Climate Politics

Why the disaster trust fund is bad news

The following is a guest essay by Britt Lundgren and Jason Funk. Britt Lundgren is an agricultural policy fellow at Environmental Defense Fund. Jason Funk is a Lokey Fellow in the Land, Water and Wildlife program at Environmental Defense Fund.

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The recent fires in California and the severe drought in the Southeast are just two of the litany of disasters that have hit agriculture in recent memory. When natural disasters happen, members of Congress (at least those who want to get reelected) want to respond quickly, with cash for those that are affected.

Currently they must go through the clunky and often-slow process of getting disaster dollars for their district by passing an emergency supplemental appropriations bill (PDF). For this reason, the Senate approved a farm bill that includes a new $5.1 billion piggy bank, called the Agricultural Disaster Assistance Trust Fund, for the seemingly innocuous purpose of having money set aside in advance to help farmers out when they're struck with calamity.

Unfortunately, there are many reasons to think that this new trust fund is itself going to be a disaster for taxpayers, most farmers, and the environment.

Border wall brings peace in the Middle East

Fighting the border wall, that is.

Listen to ‘Ohio’ by Damien Jurado

Listen Play “Ohio,” by Damien Jurado While we all wait.

Clinton v. Obama on SNL

Medium funny:

Oil and the status of women in the Middle East

I'm not sure this falls under my "campus news" beat for Grist, but I heard it at a seminar at a college campus, and it's compelling enough that I'm going to say that because it falls within academia, it counts. Michael Ross is a political scientist at UCLA who was published in the February 2008 American Political Science Review with the assertion (PDF) that much of the gender inequality in the Middle East relative to the rest of the world can be explained not by traditional Islam, but by the presence of oil.

The quick version is that Ross makes a strong case that women are hurt by a previously unappreciated effect of the infamous "resource curse" that imperils democracy in countries with abundant fossil fuels.

Western states look into building new dams

Concerned about climate-caused drought, officials in at least six Western states are looking into building new dams to create rain-capturing reservoirs — even as dams across the country are being torn down over environmental concerns.

New study from mainstream ag economists at Iowa State

Cellulosic ethanol represents a beacon on the horizon — the justification cited by wiseguys like Vinod Khosla for dropping billions per year in public cash to prop up corn ethanol production. Corn ethanol, you see, is a bridge to a bright cellulosic future. But the beacon is looking more and more like a mirage, a […]

Further evidence that impotence leads to arson

Am I crazy, or is the Earth Liberation Front website sponsored by Viagra? (via Dan Shapley)

Why the USDA wants to stop local food

This is one of those "in case you missed it" kind of posts. In yesterday's New York Times, Minnesota farmer Jack Hedin wrote an op-ed that shows very clearly how the federal deck is stacked against small, sustainable, local farms and in favor of Earl Butz's "get-big-or-get-out" mentality.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on "corn base" acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I never ceased to be amazed at the all-encompassing power of the Golden Rule (The One Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules).

The core progressive issue in the fight over climate legislation

The following post was originally published on The Nation’s guest blog, Passing Through, where I was in residence throughout February. It is a rudimentary introduction to cap-and-trade and the question of allocating permits, an argument (or three) in favor of auctioning permits, and a review of the political state of play around the question. The […]