Chris Hedges's Blog, page 473

All the Electricity the World Needs Can Come From Renewables

Imagine a world with so much renewable, clean energy that it could provide all the electricity society needed, reliably and without any interruption, round the clock. If UK researchers are correct, you shouldn’t need to imagine it. It could soon be a reality.

A report by the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) says clean energy could now meet all our electricity needs, using only existing technology, at all times of the day, and all year round. The report draws on “scenarios” designed to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement, developed at the global, regional, national and sub-national scales.

Scenarios, in the sense used in the report, are emissions reduction models describing possible futures in which society has managed to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The report’s insistence that renewables can power the world is a challenge to earlier studies which have suggested that the obstacles to a fossil fuel-free economy remain for the moment insurmountable.

The researchers assessed and mapped more than 130 of these scenarios, including 18 in-depth case studies. They draw on cutting-edge modelling work for a net zero world, with deep decarbonisation, and for up to 100% renewable energy. Their geographical range extends from East Africa to the US west coast, and from southern Asia to northern Europe.

“Tackling climate change and creating a fairer future for everyone is no longer a technological challenge, it’s a challenge of will, of ambition, and of vision”

“This summer the climate crisis became horrifically real for people experiencing record weather extremes from the United States to Japan and Bangladesh. We have produced the largest survey yet of scenarios for switching to climate-friendly energy, and the good news is that they show it is within our power to make the changes needed to meet carbon reduction targets and halt the worst of global climatic upheaval,” said Paul Allen, project coordinator of Zero Carbon Britain, CAT’s flagship research project.

Since a previous assessment in 2015 the number of scenarios has grown by 30% and their scope has spread to include more developing countries. They incorporate raised ambitions for decarbonising electricity supplies by up to 100%, and doing so between 2030 and 2050.

The results also show the ability of renewable power to provide reliable electricity supplies both around the clock and all year round. This is significant because of the insistence of many industries which continue to use fossil fuels that they have to do so to guard against “intermittency” – the inability of some forms of renewable energy to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of power. Another research project concluded that the sheer scale of the change needed to achieve zero emissions was likely to be too much for human societies to achieve in time.

But the CAT team remain upbeat. “These scenarios are increasingly based on hourly modelling, including for developing countries, which means we can show that green energy supplies can meet demand 24 hours a day and across the seasons,” Allen said. “Through demonstrating the potential of intelligent, mixed supply systems we can show that renewables deliver whatever the weather.”

Cheap renewables

The mapping in the report shows the range of new scenarios which are now emerging, including for many of the world’s largest emitters. It comes at a time when it is increasingly clear that, with all associated costs included, renewable energy is becoming the cheapest option for most parts of the world.

Many of the scenarios show that making the switch to 100% renewables is increasingly cheaper than taking a business-as-usual approach.

But the report does disclose a number of key challenges. While the global and regional scenarios show great potential, it says, too many countries have still not yet prepared scenarios that align their short-term actions and long-term plans with the levels of ambition required by the Paris Agreement. Of the world’s countries – almost 200 in total – the study found only 32 had developed scenarios for deep decarbonisation, 100% renewable energy or net zero emissions.

To deliver on Paris, scenarios must go beyond electricity, the CAT team says. The world needs to get to zero in all sectors. For that, multi-sector modelling is needed to offer fully integrated net-zero carbon scenarios which include emissions from transport, buildings, industry and agriculture.

Remaining emissions

And even with a 100% renewable energy system, plus reduced agricultural emissions, and more efficient industrial processes, there will still be significant amounts of unavoidable residual greenhouse gas emissions which need to be balanced by genuinely sustainable net-negative processes.

Land-use is important but is overlooked in meeting the climate challenge, the report says. Society can revitalise natural systems, for example by restoring forests, peatlands and soils. These can absorb and sequester unavoidable residual greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to achieve an overall balance, while also regenerating and protecting natural systems.

To take the Paris climate targets seriously, the researchers say, all countries must be supported to prepare full net-zero scenarios which link energy, transport, buildings, diets, land-use and sustainable, natural carbon sinks.

Paul Allen says: “From researching this report, we know that tackling climate change and creating a fairer future for everyone is no longer a technological challenge, it’s a challenge of will, of ambition, and of vision.”

Trump Is Not the Problem

Donald Trump’s tenure as the 45th U.S. president may last another few weeks, another year, or another 16 months.  However unsettling the prospect, the leaky vessel that is the S.S. Trump might even manage to stay afloat for a second term.  Nonetheless, recent headline-making revelations suggest that, like some derelict ship that’s gone aground, the Trump presidency may already have effectively run its course. What, then, does this bizarre episode in American history signify?

Let me state my own view bluntly: forget the atmospherics.  Despite the lies, insults, name calling, and dog whistles, almost nothing of substance has changed. Nor will it.

To a far greater extent than Trump’s perpetually hyperventilating critics are willing to acknowledge, the United States remains on a trajectory that does not differ appreciably from what it was prior to POTUS #45 taking office. Post-Trump America, just now beginning to come into view, is shaping up to look remarkably like pre-Trump America.

I understand that His Weirdness remains in the White House. Yet for all practical purposes, Trump has ceased to govern. True, he continues to rant and issue bizarre directives, which his subordinates implement, amend, or simply disregard as they see fit.

Except in a ceremonial sense, the office of the presidency presently lies vacant. Call it an abdication-in-place. It’s as if British King Edward VIII, having abandoned his throne for “the woman I love,” continued to hang around Buckingham Palace fuming about the lack of respect given Wallis and releasing occasional bulletins affirming his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In Trump’s case, it’s unlikely he ever had a more serious interest in governing than Edward had in performing duties more arduous than those he was eventually assigned as Duke of Windsor. Nonetheless, the 60-plus million Americans who voted for Trump did so with at least the expectation that he was going to shake things up.

And bigly. Remember, he was going to “lock her up.”  He would “drain the swamp” and “build a wall” with Mexico volunteering to foot the bill. Without further ado, he would end “this American carnage.” Meanwhile, “America First” would form the basis for U.S. foreign policy. Once Trump took charge, things were going to be different, as he and he alone would “make America great again.”

Yet the cataclysm that Trump’s ascendency was said to signify has yet to occur. Barring a nuclear war, it won’t.

If you spend your days watching CNN or MSNBC or reading columnists employed by the New York Times and the Washington Post, you might conclude otherwise. But those are among the institutions that, on November 8, 2016, suffered a nervous breakdown from which they have yet to recover. Nor, it now seems clear, do they wish to recover as long as Donald Trump remains president. To live in a perpetual state of high dudgeon, denouncing his latest inanity and predicting the onset of fascism, is to enjoy the equivalent of a protracted psychic orgasm, one induced by mutual masturbation.

Yet if you look beyond the present to the fairly recent past, it becomes apparent that change on the scale that Trump was promising had actually occurred, even if well before he himself showed up on the scene. The consequences of that Big Change are going to persist long after he is gone. It’s those consequences that now demand our attention, not the ongoing Gong Show jointly orchestrated by the White House and journalists fancying themselves valiant defenders of Truth.

Trump himself is no more than a pimple on the face of this nation’s history. It’s time to step back from the mirror and examine the face in full. Pretty it’s not.

The Way We Were

Compare the America that welcomed young Donald Trump into the world in 1946 with the country that, some 70 years later, elected him president. As the post-World War II era was beginning, three large facts — so immense that they were simply taken for granted — defined America.

First, the United States made everything and made more of it than anyone else. In postwar America, wealth derived in large measure from the manufacture of stuff: steel, automobiles, refrigerators, shoes, socks, blouses, baseballs, you name it. “Made in the USA” was more than just a slogan. With so much of the industrialized world in ruins, the American economy dominated and defined everyday economic reality globally.

Second, back then while the mighty engine of industrial capitalism was generating impressive riches, it was also distributing the benefits on a relatively equitable basis. Postwar America was the emblematic middle-class country, the closest approximation to a genuinely classless and democratic society the world had ever seen.

Third, having had their fill of fighting from 1941 to 1945, Americans had a genuine aversion to war. They may not have been a peace-loving people, but they knew enough about war to see it as a great evil. Avoiding its further occurrence, if at all possible, was a priority, although one not fully shared by the new national security establishment just then beginning to flex its muscles in Washington.

Now, by twenty-first-century standards, many, perhaps nearly all, Americans of that era were bigots of one sort or the other. Racism, sexism, and homophobia flourished, lamented by some, promoted by others, tolerated by the vast majority. An anti-communist political hysteria, abetted by cynical politicians, also flourished. Americans worked themselves into a tizzy over the putative threat posed by small numbers of homegrown subversives. And they fouled the air, water, and soil with abandon. Add to this list violence, crime, corruption, sexual angst, and various forms of self-abuse. Taken as a whole, American society, as it existed when Trump was growing up, was anything but perfect. Yet, for all that, postwar Americans were the envy of the world. And they knew it.

By 2016, when Trump was elected president, America had become an altogether different country. Without actually disappearing, racism, sexism, and homophobia had — at least for the moment — gone underground. Attitudes toward people of color, women, and gays that a half-century earlier had been commonplace were now largely confined to a pathological fringe. Hysteria about communists had essentially disappeared, only to be replaced by hysteria over Islamic terrorists. Pollution, of course, persisted, as did violence, crime, corruption, and sexual angst. New and more imaginative forms of self-destructive behavior had made their appearance.

Yet little of that turned out to be central. What had truly changed in the decades since Trump was a babe-in-arms were those three taken-for-granted facts that had once distinguished the United States. New realities emerged to invert them.

By 2016, the U.S. was no longer by any stretch of the imagination the place that made everything, though it bought everything, often made elsewhere. It had long since become the ultimate consumer society, with Americans accustomed to acquiring and enjoying more than they produced or could afford. Accounts no longer balanced. The government lived on credit, assuming that the bills would never come due. So, too, did many citizens.

By 2016, the U.S. had long since become a deeply unequal society of haves and have-nots. Finance capitalism, the successor to industrial capitalism, was creating immense fortunes without even pretending to distribute the benefits equitably. Politicians still routinely paid tribute to the Great American Middle Class. Yet the hallmarks of postwar middle-class life — a steady job, a paycheck adequate to support a family, the prospect of a pension — were rapidly disappearing. While Americans still enjoyed freedom of a sort, many of them lacked security.

By 2016, Americans had also come to accept war as normal. Here was “global leadership” made manifest. So U.S. troops were now always out there somewhere fighting, however obscure the purpose of their exertions and however dim their prospects of achieving anything approximating victory. The 99% of Americans who were not soldiers learned to tune out those wars, content merely to “support the troops,” an obligation fulfilled by offering periodic expressions of reverence on public occasions. Thank you for your service!

The Way We Are

But note: Donald Trump played no role in creating this America or consigning the America of 1946 to oblivion. As a modern equivalent of P.T. Barnum, he did demonstrate considerable skill in exploiting the opportunities on offer as the strictures of postwar America gave way. Indeed, he parlayed those opportunities into fortune, celebrity, lots of golf, plenty of sex, and eventually the highest office in the land. Only in America, as we used to say.

In 1946, it goes without saying, he would never have been taken seriously as a would-be presidential candidate. By 2016, his narcissism, bombast, vulgarity, and talent for self-promotion nicely expressed the underside of the prevailing zeitgeist. His candidacy was simultaneously preposterous, yet strangely fitting.

By the twenty-first century, the values that Trump embodies had become as thoroughly and authentically American as any of those specified in the oracular pronouncements of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt. Trump’s critics may see him as an abomination.  But he is also one of us.

And here’s the real news: the essential traits that define America today — those things that make this country so different from what it seemed to be in 1946 — will surely survive the Trump presidency. If anything, he and his cronies deserve at least some credit for sustaining just those traits.

Candidate Trump essentially promised Americans a version of 1946 redux. He would revive manufacturing and create millions of well-paying jobs for working stiffs. By cutting taxes, he would put more money in the average Joe or Jill’s pocket. He would eliminate the trade deficit and balance the federal budget. He would end our endless wars and bring the troops home where they belong. He would oblige America’s allies, portrayed as a crew of freeloaders, to shoulder their share of the burden. He would end illegal immigration. He would make the United States once more the God-fearing Christian country it was meant to be.

How seriously Trump expected any of those promises to be taken is anyone’s guess. But this much is for sure: they remain almost entirely unfulfilled.

True, domestic manufacturing has experienced a slight uptick, but globalization remains an implacable reality. Unless you’ve got a STEM degree, good jobs are still hard to come by. Ours is increasingly a “gig” economy, which might be cool enough when you’re 25, but less so when you’re in your sixties and wondering if you’ll ever be able to retire.

While Trump and a Republican Congress delivered on their promise of tax “reform,” its chief beneficiaries will be the rich, further confirmation, if it were needed, that the American economy is indeed rigged in favor of a growing class of plutocrats. Trade deficit? It’s headed for a 10-year high. Balanced budget? You’ve got to be joking. The estimated federal deficit next year will exceed a trillion dollars, boosting the national debt past $21 trillion. (Trump had promised to eliminate that debt entirely.)

And, of course, the wars haven’t ended. Here is Trump, just last month, doing his best George McGovern imitation: “I’m constantly reviewing Afghanistan and the whole Middle East,” he asserted. “We never should have been in the Middle East. It was the single greatest mistake in the history of our country.” Yet Trump has perpetuated and, in some instances, expanded America’s military misadventures in the Greater Middle East, while essentially insulating himself from personal responsibility for their continuation.

As commander-in-chief, he’s a distinctly hands-off kind of guy. Despite being unable to walk, President Franklin Roosevelt visited GIs serving in combat zones more often than Trump has. If you want to know why we are in Afghanistan and how long U.S. forces will stay there, ask Defense Secretary James Mattis or some general, but don’t, whatever you do, ask the president.

On Not Turning America’s Back on the World

And then there is the matter of Trump’s “isolationism.” Recall that when he became president, foreign policy experts across Washington warned that the United States would now turn its back on the world and abandon its self-assigned role as keeper of order and defender of democracy. Now, nearing the mid-point of Trump’s first (and hopefully last) term, the United States remains formally committed to defending the territorial integrity of each and every NATO member state, numbering 29 in all. Add to that an obligation to defend nations as varied as Japan, South Korea, and, under the terms of the Rio Pact of 1947, most of Latin America. Less formally but no less substantively, the U.S. ensures the security of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and various other Persian Gulf countries.

As for obliging those allies to pony up more for the security we have long claimed to provide, that’s clearly not going to happen any time soon. Our European allies have pocketed both Trump’s insults and his assurances that the United States will continue to defend them, offering in return the vaguest of promises that, sometime in the future, they might consider investing more in defense.

By-the-by, U.S. forces under Donald Trump’s ostensible command are today present in more than 150 countries worldwide. Urged on by the president, Congress has passed a bill that boosts the Pentagon budget to $717 billion, an $82 billion increase over the prior year. Needless to say, no adversary or plausible combination of adversaries comes anywhere close to matching that figure.

To call this isolationism is comparable to calling Trump svelte.

As for the promised barrier, that “big, fat, beautiful wall,” to seal the southern border, it has advanced no further than the display of several possible prototypes. No evidence exists to suggest that Mexico will, as Trump insisted, pay for its construction, nor that Congress will appropriate the necessary funds, estimated at somewhere north of $20 billion, even with Republicans still controlling both houses of Congress. And in truth, whether it is built or not, the U.S.-Mexico border will remain what it has been for decades: heavily patrolled but porous, a conduit for desperate people seeking safety and opportunity, but also for criminal elements trafficking in drugs or human beings.

The point of this informal midterm report card is not to argue that Donald Trump has somehow failed. It is rather to highlight his essential irrelevance.

Trump is not the disruptive force that anti-Trumpers accuse him of being. He is merely a noxious, venal, and ineffectual blowhard, who has assembled a team of associates who are themselves, with few exceptions, noxious, venal, or ineffectual.

So here’s the upshot of it all: if you were basically okay with where America was headed prior to November 2016, just take a deep breath and think of Donald Trump as the political equivalent of a kidney stone — not fun, but sooner or later, it will pass. And when it does, normalcy will return. Soon enough you’ll forget it ever happened.

If, on the other hand, you were not okay with where America was headed in 2016, it’s past time to give up the illusion that Donald Trump is going to make things right. Eventually a pimple dries up and disappears, often without leaving a trace. Such is the eventual destiny of Donald Trump as president.

In the meantime, of course, there are any number of things about Trump to raise our ire. Climate change offers a good example. And yet climate change may be the best illustration of Trump’s insignificance.

Under President Obama, the United States showed signs of mounting a belated effort to address global warming. The Trump administration wasted little time in reversing course, reverting to the science-denying position to which Republicans adhered long before Trump himself showed up.

No doubt future generations will find fault with Trump’s inaction in the face of this crisis. Yet when Miami is underwater and California wildfires rage throughout the year, Trump himself won’t be the only — or even the principal — culprit charged with culpable neglect.

The nation’s too-little, too-late response to climate change for which a succession of presidents share responsibility illustrates the great and abiding defect of contemporary American politics. When all is said and done, presidents don’t shape the country; the country shapes the presidency — or at least it defines the parameters within which presidents operate. Over the course of the last few decades, those parameters have become increasingly at odds with the collective wellbeing of the American people, not to mention of the planet as a whole.

Yet Americans have been obdurate in refusing to acknowledge that fact.

Americans today are deeply divided. There exists no greater symbol of that division than Trump himself — the wild enthusiasm he generates in some quarters and the antipathy verging on hatred he elicits in others.

The urgent need of the day is to close that divide, which is as broad as it is deep, touching on culture, the political economy, America’s role in the world, and the definition of the common good. I submit that these matters lie beyond any president’s purview, but especially this one’s.

Trump is not the problem. Think of him instead as a summons to address the real problem, which in a nation ostensibly of, by, and for the people is the collective responsibility of the people themselves. For Americans to shirk that responsibility further will almost surely pave the way for more Trumps — or someone worse — to come.

Prisoners Fighting Fires Are Being Denied Justice

SAN FRANCISCO — Evidence of global climate disruption blankets the Earth, pummeling communities with the full arsenal of nature’s fury, from hurricanes, tornadoes, relentless rainstorms and thousand-year floods, to historic droughts and searing heat waves. In California, wildfires have raged in record numbers and intensity, pushing the state’s firefighting crews to the limit and busting the state’s firefighting budget. New wildfires are exploding across the Golden State as thousands of people converge in San Francisco for this week’s Global Climate Action Summit, convened by Gov. Jerry Brown and others deeply concerned with the climate change crisis and President Donald Trump’s obstinate denial of its very existence. Joining the professional firefighting crews on the front lines of these massive fires are thousands of California prisoners, brought out of their jails to engage in this dangerous work, all for a dollar an hour or less.

“Democracy Now!” traveled to Delta Conservation Camp, an hour north of San Francisco, to meet the prisoners who are fighting these devastating wildfires. You wouldn’t know from its name that it’s a prison camp. There are 44 of these detention facilities, including three for women and one for juveniles, fighting the scores of wildfires that plague California with increasing frequency and ferocity.

Up to 25 percent of California’s wildfire firefighters are prisoners.

“The inmate firefighters are the backbone of Cal Fire. They get the toughest assignment there is, out there,” Sgt. Steven Reeder, one of the corrections officers at Delta, said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “They get the toughest assignments in the worst conditions, 110 degrees in the middle of the sun, wearing two layers of clothing, carrying 40 pounds of gear. And then they have to carry all their food and water for a 24-hour shift, and then swing a tool the whole time.”

Gov. Brown also praises them for their heroic firefighting efforts: “I want to personally thank … the thousands of inmates who are also on the line fighting to protect lives and bring these fires to a quick close.”

Prison firefighters, with their abysmal pay of $1 per hour, save California up to $100 million per year by official estimates. “I believe that they should make more than the dollar an hour,” Delta Camp commander Lt. Sid Turner said on “Democracy Now!” “They have been at that rate of pay for many decades.” Turner admitted that if the prison population were to decline, the firefighting system would be challenged: “California needs hand crews. If we don’t have the inmates to perform that function, then they’ve got to find the labor from someplace else.” And Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency, is running out of money, fast.

Marty Vinson, a 25-year-old African-American prisoner who had been at Delta for two months, speaking on “Democracy Now!,” described the solidarity between prisoner and non-prisoner firefighters: “We’re all here to help each other and make sure everybody is safe.” When asked about the wages he earns, he replied, “When you’re fighting a fire, a dollar an hour.” When they’re not fighting fires? “You make $1.45 a day,” he said. When asked what he thought of some describing the wages as slave labor, he laughed nervously, with the guard looking on, and said, “I don’t really want to call the work slave work, but … we’re getting paid a dollar an hour.”

Prisoners and ex-prisoners have told “Democracy Now!” that a key incentive to engage in this dangerous work is to receive time off their sentences. They can get two days off their prison sentence for each day at a firefighting camp. Remarkably, after fighting wildfires for years, these prisoners are prevented from working as firefighters when they are freed, because they are ex-felons.

This past weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in San Francisco as part of a global day of protest demanding action on climate change. Central to this modern-day movement is the concept of environmental justice, addressing how climate change impacts communities differently, based on race, economic status and gender. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than on the fire lines in California, where thousands of prisoners, mostly poor people of color, get paid slave wages to risk their lives by fighting raging fires, made more frequent and more intense by climate change.

Abuse Scandal Hits Diocese of Cardinal Set to Meet With Pope

HOUSTON — As U.S. Catholic leaders head to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis about a growing church abuse crisis, the cardinal leading the delegation has been accused by two people of not doing enough to stop a priest who was arrested this week on sexual abuse charges.

The two people told The Associated Press that they reported the priest and met with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. One of them says she was promised in a meeting with DiNardo, several years after she first reported abuse, that the priest would be removed from any contact with children, only to discover that the priest remained in active ministry at another parish 70 miles away.

The priest, Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, was arrested Tuesday by police in Conroe, Texas. Both people who spoke to the AP are cooperating with police.

The priest’s arrest and allegations that DiNardo kept an abusive priest around children cast a shadow over a Thursday summit at the Vatican between Pope Francis and American bishops and cardinals. DiNardo is leading the delegation, putting him in the position of having to fend off abuse allegations in his own diocese while at the same time calling on the pope to get tougher on clergy abuse.

In addition to his responsibilities in Houston, DiNardo is head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a position that has made him a prominent figure in the church’s response to a new wave of allegations that Catholic leaders covered up sexual abuse. He has been outspoken in his calls for Pope Francis to investigate ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from his post in July after a credible accusation that he groped a teenager.

DiNardo himself is now facing criticism for his role in handling a priest accused of abusing children.

LaRosa-Lopez, 60, is accused of fondling both people when they were teenagers and he was a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe. He is charged with four counts of indecency with a child. Each count carries a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

LaRosa-Lopez is now the pastor at St. John Fisher Catholic Church in Richmond while also serving as the archdiocese’s episcopal vicar for Hispanics.

The archdiocese issued a statement Wednesday confirming that both people had come forward to report abuse by LaRosa-Lopez, one of them in 2001. The archdiocese said it reported both allegations to the state Child Protective Services, and said it was unaware of any other “allegations of inappropriate conduct involving minors” against the priest. A spokesman for CPS on Wednesday declined to comment, citing confidentiality of the reports. LaRosa-Lopez did not immediately return a phone message left Wednesday.

“To anyone affected by any form of abuse by anyone who represents the Church, the Archdiocese deeply regrets such a fundamental violation of trust, and commits itself to eliminating such unacceptable actions,” the archdiocese said.

Both accusers who say they went to DiNardo are now in their 30s. The Associated Press typically does not identify victims in sexual abuse cases, and both people asked that their names be withheld.

One was flown by the church from the West Coast to Houston to meet with DiNardo and the victims’ assistance coordinator for the archdiocese. They met at the archdiocese on the afternoon of Aug. 10, just as he was taking on a greater role nationally in responding to the McCarrick saga.

The man wrote down notes from the meeting quickly after leaving, and shared a copy of the notes with AP.

“Cardinal seemed dismissive of situation,” the notes read. He also wrote down what he says is a quote from DiNardo: “You should have told us sooner.”

“It was a dismissive tone,” he recalled. “In the back of my head, I was thinking about his comment. I was so mad afterward.”

Both said they had believed their cases would be too old to prosecute under statute of limitations laws. But the Texas Legislature in 2007 removed the statute of limitations for indecency with a child cases. Montgomery County prosecutors say that change means their cases remain eligible to be prosecuted now.

The group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, has called for the Texas attorney general to investigate the Houston archdiocese and others for whether they covered up sexual abuse in their ranks.

“DiNardo needs to come clean on what he knows,” said Michael Norris, a member of SNAP.

Both victims say they were teenagers when LaRosa-Lopez tried to befriend them over a period before initiating physical contact.

The male victim said he became interested as a teenager in joining the clergy and going to seminary. He started to attend Mass and got to know LaRosa-Lopez. Eventually, he got a job where he worked nights at Sacred Heart as an assistant.

He remembered LaRosa-Lopez being known as “touchy-feely,” and that the priest’s contact with him became more physical over time: first touching on the arm, then hugging, then a kiss on the cheek.

One night, he said, the priest showed him pictures of young seminarians that “he had a lot of fun with,” and tried to take the teenager’s clothes off and put his hands down his pants. He pushed back and quickly left the residence. He said he reported the incident to church authorities last year. The archdiocese said Wednesday it was “formally presented” with the allegation in August.

The female accuser said LaRosa-Lopez befriended her during her weekly confession at Sacred Heart. “He basically was my only friend,” she said.

The female victim declined to detail what LaRosa-Lopez did, saying only that he touched her inappropriately shortly before Easter, after she had turned 16.

She says her father found out what had happened and the family reported it to the church. Church officials told her that LaRosa-Lopez would be moved.

The archdiocese confirmed Wednesday that LaRosa-Lopez was re-assigned in 2001 to another church, St. Francis de Sales, and then moved in 2004 to St. John Fisher, his current assignment. It would not confirm he was moved due to an abuse complaint.

She eventually resumed going to her church with LaRosa-Lopez transferred to a new location.

But in 2010, she saw a copy of the archdiocese’s internal newsletter, which announced LaRosa-Lopez’s appointment as vicar of Hispanic ministry. She thought there was a chance DiNardo didn’t know about her complaint because it had predated his time in Houston.

She contacted the church and started to meet with a therapist paid for by the archdiocese. Eventually, she met with DiNardo and other top clergy in the diocese. She says they told her that after she had come forward, LaRosa-Lopez was sent to a hospital for psychiatric treatment twice and that would no longer be allowed to work with children.

Then LaRosa-Lopez was brought in for about 10 minutes, she confronted him about the abuse and he apologized.

She says she later discovered that LaRosa-Lopez remained at St. John Fisher, in the presence of children.

Of DiNardo, the woman said, “I’m tired of all of his empty words.”

“If he’s going to go meet with the Pope and pretend that all of this is OK and his diocese is clean, I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t be quiet.”

The Associated Press asked Tuesday to interview DiNardo and other top leaders at the archdiocese. It also submitted a list of questions about both victims’ allegations.

A spokesman for the archdiocese declined the interview requests or to address specific allegations about what DiNardo told the victims.

LaRosa-Lopez was not present at Mass in St. John Fisher on Saturday night or Sunday. A reporter who visited both days saw that a parking spot, marked with a sign reserving the space for “Father Manuel,” was empty.

Parishioners were told on Sunday morning Mass that LaRosa-Lopez was “at a retreat.”

Planned Parenthood Picks Physician—a Chinese Immigrant—as Leader

NEW YORK — A Chinese immigrant who fled her native country when she was 8 was named Wednesday as Planned Parenthood’s new president, the first doctor to hold the post in five decades.

Dr. Leana Wen will assume the role Nov. 12, six days after midterm elections in which Planned Parenthood’s political wing plans to spend $20 million on behalf of candidates who support abortion rights.

Wen,  will be Planned Parenthood’s sixth president over a century of work providing millions of Americans with birth control, sex education and medical screenings.

The organization also is the largest provider of abortions in the U.S., making it a perennial target for anti-abortion activists. In recent years, its foes have been striving — thus far unsuccessfully — to halt the flow of federal funds that help Planned Parenthood provide some of its non-abortion services.

Wen succeeds Cecile Richards, who had been president since 2006 before resigning earlier this year.

Under Richards’ leadership, Planned Parenthood has been at odds with congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump on numerous fronts, most recently joining the intense opposition to Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Abortion-rights advocates fear that Kavanaugh will tilt the high court to the right, possibly opening the way for rulings that would reverse or weaken the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a nationwide right for women to have abortions.

Wen and her family fled from China just before her 8th birthday, were granted political asylum in the U.S. and became U.S. citizens in 2003.

Wen graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Los Angeles and earned her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine before becoming a Rhodes Scholar.

Early in her tenure as Baltimore’s health commissioner, she provided strong leadership as the city was wracked by violent protests related to disputed police actions. She expanded trauma and mental health services, and secured funding for a program designed to treat gun violence as a contagious disease.

Wen said she was proud of her accomplishments in Baltimore — including reducing infant mortality to record lows and providing eyeglasses for all children who needed them. But she said she could not resist the new job offer.

“For more than 100 years, no organization has done more for women’s health than Planned Parenthood,” Wen said. “As a doctor, I will ensure we continue to provide high-quality health care, including the full range of reproductive care and will fight with everything I have to protect the access of millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Baltimore, praised the appointment, saying of Wen, “When it comes to protecting her patients, she doesn’t back down from a fight.”

With Wen’s encouragement, Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting funds for teen pregnancy prevention. A federal judge subsequently ordered the restoration of $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based prevention programs.

Bush Boosting Republicans in Places Where Trump Isn’t Strong

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former President George W. Bush is quietly helping boost Republican candidates in places where President Donald Trump has struggled. In so doing, the former two-term president is raising his profile, ever so slightly, in the national politics he eschewed for years.

On Wednesday, Bush held an event in Fort Worth, Texas, for Republican Rep. Will Hurd in a congressional district Trump lost in 2016. On Friday, Bush is set to appear in Florida, which Trump narrowly carried in 2016, on behalf of Gov. Rick Scott in the state’s expensive Senate race.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who will also attend the Scott event, said in an email that his brother “is helping Senate candidates across the country.”

These events are a focal part of Bush’s re-emergence in national politics ahead before the Nov. 6 election that will help determine control of Congress.

Another former president, Barack Obama, also has come off the political sidelines for the upcoming midterms.

Both parties have much at stake. Democrats want to capitalize on Trump unpopularity and gain the 23 seats they need to regain a majority in the House and launch investigations of the administration and, potentially, impeachment hearings.

Republicans are increasingly concerned about their ability to fend off Democrats aiming to retake the Senate and win complete control of Congress.

The presence of Trump looms large over the elections. He has pledged to campaign as many days as possible to help Republicans defend their majorities, including in Texas, where Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is defending his seat against a strong challenge from Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

The president has demonstrated that with one Tweet, he can sway the fortunes of Republicans who dare cross him. That puts Republican candidates in places where voters don’t love Trump in sticky positions.

So Bush is stepping in, officials in Washington, Florida and Texas said. Doing so could help with voters such as independents and women who want Congress to stay in Republican hands.

“We’re beyond grateful that President Bush is helping in the fight to keep the House,” said Matt Gorman, spokesman for the House Republicans’ campaign committee. “His support of accomplished members like Will Hurd are critical to our effort.”

The GOP chairman in Florida, Blaise Ingoglia, said Bush will be a “plus” for Scott’s bid to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson.

“There are still plenty of people in the state of Florida who love and admire President Bush,” Ingoglia said.

It’s not Bush’s first move back toward national politics.

Bush re-emerged with a message that echoed with politics at the Sept. 1 funeral of Arizona Sen. John McCain in Washington. The late senator had asked Bush and Obama to give eulogies.

Trump wasn’t invited to the service and his name was rarely mentioned in the speeches, but collectively the ceremony was seen as a rebuke by official Washington of his divisive approach to the presidency.

“John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this,” Bush said from the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral.

The Bush family has long had a complicated relationship with Trump.

During the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump said Jeb Bush was “low energy” and argued that George W. Bush had failed to keep the nation safe after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Trump didn’t attend the funeral this year of Barbara Bush, the wife and mother of former presidents. First lady Melania Trump attended.

Both Hurd and Scott have tried to distance themselves from Trump.

A former CIA agent, Hurd criticized Trump in a New York Times op-ed in July after the president’s deferential news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Helsinki. Trump, Hurd wrote, was guilty of a “failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions” that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

“His standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans,” Hurd wrote. “By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.”

Trump urged Scott to run against Nelson, but Scott has publicly kept his distance from the president. In April, Scott skipped a Trump discussion of the tax-cut package in South Florida, heading out of state to raise money for his Senate campaign instead.

In late July, Scott traveled on Air Force One with the president when he visited Florida. But the governor skipped Trump’s campaign rally held in Tampa, opting instead to hold a fundraiser in nearby Clearwater.

The governor split with Trump over the administration’s policy of separating families at the border but did not sharply criticize the president. Instead, he sent a letter to federal authorities calling for an immediate end to the policy and demanded that state officials be told about children brought into Florida.

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Kellman reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.

Second CBS Executive Ousted in Wake of Sex Abuse Probe

NEW YORK—CBS News on Wednesday fired “60 Minutes” top executive Jeff Fager, who has been under investigation following reports that he groped women at parties and tolerated an abusive workplace.

The network news president, David Rhodes, said Fager’s firing was “not directly related” to the allegations against him, but because he violated company policy. Fager said it was because of a text message he sent to a CBS News reporter who was covering the story about him.

“My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it,” Fager said.

The investigation into Fager by an outside law firm is not complete. Fager has denied charges made by former CBS employees in the New Yorker magazine of personal misbehavior at parties and not disciplining people under him who had misconduct issues.

Fager said he would not have thought that one note would have resulted in a dismissal after 36 years at the network, “but it did.” CBS had no immediate comment on his characterization of the action.

“60 Minutes” is the most popular and powerful network news broadcast on television, and Fager is only the second person to lead it during its 50 years of history. He was appointed in 2004 to succeed founding executive Don Hewitt.

He worked to modernize the broadcast and uphold its standards during a changing of the guard from the show’s original cast of figures like Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Andy Rooney.

His firing came only three days after the CBS Corp. board ousted the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, who was charged with sexual misconduct in the same New Yorker articles.

Fager and Rhodes had worked for several years as a team, when Fager was appointed CBS News chairman by Moonves. Rhodes was then brought in as news president, taking over full management of the news division when Fager went back to solely running “60 Minutes.”

Fager’s second in command at “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, will run the show while a search is conducted for a permanent replacement, Rhodes said. The show debuts a new season on Sept. 30.

‘Not a Pretty Sight’: Hurricane Florence Has Experts Worried

WASHINGTON — To whip up a monstrous storm like the one chugging for the Carolinas you need a handful of ingredients — and Florence has them all.

Warmer than normal sea temperatures to add energy and rain to a storm. Check.

A wind pattern that allows a storm to get strong and stay strong. Check.

Higher sea levels to make a storm surge worse. Check.

A storm covering enormous area, to drench and lash more people. Check.

And an unusual combination of other weather systems that are likely to stall Florence when it hits the Carolinas, allowing it to sit for days and dump huge amounts of rain. Check.

“The longer it stays, the more wind, the more rain. That means the more trees that could fall, the more power outages,” National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham said.

“This one really scares me,” Graham said. “It’s one of those situations where you’re going to get heavy rain, catastrophic, life-threatening storm surge, and also the winds.”

The National Hurricane Center Tuesday afternoon increased its rainfall forecast to 15 to 25 inches of rain and 35 inches in isolated spots. But a computer simulation known as the European model predicts some places could get 45 inches. Sound unlikely? It’s the same model that accurately predicted that last year’s Hurricane Harvey, which also stalled over land, would drop 60 inches.

“It does look a bit similar to Harvey in a sense that it goes roaring into shore and then comes to a screeching stop,” said MIT meteorology professor and hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel. “This is not a pretty sight.”

Florence is unusual in that it is aiming at the Carolinas from the east. Usually storms come to the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic from the south — and those usually curve safely out to sea.

But a weather formation known as a high-pressure ridge is parked over the U.S. East coast, preventing Florence from doing the normal turn, said University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy.

After Florence makes landfall, that ridge, now over Washington and New York, will move east — but be replaced by another one forming over the Great Lakes that will likely keep the storm stuck, McNoldy said.

Florence’s path remains uncertain. It may move a little north into Virginia or a little south into South Carolina. But it’s such a large storm that the rain will keep coming down in the region no matter where it wanders. And with the Appalachian Mountains to the west, there could be flooding and mudslides, experts worry.

Florence’s large size — tropical storm force winds extend 170 miles from the center in all directions — means its fury will arrive long before the center of the storm comes ashore, Graham said.

Some of Florence’s behavior, both what has been seen so far and what experts expect, show the influence of climate change.

Its expected sluggishness is becoming more common, possibly a result of climate change, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist and hurricane expert Jim Kossin.

The ocean waters that Florence is travelling over are about 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal, McNoldy said. Even normal water is warm enough for a storm to form there, but this adds to the storm’s fuel and its rainfall. The air is holding 10 percent more water that can be dumped as rain.

And the storm surge, which could be as much as 12 feet in some areas, will be on top of sea level rise from climate change. For example, the seas off of Wilmington, North Carolina have risen 7.5 inches since 1935, according to NOAA.

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Jennifer N. Kay contributed to this report from Miami.

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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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For the latest on Hurricane Florence, visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/Hurricanes.

Humans Could Be About to Trigger a Huge Vegetation Change

The planet’s greenery – prairie grasslands, riverine swamps, Sahel drylands, European woodlands, tropical rainforest and Alpine meadows – could be about to be overtaken by a huge vegetation change as the world warms at a dangerous rate.

The warning comes not from computer simulations of what could happen under the notorious “business-as-usual” scenario, in which humans go on burning ever greater quantities of fossil fuel, to raise the levels of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere, but from a simple natural experiment while humans were still Neolithic nomads.

Between 21,000 and 14,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age, the world warmed by between 4°C and 7°C. And the world’s plants preserved a register of the changes during that era.

“We’re talking about the same amount of change in 10 to 20 thousand years that is going to be crammed into a century or two. Ecosystems are going to be scrambling to keep up”

An international research team reports in the journal Science that they collated and examined the data based on the fossilised pollen evidence of bygone ecosystems from 594 sites on every continent except Antarctica, to record the way forests died back, new species invaded, and the nature of the landscapes changed.

And, they say, there is evidence that climate change is already imposing a new plant hierarchy on the landscape, and major transformation could be on the way. But there are two big differences between the climate shift near the end of the last Ice Age and the present global warming.

Back then, the temperature rise, and the shifts in vegetation, took thousands of years. Then, the temperature shifted between familiar boundaries: glacial and interglacial.

But under the business-as-usual scenario, humans are now warming the world at a rate an estimated 65 times faster than late in the last Ice Age. And since the temperatures are already much higher, any changes in the next century or so could exceed anything the world experienced in the last two million years.

Diversity at risk

Climate scientists have always used the evidence of the past as a guide to future change. The difference is that instead of looking at very recent shifts or dramatic extinctions tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, researchers have focused on an era of change in which modern humans would still recognise almost all of the plants, fungi, birds, insects and mammals on the planet.

“If we allow climate change to go unchecked, the vegetation of this planet is going to look completely different than it does today, and that means a huge risk to the diversity of this planet,” said Jonathan Overpeck, of the University of Michigan, one of the scientists who launched the five-year study.

“We’re talking about global landscape change that is ubiquitous and dramatic. And we’re starting to see it in the United States, as well as around the globe.”

Too little progress

In Paris in 2015, some 195 nations, including the US, undertook to contain global warming to “well below” 2°C by 2100. In fact, the planet has already warmed by almost 1°C, the US has announced its withdrawal from the pact, and climate scientists have repeatedly warned that few of the national plans to limit greenhouse emissions go nearly far enough, and even fewer have begun to implement those plans.

The researchers calculate that if nations go on driving economies by coal, oil and natural gas combustion, the chance of large-scale change in the planet’s vegetation is more than 60%. If nations implement their Paris promises the probability of global-scale change is less than 45%. Most of this change will occur in this century and, because of the rate of warming, people now alive will see some of these vegetation shifts.

“We’re talking about the same amount of change in 10 to 20 thousand years that is going to be crammed into a century or two. Ecosystems are going to be scrambling to keep up,” said Stephen Jackson, who directs the US Geological Survey’s southwest climate adaptation centre, and is one of the co-authors. In the US West, forests incinerated by wildfires – in turn driven by drought and extremes of heat – may be colonised by unfamiliar species.

“You take the ponderosa pine forests of the Sky Islands and turn it into oak scrub – we are starting to see that,” he said.

“Then you can’t go up to those pine forests any more for shade or coolness or the experience of walking through a beautiful grove of trees.”

#PlaidShirtGuy Illustrates Trump’s Tyrannical Tastes

 The most striking characteristic of the tyrant is pettiness.

Trump as president is dangerous. He is volatile. He shouts that he wants people killed, and apparently in large numbers sometimes (“kill them all,” he appears to have said about the Syrian government, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis just ignored him. What if he fires Mattis and brings in someone willing to kill at will?)

Trump tries to divide Americans by ethnic group and social class and set them fighting one another in hopes of dividing and ruling. He is nasty. Having put his hands all over women’s bodies all his life without their consent and buying off the ones who objected or might blab, he is now reshaping the Supreme Court so that women entirely lose control over their own bodies to 5 male justices. Brett Kavanaugh admitted that there are no Federal laws governing any aspect of men’s bodies.

One of Trump’s more dangerous features is his brittleness and thin skin. He had the photo cropped of his pitiful inauguration, more a wake for the nation than a moment of hope (whatever the polls say, I think most people knew what they had done as soon as he was unexpectedly elected). He had to try to make it look bigger.

But the most dangerous of all is his pettiness, the jabs at perceived enemies, no matter how minor.

The treatment of “plaid shirt guy” by Trump’s staffers and the secret service assigned to him this weekend at Billings, Montana, is a case in point. Three local high schoolers attended the rally and unexpectedly ended up being very visible behind Trump.

Senior Tyler Linfesty hammed it up, doing double takes or smiling knowingly when Trump told one of his famous whoppers. Trump’s handlers, alarmed by the insufficiently beatific expression on Linfesty’s face, came and got all three of the young students. They appear to have replaced them with Trump staffers. Then the staffers and the secret service agents took Linfesty to a room and kept him there for ten minutes before releasing him.

It is the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships all the time, though of course with worse consequences. But the difference is one of degree, not of kind.

The Canadian media mogul Max Aitkin, Lord Beaverbrook, is said to have met an American actress, presumably at a cocktail party in Toronto, in 1937. He teased her with the question, “Would you live with a stranger for a million dollars?”

She said, “Yes.”

“And what about for five pounds?”

She fumed, “What do you think I am?”

He replied, “We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”

We’ve already established that Trump is a petty tyrant. The question is only the degree of tyranny he is willing to exercise. It was a public event put on by the president, and Linfesty had no duty to smile or clap, and Trump had no right to remove him for not doing so. How many taxpayer dollars were spent on this event? We all paid for it. Trump is not even runnng for anything, he just does rallies in Red states in hopes of stroking his own ego. Billings declined to oblige.

Field Marshall “President” Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, leader of the military junta that seized power in Egypt in 2013, exhibits exactly the same tendencies as Trump. He, however, is unconstrained by any actual checks or balances (his opponent in the last presidential election declared himself a supporter of . . . al-Sisi). The judiciary is packed and the parliament is sheeple.

The secret police take away anyone who frowns while al-Sisi is speaking.

That could never happen in America! Oh wait . . .

Al-Sisi especially minds being made fun of. People put Mickey Mouse ears on him because they think he looks like the famous rodent. That is a big no-no. He routinely has comedians arrested.

Al-Sisi’s government just sentenced 75 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death for taking part in demonstrations, which turned violent, in August 2013 against his coup.

Trump has, of course, been full of praise for al-Sisi, even has he tears down US allies in Europe. And Trump just sent al-Sisi over a billion dollars in aid. A reward for a job well done. In removing all the plaid shirt guys of the world.