The Texas state legislature voted yesterday to ban fracking bans. Ever since the people of Denton, Texas voted to ban fracking last November, state lawmakers in cahoots with the oil and gas industry and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, have attempted to strip municipalities like Denton of home rule authority to override the city’s ban.
Approved by the Texas House and Senate, the bill banning fracking bans is expected to be signed by Governor Greg Abbott.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
In response, citizens banded together to form Frack Free Denton to fight for home rule. The group has put together a powerful film, which premieres on Friday, documenting their fight to ban fracking within city limits in the heart of oil and gas country. The vote comes despite recent findings by a team of researchers from Southern Methodist University that linked the earthquakes in one area of Texas, which did not have earthquakes prior to the fracking boom..
Marketplace′s Kai Ryssdal and Scott Trang discuss Texas's ban and other states considering similar bills. "The bill would provide what's called state preemption and that is state law here would trump anything that local jurisdictions, cities and towns pass," says Trang.
A similar bill, in Oklahoma, passed one chamber. "The sponsor of that bill said he wants to 'get ahead of what we're seeing in other states,'" reports Trang. Ryssdal asks if there is a group connecting all these state lawmakers. Trang's response? You guessed it: ALEC.
Listen to the full story here:
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By Julia Conley
The results of the U.S. Senate race this week in Maine — won by four-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins after Democrats poured $50 million into challenger Sara Gideon's campaign — may have given the impression that a Trumpian right-wing agenda has an iron grip on the state's more conservative rural voters, but the victory of Democratic state Rep. Chloe Maxmin, a progressive champion who ran on the promise of a Green New Deal and offering a "politics as public service" in a strong GOP district, tells a much different story.
<p>Two years after winning a seat in the state House of Representatives, representing conservative, rural District 88, Maxmin secured a win in her challenge to state Senate Republican Leader Dana Dow. As in her first campaign for elected office, Maxmin won over voters in state Senate District 13 — where residents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-maine-senate.html" target="_blank">chose Collins </a>over Gideon — by engaging deeply with her community and <a href="https://chloe.mainecandidate.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">offering a platform</a> focused on climate action, investing in universal broadband access, and treating healthcare as a human right. </p>
<p>Maxmin's campaign was focused on providing help to people in a part of Maine where many feel disillusioned by politics and neglected by leaders in the state legislature and Washington, D.C. — but her energy was spent less on convincing voters to back a progressive agenda and more on giving them a platform to talk about their own experiences.</p><p>"When I talk to folks, I mostly listen, I don't show up and talk about myself," Maxmin told Common Dreams on Thursday. "I really try and listen and make sure that the voices that I hear are reflected in our campaign ... The work that we do on our side is to really think about campaigns differently, because we see them as one of the primary ways that we can start building a new type of politics. So we didn't use any party consultants. We designed all of our mailers, palm cards, postcards ourselves. We're all about authentic conversation and just had dozens and dozens of volunteers writing postcards or having conversations with voters and using the same style of just listening, and not going around saying, 'You should vote for Chloe because of this,' but trying to understand where people are at."</p><p>"My sense is that people really saw that we were doing it differently and that I could be in office differently, too," she added.</p><p>When the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, the Maxmin campaign further stepped up its commitment to engaging directly with voters, enlisting 200 volunteers to check on voters' wellbeing.</p><p>"Maxmin called upon her volunteers to reach out to every senior in her district and her network of campaign volunteers provided food, assistance with prescription drugs and identified transpiration needs," Marie Follayttar, director of the progressive grassroots group Mainers for Accountable Leadership, told Common Dreams. "Chloe is both a community organizer and an elected official. Not only is Chloe willing to listen to the people where they are — at their dinner table or at their door — she is demonstrably responsive to their needs and leverages the organizing structure of her campaign to assist her in accomplishing mutual aid work."</p><p>Other Democratic campaigns in the state, Follayttar noted, "could have done this as well. We transform lives by being present in them and building community to support one another. We move into legislative action by turning the concerns heard at the door into legislation."</p><p><span></span>Maxmin, who introduced <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/10/19/were-not-polarized-everywhere-maine-democracy-and-green-energy-win-big" target="_blank">the state's Green New Deal</a> in 2019, with the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/16/great-example-local-organizing-maine-afl-cio-signs-greennewdeal" target="_blank">notable backing </a>of the state AFL-CIO, and co-founded the fossil fuel divestment campaign Divest Harvard while in college, won applause from national climate action campaigners at 350.org and Friends of the Earth.</p>
<div id="0d2d5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b4c2cdc6328f9c94bb65f389a2037ca9"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1324037287127252993" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Hats off to new Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin, a true climate champ who managed to beat the incumbent Senate Minority Leader.</div> — Bill McKibben (@Bill McKibben)<a href="https://twitter.com/billmckibben/statuses/1324037287127252993">1604510063.0</a></blockquote></div>
<div id="9ee73" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="af2a00b60ef3fad71bd5cb93c84f1cdc"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1324084291199029248" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Congrats to progressive champion (and Friends of the Earth board member) Chloe Maxmin! https://t.co/qKVceZQAfu</div> — Friends of the Earth (Action) (@Friends of the Earth (Action))<a href="https://twitter.com/foe_us/statuses/1324084291199029248">1604521269.0</a></blockquote></div><p>"Just seeing the amazing news that Chloe Maxmin — who was a young leader of Divest Harvard — has won a seat in the Maine State Senate!" exclaimed Thelma Young-Lutunatabua, an organizer with 350.org, on Wednesday. "Youth of the climate movement gaining political office!"</p><p>Maxmin's tactic of engaging authentically with voters in reminiscent of "<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/15/groundbreaking-study-shows-deep-listening-over-100-times-more-effective-winning" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">deep canvassing</a>," a method of campaigning used by the national grassroots network People's Action and found to be 102 times more effective at winning over undecided voters than a typical brief interaction during a door-knocking or phone-banking campaign.</p><p>"Deep canvassing differs from traditional campaign tactics because it relies on soul," People's Action Director George Goehl told Common Dreams<em>.</em> "In a deep canvass conversation, you break down your walls and the canvasser and voter really connect with one another. This is the kind of organizing that changes hearts and minds."</p><p>Maxmin told Common Dreams that her campaign led her to "thousands" of similar interactions.</p><p>"I had thousands of conversations with people," she said. "And it's so interesting when you have that kind of breadth to your exposure of humanity, just the themes that you hear. And it was really, really consistent—rarely hearing direct issues, mostly hearing about how people are so frustrated with everyone and everything on both sides and just hating the negative campaigning."</p><p>Mike Tipping of Maine People's Alliance, an affiliate of People's Action, credited Maxmin's ability to connect with voters across party lines, stressing that Maxmin ran a campaign she defined as "bipartisan" rather than "progressive" because issues that matter to voters in her rural district are important to people of all political beliefs. </p><p>"These are universal progressive values," Tipping told Common Dreams<em>.</em> "Too often we talk about these things in a partisan lens, but overwhelmingly people believe we need to tax the wealthy, that we need to raise the minimum wage, that we need sick days, paid family leave, healthcare access that's real, that everyone can see a doctor when they need to. Those are not limited to a party. And when you build a multi-race, multi-class coalition like Chloe did ... That's how you win in those places."</p><p>In "Rural Runner," a short film by Forest Woodward about Maxmin and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, Maxmin is seen knocking on doors in rural Maine, talking to voters about how their lives could be impacted by a Green New Deal for the state and other progressive legislation. </p><p>"Every year we keep electing the same kind of folks," she says in the film. "They tell us the same things, they act the same way, we elect them, they get into the state House, and they break the same promises and we're left with the same disillusionment that we had before."</p>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/473942482" width="100%" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4e637980c1062805b99e6bfec753d3f6"></iframe><p>In 2018, Maxmin began her campaign in House District 88 as an underdog, 16 points behind her opponent, but credited her tireless face-to-face campaigning with securing victory.</p><p>"What Chloe and I have done is pretty simple," said Woodward in "Rural Runner," which was filmed as the team was beginning Maxmin's campaign for the state Senate race. "We put one foot in front of the other, we listen, we show up every day rain or shine, we do our best. We never really know what we're capable of unless we try."</p><p>After becoming the first Democrat ever to win House District 88 at the age of 26, Maxmin introduced her state's own Green New Deal, <a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/maine-passes-state-level-green-new-deal" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">centering</a> the legislation on a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel sector and investing in solar installations for newly-built schools. </p><p>In the State House, she has also sponsored legislation to provide access to rural public transportation, an issue she campaigned on this year and <a href="https://chloe.mainecandidate.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">called</a> "the great equalizer in rural communities." Maine Senate District 13 has been <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_State_Senate_District_13" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">represented</a> by Republicans for most of the last decade. </p><p>While the national Democratic Party often express wariness about engaging with voters in traditionally conservative areas about issues erroneously deemed "left wing," such as far-reaching action to solve the climate emergency, Maxmin's winning campaigns suggest Democrats can find more success with rural voters by being unapologetic proponents of policies aimed at helping working people.</p><p>"She is no shrinking violet and didn't try and moderate herself or be anyone other than who she is, and I think voters responded to that," Tipping said.</p><p>During the campaigns Maxmin and Woodward have run together, they <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/02/what-rural-maine-house-race-can-teach-left" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a> in an article for The Nation in 2018, "We dig into the local, cultivating relationships and utilizing the resourcefulness of our rural communities to build a rooted movement... We see that rural America is alive and beautiful, eager to be heard and remembered."</p><p>"Many have welcomed us into their homes and honored us with stories of family members who are registering to vote just for our campaign, who are voting Democrat for the first time, who have never voted in a midterm but now are because our movement gives them hope," they continued.</p><p>"We view our campaign as a movement, built on shared values and authentic conversations," Maxmin and Woodward wrote. "We build real political power, with lasting muscle for the long fight, with an inside-outside movement that elects authentic representatives to fight for everyone and continues to organize beyond the election to maintain pressure on our politicians."</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/06/i-mostly-listen-offering-blueprint-democrats-green-new-deal-champion-chloe-maxmin" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>. </em></p>
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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris greet supporters in Wilmington, Delaware on August 20, 2020. Olivier Douliery / AFP / Getty Images
On Nov. 4, the U.S. officially left the Paris climate agreement, but its departure may be short lived.
<p>Former Vice President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/joe-biden" target="_self">Joe Biden</a>, who took the lead Friday morning in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania according to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-georgia-elections-1243852669c8384493850f528534b2c7" target="_blank">The Associated Press</a>, has reaffirmed his commitment to immediately rejoining the accord if he wins the 2020 presidential election against incumbent <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a>.</p><p>"Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it," Biden tweeted late Wednesday.</p><p>The two candidates have taken opposite stances on how to address the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>. Trump has <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-california-biden-climate-science-2647658093.html" target="_self">repeatedly</a> <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-rejects-us-climate-report-2621629346.html" target="_self">denied</a> climate science and worked to roll back climate policies put in place by the Obama administration, including standards for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-power-plan-trump-epa-2638927020.html" target="_self">power plant</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-fuel-efficiency-proposal-2592345279.html" target="_self">vehicle emissions</a>. He has appointed former energy lobbyists to head both the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/interior-secretary-bernhardt-oil-2634420948.html" target="_self">Department of the Interior</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/andrew-wheeler-epa-confirmed-2630358470.html" target="_self">Environmental Protection Agency</a>, and has completed or started the process of rescinding almost 100 environmental regulations, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html" target="_blank">New York Times tally</a>.</p>
<p>Biden, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/biden-climate-plan-green-new-deal-2648128471.html" target="_self">promised</a> to spend $2 trillion over four years to boost green jobs and infrastructure and achieve a carbon-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions country-wide by 2050. While his plan is less ambitious and comprehensive than the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/green-new-deal" target="_self">Green New Deal</a>, it has received qualified praise from progressive climate activists who worked with his campaign on a Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force and helped improve the plan's ambitions.</p><p>Some of those same activists saw Biden's recommitment to the Paris agreement as a positive sign for his future administration's climate action.</p><p>"Pretty cool that<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden" target="_blank"> @JoeBiden</a>'s most confident statement yet about being the next President of the United States is about Day 1 action to address the climate crisis," <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sunrise Movement</a> co-founder and political director Evan Weber tweeted. "Biden has a climate mandate, and our movement will make sure he acts on it."</p>
<p>Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus also <a href="https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1324159769268101120" target="_blank">noted</a> that climate change was featured on Biden's transition website.</p><p>"The American people will determine who will serve as the next President of the United States. Votes are still being counted in several states around the country," the <a href="https://buildbackbetter.com/" target="_blank">site reads</a>. "The crises facing the country are severe — from a pandemic to an economic recession, climate change to racial injustice — and the transition team will continue preparing at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One."</p><p>The Paris agreement was passed in 2015 as a pledge to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Trump first <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/best-responses-trump-paris-agreement-2429353243.html" target="_self">announced</a> he would withdraw from the agreement in June 2017, and his administration <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-begins-withdrawal-paris-agreement-2641223963.html" target="_self">took action</a> to do so on Nov. 4, 2019, as soon as was possible under UN regulations. If Biden wins and rejoins Jan. 20, the U.S. would officially be back in 30 days later.</p>
<p>On his campaign website, Biden has pledged not only to rejoin the agreement, but to lobby for greater international climate ambition.</p><p>"He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets," the <a href="https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/" target="_blank">site says</a>. "He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America's economic leverage and power of example."</p>However, even if Biden rejoins the agreement, it may be difficult for other countries to trust U.S. leadership on the issue, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54797743" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">BBC News pointed out</a>. This is the second time the U.S. has helped to negotiate an international climate deal and then been unable to maintain support at home. The Clinton administration was not able to get the Senate to agree to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
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Climate crisis debates often take a generational rather than party-line split. laflor / Getty Images
The climate crisis and debates about its severity were at the forefront of the U.S. election, but in private homes and communities, the rift between the sides often took a generational rather than party-line split. While young people often cited a sense of despair and outrage over global heating, their alarm was often met by indifference and even dismissal by some of their older relatives and acquaintances, reported The Guardian.
<p>For example, Gemma Gutierrez, a 16-year-old in Milwaukee, was inspired by Greta Thunberg to contact her local elective representatives to voice her concern about the climate crisis. Her grandparents, self-described conservatives, think that she's been misled by popular opinion. Gutierrez plans to write a letter to her grandparents to explain her distress but also knows that discussions may end up, as they have in the past, in a stalemate.</p><p>She said, "I feel [older people] are voting against the better interests of our climate and I want them to see a different perspective. I think I would be doing the world a disservice by not trying."</p><p>17-year-old Lily Jarosz told The Guardian, "I can see a really clear generational split," when talking climate with her "apolitical Gen X-er" parents and "openly hostile" grandmother. "That hurts me so much, like she doesn't care about me or understand the immediacy of the issue."</p><p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/492507/concerns-about-climate-change-united-states-by-age-group/" target="_blank">Statista</a> found that 51 percent of surveyed 18- to 34-year-olds agreed that the climate crisis would pose a serious threat within their lifetime, while only 29 percent of those surveyed aged 55 and older agreed with the statement.</p>
<p>"The <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/im-fighting-for-my-future-a-climate-change-generation-is-making-itself-heard/" target="_blank">climate change generation</a> is a generation of young people born into a warming world, who will be alive to see which climate model scenario plays out, and who have spent — and will spend — essentially our entire adult lives fighting for a just and stable future," Harvard postdoctoral fellow Geoffrey Supran told <a href="https://www.manomet.org/publication/the-climate-change-generation-looks-to-their-future/" target="_blank">Manomet</a>. He pointed out that many younger members of the "climate change generation" will outlive the climate projections that scientists have created through 2100.</p><p>Similarly, Zach Fayer, a business sustainability college program alum, explained to Manomet, "Members of my generation care about climate change because we're going to live through it."</p><p>"[W]e need to recognize that the climate crisis will arguably be the defining issue for younger generations," said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International, in an <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/12/climate-change-ranks-highest-as-vital-issue-of-our-time/" target="_blank">Amnesty International</a> report. "The right to a healthy environment, including a safe climate, is essential for the enjoyment of so many other rights. It is a right that young people today have been forced to take the lead in asserting."</p><p>A report by David Karol cited in a <a href="https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/02/04/age-gap-environmental-politics/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Columbia University blog</a> demonstrated that disagreements surrounding the climate crisis revolve more around an age gap than a party distinction. While millennials grew up widely discussing climate change, the same was not true of baby boomers and generators prior to them, Karol said. Comparing the generational gap within the Republican party revealed "widespread recognition" in college-aged Republicans that climate change was real and in part caused by human activity. These younger GOP scholars were also open to solutions to the climate crisis and 57 percent of them believed there to be "solid evidence" of climate change, Karol found. By contrast, the majority of GOP baby boomers and those older than them did not accept that there was solid evidence.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/do-younger-generations-care-more-about-global-warming/" target="_blank">Yale survey</a> did not find the same generational differences between young and old Democrats. While more than 90 percent of both groups believed that global warming is happening, more Silent Generation Democrats supported the idea than millennial Democrats. The groups flip-flopped on anthropogenic influence, with 81 percent of millennial and 74 percent of Silent Generation Democrats believing that global warming is human-caused.</p><p>Yale offered that young Americans concerned about the climate may be able to transform it into a voting issue and thereby help advance mitigation policies. In particular, "young Republications... may be critical to bridging the political divide on climate change and building bipartisan support for reducing carbon emissions."</p><p>Kathryn Stevenson, who has studied how climate education for children can raise concern for parents, told The Guardian, "Climate change is visceral for young people. They can see this coming down on them in their future."</p><p>Stevenson noted that even simple conversations at home and at school can also help bridge the generational gap, especially because "[i]t's hard to look a kid in the face and ignore them when they are talking about their future."</p>
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Phil Roeder / CC BY 2.0
By John R. Platt
Well, that was interesting … and hair-raising. At press time the harrowing presidential race of 2020 remains too close to call, as do a few key congressional and Senate seats. The Senate may not even settle out until January, when Georgia will hold runoff elections and we'll find out which party controls that house of government.
But while we wait — patiently or otherwise — for those votes to be tallied, let's take a moment to step back and look at several big-picture environmental takeaways from the election season.
<h3>1. Climate Change Came Calling</h3><p>Despite the lack of real policy debate — let's face it, this was less an election of ideas and more a contest of ideologies — <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis">climate</a> change played an unexpected and thankful role. That started most noticeably in the unannounced climate question during the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/30/presidential-debate-climate-crisis-question-trump-biden-analysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first presidential debate</a>. After that several <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/us/elections/biden-leans-into-climate-change-with-two-new-ads.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">political ads</a> made climate an issue, and some Democrats stumped on it. We didn't see any speeches <em>solely </em>about climate, but Biden and Harris brought it up strongly several times during the last days of the campaign.</p><p>And yes, the very real risks of climate change played a role in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/01/climate/polls-what-voters-think-climate-global-warming.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">driving people to the polls</a>. A survey conducted last month found that 58% of Americans were either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about the threats of climate change. That included 90% of voters who favored Biden at the time. Biden and Harris spoke to that, and voters listened. Life lesson: When you talk about and take seriously issues that affect peoples' lives, they lend you their ears.</p><p>This growing support for climate action means that if Trump ultimately wins reelection, and then continues to ignore climate (as he obviously would), there will be prices to pay on the international stage starting in January and again at the polls in 2022.</p>
<h3>2. The Forgotten Crisis</h3><p>But the extinction crisis did not get any real play in this election, even from <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/02/21/not-on-the-candidates-radar-the-sixth-great-extinction/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">progressive Democrats</a>. Considering the oversized role of wildlife trafficking in the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, preserving <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity">biodiversity</a> will need to become a major policy initiative moving forward.</p><p>Luckily many environmental organizations made this a key call during the campaign, so we can expect to see some progress on this if Biden is confirmed as the next president. (If not, expect more Trump attacks on the Endangered Species Act and other wildlife policies.)</p>
<h3>3. Equality</h3><p>Racial inequality was one of the main themes of the election, but the candidates did little to address income inequality, the <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/political-violence-inequality-us-election?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">greatest driver of political and social unrest</a> in this country. If we don't take dramatic action about that soon, it will give further strength to the Proud Boys, QAnon conspiracy junkies and their extremist ilk — and that will spill out into environmental issues like livestock ranching, public lands protection and environmental justice.</p><p>Fortunately the presidential and vice-presidential debates, and Democratic candidates themselves, made a big deal out of other issues related to inequality, such as racism, LGBTQA+ rights and women's rights. Unfortunately, the fact that nearly half the country voted to reelect a racist misogynist — and many other candidates who rode on his coattails — does not bode well for the future. These are all issues that have <a href="https://therevelator.org/racial-environmental-justice/" target="_blank">deep environmental implications</a>, so we as a people and as a country need to do a lot better.</p>
<h3>4. Suppression</h3><p>People like to vote. And record numbers turned out this year, even amidst the pandemic. But who knows how many more votes would have been counted — and how many races would have had different outcomes — if not for the <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/29-ways-trump-and-the-gop-are-making-it-harder-to-vote/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">29 Republican techniques for voter suppression</a> used during this election?</p><p>So come on, Republicans, stop trying to prevent our citizens from doing their democratic duty. If you can't play fair, get out of the game. (And while you're at it, stop suppressing science related to pandemics and climate change, 'K?)</p><p>Everyone else: Watch your back. The same Republican-appointed, Federalist Society loyalist judges who have ruled (and may yet rule) on so many of this year's voting lawsuits will soon find cases about climate change and other environmental threats on their dockets.</p>
<h3>5. Fossils</h3><p>The Democratic Party needs to refine its messaging on oil and gas. It's got some decent policies — such as ending subsidies and stopping development on federal land — but that doesn't ease the fears of people terrified by a forced transition in their lives and careers. The evidence is clear that these industries not only harm the planet and peoples' health, they're also failing financially. The faster we transition those jobs, the less pain we'll all feel when oil, gas and coal collapse like a house of cards.</p>
<h3>6. Faux News</h3><p>Speaking more broadly, the media landscape remains hopelessly bifurcated, and that seeds division within the country, reaching from politics to basic information such as COVID-19 safety measures and crises like climate change. That needs to change. To address this issue, education standards should include teaching media literacy — and all adults should be encouraged to learn how to spot disinformation and bias. (It's telling that <a href="https://medialiteracyweek.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Media Literacy Week 2020</a> was held the week before the election.)</p><p>It's all a bit bigger than this, obviously. Most people self-identify as belonging to — or diverging from — one political party first, then pick the media outlet that supports that worldview. But the right-wing media notoriously spreads more disinformation about environmental issues, so finding a way to break that chokehold will go a long way toward bridging that divide.</p>
<h3>7. Money, Money, Money</h3><p>An obscene amount of money was collected and spent on this election — a record <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$14 billion</a>, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending.</p><p>On the one hand, we saw an amazing increase in small, individual donations. That's great.</p><p>But corporations and PACs poured cash into candidates' coffers (either directly or in support of their campaigns), and it felt like most of that went to fund blatantly dishonest campaign ads.</p><p>And what's the ultimate cost of those donations? Will special interests return with their hands out? We'll never know for sure, since most of those dollars (on both sides of the political aisle) are hidden from the public record, although it's certainly happened before. That needs to change if we ever hope to transform this economy and save the planet.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/environmental-takeaways-2020-election/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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"Once engineered genes are introduced into the wild salmon gene pool, it cannot be undone," said Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. Julia Manzerova / flickr / cc
By Andrea Germanos
Food safety campaigners on Thursday welcomed a federal court's finding that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated U.S. law in its approval of genetically engineered salmon.
<p>"This decision underscores what scientists have been telling FDA for years — that creating <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/gmo-genetically-modified-organism/">genetically engineered</a> salmon poses an unacceptable risk if the fish escape and interact with our wild salmon and that FDA must understand that risk to prevent harm," <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/05/federal-court-declares-genetically-engineered-salmon-unlawful-0" target="_blank">said</a> Steve Mashuda, managing attorney at Earthjustice, one of the organizations representing plaintiffs in the case.</p><p>"Our efforts should be focused on saving the wild salmon populations we already have," said Mashuda, "not manufacturing new species that pose yet another threat to their survival."</p>
<p>The lawsuit stems from Earthjustice and Center for Food Safety's 2016 <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/31/groups-sue-fda-over-unlawful-and-irresponsible-approval-frankenfish" target="_blank">legal challenge</a> to the FDA's <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/19/emergency-lawsuit-filed-fight-fda-approval-frankenfish" target="_blank">approval</a> of the so-called "frankenfish" engineered by aquaculture firm AquaBounty.</p><p>Federal Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District for the Northern District of California found that the FDA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA), <a href="https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/2020-10-05-ecf-285--order-granting-in-part-and-denying-msj_03835.pdf" target="_blank">writing</a>, in part:</p><blockquote>[T]he FDA did not adequately explain in its environmental assessment why the potential impacts of the production and growth of engineered salmon will be insignificant. The central problem is that the document failed to conduct the very inquiry it stated was necessary. In the section describing the "approach to assessment," the environmental assessment stated that an analysis of environmental risk would need to consider two probabilities: the probability of "exposure," or a bad event, and the probability of harm that could occur given exposure. The document thoroughly analyzed the probability of exposure, concluding that it was low. But it failed to assess and explain the potential consequences of that low probability being realized.<br>[...]<br>The NEPA evaluation addressed the potential impacts of engineered salmon on wild salmon; the ESA analysis was also concerned with wild salmon, albeit more specifically the endangered Gulf of Maine Atlantic salmon. Because the FDA did not sufficiently examine whether the engineered salmon would significantly impact wild salmon under NEPA, it follows that the agency cannot defend its conclusion that the engineered salmon would have no effect at all on Gulf of Maine salmon. Indeed, the fact that the FDA apparently reached a conclusive determination that the AquaBounty salmon would have "no effect" on the Gulf of Maine Salmon in 2010, while the environmental assessment was still under active consideration and five years before the NEPA process was completed, suggests that the agency may have failed to grasp the practical relationship between the two statutes' requirements in this case.</blockquote>
<p>Chhabria sent the assessment back to the FDA, ordering the agency to "reconsider its 'no effect' determination under the ESA together with its revised NEPA evaluation."</p><p>Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, one of the plaintiffs in case, framed the ruling as a clear win for fish and those whose livelihoods depend upon them given the possible ecological consequences of the genetically engineered salmon.</p><p>"It's a terrible idea to design genetically engineered 'frankenfish' which, when they escape into the wild (as they inevitably will), could destroy our irreplaceable salmon runs," said Conroy. "Once engineered genes are introduced into the wild salmon gene pool," he added, "it cannot be undone."</p><p>Conroy further hailed the ruling as "a major victory for wild salmon, salmon fishing families and dependent communities, and salmon conservation efforts everywhere."</p>
<p>According to Center for Food Safety legal director George Kimbrell, who was counsel in the case, Thursday's decision marks "a vital victory for endangered salmon and our oceans."</p><p>"Genetically engineered animals create novel risks and regulators must rigorously analyze them using sound science, not stick their head in the sand as officials did here," he said.</p><p>"The absolute last thing our planet needs right now," added Kimbrell, "is another human-created crisis like escaped genetically engineered fish running amok."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/05/major-victory-federal-court-smacks-down-fda-approval-frankenfish" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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