Chris Hedges's Blog, page 423

The Blue Wave Is Real, and Republicans Are Reeling

The 2018 midterms were a blue wave—despite what Fox News hosts blared on Wednesday morning, mimicking the line White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered late on election day.

But that wave doesn’t mean the anti-democratic features of America’s electoral process didn’t kick in, to say nothing of a catalog of intentional partisan obstructions to voting in a handful of states—led by Georgia, where it may take days for all the paper mail-in and provisional ballots to be validated and counted. When those totals are added in, there may be a run-off gubernatorial election in early December.

The first affirmation of the wave was the volume of voters. As millions of votes are still being counted (in states like California), the votes cast so far total approximately 100 million, with experts estimating that figure will reach 111 million—a 47.3 percent national turnout. That is the first 100-million voter midterm, and the highest turnout since 1970, according to the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald.

Back to the false assertion that this isn’t a blue wave. Even as the final numbers have yet to be certified by state election officials—and won’t be for days or weeks—Democratic candidates won the popular vote for House and Senate races. As of Wednesday morning, the New York Times’ live (and therefore slowly updating) dashboard of results showed there were 4 million more votes for Democratic House candidates and 12.1 million more votes for Democratic Senate candidates. That’s a blue wave by any fact-based measure.

Why didn’t the Democrats win more widely—taking back a full congressional majority and not just the U.S. House? The answer is because each state has two U.S. senators, regardless of its population. That blame lies with the country’s founders and the structure of federal representative government.

The Democrats also won more widely, and with long-lasting impacts in a series of key states—just as the GOP solidified their hold in some regions, namely the lower Midwest—but Democratic disappointments surrounding the most emotionally compelling contests eclipsed their victories elsewhere. The biggest disappointments center around the vision of a “new South,” where there was great hope that Florida’s Andrew Gillum would be elected governor (he lost by fewer than 60,000 votes out of 8 million cast); that Texas’ Beto O’Rourke would be elected to a Senate seat (he lost by 115,000 votes out of 8.3 million cast); and that Georgia’s Stacey Abrams would be elected governor—where the absentee and provisional ballot counting continues. (The contest’s current leader, Republican Brian Kemp, is fewer than 20,000 votes above the 50 percent threshold, which, if not cleared, triggers an early December recount.)

These three marquee contests were all emotional races for Democrats, portending the repudiation of President Trump’s divisive leadership in one of the fastest-growing and most racially diverse regions of the country. In fact, both Gillum and O’Rourke achieved what was unthinkable for Democrats in their states. O’Rourke won 48.3 percent of the vote in Texas; several points more than President Obama’s peak. And Gillum was the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Florida to be ahead in the polls in decades. Their respective votes show how close those purple states are to tipping points; but the converse also remains true—that vast swaths of these states, from rural areas to suburbia, are deeply conservative.

Still, Florida’s biggest electoral bonanza is one that was not widely featured in election night returns but will almost certainly push the state from purple to blue in coming years. The voters passed a constitutional amendment to re-enfranchise an estimated 1.6 million felons who lost their voting rights when convicted. Florida’s ex-felon voting ban was a holdover from the racist Jim Crow and affected more voters than any other state. There will now be efforts to enroll them as voters, where, had they participated in the 2018 midterms, the state’s next governor and many legislative seats would have been in blue hands.

There were other significant Democratic victories that, like re-enfranchising Florida’s ex-felons, will resonate in the 2020s. These victories concern aspects of the redistricting process, where, unlike 2011’s GOP extreme gerrymandering, Democrats or citizens commissions (which are fairer-minded) will be in place to counterbalance aggressive Republican moves to draw districts that favor an increasingly minority political party.

The biggest redistricting-related victories come from Democrats who were elected governor in formerly red states that play outsized roles in presidential and House elections. Those blue gubernatorial victories were in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. (In contrast, Republicans won governorships in this decade’s GOP-gerrymandered states of Ohio and Florida—and it remains to be seen what happens in Georgia.) Democratic governors can wield veto pens if Republican-controlled legislatures sort voters by party to intentionally create unfair political maps.

Four states passed redistricting reforms. Independent commissions for congressional and legislative redistricting won in Colorado (Amendment Y and Amendment Z) and Michigan (Proposal 2), becoming the first east of the Rockies. Also, in Missouri, a state where the GOP has consolidated gains in recent years, Amendment 1 requires the use of a state demographer and fairness formulas when drawing maps. And in Utah, Proposition 4 also establishes an independent redistricting commission.

There were other signs that Democrats were making inroads in previously red states. In Kansas, the anti-immigrant and vote-suppressing Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, was defeated for governor by Laura Kelly, and Kansans also elected Democrat Sharice Davids, a Native American and gay woman, to the House. Davids was one of many women elected on Tuesday, from governors to House members.

Stepping back from individual contests, historians and political scientists will see 2018’s midterms as a blue wave election that showed a steady realignment in the nation’s political landscape. Yes, the Senate will be filled by more Trump acolytes, making it more partisan and pushing the federal judiciary to the right for decades to come, as the GOP majority will continue to stack the federal courts with arch conservatives. However, from a popular vote perspective, that body is not representative of the national electorate.

But in the states, significant political shifts are underway. The GOP’s lock on the entire Midwest has been broken. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—the final three states that elected Trump—are returned to blue governors. In contrast, presidential bellwethers Ohio and Missouri are becoming more conservative.

However, it appears the biggest political shifts are underway in the Sun Belt border states. Florida is on the verge of becoming permanently purple, if not blue. Georgia may yet see a Democratic governor; but if not, its voting demographics are close to Florida’s. And even in Texas—and Arizona and Florida, where the counting continues in very tight U.S. Senate races where the GOP has small leads—blue voters are at tipping points with popular majorities in sight.

No party wins everything in an election. But the biggest shifts, based on popular votes, gubernatorial takeovers, electoral reforms with redistricting and felon re-enfranchisement, all affirm 2018’s midterm elections were indeed a blue wave year.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

White House Bans CNN Reporter After Tiff With Trump

NEW YORK — The White House on Wednesday suspended the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after he and President Donald Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference.

They began sparring after Acosta asked Trump about the caravan of migrants heading from Latin America to the southern U.S. border. When Acosta tried to follow up with another question, Trump said, “That’s enough!” and a female White House aide unsuccessfully tried to grab the microphone from Acosta.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement accusing Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern,” calling it “absolutely unacceptable.”

The interaction between Acosta and the intern was brief, and Acosta appeared to brush her arm as she reached for the microphone and he tried to hold onto it. “Pardon me, ma’am,” he told her.

Acosta tweeted that Sanders’ statement that he put his hands on the aide was “a lie.”

CNN said in a statement that the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass out of “retaliation for his challenging questions” Wednesday, and the network accused Sanders of lying about Acosta’s actions.

“(Sanders) provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better,” CNN said. “Jim Acosta has our full support.”

Journalists assigned to cover the White House apply for passes that allow them daily access to press areas in the West Wing. White House staffers decide whether journalists are eligible, though the Secret Service determines whether their applications are approved.

The post-midterm election news conference marked a new low in the president’s relationship with journalists.

“It’s such a hostile media,” Trump said after ordering reporter April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks to sit down when she tried to ask him a question.

The president complained that the media did not cover the humming economy and was responsible for much of the country’s divided politics. He said, “I can do something fantastic, and they make it look not good.”

His exchanges with CNN’s Acosta and NBC News’ Peter Alexander turned bitterly personal, unusual even for a forum where the nature of their jobs often put presidents and the press at odds.

“I came in here as a nice person wanting to answer questions, and I had people jumping out of their seats screaming questions at me,” said Trump, who talked for nearly 90 minutes despite the run-ins with reporters.

Acosta asked Trump why the caravan of migrants was emphasized as an issue in the just-concluded midterm races, and he questioned Trump’s reference to the caravan as an invasion.

“You should let me run the country,” Trump said. “You run CNN and if you did it well, your ratings would be much better.”

After Acosta asked about the investigation of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, Trump tried to turn to Alexander, but Acosta continued to ask questions.

“CNN should be ashamed of itself having you work for them,” the president said to Acosta. “You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN. The way you treat Sarah Sanders is horrible. The way you treat other people is horrible. You shouldn’t treat people that way.”

Alexander came to his colleague’s defense. “I’ve traveled with him and watched him,” Alexander said. “He’s a diligent reporter who busts his butt like the rest of us.”

“I’m not a big fan of yours, either,” Trump replied.

“I understand,” Alexander said, attempting to ask a question. Acosta stood back up and noted the explosive devices that were recently sent to CNN and some of the president’s political opponents.

“Just sit down,” Trump said. “When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people.”

CNN said Trump’s attacks on the press have gone too far.

“They are not only dangerous, they are disturbingly un-American,” CNN tweeted after the exchange. “While President Trump has made it clear he does not respect a free press, he has a sworn obligation to protect it. A free press is vital to democracy, and we stand behind Jim Acosta and his fellow journalists everywhere.”

In announcing Acosta’s suspension, Sanders said, “The fact that CNN is proud of the way their employee behaved is not only disgusting, it is an example of their outrageous disregard for everyone, including young women, who work in this administration.”

The White House Correspondents Association released a statement Wednesday saying it “strongly objects to the Trump Administration’s decision to use U.S. Secret Service security credentials as a tool to punish a reporter with whom it has a difficult relationship. Revoking access to the White House complex is a reaction out of line to the purported offense and is unacceptable.”

The WHCA called on the White House to “immediately reverse this weak and misguided action.”

During the news conference, Trump also turned on reporter Yamiche Alcindor of PBS’ “NewsHour.” She said that “on the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists.” Trump interrupted her, calling it a racist question.

Alcindor pressed on: “There are some people who say the Republican Party is seen as supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you say to that?”

“What you said is so insulting to me,” he said. “It’s a very terrible thing you said to me.”

Alcindor moved on to a different topic. Later, via Twitter, she said that she has interviewed white nationalists who say they are more excited by Trump than they have been about other presidents. “Even if President Trump doesn’t intend it, some see him as directly appealing to the racists,” she wrote.

Trump told Ryan, of American Urban Radio Networks, repeatedly to sit down when she attempted to ask Trump about accusations of voter suppression. He said she was rude for interrupting another reporter, though he did briefly answer one of Ryan’s questions.

Marijuana Stocks Up After Pot Ballot Victories and Sessions’ Firing

Marijuana stocks are up following Jeff Sessions’ firing as attorney general and several state ballot victories. Michigan became the 10th state to legalize recreational marijuana, and Missouri and Utah legalized medical marijuana.

Tilray, a Canadian company, closed up 30 percent. Cronos group added 8.4 percent, Canopy Growth added 8.1 percent and Aurora Cannabis added 9 percent. Experts are also optimistic about the tax revenue that will be generated from legal sales. According to financial services firm Cowen and Co., the U.S. marijuana market could be worth $75 billion by 2030. The legal weed market is expected to hit $11 billion in sales this year.

“Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” Sessions said during a Senate hearing in 2016. In January, he reversed Obama-era guidelines calling for a hands-off approach for states with liberal marijuana laws.

U.S. marijuana stocks up on news of Sessions departure https://t.co/zqh9TpOgX2 pic.twitter.com/ZF1DBEo3we

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) November 7, 2018

In Michigan, where medical marijuana has been legal since 2008, recreational sales are expected to start in 2020. Individuals will be allowed to grow as many as 12 plants, and current weed-related violations will be changed from crimes to civil infractions. A 10 percent excise tax on retail purchases will go to local government, public education and maintenance of roads and bridges. Tax revenue will also go toward approved academic research on the use of medical marijuana in helping U.S. military veterans, including suicide prevention.

“Legalization of marijuana will end the unnecessary waste of law enforcement resources used to enforce the failed policy of prohibition while generating hundreds of millions of dollars each year for Michigan’s most important needs,” said Josh Hovey, a spokesman for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which supported the Michigan ballot initiative. Experts estimate that the state’s legal weed industry could reach $1.7 billion.

Thirty-three states have legalized medical marijuana, including Missouri and Utah. In Missouri, voters contended with three different proposals on how taxes on medical marijuana would work. They chose a 4 percent tax that will go toward health care for military veterans. In Utah, smoking marijuana will still be illegal, but patients with such conditions as multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV will be allowed to vape and consume edibles.

“Even in socially conservative states like Utah, most voters recognize marijuana has significant medical value, and they believe it should be available to patients who could benefit from it,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project.

Several states rejected weed-related ballot measures, however. In North Dakota, voters decided against legalizing recreational marijuana, and voters in Nebraska rejected a proposal to legalize medical marijuana.

“With Democrats winning the House of Representatives and additional states voting to create medical and recreational cannabis markets, we believe it’s increasingly likely Congress could take action to regulate and tax cannabis at the federal level,” said Isaac Dietrich, CEO of MassRoots, a marijuana-related social network.

Weed is still illegal at the federal level, and it remains to be seen who will become the next attorney general. Matthew Whitaker, who was Sessions’ chief of staff, will take over as acting attorney general.

“Marijuana has now been legalized for adult use in one out of every five states, so I think it’s safe to say federal laws are in need of an update,” said Steve Hawkins, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group. “We hope the results of this election will inspire Congress to finally start addressing the tension that exists between state and federal marijuana laws in our nation.”

How Alaska ‘Gets the Shaft’ From Canada’s Mining Industry

The border between British Columbia and Alaska is wet.

The boundary is made up mostly of rivers flowing from British Columbia in Canada to southeast Alaska, and what happens in Canada therefore affects southeast Alaska.

Rich mineral deposits, including the gold, silver and copper used in the manufacturing of mobile phones and other products, are buried deep in British Columbia. With the explosion of various technologies that demand these minerals, the “gold rush” is very much alive and growing every day.

According to the Minerals Education Coalition, a baby born in the U.S. in 2018 will use up 539 pounds of zinc, 903 pounds of lead and 985 pounds of copper during his or her lifetime, in phones, gadgets and appliances. In terms of environmental drain, each smartphone made also uses oil to produce plastics and sand to produce glass.

The primary challenge is how to mine and remove these minerals from the earth without destroying the rich, salmon-spawning Alaskan waters and other parts of the environment.

Also at issue is an ongoing battle between Alaska and British Columbia over the rules for building, inspecting and financially indemnifying mines built in British Columbia—because if and when those mines fail, they release tailings that flow into and pollute southeast Alaskan rivers.

Mine tailings are the waterborne chemicals, gravel and silt left after valuable minerals are extracted from ore, and they are extremely toxic.

The history is not good. Contaminated water from extraction processes is stored at the mine, in a structure made up of dams built to function as a holding tank. The primary risk all mines run is a failure of the tailings holding tank; when a tank fails, toxic materials escape into rivers that flow miles downstream, often from British Columbia to the U.S., and primarily to rivers in Alaska and Montana. The number of old mines leaching tailings into salmon-rich rivers is growing.

The most devastating example of a mine failing in British Columbia with disastrous effects downstream in Alaska is that of the Imperial Metals mine at Mount Polley, in the Cariboo region of central British Columbia. The failure began on Aug. 4, 2014, with a rupture and the collapse of the copper and gold mine tailings pond holding tank, releasing years of built-up water and slurry mining waste into Polley Lake. The breach sent more than 847 million cubic feet of mining waste into lakes and rivers nearby, destroying livelihoods and the environment for miles around.

Several problems contributed to the collapse of the Mount Polley mine. The design of the tailings pond had not taken into consideration the unstable bedrock beneath the pond. Over the years, the pressure on that bedrock continued to increase. Furthermore, there were no inspections of that pond while the mine was in operation.

The spill flooded the lake at its outflow point and flowed into the nearby Cariboo River and Quesnel Lake. Four square miles of toxic tailings emptied from the tank. Tests revealed high levels of selenium, arsenic and other metals; these measures fit right in with measures of toxic concentrations at other mining disasters.

A mining failure that is still polluting years later occurred at the Tulsequah Chief mine, on the Tulsequah River. Located 62 miles southwest of Atlin, British Columbia, the mine produced copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold from its opening in 1950 to its failure in 1957. It has been left unattended since then.

According to Jill Weitz, campaign director for Salmon Beyond Borders, the Tulsequah Chief mine has been spewing toxic pollution into the waters ever since, in violation of the Canadian Federal Fisheries Act.

Weitz stated:

This mine is the poster child for [British Columbia’s] under-regulated mining industry. This mine, which is small in comparison to the other dozen projects in various stages of permitting, development, and operation in the transboundary region, has been abandoned since 1957, and [is] slowly leaching acid mine drainage into Southeast Alaska’s largest salmon producing river.

While [British Columbia] taxpayers are on the hook for these abandoned mines, the mining companies make profits, and those of us in Alaska sit below … ticking time bombs.

Border Battles

Successful management of these mines on the boundary rivers is a challenge that affects the environment of both countries.

“Water pollution does not respect international borders. Southeast Alaska communities such as Juneau, Wrangell, Petersburg and Ketchikan are downstream of areas of major mining activity in northwest [British Columbia],” says Chris Zimmer, Alaska campaign director for Rivers Without Borders, an organization that works to protect the rivers straddling the borders between British Columbia and Alaska. He adds:

These communities depend on transboundary rivers, such as the Taku, Stikine and Unuk, for jobs, food, recreation and culture. Harm to water quality and fisheries from upstream mining activities will be felt far more in Alaska than [British Columbia], while the overwhelming majority of economic benefits of the mines will go to [British Columbia]. The saying here is, [British Columbia] gets the mine and Alaska gets the shaft.

The Mount Polley mine failure is considered one of the largest dam mining catastrophes in the past 50 years. According to Earthworks, a nonprofit that follows the effects of mineral and energy developments, it was considered a “loaded gun” because the design of the dam was incorrect. Alaskan mines minister Bill Bennett’s report on Mount Polley stated that the structure collapsed because it was built on a foundation underlain with glacial silt.

More Mines, Opened and Planned

Many people are opposed to new mines in the wake of the Mount Polley spill, including the fishing industry, regional aboriginal peoples, organizations such as Trout Unlimited Alaska, and some politicians. Nonetheless, given both the demand for these metals and the profits to be made from extracting them, explorations are still being conducted for potentially productive mines in British Columbia, including locations at several salmon-producing systems that flow through southeast Alaska.

The large Red Chris gold and copper mine, owned by Imperial Metals, is now operating in the headwaters of the Iskut River, a primary tributary of the Stikine River, whose estuary is near Petersburg and Wrangell, Alaska.

Imperial Metals incorporated in British Columbia in December 1959. Besides the Mount Polley open-pit copper and gold mine, it runs the Red Chris, and it has a 50 percent interest in the Huckleberry open-pit copper mine, and in the Ruddock Creek zinc/lead project.

Alaskan fisheries interests are not comfortable with the status of the company that has a history related to the Mount Polley disaster. Some people are concerned about what could happen if the company were to go bankrupt, and thus lack the funds to manage a failed mine.

Requests to Imperial Metals for comments for this article were not answered.

The KSM mine project, approved by the Canadian government but not yet under construction, is owned by Seabridge Gold Inc. If completed, it will be near the Unuk River system, which supports southeast Alaska’s largest Chinook salmon population and some of the world’s most healthy and vibrant waterways. Its mine tailings ponds could potentially drain into the river, affecting not only local ecosystems, but the environment and economic livelihood downstream in Alaska.

The projected KSM gold and copper mine site is about 20 miles northeast of the Alaskan border, on a major tributary of the Unuk River, which flows into Alaska’s Misty Fjords National Monument in Ketchikan and is a significant river ecosystem for wild salmon. The Unuk River supports all five species of wild Pacific salmon, which are harvested by many stakeholders, including commercial and recreational fishers and indigenous groups.

If built, it would be one of the largest gold projects in the country, and it is projected to have a 52-year mine life. Research and exploration have confirmed the presence of at least 38.2 million ounces of gold, 9.9 billion pounds of copper, 191 million ounces of silver and 213 million pounds of molybdenum at the site.

The KSM Project is expected to employ about 1,800 people on-site annually, and to indirectly create another 4,770 jobs across Canada.

Explorations for another proposed mine, the Pebble Mine, are in progress near the Bristol Bay region of Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark in southwest Alaska. Large deposits of gold, copper and molybdenum have been found in this remote area, near the headwaters of tributaries of both the Nushagak and Kvichak rivers.

This potential site, totally within the U.S., would be under more stringent governmental oversight and financial regulations, yet the fear of pollution exists for this, as for all similar mines.

Some 40 million salmon migrate through Bristol Bay area each year. These are predominantly sockeye, as well as other species of Pacific salmon, which are harvested by commercial and sport fisheries. Those salmon produce billions of offspring that then find their way down into Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake. They then go out to the Bering Sea, where they eat omega-3-rich krill and get big and fat. After three years, they return to their headwaters to begin the cycle anew. Bristol Bay salmon fishing is a significant aspect of the region’s economy, one that the industry wants to preserve. In 2017, the catch brought in $215 million; in 2018, the haul reached more than $280 million.

In a study by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay in 2018 was nearly 70 percent above the 20-year average. It also was the fourth consecutive year that sockeye runs topped 50 million fish.

Northern Dynasty Minerals, a small Canadian company, began exploratory drilling in the Bristol Bay area in 2002. It holds the mineral rights to 186 square miles of Alaska state land, and it is proposing to build the Pebble Mine.

Northern Dynasty has no experience in mining, so it has reached out for help from Anglo American, Mitsubishi and Rio Tinto. The companies eagerly joined in for a potential share of the estimated $350 billion worth of precious metals buried beneath the ground. Joining forces as the Pebble Limited Partnership, the four companies started planning what could be, at two miles wide and 2,000 feet deep, the largest open-pit mine in North America. As such, it has the highest potential for polluting Bristol Bay due to its size, location and geochemistry, according to the National Resources Defense Council.

Funds to Cover Mining Problems and Failures

The consistent complaint about the British Columbia mining industry is that some of the companies that built open-pit mines are not financially stable enough to run the mines long term, and that they are unable to repair or close down a mine that has failed.

Alaskan organizers who work to change the laws say that the British Columbian government has not addressed these critical concerns from its downstream neighbors, issues that have been raised by every level of Alaska’s government, tribes, municipalities, commercial fishing groups, business owners and tour operators who depend upon clean water and wild salmon rivers.

According to Zimmer, who has been working on transboundary mining issues since 2001, “Alaska requires a full cash bond to cover cleanup and [British Columbia] doesn’t. It’s almost more like ‘when’ than ‘if’ many of these mines go bankrupt and leave Alaska holding the proverbial bag.”

In an op-ed, Zimmer wrote:

How is the province going to get cleanup money from a bankrupt company? Mines in [British Columbia] are chronically under-bonded. So, with a company that can’t pay its bills as a result of bankruptcy or other reason, either nothing happens or taxpayers are stuck with the cleanup bill.

Neither of the two companies that went bankrupt trying to open the Tulsequah Chief, nor Imperial Metals, provided a full cash bond adequate to address cleanup and closure in case of bankruptcy or inability to pay bills.

Needed Governmental Regulations

The current U.S. law that governs mining for gold, silver, copper and other metals on federal lands is the General Mining Law of 1872. There have been no changes since President Ulysses S. Grant signed it 146 years ago. There are no royalties to the taxpayers for these extractions, and, in keeping with the time at which the law was written, there were no provisions for environmental protection.

One result has been many abandoned mines. Earthworks suggests that it will cost taxpayers between $32 billion and $72 billion to clean up these mines, and that taxpayers are potentially liable for billions more in cleanup costs at currently operating mines.

Raúl Grijalva wrote in Sierra, the Sierra Club’s magazine:

Our antiquated mining laws have left us stuck giving away public assets at rock-bottom prices to profitable companies, many of which are foreign-owned, without providing any direct benefit to the taxpayers. Defenders of the 1872 law say we need to keep this broken system going because it creates jobs. But that doesn’t fly—Congress needs to set a higher bar. Federal policy must be about more than shoveling massive subsidies to industries that are, in many ways, already taking advantage of the public.

Robyn Allan is an independent Canadian economist. She has held many executive positions in the private and public sectors, including president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia; vice president of finance for Parklane Ventures Ltd.; and senior economist for British Columbia’s Central Credit Union.

In a statement titled “On Canadian Mines on Transboundary Rivers: The Need for Financial Assurances,” prepared for and presented to a legislative hearing in the Alaska State Legislature, Allan wrote:

Notwithstanding the recently signed Statement of Cooperation between the [British Columbia] and Alaska governments, the State of Alaska cannot rely upon the Province of [British Columbia] to adequately protect downstream interests threatened by upstream mining activities that [have] been, or will be, permitted and ,,, regulated by the [British Columbia] Ministry of Energy and Mines and the [British Columbia] Ministry of Environment.

Allan stated that the Canadian and U.S. governments must work together to investigate the current and long-term effects of mining in British Columbia and develop measures to ensure that downstream resources are not harmed. Allan emphasized that:

A fulsome and effective financial assurance regime is needed in [British Columbia] to protect the environment, guarantee reclamation of mine sites, and in the event unintended major or catastrophic pollution occurs, ensure cleanup, remediation and financial compensation for those affected.

Seabridge Gold maintains it has taken every precaution in planning the KSM Project, including plans to build a holding tank that would capture all toxic tailings from the mining process in a “double sealed” underground holding facility that would not, it maintains, fail.

Nonetheless, Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel at Earthworks, states that the fear of mining failures is real.

We are not buying the company (KSM) line. We are unmoved by claims that modern mining is somehow clean. What we have instead is the environmental disaster at Mt. Polley. The failure of a mine the size of KSM would cause damage on the order of magnitude [that would] make the Mt. Polley looks small.

Multiple requests for comment for this article from Seabridge Gold about the KSM mine were not answered.

Congressional Pressure

An Alaska delegation that included Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Rep. Don Young, Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Oct. 9, urging him to discuss the risks posed by the transboundary mining activity during bilateral meetings between the United States and Canada. The letter outlined Alaska’s priorities for strong and continued engagement between the State Department and the Canadian government on the management of mining activity affecting Alaska and British Columbia’s transboundary waters.

The letter was a follow-up to a request that had been made earlier to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, with similar asks. The new letter specifically requests that the State Department deliver this “strong message” to Global Affairs Canada at U.S.-Canada bilateral meetings.

The Canadian Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources recognizes that British Columbia and Alaska share a lot of common interests that transcend borders.

A spokesman from the ministry says that the protection of the shared transboundary waterways is a key concern for people on both sides of the border. In fact, based on the memorandum of understanding signed by British Columbia and Alaska in November 2015, both parties agreed to a statement of cooperation on the protection of transboundary waters.

The ministry indicates that this agreement establishes a bilateral working group, consisting of the commissioners of the Alaska departments of Environmental Conservation and Fish and Game and the British Columbian ministers of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and Environment. This working group on water monitoring is charged with identifying a reliable process for the collection of water data; the ministry believes that this cooperative effort is being implemented as planned.

According to the ministry, the two governments also are working closely on several new mining proposals, and Alaska is very much involved in the assessment and permitting of the proposed mines in the transboundary watershed. Those mines are the Red Chris, BruceJack, Galore Creek, Kitsault, KSM and Schaft Creek. The joint British Columbia/Alaska working group is currently implementing its monitoring program in the transboundary watersheds.

Improvement of Mining Safety

In an attempt to standardize mining code safety rules, the ministry commissioned international engineering, geoscience and environmental consulting firm Klohn Crippen Berger to complete a third-party comparison of mining legislation and guidelines in British Columbia, Montana and Alaska. According to the consultants, the comparison found British Columbia’s requirements for mining to be equal to or more stringent than those in Montana or Alaska.

Canada’s environmental assessment act requires all existing and new mines to meet certain standards if the facility is designed to extract groundwater at a rate of roughly 20 gallons or more per second; modifications to the facility are renewable if they will increase the design rate of extraction by 35 percent.

A Difficult Road

Our appetites for and addiction to technology come at a price. The materials that go into tech manufacturing consist of around 40 percent metals (predominantly copper, gold, platinum, silver and tungsten), 40 percent plastics and 20 percent ceramics and trace materials.

In an article titled “For metals of the smartphone age, no Plan B,” Barbara Reck, a research scientist at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, wrote:

We all like our gadgets; we all like our smart phones. But in 20 or 30 years, will we still have access to all the elements necessary to provide the particular functions that make a smart phone so great? Based on our findings, it is unlikely that substitution alone can solve potential supply restrictions for any of the metals on the periodic table.

Issues include limited resources, demands for new exploration, needs for stricter standards for mine construction and requirements for financial backing to repair damages caused by poor construction.

It would appear clear that a response to the overlapping and sometimes conflicting desires for more technical products, limited resources and fishing and other environmental concerns can best be found in updated governmental regulations, in both the U.S. and Canada, that include construction, operational oversight, fiscal indemnification requirements and joint management of these rules.

Trump, Democrats Confront Thorny Life Under Divided Congress

WASHINGTON — Suddenly facing life under divided government, President Donald Trump and congressional leaders talked bipartisanship Wednesday but then bluntly previewed the fault lines to come. Trump threatened to go after House Democrats who try to investigate him, while Rep. Nancy Pelosi said her party would be “a check and balance” against the White House.

The day after midterm elections reset Washington, Trump took a victory lap at a raucous news conference, celebrating Republican Senate wins but distancing himself from the GOP’s loss of the House. He said he was interested in working with House Democrats but was ready to respond if he felt he was being ill-treated.

As long as Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress, Democrats have been hampered in pursuing any significant probes of Trump and his administration, and he made it clear he expects the Senate to follow that course.

“They can play that game,” he said of possible House Democratic investigations, “but we can play it better, because we have a thing called the United States Senate.”

On Capitol Hill, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats must decide how much “harassment” they want to pursue against Trump, while suggesting there could be limited opportunities to work across the aisle. And Pelosi, who is expected to run for a second stint as speaker when Democrats take the House majority in January, said the party has “a responsibility to seek common ground where we can.” But she added, “Where we cannot, we must stand our ground.”

After midterm elections that served as a referendum on Trump’s divisive presidency, Congress and the White House reckoned Wednesday with expected Republican gains in the Senate and a Democratic flip of the House. The early positioning provided the first glimpse of how all parties will balance calls for bipartisanship with an appetite for anger going into the next two years.

By turns combative and conciliatory, Trump said Democrats and Republicans should set aside partisanship to work together. On legislative prospects, Trump said he could potentially work with Democrats on issues such as taxes, infrastructure and health care, saying it “really could be a beautiful, bipartisan type of situation.”

And Pelosi, during a news conference that was delayed because of Trump’s lengthy remarks, said she had worked productively with President George W. Bush when she was speaker a decade ago on taxes and other issues, and she welcomed the chance to do so again with Trump.

“We’d like to work together so our legislation will be bipartisan,” she said.

Still, Pelosi said Democrats weren’t elected to be “a rubber stamp” for Trump.

Some House Democrats have threatened to use the subpoena power they will gain in January to investigate Trump and administration actions. But, he warned, he will respond in kind and government will suffer.

Plus, he said, Democrats have “nothing, zero,” on him. Of the special counsel’s Russia investigation that has shadowed his administration for more than 18 months, Trump said, “I could end it right now” but “I let it go on.”

Shortly thereafter, however, it was announced that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been forced out. His departure followed 18 months of criticism and insults from Trump, who had appointed him but objected to Sessions’ stepping aside from the Russia probe rather than guiding. It.

On the potential for House investigations, Pelosi said Democrats will have a “responsibility for oversight” when they take charge in January and she will leave final decisions to committees. She wouldn’t answer a question about whether Democrats will seek Trump’s tax filings, but said committee requests for documents and hearings won’t be “scattershot.”

Democrats are expected to investigate Trump’s business dealings, his Cabinet’s conduct and his campaign’s possible ties to Russia, among other issues.

“We’ll know what we are doing and we’ll do it right,” she said.

Pelosi spoke with Trump and McConnell after the Democrats’ victory. McConnell said Wednesday that the two had discussed how they might “find a way forward” in a divided Congress.

He and Pelosi, the Kentucky senator said, are “not unfamiliar” with one another as longtime leaders and colleagues.

As for congressional action the rest of this year, he said he could not imagine taking up immigration and acknowledged that the Democratic House and Republican Senate were likely to go their separate ways when it comes to the legislative agenda

“Areas for legislative agreement will be more limited,” he said.

“The one issue that Leader Pelosi and I discussed this morning where there could be a possible bipartisan agreement would be something on infrastructure, but there could be a lot of other things,” he said.

McConnell also echoed Trumps’ warnings on investigations, saying: “The Democrats in the House will have to decide just how much presidential harassment they think is good strategy.”

Jeff Sessions Forced Out as Attorney General by Trump

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions was pushed out Wednesday as the country’s chief law enforcement officer after enduring more than a year of blistering and personal attacks from President Donald Trump over his recusal from the Russia investigation.

Sessions told the president in a one-page letter that he was submitting his resignation “at your request.”

Trump announced in a tweet that he was naming Sessions’ chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, a former United States attorney from Iowa, as acting attorney general.

The resignation was the culmination of a toxic relationship that frayed just weeks into the attorney general’s tumultuous tenure, when he stepped aside from the investigation into potential coordination between the president’s Republican campaign and Russia.

Trump blamed the decision for opening the door to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Russia investigation and began examining whether Trump’s hectoring of Sessions was part of a broader effort to obstruct justice and stymie the probe.

The implications for Mueller’s investigation were not immediately clear. The Justice Department did not announce a departure for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller more than a year and a half ago and has closely overseen his work since then.

The relentless attacks on Sessions came even though the Alabama Republican was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump and despite the fact that his crime-fighting agenda and priorities — particularly his hawkish immigration enforcement policies — largely mirrored the president’s.

But the relationship was irreparably damaged in March 2017 when Sessions, acknowledging previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador and citing his work as a campaign aide, recused himself from the Russia investigation.

The decision infuriated Trump, who repeatedly lamented that he would have never selected Sessions if he had known the attorney general would recuse. The recusal left the investigation in the hands of Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel two months later after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey.

The rift lingered for the duration of Sessions’ tenure, and the attorney general, despite praising the president’s agenda and hewing to his priorities, never managed to return to Trump’s good graces.

The deteriorating relationship became a soap opera stalemate for the administration. Trump belittled Sessions but, perhaps following the advice of aides, held off on firing him. The attorney general, for his part, proved determined to remain in the position until dismissed. A logjam broke when Republican senators who had publicly backed Sessions began signaling a willingness to consider a new attorney general.

In attacks delivered on Twitter, in person and in interviews, Trump called Sessions weak and beleaguered, complained that he wasn’t more aggressively pursuing allegations of corruption against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and called it “disgraceful” that Sessions wasn’t more serious in scrutinizing the origins of the Russia investigation for possible law enforcement bias — even though the attorney general did ask the Justice Department’s inspector general to look into those claims.

The broadsides escalated in recent months, with Trump telling a television interviewer that Sessions “had never had control” of the Justice Department and snidely accusing him on Twitter of not protecting Republican interests by allowing two GOP congressmen to be indicted before the election.

Sessions endured most of the name-calling in silence, though he did issue two public statements defending the department, including one in which he said he would serve “with integrity and honor” for as long as he was in the job.

The recusal from the Russia investigation allowed him to pursue the conservative issues he had long championed as a senator, often in isolation among fellow Republicans.

He found satisfaction in being able to reverse Obama-era policies that he and other conservatives say flouted the will of Congress, including by encouraging prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges they could and by promoting more aggressive enforcement of federal marijuana law. He also announced media leak crackdowns, tougher policies against opioids and his Justice Department defended a since-abandoned administration policy that resulted in parents being separated from their children at the border.

His agenda unsettled liberals who said that Sessions’ focus on tough prosecutions marked a return to failed drug war tactics that unduly hurt minorities and the poor, and that his rollbacks of protections for gay and transgender people amount to discrimination.

Some Democrats also considered Sessions too eager to do Trump’s bidding and overly receptive to his grievances.

Sessions, for instance, directed senior prosecutors to examine potential corruption in a uranium field transaction that some Republicans have said may have implicated Clinton in wrongdoing and benefited donors of the Clinton Foundation. He also fired one of the president’s primary antagonists, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, just before he was to have retired — a move Trump hailed as a “great day for democracy.”

Despite it all, Sessions never found himself back in favor with the president.

Their relationship wasn’t always fractured. Sessions was a close campaign aide, attending national security meetings and introducing him at rallies in a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

But the problems started after he told senators during his confirmation hearing that he had never met with Russians during the campaign. The Justice Department, responding to a Washington Post report, soon acknowledged that Sessions had actually had two encounters during the campaign with the then-Russian ambassador. He recused himself the next day, saying it would be inappropriate to oversee an investigation into a campaign he was part of.

The announcement set off a frenzy inside the White House, with Trump directing his White House counsel to call Sessions beforehand and urge him not to step aside. Sessions rejected the entreaty. Mueller’s team, which has interviewed Sessions, has been investigating the president’s attacks on him and his demands to have a loyalist in charge of the Russia investigation.

Sessions had been protected for much of his tenure by the support of Senate Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who had said he would not schedule a confirmation hearing for another attorney general if Trump fired him.

But that support began to fade, with Grassley suggesting over the summer that he might have time for a hearing after all.

And Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, another Judiciary Committee member who once said there’d be “holy hell to pay” if Trump fired Sessions, called the relationship “dysfunctional” and said he thought the president had the right after the midterm to select a new attorney general.

Has Iraq Become Another ‘Lesson Lost’ Like Vietnam?

This piece originally appeared on The American Conservative.

According to reports, the Army has delayed the publication of a 1,300-page internal Iraq war study commissioned by General Ray Odierno in 2013. The volume, which few in the public were even aware of, was an admirable project. After all, the U.S. military famously ignored and jettisoned any lessons after its defeat in Vietnam. Most of us would agree that simply can’t happen again.

So why the delay? Some fear the Army might be hesitant to publish a study that takes its leadership to task for decisions critical to the execution, and perhaps outcome, of the war. (Basically, while the Army says it wants to learn its lessons, it doesn’t necessarily want to see them in black and white.) One chief Army historian claimed it would “air” too much institutional “dirty laundry.”

Indeed, retired Colonel Frank Sobchack, a study team director, expressed concern about the delay in the report’s release, asserting “that the Army was paralyzed with apprehension for the past two years over publishing it leaves me disappointed with the institution to which I dedicated my adult life.”

Of course, there has been skepticism about the report itself, given the commissioner of the project and the composition of the study team. Some fear the conclusions will skew towards a one-sided lionization of the 2007 “surge”—which General Odierno and his closest subordinates oversaw. In fact, reporting in The Wall Street Journal suggests that the report credits Odierno and General Petraeus, who commanded all U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq at the time, for turning the war around by shifting to a theater-wide counterinsurgency strategy (COIN).

These are all legitimate concerns. Indeed, this author has long sought to debunk the flawed notion that Petraeus’s famed “surge” achieved anything more than a temporary pause in violence and political instability. Still, the real problem with this report is that it completely ignores the utterly flawed grand strategy that brought the U.S. military into Iraq in the first place in favor of focusing on more minor tactical mistakes.

Let us review, then, some of the reported conclusions in the study and how they’re disjointed from the larger, strategic failures inherent to the entire American military adventure in Iraq.

The report admits to the following shortfalls:

More troops were needed to occupy the country and fight an expansive insurgency. This was undoubtedly the case, but it fails to consider whether America even had such troops available in its volunteer force, and whether an all-hands-on-deck effort to pacify Iraq was the best strategic use of its limited military machine.
The failure to deter Iran and Syria, which gave sanctuary and support to Shiite and Sunni militants, respectively. True enough, but how exactly—short of an expanded regional war—could the U.S. have hoped to stop this? Iraq is in Syria’s and Iran’s neighborhood, just as the Caribbean is in ours. How could Washington not expect Syria and Iran to meddle so close to home?
Coalition warfare wasn’t successful: the deployment of allied troops had political value but was “largely unsuccessful” because the allies didn’t send enough troops. This ignores the reasons why so few countries sent substantial troops to our aid in Iraq. It was because they considered such an invasion ill-advised, illegal, and, in many cases, immoral. Perhaps the U.S. should have listened carefully to its long-standing friends.
The failure to develop self-reliant Iraqi forces. Well, of course. But if eight years (2003 to 2011) of training and funding a new Iraqi army wasn’t enough to make them self-sufficient, and if 17 years hasn’t been enough to do the same in Afghanistan, might not the entire theory of America’s ongoing “advise & assist” missions need to be rethought?
An ineffective detainee policy: the U.S. decided at the outset not to treat captured insurgents and militia fighters as prisoners of war and many Sunni insurgents were returned to the battlefield. This ignores Guantanamo, and, most likely, the national-level global detainee policy of the U.S. Perhaps indefinite detention of suspected insurgents or “terrorists,” without any recourse to due-process, created more enemies than it imprisoned. Think Abu Ghraib.
Democracy doesn’t necessarily bring stability: U.S. commanders believed the 2005 Iraqi elections would have a “calming effect,” but instead they exacerbated ethnic and sectarian tensions. A more holistic analysis would question the very capacity of a foreign military occupation force to impose democracy in an ancient locale at war with itself.

There’s also a personal connection here. The leader of the study team was Colonel Joel Rayburn. At first glance, no one is more qualified. Rayburn is brilliant and someone I hold in high esteem. He taught me British History at West Point, performed quite well on a popular TV trivia show, and wrote an interesting book on Iraq. Then again, Colonel Rayburn was deeply involved in the planning and execution of the famed “surge,” and is rather likely to glorify a military campaign (one this author fought in) that ultimately failed in its purpose—to stifle violence long enough to stabilize and form an inclusive Iraqi government.

In Search of the ‘Short, Serious War’ Unicorn
15 Years in Iraq: A Shameful Anniversary

Sure, violence drastically, if temporarily, decreased, but that was mainly due to a short-term alliance with former Sunni insurgents (many of whom had American blood on their hands). In the end, all that the roughly 1,300 U.S. troops killed during the surge achieved was the long-term entrenchment of a Shiite chauvinist prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. His corrupt government in Baghdad alienated the very Sunnis once on America’s payroll and caused a new outbreak of sectarian violence. Many of those Sunnis later allied with or joined ISIS, seeing the group as their best protection. Looking back, that’s far from an encouraging outcome for a “surge” in which so many American servicemen were killed.

A truly expansive history (or study) of the Iraq war (perhaps best commissioned by a government agency besides the military) would admit to the much broader failures of the U.S. adventure in Iraq. It would certainly discuss the tactical and operational failures included in the current report, but it would also focus on the scarcity of American grand strategy. Such a study would question whether external military intervention is even capable of reordering and stabilizing ancient societies. It would include an honest cost-benefit analysis and ask whether the proverbial juice was worth the squeeze in Iraq. Did that war make America safer? Unlikely. Was it necessary? Undoubtedly not. These are the true takeaways from what will someday be remembered as one of America’s great foreign policy debacles.

The safe bet is that little to none of this will be in the report, when—or if—it ever sees the light of day. We shall see, of course, but this much is certain: an entire generation of American troops dedicated the greater part of the last 15 years of their lives to the war in Iraq. I left four soldiers and the remnants of my emotional health in Baghdad. Others suffered far worse—notably average Iraqis. We deserve a comprehensive, honest, and critical analysis of that debacle.

Whether we ever get one remains to be seen.

Trump Administration Mum on Training for Troops at Border

With President Trump deploying 7,000 troops this month to help the U.S. Border Patrol confront a migrant caravan from Central America, one important question stands out: How well are government forces trained to deal with a large group of civilians?

The migrants are unarmed, though several of them reportedly threw rocks at Mexican officers as they crossed that country’s border a few weeks ago. President Donald Trump recently said any rocks thrown at troops would be considered a rifle after a reporter asked if the military would fire at the migrants.

“We’re not going to put up with that. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” Trump said. He later backtracked on his comments, saying that migrants would be arrested instead.

An estimated 4,000 migrants are traveling hundreds of miles to the border. As of Tuesday morning, the group was gathered inside a stadium in Mexico City.

Reveal asked Customs and Border Protection about the kind of training officers would complete in anticipation of the migrants’ arrival. They provided a statement saying officers will be “participating in operational readiness exercises.” The agency didn’t respond to a reporter’s follow up questions.

Reveal posed the same questions to the Department of Defense. General Terrence John O’Shaughnessy, the commander leading the border operation, told reporters last week that troops would receive use-of-force training.

“We are, in fact, as an example, setting up training programs that’ll be all the way from a large scale mass training that will then go down to unit training,” he said.

Pentagon spokesman Jamie Davis told Reveal that training will depend on each troop’s assignment. He said he didn’t immediately have details about what the training would entail.

“I don’t have that in front of me,” he said.

In general, soldiers are instructed to use force to defend themselves from “imminent threat of physical injury or death,” as well as to overcome resistance during an arrest, prevent destruction of military property, or to control or restrain animals, according to a Department of Defense directive obtained by the Federation of American Scientists. They are also trained in “scaled use of force,” which includes a variety of non lethal tactics such as voice commands, pepper spray, and batons.

Besides the thousands of troops, the military will be providing helicopters “to support the movement of CBP tactical personnel,” as well as medical teams, temporary housing, light towers, and fencing materials like barbed wire, according to the Department of Defense.

Then there are the so-called militia groups who say they are headed to the border to confront the caravan.

Although some of them may be veterans, most of these armed civilians won’t have the same formal use-of-force training that the military provides. The militias are governed by another set of rules: Forty-one states have laws restricting private military activity, including Arizona, Texas and California.

Meanwhile, the migrants have about 600 miles between them and the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s unclear how many will actually make it to the U.S. border.

The last caravan that formed in Central America totaled about 1,500 migrants. By the time is reached San Diego in May, it had dwindled to a few hundred.

Oceans Are Heating Up Faster Than We Thought

The seas are getting hotter – and researchers have thought again about just how much faster ocean warming is happening. They believe that in the last 25 years the oceans have absorbed at least 60% more heat than previous global estimates by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had considered.

And they calculate this heat as the equivalent to 150 times the annual human electricity generation in any one year.

“Imagine if the ocean was only 30 feet (10m) deep,” said Laure Resplandy, a researcher at the Princeton Environment Institute in the US. “Our data show that it would have warmed by 6.5°C every decade since 1991. In comparison, the estimate of the last IPCC assessment report would correspond to a warming of only 4°C every decade.”

The oceans cover 70% of the Blue Planet, but take up about 90% of all the excess energy produced as the Earth warms. If scientists can put a precise figure to this energy, then they can make more precise guesses about the surface warming to come, as humans continue to burn fossil fuels, release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and drive up the planetary thermometer.

“There will have to be an even more drastic shutdown of fossil fuel investment and an even faster switch to renewable sources of energy”

At the academic level, this is the search for a factor known to climate researchers as climate sensitivity: the way the world responds to ever-increasing ratios of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

At the human level, this plays out as ever-greater extremes of heat, drought and rainfall, with ever-higher risks of catastrophic storm or flood, or harvest failure, and ever-higher tallies of human suffering.

Comprehensive global measurements of ocean temperature date only from 2007 and the network of robot sensors that deliver continuous data about the top half of the ocean basins.

Dr Resplandy and her colleagues report in the journal Nature that they used a sophisticated approach based on very high-precision measurements of levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air.

Gases released

Both gases are soluble, and the oceans are becoming more acidic as the seas absorb ever-greater levels of carbon dioxide. But as seas warm, they also become less able to hold their dissolved gases, and release them into the atmosphere.

This simple consequence of atmospheric physics meant that the researchers could use what they call “atmospheric potential oxygen” to arrive at a new way of measuring the heat the oceans must have absorbed over time.

They used the standard unit of energy: the joule. Their new budget for heat absorbed each year between 1991 and 2016 is 13 zettajoules. That is a digit followed by 21 zeroes, the kind of magnitude astronomers tend to use.

That the oceans are warming is no surprise: this has been obvious from the crudest comparison of old naval data with modern surface checks, and for years some researchers argued that ever-higher ocean temperatures could account for the so-called slowdown in global warming in the first dozen years of this century.

Challenging achievement

The new finding counts first as an academic achievement: there is now a more precise thermometer reading, and new calculations can begin.

One of the researchers, Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said: “The result significantly increases the confidence we can place in estimates of ocean warming and therefore help reduce uncertainty in the climate sensitivity, particularly closing off the possibility of very low climate sensitivity.”

But the result also suggests that internationally agreed attempts to hold planetary warming to a maximum of just 2°C – and the world has already warmed by around 1°C in the last century – become more challenging.

It means that there will have to be an even more drastic shutdown of fossil fuel investment and an even faster switch to renewable sources of energy such as sun and wind power.

Robert Reich: America Has Rejected Trumpism

Make no mistake: America has rejected Trumpism.

No one seriously expected the Senate to flip, because Democrats had to defend 26 seats in that chamber, compared with only nine held by Republicans.

The real battleground was the House, where Democrats had to achieve a net gain of 23 seats to get the 218 needed for a majority.

They did.

Trump wasn’t on the ballot but he made the election into a referendum on himself.

So Americans turned against House Republicans, who should have acted as a check on him but did nothing – in many cases magnifying his vileness.

The nation has repudiated Trump, but do not believe for a moment that our national nightmare is over.

Trump still occupies the White House and in all likelihood will be there for two more years.

The Republican Party remains in control of the Senate.

Fox News is still Trump’s propaganda ministry. (The line between Fox and Trump, already blurred, vanished completely at his last pre-election rally when Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Jeannine Pirro joined him on stage.)

The American people will be subject to more of Trump’s lies and hate, as amplified by Senate Republicans and Fox News.

Trump can be expected to scapegoat House Democrats for anything that goes wrong. American politics will almost certainly become even meaner, coarser, and uglier. We will remain deeply and angrily divided.

Most worrisome, America still won’t respond to real threats that continue to grow, which Trump and his enablers have worsened – climate change; the suppression of votes, and foreign intrusions into our elections; the most expensive and least efficient healthcare system in the world; and, not least, widening inequalities of income, wealth, and political power.

America will eventually overcome and reverse Trumpism. The harder challenge will be to reverse the reasons Trump and his Republican lapdogs gained power in the first place.

Some blame racism and nativism. But these toxins have poisoned America since the founding of the Republic.

What’s new has been the interaction between them and the long economic slide of tens of millions of working Americans, most of them white and lacking college degrees.

They used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party, many of them members of trade unions whose strength in numbers gave them an increasing share of the gains from economic growth.

Their long economic slide has generated the kind of frustrations that demagogues throughout history have twisted into rage at “them.”

Meanwhile, most economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent, whose wealth is now greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent – giving them enough political muscle to demand and get tax cuts, Wall Street bailouts, corporate subsidies, and regulatory rollbacks. These in turn have created even more wealth at the top.

All were trends before Trump. Yet Democrats failed to reverse them, even though Democrats occupied the White House most of these years (and during four of them controlled both houses of Congress).

Trump has worsened them by slashing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, whittling back the Affordable Care Act, and loosening restrictions on Wall Street.

Jobs may be back but they pay squat, especially compared with the rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education. And they’re less secure than ever. One in five is now held by a worker under contract without any unemployment insurance, sick leave, or retirement savings.

Which presumably is why Trump decided to focus the midterms on hate and fear rather than the economy.

He thereby created a large opening for Democrats aiming for 2020. They can become the party of the bottom 90 percent by creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition to wrest back control of our economy and democracy.

They would focus on two big things: First, raise the purchasing power of the bottom 90 percent through stronger unions, a larger wage subsidy (starting with a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit), and Medicare for All.

Second, get big money out of politics through public financing of elections, full disclosure of all sources of political funding, an end to the revolving door between business and government.

Democrats shouldn’t try moving to the “center.” The center no longer exists because most Americans are no longer on the traditional “right” or “left.”

The vast majority of Americans are now anti-establishment, and understandably so.

The practical choice is either Trump’s authoritarian populism backed by the moneyed interests, or a new democratic populism backed by the rest of us.

The direction couldn’t be clearer. It should be the Democrat’s hour.