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Dining, Featured, Featured Lifestyle, Lifestyle, Travel

Gourmet ganja? Marijuana dining is growing up, slowly

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How to set a tone of woodsy chic at a four-course candlelight dinner served under the stars in the Colorado foothills:

Live musicians and flowers, check.

Award-winning cuisine, check.

Beer and wine pairings with each course, check.

Marijuana pairings? Oh, yes.

The 100 diners at this $200-a-plate dinner smoked a citrus-smelling marijuana strain to go with a fall salad with apples, dates and bacon, followed by a darker, sweeter strain of pot to accompany a main course of slow-roasted pork shoulder in a mole sauce with charred root vegetables and rice.

And with dessert? Marijuana-infused chocolate, of course, grated over salted caramel ice cream and paired with coffee infused with non-intoxicating hemp oil.

The diners received small glass pieces and lighters to smoke the pairings, or they could have their marijuana rolled into joints by professional rollers set up next to a bartender pouring wine.

Welcome to fine dining in Weed Country.

The marijuana industry is trying to move away from its pizza-and-Doritos roots as folks explore how to safely serve marijuana and food. Chefs are working with marijuana growers to chart the still-very-unscientific world of pairing food and weed. And a proliferation of mass-market cheap pot is driving professional growers to develop distinctive flavors and aromas to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

“We talk with the (marijuana) grower to understand what traits they saw in the marijuana … whether it’s earthy notes, citrus notes, herbal notes, things that we could play off,” said Corey Buck, head of catering for Blackbelly Restaurant, a top-rated farm-to-table restaurant that provided the meal.

The grower of one of the pot strains served at the dinner, Alex Perry, said it won’t be long until marijuana’s flavors and effects are parsed as intently as wine profiles. But that’s in the future, he conceded.

“It’s still looked down upon as a not-very-sophisticated thing,” said Perry, who grew a strain called Black Cherry Soda for his company, Headquarters Cannabis.

Holding his nose to a small jar of marijuana, Perry said, “If I asked my mom or my dad what they smell, they’re going to say, ‘skunk,’ or, ‘It smells like marijuana.’ But it’s like wine or anything else. There’s more flavor profile there.”

But chefs and pot growers trying to explore fine dining with weed face a legal gauntlet to make pot dinners a reality, even where the drug is as legal as beer.

Colorado’s marijuana retailers can’t also sell food, so guests at this dinner had to buy a separate $25 “goodie bag” from a dispensary for the pot pairings.

The bags came with tiny graters for diners to shave the pot chocolate onto their ice cream themselves; the wait staff could not legally serve a dish containing pot, even though the event was private and limited to people over 21. Diners were shuttled to and from the event by private bus, to avoid potentially stoned drivers leaving the dinner.

Marijuana dining may become more accessible in coming months, though.

Denver voters this fall will consider a proposal to allow marijuana use at some bars and restaurants as long as the drug isn’t smoked, with the potential for new outdoor marijuana smoking areas.

And two of the five states considering recreational marijuana in November _ California and Maine _ would allow some “social use” of the drug, leaving the potential for pot clubs or cafes.

Currently, Alaska is the only legal weed state that allows on-site marijuana use, with “tasting rooms” possible in commercial dispensaries. But that state is still working on rules for how those consumption areas would work.

For now, marijuana dining is limited to folks who hire private chefs to craft infused foods for meals served in their homes, or to special events like this one, limited to adults and set outside to avoid violating smoke-free air laws.

Guests at the Colorado dinner were admittedly experimenting with pairing weed and food, many giggling as they toked between bites. It became apparent late in the evening that a rich meal doesn’t counteract marijuana’s effects.

“What was I just saying?” one diner wondered aloud before dessert. “Oh, yeah. About my dog. No, your dog. Somebody’s dog.”

The man trailed off, not finishing his thought. His neighbor patted him on the back and handed him a fresh spoon for the ice cream.

Diners seemed genuinely curious about how to properly pair marijuana and food without getting too intoxicated.

“I am not a savant with this,” said Tamara Haddad of Lyons, who was waiting to have one of her pot samples professionally rolled into a joint. “I enjoy (marijuana) occasionally. I enjoy it with friends. I’m learning more about it.”

She laughed when asked whether marijuana can really move beyond its association with junk-food cravings.

“I have also munched out after being at the bar and drinking martinis and thinking, ‘Taco Bell sounds great,”” she said.

Environment, Featured News, Milwaukee, News, Wisconsin

Harley-Davidson to pay $12 million fine over emissions

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Harley-Davidson will also pay a $12 million civil penalty and spend $3 million to mitigate air pollution through a project to replace conventional woodstoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities, the Justice Department announced on Aug. 18.

Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a settlement with Harley-Davidson and related companies that requires the companies to stop selling and to buy back and destroy illegal devices that increase air pollution from their motorcycles.

The agreement requires the companies to sell only models of these devices that are certified to meet Clean Air Act emissions standards.

The government’s complaint was filed with the settlement. It alleges that Harley-Davidson manufactured and sold about 340,000 illegal devices, known as “super tuners,” that, once installed, caused motorcycles to emit higher amounts of certain air pollutants than what the company certified to EPA.

Aftermarket defeat devices like “super tuners” alter a motor vehicle’s emissions controls and are prohibited under the Clean Air Act for use on vehicles that have been certified to meet EPA emissions standards.

The government said Harley-Davidson also made and sold more than 12,000 motorcycles that were not covered by an EPA certification that ensures a vehicle meets federal clean air standards.

“Given Harley-Davidson’s prominence in the industry, this is a very significant step toward our goal of stopping the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices that cause harmful pollution on our roads and in our communities,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden, head of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Anyone else who manufactures, sells, or installs these types of illegal products should take heed of Harley-Davidson’s corrective actions and immediately stop violating the law.”

“This settlement immediately stops the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices used on public roads that threaten the air we breathe,” added Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Harley-Davidson is taking important steps to buy back the ‘super tuners’ from their dealers and destroy them, while funding projects to mitigate the pollution they caused.”

Since January 2008, Harley-Davidson has manufactured and sold two types of tuners, which when hooked up to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, allow users to modify certain aspects of a motorcycles’ emissions control system.

These modified settings increase power and performance, but also increase the motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx).  These tuners have been sold at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country.

The Clean Air Act requires motor vehicle manufacturers to certify to EPA that their vehicles will meet applicable federal emissions standards to control air pollution and every motor vehicle sold in the U.S. must be covered by an EPA-issued certificate of conformity.

The Clean Air Act prohibits manufacturers from making and selling devices that bypass, defeat or render inoperative a motor vehicle’s EPA-certified emissions control system.

The act also prohibits any person from removing or rendering inoperative a motor vehicle’s certified emissions control system and from causing such tampering.

The complaint alleges violations of both those provisions.

The settlement details

Under the settlement, Harley-Davidson will stop selling the illegal aftermarket defeat devices in the United States by Aug. 23.

Harley-Davidson also offer to buy back all such tuners in stock at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country and destroy them.

The settlement requires the company to obtain a certification from the California Air Resources Board for any tuners it sells in the United States in the future.

The CARB certification will demonstrate that the CARB-certified tuners do not cause Harley-Davidson’s motorcycles to exceed the EPA-certified emissions limits.

Harley-Davidson also will conduct tests on motorcycles that have been tuned with the CARB-certified tuners and provide the results to EPA to ensure that its motorcycles remain in compliance with EPA emissions requirements.

In addition, for any super tuners that Harley-Davidson sells outside the United States in the future, it must label them as not for use in the United States.

The announcement of the settlement said the EPA discovered the violations through a routine inspection and information Harley-Davidson submitted after subsequent agency information requests.

 

On the web

The settlement, a proposed consent decree lodged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is subject to a 30-day public comment period before it can be entered by the court as final judgment.

To view the consent decree or to submit a comment, visit the department’s website: www.justice.gov/enrd/Consent_Decrees.html.

Environment, National, News

The rise and demise of a West Virginia coal mine

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On the day Victor Clark retired after 26 years at the Hobet coal mine in West Virginia, the bosses called him to the office for a surprise.

His wife, daughter, and sons Rocky and Tony, both miners, turned out for ice-cream, pop and a farewell toast for a man who had been at the West Virginia strip mine since the beginning. “You felt appreciated,” Clark, 87, remembered of that day in January 1990.

When son Tony left the same mine in 2012, there was no fuss. “They had my job posted before I was out the door,” Tony said.

In a generation, the Hobet mine transformed from a small, founder-run operation to a company cheered in three different incarnations by Wall Street and twice bankrupt — a twisting path mirroring the fortunes of a U.S. coal industry whose output is at its lowest level in decades. Operating 25 miles south of Charleston in the belly of West Virginia, Hobet is a case study of a once-rich industry in decline.

Coal supporters blame competition from natural gas, weak demand from China and government pollution controls they call a “war on coal.” All those forces hampered an industry where the largest investor-owned companies are mired in bankruptcy.

Yet there’s something more to the coal story and the fall of industry behemoths. Like the onetime family-run Hobet mine, the coal sector transformed from a blue collar bastion known for dirty, dangerous work to one noted for its dizzying mode of buy and sell.

Some coal insiders believe the industry’s quest for fast profits through corporate maneuvers brought peril, not promise. As companies sought new investments, they shed union mines and left worker benefits in jeopardy. Those same companies piled up debt as they acquired rivals.

Bob Murray, an outspoken coal baron who founded Murray Energy, believes a drive for short-term profits pushed publicly-traded companies to the brink.

“I watched it go on and shook my head,” Murray said. “Everyone was shoving liabilities to someone else.”

As a privately held company, Murray Energy did not face the same investor pressure for quick returns. Still, the industry’s larger challenges are testing the Ohio miner. Murray Energy said last month it may be forced to lay off thousands of miners.

Those cutbacks have some asking whether any coal company can survive this industry-rattling decline.

Since last year, Arch Coal, Peabody Energy and Patriot Coal have all gone bankrupt. Each was tethered, at one point or another, to the Hobet mine – a site with a history shaped by mining advances, near disasters, striking workers and market swings.

Investors applauded for years before those industry leaders reached the edge. Patriot Coal shares soared in the first years after it took hold of union mines once controlled by Arch and Peabody. Wall Street helped leading companies acquire rivals in a 2011 buyout binge that crashed a few years later.

Arch Coal and Peabody Energy declined to discuss past business deals for this story. The companies have previously said critics are misguided in second-guessing deals in hindsight. When Arch sold the Hobet mine to a private equity firm in 2005, the buyer was “a strong, well-capitalized” entity, the company said.

Today, Hobet is owned by a conservation group and no longer producing coal. The mine is a scene of rubble and retaining ponds where sycamore, pine and cedar forests once stood. Toxic runoff must be steered clear of tributaries that feed the Ohio River. A decades-long cleanup awaits.

There’s uncertainty, too, for miners.

For Andrew Adkins it’s a matter of leukemia medicine costing $1,200 a month. He could die without his pills, yet the health care plan for Adkins and about 800 other retired Hobet miners and their families expires at year’s end. Miners who went on strike in the 1990s to protect their health plan said they never expected this.

“They’re doing away with everything we were promised,” said Adkins, a Vietnam veteran who relies on the low cost and open access of his health plan. Adkins, 71, is eligible for Medicare, but that carries its own costs and limitations.

For mining families in West Virginia and beyond, a blur of Wall Street deals altered the industry’s decades-old pledge to mining communities.

DAWN OF A COAL MINE

The Hobet mine was born in 1974 under a man named Fil Nutter – part of a West Virginia prospecting family that controlled a construction company, limestone pit and small-time coal mines.

Nutter was a “typical coal operator” of the era with the charm and hustle needed to thrive in the mountains, said Homer Toler, an early employee. “He liked to party, get drunk and worked his ass off,” Toler said.

When a land speculator named Granville Lee “Jimmy” Linville acquired the right to a forested plot 25 miles south of Charleston, Nutter brought the financing and connections. They went into business together.

Underground mines were joined by strip mines: workers blasting, or ‘shooting,’ the surface until they reached coal and then pushed everything else down the mountainside.

“Shoot and shove,” in common parlance. The method left behind poisoned streams and peaks sheared in half.

Nutter, who died in 2009, knew the brutality of coal mining. One brother was killed in a bulldozer accident at a strip mine, and the Hobet workforce was shaped by defiance.

Just a few summits from the Hobet mine stands Blair Mountain, site of a bloody scene in 1921, where at least 10,000 miners stood down strikebreakers, sheriffs and coal bosses.

“If you owned a mine in this area, it was going to be union,” said Wayne Chambers, founding member of the United Mine Workers of America local at Hobet.

Hobet grew from a hill and valley called Dog Hollow. Soon one shift became two. Streetlights were installed so laborers could work around the clock to fulfill a contract with a power plant in the state capital, Charleston.

The less than 90,000 tons of coal produced in 1975 ballooned to nearly a half-million tons by 1978. Some miners say they dared believe Jimmy Linville’s prophecy: “Men, you’ll retire from this job.”

A NEW EARTH MOVER

In the coal patch that stretches from southern West Virginia to central Pennsylvania, miners must pull countless loads of worthless rubble out of the ground before reaching the precious black rock. Hauling that waste, or “spoil,” is a costly concern.

Nutter had a method that satisfied West Virginia officials, but then Congress set national standards with the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. Mining companies were to take more care with spoil and restore vanished mountains to their “approximate original contour.”

New rules meant higher costs. The year the law was passed, Nutter sold out to Ashland Oil of Kentucky. The new operator attacked the problem of spoil with an audacious piece of equipment.

It was a dragline: a towering crane-and-bucket that could carry in one scoop what several dump trucks might haul.

The dragline came in pieces and took 18 months to assemble. The contraption grew to a 20-story tower and slung a giant bucket from a half-mile of steel cable.

At first sight, miners feared the dragline might end their jobs. But the mammoth machine is probably what kept Hobet running through market ups and downs over the years, those same workers say.

In 1984, the first full year of operating the dragline, Hobet produced 1.8 million tons of coal. That was more than double previous output, according to data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Jobs were abundant, with over 200 miners, and spirits were high. Workers and bosses fraternized at the Hobet cookout each summer, the families fishing and tossing horseshoes.

In these flush times, miners were unafraid to strike.

From May until nearly Christmas in 1993, workers were off the job to protect their health plan. “We won that one. We won them all,” recalled former miner Adkins.

In the end, though, the health and pension plans at Hobet were difficult to sustain. Pensions had defined benefits, which relied on a share of miner wages going to pay retirees. Layoffs and cutbacks to the workforce could upend that model.

The Hobet health plan had uncommonly low deductibles.

“We took smaller pensions, smaller hourly wages to protect our health insurance,” said Ronald ‘Yogi’ Pauley, a United Mine Workers leader at the Hobet mine for 30 years.

Former managers agree the health plans were exceptional.

“These would have been called ‘Cadillac’ health plans,” said Ken Woodring, who started as a Hobet mine manager in the 1970s and retired as an Arch executive in 2004. “They were manageable when health costs were low in the 1960s and 1970s. But those costs kept rising.”

DEBT AND PROMISES

The fate of miners was closely tied to a changeable coal market known for long winning and losing streaks.

In September 1995, as Hurricane Opal crashed through the Gulf of Mexico, fear of a natural gas shortage drove coal prices higher.

Within months, utilities burned through coal inventories until they reached lows not seen since Fil Nutter put his claim on Dog Hollow.

Steady, reliable coal was proving itself again. Investors liked the turnaround story and Ashland helped conceive Arch Coal as a shareholder-owned company in July 1997. Hobet was now under Arch Coal’s corporate umbrella.

In the era of answering to Wall Street, Woodring said, mining knowledge could take a backseat to marketing. It was important that executives be comfortable with investors, analysts and stock pickers.

Steven Leer, 45 at the time, had helped market Valvoline motor oil for Ashland before leading the coal division. When Arch Coal was formed, Leer was tapped as chief executive and paid in Wall Street fashion, with bonuses, country club memberships and other perks. Much of his compensation was tied to the company’s performance. If the share price climbed, Leer could redeem stock options for cash.

Leer did not respond to interview requests.

Deals were one way to get investors’ attention, and Leer’s first big acquisition in 1998 was emblematic of a borrow-and-buy growth strategy.

Arch used more than a billion dollars in debt to take hold of new leases and rival operations in the West. Further deals would anchor the company in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. There, union power was weak and mines had vast reserves of low-sulfur coal in demand under new pollution controls.

Still, Arch Coal had promises to keep at Hobet and other eastern mines where current and former workers were owed hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits. These were “onerous” liabilities, credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s reported.

Arch Coal could not shift its miner liabilities, so it tried to control them. With bigger machinery and longer hours, the Hobet mine could boost output without hiring more miners.

After five years under Arch, Hobet was producing a record 5 million tons of coal, according to government data. That was 1.5 million tons more than Ashland produced in its last year of management.

Production was up but the culture became more focused on the bottom line, some former miners say.

Hobet managers summoned to Arch’s St. Louis headquarters came back describing cost-savings and “the Arch Way” of management that kept a steady eye on spending, said Ronnie Vance, a Hobet manager.

In Novembers past, Ashland had tolerated deer season when more than 15 percent of the workforce sought an absence. No more.

COAL CRUSH

Coal fever spread through the 2000s. Asian demand rose with the economy and natural gas output was flat, keeping up demand for coal.

Amid record revenue, one cost remained a blot on the Arch Coal balance sheet: more than $400 million in miner health and pension costs.

By 2005, investor hunger for coal had spread beyond Wall Street. ArcLight Capital Partners, a Boston private equity group, wanted a toehold in the coal business and Arch Coal found a way out of some stubborn costs.

ArcLight bought Hobet and three other West Virginia mines and named the new enterprise Magnum Coal. The deal included the miner health and pension plans.

The welfare of thousands of miner families was no longer tied to the deep-pocketed Arch Coal. Miners fretted about their private equity bosses and the sector’s reputation for flipping companies for investors.

Could Magnum shoulder miner health and welfare plans? Miners had to wait and see. “The union leadership told us there was nothing we could do,” said labor leader Pauley.

The Magnum transaction “clears the decks” for more growth, Leer told analysts on a conference call in January 2006. Arch shares climbed 3.6 percent.

In 2007, Leer took a $10 million payout – his biggest in a career with Arch Coal that earned him more than $40 million, a Reuters review of securities filings found.

WALL STREET AND COAL

Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal company, conceived Patriot Coal in 2007 to house its union mines and about $750 million in worker liabilities. Eventually, Patriot Coal bought Magnum Coal.

By 2011, rising coal prices ignited a new spree of deals. This time coal companies borrowed big for industry-shaping buyouts.

Alpha Natural Resources acquired Massey Energy for $7.1 billion in 2011. In December, Peabody Energy acquired MacArthur Coal of Australia for $5.1 billion. Arch Coal bought rival International Coal Group in May for $3.4 billion, with Leer envisioning a “coal franchise poised for growth.”

In the end, the deals were poorly timed. Asian coal demand was tapering, and the new drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, pushed natural gas prices to 10-year lows.

Alpha Natural Resources declined to comment on the 2011 deals.

Mike Quillen, who founded Alpha in 2002, believes coal executives erred by trying to keep up with the steady rhythms of Wall Street.

“Debt will kill you in the coal business,” said Quillen, who stepped down as Alpha’s chairman in 2012. “And it’s cyclical. But everybody just got caught up in the idea that high coal prices would go on forever.”

The industry paid for that misjudgment.

Alpha Natural Resources filed for bankruptcy in August 2015; a federal judge in July approved its plan to exit bankruptcy. Peabody Energy filed for bankruptcy in April 2016. Arch Coal, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2016, suffered cost overruns at its Leer Mine of West Virginia, named after its executive.

“If it weren’t for those deals, these companies would be solvent,” said John Hanou, an independent coal industry analyst who helped lead market research at Wood Mackenzie and Hill & Associates in Annapolis, Maryland.

Quillen said that’s not so clear-cut. “Everything is negative for the industry right now. There’s no way of knowing how long any company might have survived,” he said.

The coal industry will come through this downturn smaller and with fewer publicly-owned companies, he said. “But I don’t think the major acquisitions were the single catalyst.”

TOXIC LEGACY

Today the remnants of decline are visible at the Hobet mine.

The weathered piles of spoil and valley fills are leaching selenium, a healthful nutrient in trace amounts but a toxin in larger doses. A 2008 study, presented in federal court, found deformed fish and warned of catastrophe, requiring a cleanup.

Patriot Coal, the last major operator at the Hobet mine, outlined more than $400 million in pollution liabilities after its first bankruptcy in 2012. At the same time, miners learned their health benefits would vanish.

The company-sponsored policy relied on cash from coal operators that are now bankrupt and so those contributions are due to end.

When Patriot went bankrupt again last year, the company was sold in pieces.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has said he hopes the Hobet site will be fit for commercial development. But there are no concrete plans yet.

On the land where the dragline first trod, there’s a slurry impoundment rather than the wildlife habitat promised by executives in the original permit. This summer, the dragline will be idled.

Featured Lifestyle, Lifestyle, Wellness

Pop or fizzle: Are soda taxes gaining steam?

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A sip of soda will become more expensive next year in Philadelphia, which recently became the second city in the United States to pass a tax on sugary beverages — after Berkeley voters passed one in 2014.

The Philadelphia measure, approved by the City Council in June, could lend momentum to efforts by public health advocates to get similar taxes enacted elsewhere around the nation.

Voters in three Northern California cities — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany — will decide in November whether to approve such taxes. A soda tax initiative in San Francisco in 2014 failed to get the two-thirds vote needed to pass.

Several states also have tried and failed to pass soda taxes. In California, a bill to do so died this spring.

Outside of the United States, Mexico, England and France also tax sugar-laden beverages.

Advocates of taxing these drinks say that they contribute to high rates of obesity and diabetes, and that putting a bigger price tag on them can reduce consumption and improve people’s health. Critics argue the taxes are unpopular and that it is discriminatory to single out one item in the grocery cart.

The American Beverage Association, one of the staunchest opponents of soda taxes, has funded successful opposition campaigns throughout the United States, including in California.

The association has spent $64.6 million since 2009 fighting such initiatives — including more than $9 million just to defeat the proposed San Francisco tax in 2014, according to a report last year by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have also been big contributors to the opposition.

Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for the beverage trade group, said there is no evidence that soda taxes make anyone healthier. “Obesity has been rising … while soft drink consumption has been declining,” she said. “It would defy logic to say that soft drink consumption is driving obesity.”

Overall, soda sales dropped 1.2 percent in 2015, according to Beverage Digest, which tracks the industry, continuing a downward trend.

Kane added that taxing any grocery item is a “slippery slope” that makes other groceries vulnerable to taxation.

To hear more about the campaigns for soda taxes, we spoke with Harold Goldstein, executive director of California-based Public Health Advocates, who has played an active role in some of these efforts. A transcript of the conversation below has been edited for clarity and space.

Q: What are the health and medical effects of drinking too many sugar-sweetened beverages?

It is now proven that sugary beverages are a leading contributor to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. When we consume liquid sugar, the body converts much of that sugar to fat in the liver, causing fatty liver disease. We now have an epidemic in this country of fatty liver disease.

There are studies showing, for example, if you drink two sodas a day for just two weeks, that your unhealthy cholesterol, your LDL cholesterol, will go up 20 percent and that your triglycerides will go up 20 percent. If you drink that amount for six months, the amount of fat in your liver will go up 150 percent. This is a dramatic impact in a short period of time because our bodies are not designed to consume liquid sugar.

Q: How big is the problem of obesity and diabetes in the U.S.?

The obesity and diabetes epidemics are among the most fundamental public health problems facing our country today. They impact every demographic group. At the same time, they are a particular problem in low-income communities and communities of color, in large part because it’s in those communities where there is the least access to healthy food and the least access to opportunities to be physically active.

We know that diabetes rates are going to increase by 80 percent in the next five years, costing the state $15 billion more in direct health care costs. With that kind of money on the table … it is imperative that we invest in diabetes prevention. Whether it is through a soda tax, through the state legislature or state general funds, it is time to establish a major statewide diabetes prevention campaign in California.

Q: A recent report by your organization and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that more than half of Californians have either diabetes or prediabetes. Aside from sugar-sweetened beverages, what else is causing this?

We have created a world that is designed for diabetes. We have fast food outlets on every corner. We have staggering portion sizes of sugary beverages and restaurant meals and everything from bagels to burgers. We have gotten rid of [physical education] in schools. We allow unregulated advertising of unhealthy products to children.

Q: Why target sugary beverages and not other junk food?

A: If you eat a candy bar, it takes hours to digest it. The liquid sugar is just floating sugar molecules and we absorb that sugar in as little as 30 minutes. The research is continuing to show that sugar itself is a particular problem, and perhaps the biggest problem. We know that the body turns sugar into fat. [Soda] is the right place to start. It represents half of the sugar in the food supply, it is the largest source of sugar and our body treats it differently.

Q: In Philadelphia, the mayor argued for the new tax based on the revenue it would bring in, rather than the health risks of soda. Do you think that helped get it approved?

I think different communities are going to support soda taxes for different reasons, in large part based on what the funds are going to be used for. In Berkeley, the revenues go into the general fund. City council members wanted that money to be dedicated to obesity and diabetes prevention efforts, as they have done. That was something clearly important to voters in Berkeley. In Philadelphia, the funds are dedicated to a variety of things, especially pre-K [education] in low-income communities and parks and rec programs. It is important that through this democratic process, residents get to decide how they want to use the revenues raised by such a tax.

Q: The effort to pass a soda tax in California died in committee this spring. Can you explain what the bill would have done and what happened to it?

The bill would have established a 2 penny-per-ounce fee on sugary beverages. As a fee, it would have required that all the revenues raised be dedicated to mitigating harm caused by those products. As has happened now five times in the state legislature, the beverage industry put their corporate might behind their lobbying efforts and successfully killed the bill.

Q: How difficult is it to overcome opposition by the soda industry?

What we are learning is that it’s far easier to enact soda taxes at the local level than at the state level in California. The beverage industry has enormous power in the state Legislature. And getting it passed in California requires a two-thirds vote in the legislature, which is a big hurdle. Other states don’t have that hurdle. There are a number of states that are currently working on it in one way or another.

Q: Critics say that soda taxes won’t reduce obesity rates and give government too much control over consumer choice. What do you think about the argument that this might not be the best way to address diabetes and obesity?

Soda taxes are one way to address the diabetes and obesity epidemic. What has been shown in Berkeley and Mexico, where the tax has now been in effect for quite some time, is that those taxes reduce consumption of sugary beverages, which we know are a leading contributor to the epidemic.

At the same time, those taxes provide funds to pay for much needed programs in communities. Soda taxes aren’t the end-all and be-all of obesity and diabetes prevention. There is a lot more that can and needs to be done to address the epidemic.

Q: As public health advocates like yourself work to reduce access to these beverages, what sort of alternatives are you promoting?

The biggest solution is to encourage and support people to drink water instead of sugar. It is the simplest, easiest change that any of us can make to reduce our chance of getting diabetes. Sixteen teaspoons of sugar in every 20-ounce beverage is way more than our body can handle and still be healthy.

Q: Will there be another try to get a statewide tax in California?

I am sure there will be, with Philadelphia passing theirs. One or more of the soda taxes in the Bay Area are likely to pass. I think that in the coming years, states around the country will also establish soda taxes.

Published from Kaiser Health News under a creative commons license. KHN is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Environment, Featured News, News, Political

Feds set rules for future Arctic drilling

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With no new drilling planned in the Arctic waters off Alaska, the Obama administration is setting rules to ensure any future energy exploration in the area meets safety and environmental standards.

The Interior Department said new rules do not authorize any Arctic offshore drilling either now or in the future, but they set minimum standards for operations if and when leasing is approved.

A five-year offshoring leasing plan that includes the Arctic is expected later this year.

Assistant Interior Secretary Janice Schneider said the rules support a “thoughtful and balanced approach” to any oil and gas exploration in the Arctic region.

“The rules help ensure that any exploratory drilling operations in this highly challenging environment will be conducted in a safe and environmentally responsible manner, while protecting the marine, coastal and human environments, and Alaska Natives’ cultural traditions,” Schneider said.

Royal Dutch Shell announced last year it is ending exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas after spending nearly $7 billion on Arctic exploration. The company cited disappointing results from a well drilled in the Chukchi and the unpredictable federal regulatory environment.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell later canceled federal petroleum lease sales in U.S. Arctic waters that were scheduled for 2016 and 2017. Current market conditions and low industry interest made the leasing decision easier, Jewell said.

Environmental groups hailed the new safety rules, but said Arctic drilling would harm marine mammals already hurt by a loss of sea ice and exacerbate global warming.

“No amount of safeguards or standards can ever make drilling safe,” said Athan Manuel of the Sierra Club.

The National Ocean Industries Association, an industry group, said that despite taking years to write, the new rules do not accurately reflect current industry capabilities and include unnecessary requirements, such as same-season relief wells, that may not be needed.

Requirements imposed by the rule “could thwart industry innovation and development of new technology, and may not actually increase operational safety,” NOIA president Randall Luthi said in a statement.

Environment, Featured, News

A historic fishing industry faces a warming world

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The cod isn’t just a fish to David Goethel. It’s his identity, his ticket to middle-class life, his link to a historic industry.

“I paid for my education, my wife’s education, my house, my kids’ education; my slice of America was paid for on cod,” said Goethel, a 30-year veteran of these waters that once teemed with New England’s signature fish.

But on a chilly, windy Saturday in April, after 12 hours out in the Gulf of Maine, he has caught exactly two cod, and he feels far removed from the 1990s, when he could catch 2,000 pounds in a day.

His boat, the Ellen Diane, a 44-foot fishing trawler named for his wife, is the only vessel pulling into the Yankee Fishermen’s Co-op in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Fifteen years ago, there might have been a half-dozen. He is carrying crates of silver hake, skates and flounder — all worth less than cod.

One of America’s oldest commercial industries, fishing along the coast of the Northeast still employs hundreds. But every month that goes by, those numbers fall. After centuries of weathering overfishing, pollution, foreign competition and increasing government regulation, the latest challenge is the one that’s doing them in: climate change.

Though no waters are immune to the ravages of climate change, the Gulf of Maine, a dent in the coastline from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, best illustrates the problem. The gulf, where fishermen have for centuries sought lobster, cod and other species that thrived in its cold waters, is now warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, scientists have said.

The warming waters, in the gulf and elsewhere, have caused other valuable species, such as clams, to migrate to deeper or more northern waters. Others, such as lobsters, have largely abandoned the once-lucrative waters off the southern New England states of Connecticut and Rhode Island, having become more susceptible to disease or predators.

Lobster catches in Maine are booming as the species creeps northward, but as the warming continues, that’s a good thing bound to end. A federal report from 2009 said that half of 36 fish stocks studied in the northwest Atlantic Ocean have been shifting northward over the past 40 years, and that the trend is likely to continue.

Fish aren’t the only ones moving on, and not just in the Northeast. The U.S. fishing fleet has dwindled from more than 120,000 vessels in 1996 to about 75,000 today, the Coast Guard says.

For the fishermen of the northeastern U.S. — not all of whom accept the scientific consensus on climate change, and many of whom bristle at government regulations stemming from it — whether to stick with fishing, adapt to the changing ocean or leave the business is a constant worry.

WAVING THE WHITE FLAG

Robert Bradfield was one of the East Coast’s most endangered species, a Rhode Island lobsterman, until he pulled his traps out of the water for the last time about a decade ago.

Bradfield, of Newport, started in the fishery in the mid-1970s and stayed in it for some 30 years, sometimes catching 2,000 pounds of lobster a day. During his final years, he was lucky if he caught 100 pounds, not even enough to pay for bait, fuel and deckhands.

He now works on a pilot boat, guiding larger ships in and out of the harbor. He is glad he’s still on the water, but he misses lobstering and the community of fishermen he used to see in Newport.

“There’s probably 95 percent attrition out of that fishery in this area,” Bradfield said. “Of all the guys I fished with, I was a lobsterman for 30 years, and there’s maybe three left.”

The number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod slid to about 10 million in 2013, according to a report issued last year by an interstate regulatory board. It was about 50 million in the late 1990s. The lobster catch in the region sank to about 3.3 million pounds in 2013, from a peak of about 22 million in 1997.

Bradfield’s take on the role of warming oceans is nuanced and reflects the many years he spent on the water. Shell disease, he said, has taken a toll on southern New England’s lobster stock, something scientists say is a result of rising temperatures.

Bradfield also agrees with scientists who say the increase in predatory fish, such as black sea bass, is bad for the lobster population. Warming oceans are responsible for the increase in those fish species off New England, scientists say.

But Bradfield, a father to three grown children, also said his decision to leave the fishery was more about economics than science. He thinks some published studies are inconsistent. And he laments that Newport’s docks, once home to dozens of lobster boats, are now down to a few.

“It tore me up to do something else,” he said.

Others in the lobster business dispute the science that lays the blame on climate change. Nicholas Crismale, a former lobsterman and president of the Connecticut Commercial Lobstermen’s Association, is one of many lobstermen in his state who believes pesticide runoff is to blame.

Connecticut researchers found no pesticides in lobsters collected in Long Island Sound in late 2014. But Crismale, out of the business for four years and helping to run his wife’s restaurant, Lobster Shack in Branford, sticks to the hypothesis, even in the face of science.

“The warming stuff is a lot of baloney,” he said. “All that is is another scientist looking for a grant.”

Crismale said it’s a shame that lobstering, often a multigenerational enterprise in New England, is reaching its end in Connecticut. He used to bring his daughters out fishing with him, but they’ve grown up to be a lawyer and a teacher, and another generation isn’t taking their place.

“I’m never going to be able to take a grandchild out on my boat,” Crismale said. “And some of the other fishermen were second and third-generation fishermen. And they lost all that.”

Connecticut’s lobster fishery, based on Long Island Sound, has been hit especially hard by warming water and has been reduced to nearly nothing.

A power plant on the sound recorded more than 75 days with an average water temperature above 68 degrees Fahrenheit in each of the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, according to a regulatory board’s report. Between 1976 and 2010, that happened only twice. Lobsters prefer temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s.

There were nearly 300 lobstermen in Connecticut in 1999, and now there are maybe a dozen full-timers left.

Some in the Rhode Island lobster fishery said it’s still possible to make a living in the business.

Greg Mataronas, the president of the Rhode Island Lobstermen’s Association, who fishes out of Little Compton, said regulations and territoriality prevent members of the state’s fleet from moving to more fertile grounds. But the few remaining lobstermen in Rhode Island are still able to pull lobsters from the state’s waters, he said.

“There’s a real disconnect between what the guys are seeing on the water and what the scientists are saying,” he said.

Bradfield isn’t buying it. He is glad he left the business, as painful as it was to leave a piece of his identity behind.

“There’s a saying: Behind every successful fisherman is a wife with a good job,” he said. “You go down to the State Pier in Rhode Island now, guys hate what they’re doing right now.”

HANGING ON, GETTING BY

David Goethel has spent most of his life fishing for New England cod, and he doesn’t want to stop now.

“I could catch the entire quota for the Gulf of Maine in eight days,” Goethel said in a bit of bravado he swears is not an exaggeration. “I wouldn’t break a sweat doing it.”

Fishing is in Goethel’s blood. He paid his way through Boston University by taking thrill-seekers out on “party boat” fishing trips in Boston Harbor and segued into commercial cod fishing in 1982.

Today, he operates a trawler that leaves from New Hampshire, its nets scouring the Gulf of Maine for fish. But the catch these days is different — with the cod in jeopardy and quotas that limit his ability to catch them at all-time lows, cod fishermen like Goethel try to eke out a living by supplementing cod with just about anything else they can catch.

Goethel is making much less money. In the 1980s and 1990s, he could bring in $120,000 in a year, but is now making about $60,000, without subtracting a health insurance bill over $27,000. He and his wife, who is up every day at 4 a.m. for a far-flung teaching job, haven’t taken a vacation in three years.

Retirement isn’t in the cards for the 62-year-old Goethel — at least, not soon.

“My wife is working far more than she used to,” he said. “I have to work more to make less.”

The challenges climate change have brought to commercial fishing are perhaps most noticeable in New England’s cod fishery, which has dwindled from more than 1,200 boats in the 1980s to only a few dozen today. In that time, the catch of cod has also plummeted, from more than 117 million pounds in 1980 to just over 5 million in 2014.

Most consumers haven’t noticed the collapse, with cod still readily available at restaurants and markets because of foreign sources like Iceland and Norway.

Scientists said late last year that the impact of climate change on Atlantic cod might be worse than previously thought. Fishermen pursue the fish in the Gulf of Maine and, farther off New England, the shallows of Georges Bank, both of which have experienced dramatic temperature rise. Around 2004, the gulf began warming about 10 times faster than previously.

“This is what global warming looks like in the Gulf of Maine,” said Andrew Pershing, a Maine-based marine scientist who co-authored the paper last year in the journal Science.

Goethel, also a marine scientist and a former member of a regional regulatory board, doesn’t bemoan the ocean’s changing temperature as much as the rules he must play by. Because of the tight quotas, he must avoid fishing around areas where cod live, he said. That is because cod are a “choke species,” and when fishermen reach their quota for cod they aren’t allowed to pursue other fish.

Like others in the cod fishery, Goethel has had to adapt, but at his core he remains a cod fisherman. The experience has left him frustrated and more than a little bitter.

He doesn’t dispute the scientific consensus about climate change, but he does think government regulators apply that science in a manner unnecessarily punitive to fishermen. He plastered a sticker on his boat declaring, “Who says there’s no fish?”

For the most recent fishing year, he was allotted 3,600 pounds of cod. He caught his allotment of 60,000 pounds in 2010, and leased and caught an additional 50,000. He believes that the cod have moved and not died off, and that he could easily continue catching high totals without strict regulations.

Scientists have said warming waters have indeed motivated some young cod to seek deeper, colder waters — some of which are closed to fishing.

The cuts to catch limits represented the first and biggest blow to the industry, and they stemmed from overfishing and subsequent regulations designed to stop fishermen from taking too much from the sea. They were meant to preserve the fishery for future generations, and it made earning a living difficult.

Climate change has only exacerbated that trouble.

Other obstacles, such as the government-imposed cost of on-board monitors to collect data to inform future fishing quotas, have rankled Goethel, who lawsuit seeking to block the charges is pending. But he perseveres.

“The future of the cod fishery is not that it’s in jeopardy,” Goethel said. “It needs to be recalibrated.”

Government regulators, such as John Bullard, a regional administrator for fisheries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have said the quota cuts that irk fishermen are necessary to rebuild the stock. But he has acknowledged the rebuilding effort comes with an “economic price.”

The changes have been difficult emotionally for Goethel, whose sons, Daniel and Eric, are a fisheries biologist and a tugboat captain. He instilled a love of fishing in everyone in his family, and old traditions are hard to part with.

“Eric would get rolled out of bed to go fishing,” Ellen said. “He did the same thing to me.”

ADAPTING, COMMUTING

Michael Mohr harvested surf clams for almost 30 of his 55 years, and his desire to stay in the only business he has ever known now takes him far from his family.

The clams he caught for decades feed tourists and locals alike in towns all along the coast. Now, those clams, which he once caught off New Jersey, are found northward or farther out to sea.

Mohr has also moved on. About 10 years ago, he started commuting six hours each way from his home in Mays Landing, New Jersey, to the former whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts. He has also switched clam species; he got his start fishing for Atlantic surf clams but now pursues the ocean quahog.

The quahog is well known to New England diners as a stuffed clam or in its own kind of chowder. Both quahogs and surf clams populate supermarket seafood sections.

The reason for Mohr’s decision has been documented by published science, as well as on the decks of the boat he fishes from, the ESS Pursuit. Moving north for quahogs was a way to remain a clammer.

“We’re finding clams in deeper water instead of inshore water, where we used to work 25 years ago,” Mohr said. “It’s just affecting everything.”

Mohr leaves behind his wife of 20 years and makes the drive to New Bedford so he and his 29-year-old son, Danny, can spend 20 days out of 30 aboard the Pursuit. Mohr has two other adult children who live in New Jersey.

He has missed his children’s first days at school, their sports events, and weddings of loved ones while out chasing clams, and, later, quahogs. Missing out on family life is worse these days because of his long commute on Interstate 95.

Whether Mohr can make holidays like Thanksgiving is “hit-and-miss,” said his wife, Melanie.

Mohr’s migration story is common in the clamming business, said Dave Wallace, a Maryland-based consultant in the industry. It was once based largely off Atlantic City, near Mohr’s home, but has shifted northward along with the clams, he said.

Some fishermen have decided to instead pursue quahogs, as Mohr has, while others now travel farther out to sea to harvest surf clams. The surf clam fishery has slipped somewhat in the face of the changes, with a little less than 41 million pounds caught in 2014, the second-lowest total since 1980.

Mohr is undaunted. Clamming has been good to him, and if he has to spend more time on the road as he nears 60, so be it.

“It’s just a way of life,” Mohr said. “You’ve got to go where the money is at, and you’re happy. Right now, I’m happy.”

Dining, Political, Wellness

State GMO label law effective July 1, tougher than U.S. plan

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Vermonters reacted with mixed emotions to the prospects that a U.S. Senate compromise on labeling GMO foods could impact a state law due to take effect this week.

The law, effective July 1, would make Vermont the first state to require the majority of U.S. food products containing genetically engineered ingredients to bear labels that say “produced with genetic engineering.”

Industry groups have sued to block Vermont’s law, but have been unsuccessful so far. And some food companies have announced plans to begin shipping products with labels compliant with the law.

But in Congress, Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who chairs the Agriculture Committee, and Michigan’s Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the panel’s top Democrat, announced a deal that would require similar labeling nationwide but allow food companies to use text, a symbol or an electronic label accessed by smartphone. No significant action is expected on the proposal before the Vermont law goes into effect.

In the state, residents had opposing reactions.

A bar code-style label not readable by the naked eye drew the ire of some.

At the Tulsi Tea Room, a vegetarian restaurant specializing in locally produced, organic food, manager Fiona Sullivan said needing a smartphone to read food labels “sounds very classist. You’d have to own a smartphone, for one thing, and you’d need to be educated to a certain degree.”

“It’s another example of big money blocking change that needs to take place,” she said.

But Brenda Steady, who stopped in at the Middle Road Market in Minton for a turkey grinder for lunch, said she was not worried about whether any of its ingredients was made with genetic engineering.

“I think it’s horrible,” Steady, a Democrat, said of the law passed by a Legislature and signed by a governor of her party in 2014. “It’s another way to micromanage small business. If people want to know what is in their products, they can go on Google and check them out.”

Meanwhile, Campbell’s Soup and General Mills announced months ago they would begin shipping products with labels compliant with Vermont’s law. Spokesmen for both companies said Friday they support the federal labeling proposal.

“We need consistency across the country. And without this national solution, we risked having a system of 50 different regulations impacting our packages,” General Mills’ Mike Siemienas said.

Tom Hushen of Campbell’s said the company has “already printed and shipped to comply with Vermont’s law”

“We will continue to comply with Vermont’s law until Congress and the president enact legislation that preempts and replaces it,” Hushen said. “With or without new federal legislation, the Vermont label will continue to appear on shelves across most of the country and well into the future.”

Dining, Environment, News, Social Justice, World

Greenpeace documents abuses in Taiwan’s tuna fisheries

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An investigation into Taiwan’s distant water tuna fisheries has exposed illegal shark finning, labor and human rights abuses.

Greenpeace East Asia, which conducted the investigation, also reported on April 14 on what it called “Taiwan’s failure to adequately address issues such as murder and drug smuggling at sea.”

The Greenpeace report was released as a yellow card warning from the European Commission is about to expire. Issued on last October, the notice gave Taiwan six months to clean up its fisheries or face economic sanction by the European Union.

Greenpeace says the cleanup has not happened. “These investigations paint a comprehensive picture of an industry in crisis,” said Yen Ning, ocean campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.

He added, “Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency appears incapable of monitoring the out-of-control tuna industry. Whether through lack of capacity or otherwise, our investigations reveal devastating impacts on marine life and people’s lives”

Taiwan owns the most tuna longline vessels in the world and Taiwan’s tuna take puts it in the top six Pacific fishing entities.

Taiwanese companies — like seafood giant Fong Chun Formosa Fishery Company Ltd. — export to markets and supply some of the world’s largest seafood companies. Large amounts of Taiwanese caught tuna are exported to Thailand for processing, where serious labor and human rights violations have been recently exposed by environmental groups, human rights organizations and media outlets such as The AP.

“The fishing industries of both Taiwan and Thailand have been shown to have human rights problems,” said Yen Ning. “The murky tuna supply chains of companies like Thai Union have little transparency, which means seafood lovers everywhere may be eating tuna tainted by human exploitation and environmental crime, and they’d never know.”

The Greenpeace report details abusive treatment of crew members, including delayed and withheld wage payments, horrendous working conditions, exploitation by recruiting agents, verbal and physical abuse and death at sea.

Greenpeace asserts that the human rights abuses go hand-in-hand with environmental abuses. Fins are not allowed to be separated from shark carcasses under legislation Taiwan passed in 2012, but in a single three-month investigation in just one port in Taiwan, Greenpeace East Asia uncovered 16 illegal cases of shark finning.

Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency has proposed a new distant waters fisheries act, which Greenpeace East Asia says would be meaningless without enforcement.

On the Web

Greenpeace East Asia.

Dining, Featured Lifestyle, Political

Vermont to target ‘willful violations’ of GMO law

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Vermont’s attorney general says his office will enforce the state GMO labeling law by targeting “willful violations” by manufacturers.

“What we’re really going to go after is folks who are willfully noncompliant, who are just not putting labels on their products at all or otherwise trying to skirt the labeling law,” said Todd Daloz, an assistant attorney general.

Because some shelf-stable food will be produced and distributed before July 1, the state is allowing for a six-month period for those products to move through the system. The attorney general’s office says it won’t take enforcement action for those products during that time, unless there’s evidence that a manufacturer distributed a mislabeled product after July 1.

“Those long shelf stable products are not our concern. Our concern is going to be manufacturers who are choosing not to label or are not labeling for whatever reason,” Daloz said.

The law requires manufacturers to label packaged foods produced with genetic engineering and stores must post a label on or near unpackaged genetically engineered foods such as produce and bulk food.

The Food and Drug Administration says genetically modified organisms, which can include food made from seeds that were engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, are safe, but labeling advocates say not enough research has been done and people have a right to know what’s in their food. Advocates also say the use of GMOs has led to big increases in herbicide use.

Maine and Connecticut also have passed laws that require such labeling if other nearby states put one into effect.

Some foods are exempt from Vermont’s labeling law like meat, honey, plain milk or eggs _ foods entirely derived from an animal that don’t have added ingredients and regardless of whether the animal has been fed or injected with food or drugs produced with genetic engineering. Also exempt are foods that require USDA approval of their labels such as those containing meat or poultry like a frozen dinner or can of SpaghettiOs. Alcohol is also exempt.

Violators face civil fines of up to $1,000 per day, per product, and not based on the number of individual packages of the product. Retailers who are out of compliance would get a 30-day warning to correct the problem before facing fines.

The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, which has called for a national solution rather than what it says is a patchwork of confusing and costly state labeling laws, says Vermont’s law is arbitrary and confusing. It says it’s concerned about lawsuits from private citizens and organizations against food companies and says a recent memo from Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell does not make clear how he will know a “willful” violation without bringing an action.

In recent weeks, food companies Kellogg, Mars, ConAgra, and General Mills have joined Campbell Soup Co. in saying they will print new national labels in preparation for Vermont’s law but oppose state-by-state labeling requirements.

The Vermont attorney general’s office has received a lot of inquiries from manufacturers about compliance issues, said Daloz.

“And it’s heartening to see major manufacturers … choosing to put what from our view is a very simple factual disclosure on the label and with what appears to be not a tremendous amount of burden on them to put those four words on the label,” he said.

Environment, Featured News, National, News, Political

Spring push for fossil fuels divestment launched on campuses

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Students with Swarthmore Mountain Justice took action outside board member Rhonda Cohen’s off-campus office this week, calling on her to recuse herself from future conversations on fossil fuel divestment due to her personal financial ties to the fossil fuel industry.

The demonstration marked the launch of a two-month series of nonviolent direct actions on colleges and universities.

“We refuse to stand idly by as Swarthmore continues to align itself with an industry that is incompatible with our future,” said Sophia Zaia, a sophomore and divestment organizer with Swarthmore Mountain Justice. “Board members can’t make objective decisions on divestment when they have a personal financial stake in the future success of the fossil fuel industry. We have no choice but to escalate to ensure that the conversation on divestment, an issue that leaves us without a moment to lose, is transparent and free from compromising conflicts of interest.”

Students across the country are taking action this spring, calling out links to the fossil fuel industry on their boards and demanding divestment in a campaign sponsored by 350.org.

“We know that change will only come when we take the lead and push our institutions to stand on the right side of history,” said Julia Berkman-Hill, a divestment campaigner and leader with Bowdoin Climate Action. “As long as Bowdoin refuses to move forward on divestment, we will continue to use our voices to show that we do not consent to the College’s relationship to this industry’s inherently destructive business model. Our schools betray us when they invest in the exploitation and deception that the likes of Exxon and Big Oil perpetuate.”

Reports from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon knew about climate change since the 1970s but poured extensive resources into discrediting its own research and sowing doubt and confusion among the public and world governments.

Exxon is currently being probed by the criminal branch of the FBI and four Attorneys General have launched investigations into the corporation’s alleged climate crimes. Also, 20 Attorneys General have launched a coalition to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for their decades of deep deception, according to 350.org.

“Around the world, those who have done the least to contribute bear the brunt of the worst effects of climate change. From Pakistan and the Philippines, to New Orleans and New York, climate change threatens the lives of frontline communities every day by actively making our planet uninhabitable,” said Sarah Jacqz, an organizer with Divest UMass. “Any action on climate is undermined if our institutions continue to invest in this violent industry.It is high time that our institutions do everything in their power to tackle the climate crisis — that starts with divesting from fossil fuels.”

To date, more than 500 institutions representing more than $3.4 trillion in assets under management have committed to some level of fossil fuel divestment.

For the student activists involved in the divestment campaign, personal ties to the fossil fuel industry among their school’s decision-makers pose disturbing conflicts of interest.

“We have made our choice clear, and we choose to stand on the side of a just and stable future,” said Zaia. “Now, we’re demanding that our institutions of higher learning stand with us and make a choice: the future of a destructive, outdated and rogue industry or the future of your students?”