate on climate change?”

Dr. Milkoreit’s paper is not online yet, but I have read a draft. A key point, as the conclusion states, is:

Humans are story-tellers. GOT is offering its mainly American audience a wealth of story-telling material that political actors are beginning to use to make interventions in ongoing debates about climate change.

It is an academic paper, so the next line is, “This paper has used a cognitive-affective analytical framework and the concept of pop-cultural mobilization to explore the content of a set of blog posts that link GOT and climate change politics, as well as the motivations of the blogs’ authors.” I forgot to mention her paper analyzes in detail several blog posts on the climate-GOT link (not mine) — such as “9 Things Game of Thrones Taught Me About Climate Change,”

Milkoreit told me that the online discussion of the GOT-climate link was another “signal that climate change is moving into the social and cultural sphere.” This led to the question of whether “Game of Thrones” was part of the larger emerging CliFi (climate fiction) genre, which includes “Snowpiercer,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

Does CliFi only include stories where the climate change is human caused? That seems a bit narrow. Under that definition, “The Hunger Games” books are pretty clearly CliFi, while the movies are not, since they are stripped of any reference to what caused the catastrophic food shortage. On the other hand, if climate fiction covers any fiction where the climate is changing or has changed rapidly, then it might include a great deal of stories going back to very ancient times, such as Gilgamesh. Something for the scholars to work out.

Manjana Milkoreit does not spend all of her time on “Game of Thrones” and climate change. She “recently helped establish the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative,” which is an ASU “partnership that harnesses the power of our collective imagination and bridges the gap between the hard and soft sciences to invent and deliver solutions for a sustainable future.”

In November, Margaret Atwood came to ASU to present the inaugural lecture of this Initiative. The award-winning SciFi and CliFi author explained that she takes the expansive view: “I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change. Everything is changing in ways that we cannot yet fully understand or predict.”

If you were wondering whether Milkoreit’s career choice — exploring climate futures — had any connection to her name, Manjana, which means “tomorrow,” you are not alone. When I asked, she paused and said that no doubt she was given that name to inspire a “sense of optimism about the future” … and that she is “working hard to keep it.” So are we all.

The post Meet The World’s Expert On Climate Change And ‘Game Of Thrones’ appeared first on ThinkProgress.

One Year Later, Cliven Bundy and His Right-Wing Militia Are Still Trying to Seize Public Lands

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Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, center, listens to testimony on a bill challenging federal control of Nevada public lands in a hearing at the Legislative Building in Carson City, Nev., Tuesday, March 31, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Cathleen Allison

A year after his dangerous armed standoff with federal officials, outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy has become the face of a radical bill in Nevada — and similar efforts in 10 other Western states — to seize and sell off America’s public lands.

Introduced last month by Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R), who is perhaps best known for controversial comments on guns, race, and healthcare, Nevada’s “Bundy Bill” would authorize the state to seize U.S. public lands within its borders and prohibit the federal government from using any land without the state’s permission. It would also give county commissioners authority to sell off public lands for development.

After being drastically altered in order to gain approval from a Nevada Assembly Committee on Thursday, the “Bundy Bill” now heads to the state’s full Assembly.

Last week, Bundy and 100 of his followers rallied in Nevada’s capital in support of the bill.

“We’re here to take our state back and act like we’re sovereign citizens,” Bundy said at the rally.

However, as reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, Nevada’s Legislative Counsel Bureau concluded that the proposal would be “constitutionally invalid,” and that “ample bases exist upon which court could invalidate any state laws which are in direct conflict with existing federal laws concerning those public lands or which are hostile to or interfere with the exercise of federal authority over public lands.”

Right-wing lawmakers in 10 other Western states — Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — have also proposed or introduced similar unconstitutional proposals that would support the seizure and sale of America’s public lands to the highest bidder.

In addition to the glaring legal issues they raise, these proposals would place severe burden on state taxpayers who would have to cover high costs of land management, and are consequently extremely unpopular with Western voters. Bipartisan public opinion research has shown that a majority of Westerners oppose these proposals and believe that giving control of public lands to state governments would result in reduced access for recreation and a high probability the lands would be sold off for drilling, mining and logging.

Nonetheless, Bundy’s philosophy is gaining traction with national GOP leaders and organizations, encouraged by the oil and gas industry and the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council.

Most recently, Congressman Mark Amodei (R-NV) introduced a “large-scale” public lands bill, which would allow the state of Nevada to seize and sell off public lands. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, also requested $50 million in the federal budget in order to facilitate immediate transfer of public lands to state control.

In the Senate, Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced an amendment in March to support state efforts to seize public lands. Sen. Ted Cruz is preparing to include opposition to America’s public lands in his presidential campaign as a “play for the West.”

To mark this week’s anniversary of their now infamous standoff, Bundy and his militia followers are planning a “Bundy Ranch Freedom Reunion,” or “Liberty Celebration,” to “gather in celebration of our liberties, agency and stand with God, for our U.S. Constitution, State sovereignty, Property rights and to enjoy access to our lands,” according to a Facebook invitation.

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

The post One Year Later, Cliven Bundy and His Right-Wing Militia Are Still Trying to Seize Public Lands appeared first on ThinkProgress.

One Year Later, Cliven Bundy And His Right-Wing Militia Are Still Trying To Seize Public Lands

[image error]

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, center, listens to testimony on a bill challenging federal control of Nevada public lands in a hearing at the Legislative Building in Carson City, Nev., Tuesday, March 31, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Cathleen Allison

A year after his dangerous armed standoff with federal officials, outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy has become the face of a radical bill in Nevada — and similar efforts in 10 other Western states — to seize and sell off America’s public lands.

Introduced last month by Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R), who is perhaps best known for controversial comments on guns, race, and healthcare, Nevada’s “Bundy Bill” would authorize the state to seize U.S. public lands within its borders and prohibit the federal government from using any land without the state’s permission. It would also give county commissioners authority to sell off public lands for development.

After being drastically altered in order to gain approval from a Nevada Assembly Committee on Thursday, the “Bundy Bill” now heads to the state’s full Assembly.

Last week, Bundy and 100 of his followers rallied in Nevada’s capital in support of the bill.

“We’re here to take our state back and act like we’re sovereign citizens,” Bundy said at the rally.

However, as reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, Nevada’s Legislative Counsel Bureau concluded that the proposal would be “constitutionally invalid,” and that “ample bases exist upon which court could invalidate any state laws which are in direct conflict with existing federal laws concerning those public lands or which are hostile to or interfere with the exercise of federal authority over public lands.”

Right-wing lawmakers in 10 other Western states — Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — have also proposed or introduced similar unconstitutional proposals that would support the seizure and sale of America’s public lands to the highest bidder.

In addition to the glaring legal issues they raise, these proposals would place severe burden on state taxpayers who would have to cover high costs of land management, and are consequently extremely unpopular with Western voters. Bipartisan public opinion research has shown that a majority of Westerners oppose these proposals and believe that giving control of public lands to state governments would result in reduced access for recreation and a high probability the lands would be sold off for drilling, mining and logging.

Nonetheless, Bundy’s philosophy is gaining traction with national GOP leaders and organizations, encouraged by the oil and gas industry and the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council.

Most recently, Congressman Mark Amodei (R-NV) introduced a “large-scale” public lands bill, which would allow the state of Nevada to seize and sell off public lands. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, also requested $50 million in the federal budget in order to facilitate immediate transfer of public lands to state control.

In the Senate, Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced an amendment in March to support state efforts to seize public lands. Sen. Ted Cruz is preparing to include opposition to America’s public lands in his presidential campaign as a “play for the West.”

To mark this week’s anniversary of their now infamous standoff, Bundy and his militia followers are planning a “Bundy Ranch Freedom Reunion,” or “Liberty Celebration,” to “gather in celebration of our liberties, agency and stand with God, for our U.S. Constitution, State sovereignty, Property rights and to enjoy access to our lands,” according to a Facebook invitation.

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

The post One Year Later, Cliven Bundy And His Right-Wing Militia Are Still Trying To Seize Public Lands appeared first on ThinkProgress.