Corn and soybeans are the most profitable crops for American farmers each year. While many rotate these two crops season to season, the ongoing trade dispute with China is affecting even routine decisions for farmers as they head to the fields this spring to plant. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from the Midwest state of Illinois.
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Author: Uponbiz
Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos on Thursday challenged retailers to hike their minimum wages to $16 an hour, prompting a comeback from Walmart Inc which asked its rivals to pay taxes.
“Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage,” the billionaire entrepreneur said in a letter to shareholders. “Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us.”
The online retailer raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour for U.S. employees from November, giving in to critics of poor pay and working conditions at the company.
Some critics have said the hike was insufficient and note that Amazon paid zero U.S. federal income tax on more than $11 billion in profits before taxes in 2018, and received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government.
Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, responded to Bezos by tweeting, “Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?”
Walmart, which has raised its minimum wage twice since 2015, pays an entry wage of $11 per hour. CEO Doug McMillon has said Walmart’s average U.S. hourly wage is $17.50 including bonuses based on store performance, and excluding health care benefits.
The two retailers, which are fierce rivals, rarely go after one another other publicly.
Amazon’s wage hike came as U.S. unemployment was at a near two-decade low, with retailers and shippers competing for hundreds of thousands of workers for the all-important holiday shopping season.
Bezos said in his letter that the wage hike has benefited more than 250,000 Amazon employees and over 100,000 seasonal employees who worked during the last holiday season at Amazon sites in the United States.
Amazon’s third-party sales in 2018 accounted for 58 percent of total sales, up from 56 percent in 2017, Bezos said.
Amazon has said that it pays all the required taxes in every country where it operates, including $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years.
“Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits remain modest given retail is a highly competitive, low-margin business,” according to recent Amazon statements.
Walt Disney Co on Thursday said its new family-friendly streaming service will cost $7 monthly or $70 annually with a slate of exclusive TV shows and movies from some of the world’s most popular entertainment franchises in a bid to challenge the digital dominance of Netflix.
The ad-free monthly subscription called Disney+ is set to launch on Nov. 12 and in every major global market over time, the company said. In addition to Disney films and TV shows, it will feature programming from the Marvel superhero universe, the “Star Wars” galaxy, “Toy Story” creator Pixar animation and the National Geographic channel.
The company said it has struck deals with Roku Inc and Sony Corp to distribute Disney+ on streaming devices and console gaming systems and expects it to be widely available on smart televisions, tablets, and other outlets by launch.
Disney kicked off its presentation to Wall Street analysts at its Burbank, California, headquarters on Thursday with a video that demonstrated the breadth of its portfolio, showing clips from dozens of classic TV shows and movies from “Frozen” and “The Lion King” to “Avatar” and “The Sound of Music.”
Executives said they see opportunities to take its ESPN+ sport streaming video service to Latin America and are looking into international expansion of its Hulu streaming video business, which offers movies and shows targeted to adults.
The entertainment giant is trying to transform itself from a cable television powerhouse into a leader of streaming media. Chief Executive Bob Iger in February called streaming the company’s “No. 1 priority.”
Wall Street has pinned high hopes on the new service, which analysts expect would cost about $7.50 monthly and lure about 7.2 million U.S. subscribers in 2020 and 13.66 million by 2021, according to a poll of analysts conducted by Reuters.
The digital push is Disney’s response to cord-cutting, the dropping of cable service that has hit its ESPN sports network and other channels, and the rise of Netflix Inc. The Silicon Valley upstart has amassed 139 million customers worldwide since it began streaming 12 years ago.
The Mouse House, as Disney is known, will join the market at a time when audiences are facing a host of choices, and monthly bills, for digital entertainment. Apple Inc, AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia and others plan new streaming services. To bolster its potential digital portfolio, Disney recently purchased film and TV assets from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and gained prized properties such as “Avatar.”
In a January regulatory filing, Disney reported losses of more than $1 billion for streaming-related investments in Hulu and technology company BAMtech.
Disney had been supplying new movies such as “Black Panther” and “Beauty and the Beast” to Netflix after their runs in theaters but ended that arrangement this year to feed its own streaming ambitions. The company estimated it is foregoing $150 million in licensing revenue this fiscal year by saving programming for its own platforms.
The Disney+ programming will draw in part from Disney’s deep library of classic family films. It also will include exclusive original content such as a live-action “Star Wars” series called “The Mandalorian,” a show focused on Marvel movie villain Loki, and animated “Monsters at Work,” inspired by hit Pixar movie “Monsters Inc.”
Some new Disney movies, such as a “Lady and the Tramp” remake, will go directly to the Disney+ app. Other new releases will appear on Disney+ after their run in theaters and after the cycle out of the home video sales window, executives have said.
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Uber Technologies Inc. has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said Thursday in its initial public offering filing.
The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the company, which was started in 2009 after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night.
The filing underscores the rapid growth of Uber’s business in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.
$3B loss from operations
The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to “increase significantly in the foreseeable future” and it “may not achieve profitability.” Uber lost $3.03 billion in 2018 from operations, excluding one-off gains.
The S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, which include ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018. This was up 33.8 percent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 percent a year earlier.
Uber in 2018 had revenue of $11.3 billion, up around 42 percent over 2017, again below the 106 percent growth in the prior year.
Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion but did not specify the size of the IPO. Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.
Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion.
Uber will follow Lyft Inc. in going public. Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 on Thursday, 15 percent below its IPO price set late last month, a development that has sent chilling signals to other tech startups looking to go public.
Adverse events
After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a road show, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29. The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May.
Uber faces questions about how it will navigate any transition toward self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but also as possibly disrupting its business model.
One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates. Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber’s business model to become profitable.
In addition to answering questions about the company’s finances, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years.
Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 from Expedia Inc. to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted as CEO.
Uber said in its filing its ridesharing position in the United States and Canada was “significantly impacted by adverse publicity events” and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies.
A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days.
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Hunter-gatherers in the Amazon sought in court on Thursday to stop Ecuador’s government from auctioning their land to oil companies, as tension mounts over the future of the rainforest.
In a lawsuit seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation — which could set a precedent for other tribes opposed to drilling — the Waorani said the government did not properly consult them in 2012 over plans to auction their land to oil companies.
“We live on these lands and we want to continue to live there in harmony. We will defend them. Our fight is that our rights are respected,” said Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader of the 2,000-strong Waorani.
“Our fight is not just a fight about oil. This is a fight about different ways of living — one that protects life and one that destroys life,” said Nenquimo, from Pastaza province in the eastern Amazon.
Ecuador’s energy and environment ministries, the respondents in the case, and the nation’s hydrocarbons secretary were not immediately available to comment.
When President Lenin Moreno met Waorani leaders last year to hear their concerns, he said it was important to have a dialog and reach a consenus.
Tensions have simmered between indigenous communities and oil companies in Ecuador since Texaco — now Chevron — began operations in the Amazon in the 1960s.
Key step
Ecuador is pushing to open up more rainforest and develop its oil and gas reserves in the hope of improving its sluggish economy and cutting its high fiscal deficit and foreign debt.
The constitution gives the government the right to develop energy projects and extract minerals on any land, regardless of who owns it, but requires that communities are consulted first and are properly informed about any projects and their impact.
Laws to regulate the consultation process have yet to be introduced, although the court case could push the government to do this, said Brian Parker, a lawyer with campaign group Amazon Frontlines, which is supporting the Waorani.
“The lawsuit is to ensure that the processes enshrined in the constitution are carried through to guarantee the Waorani rights to prior consultation and their rights to territory,” said Parker, who is based in Ecuador.
“The fact that the Waoroni have a chance in court to be able to plead their case is in itself a very important step,” he said, adding that a court victory would provide an “invaluable precedent” for other indigenous Amazonian tribes.
The government announced last year that it had divided swaths of forest up into blocs for auction, one of which — bloc 22 — covers the Waorani’s ancestral lands, raising the specter of pollution and an end to their way of life.
Present for hearing
Hundreds of Waorani and other indigenous peoples arrived in Ecuador’s eastern city of Puyo to witness the court hearing, which is expected to include several days of oral testimony from Waorani leaders, with a decision in the next few weeks.
Ecuadorians voted last year to give broad backing to limits on oil production and mining in environmentally sensitive areas, among other issues.
In two landmark cases in 2018, local courts sided with indigenous communities who said the government had failed to inform them before designating their land for mineral exploitation.
The Costa Rica based Inter-American Court of Human Rights also ruled in 2012 that Ecuador had violated its Sarayaku Amazonian community’s right to prior consultation before drillers started exploration on their lands in the late 1990s.
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One group in the United States who is not enjoying the low national unemployment rate is 18- to 24-year-old young adults who lack higher education, according to a new report.
For them, the unemployment rate is 17 percent, according to recent research by the Brookings Institution. By comparison, the unemployment rate for the general population was 3.8 percent in March.
“In theory, the path to employment providing financial security in adulthood is simple: finish high school, enroll in and complete college or training that is affordable and a good fit, gain some work experience along the way, and launch a career,” wrote Brookings’ Martha Ross and Natalie Holmes in their report. “Meet the millions of young adults who are out of work.”
The report characterized the younger unemployed as bilingual Karina, 19, who graduated high school recently and is considering continuing her studies; single-mom Monica, 23; Juan, 20, who attends community college and has worked seasonal jobs; 19-year-old Stephanie who left state university after a year because of financial concerns; Matt, 24, who has an associate’s degree but who lost his job at a car dealership when the business closed; and Amy, 22, who has a bachelor’s and volunteers as a tutor.
Ross and Holmes described the young unemployed in relation to education:
18 to 21 year olds with a high school diploma or less (37% of total out of work youth)
22 to 24 year olds with a high school diploma or less (25%)
18 to 21 year olds with at least some education beyond high school (17%)
22 to 24 year olds with at least some education beyond high school (15%)
22 to 24 year olds with bachelor’s degrees (6%)
In the first group, three-quarters live with their parents or grandparents “in modest circumstances,” sharing a median family income of $40,000. “They have limited connection to the work world, as only 30 percent worked in the past year, and less than half (45 percent) are looking for work. Relatively small shares are in school (8 percent) or have children (11 percent).” Nearly 40 percent live below the poverty line.
Seventy percent had a high school diploma.
The second group “are the least likely of all the groups to live with their parents (57 percent), and the most likely to have children (24 percent).” Their median family income of $36,000, the lowest among the groups, put 43 percent of them below the poverty line. One-third worked in the past year, less than half were looking for work, and only 2 percent were enrolled.
Sixty-six percent had a high school diploma.
In the third group, more than 90 percent have some college but no degree. (Of these unemployed, 8 percent have an associate or bachelor’s degree.) Fifty-one percent are in school, and 72 percent seek work. Nearly half (43 percent) worked in the past year. Three out of four live with parents or grandparents with low to moderate incomes, almost 30 percent live below the poverty line with a median family income of $54,000.
Ninety-two percent had some college.
In the fourth group, about one in four earned an associate or bachelor’s degree, but two-thirds of them live with parents or grandparents in a household with a median family income of $52,000. They are the second most likely of the groups to be in school (27 percent), to have children (16 percent), to be seeking work (62 percent), and to have worked in the past year (44 percent). One in three live below the poverty line.
Seventy-nine percent had some college, 14 percent had an associate degree, and 8 percent had a bachelor’s degree.
Among the fifth and last group, nearly half (47 percent) worked in the past year, and 58 percent are looking for work. Two-thirds live with their parents who have a median family income of $92,000, considerably higher than other groups. Only one in four lives below the poverty line, however, which could reflect that they are early in their career, when earnings are typically lower, or perhaps a deeper level of disadvantage.
All in that group had attained a bachelor’s degree.
English ability among all groups was not a persistent problem, Brookings reported, with 9 percent of the 2.3 million young people out of work reporting limited English skills. Hispanics dominated the groups of lower education out of work. Whites dominated the higher education out of work groups.
The gender split was not wide in any group.
“This path does not appear to work equally well for all, particularly in light of the effects of the Great Recession and the declining rates of employment among teens and young adults since about 2000,” the authors wrote.
U.S. consumer prices increased by the most in 14 months in March, but the underlying inflation trend remained benign amid slowing domestic and global economic growth.
The mixed report from the Labor Department on Wednesday was broadly supportive of the Federal Reserve’s decision last month to suspended its three-year campaign to raise interest rates.
The U.S. central bank dropped projections for any rate hikes this year after lifting borrowing costs four times in 2018.
Minutes of the Fed’s March 19-20 meeting, published on Wednesday, showed most policymakers viewed price pressures as “muted,” but expected inflation to rise to or near the central bank’s 2 percent target. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy is currently at 1.8 percent.
“For the most part, inflation remains tame,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. “The Fed effectively went on vacation and is likely to stay there for quite a few more months.”
The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent, boosted by increases in the costs of food, gasoline and rents. That was the biggest advance since January 2018 and followed a 0.2 percent gain in February.
In the 12 months through March, the CPI increased 1.9 percent. The CPI gained 1.5 percent in February, which was the smallest rise since September 2016. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI climbing 0.3 percent in March and accelerating 1.8 percent year-on-year.
Stripping out the volatile food and energy components, the CPI nudged up 0.1 percent, matching February’s gain. The so-called core CPI was held down by a 1.9 percent plunge in apparel prices, the largest drop since January 1949.
The government last month introduced a new method and data to calculate apparel prices. Apparel prices, which had increased for two straight months, trimmed the core CPI by 0.07 percentage point in March. Many economists expected a reversal in April.
“The new price collection methodology for apparel incorporates corporate data from one unidentified department store to complement prior survey-based collection,” said Kathy
Bostjancic, head of U.S. Macro Investor Services at Oxford Economics in New York. “The new methodology appears more likely to show large monthly declines due to the lifecycle of apparel.”
Low inflation expectations
In the 12 months through March, the core CPI increased 2.0 percent, the smallest advance since February 2018. The core CPI rose 2.1 percent year-on-year in February.
The dollar was trading slightly lower against a basket of currencies, while U.S. Treasury prices rose. Stocks on Wall Street were mostly higher.
Inflation has remained muted, with wage growth increasing moderately despite tightening labor market conditions. Minutes of the March policy meeting showed some Fed officials believed the benign price pressures could be the result of low inflation expectations and also an indication the labor market was likely not as tight as implied by measures of resource utilization.
“The minutes reinforce our view that rates are on hold for the foreseeable future, though this could shift if the economy and or inflation surprise to the up or down sides,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.
A 3.5 percent jump in energy prices in March accounted for about 60 percent of the increase in the CPI last month. Gasoline prices surged 6.5 percent, the biggest gain since September 2017, after rising 1.5 percent in February.
Food prices gained 0.3 percent after accelerating 0.4 percent in February.
Food consumed at home increased 0.4 percent. Consumers also paid more for rent. Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence, which is what a homeowner would pay to rent or receive from renting a home, increased 0.3 percent in March after a similar gain in February.
Healthcare costs rebounded 0.3 percent after slipping 0.2 percent in February. There were increases in the costs of prescription medication and hospital services.
The cost of new vehicles rebounded 0.4 percent after declining 0.2 percent in February. But there were decreases in the prices of used motor vehicles and trucks, airline fares and motor vehicle insurance.
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Mexico’s foreign minister on Wednesday criticized hold-ups in the flow of goods and people at the U.S-Mexico border, and said he planned to discuss the matter with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials later in the day.
After days of traffic delays at sections of the border that have alarmed businesses, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the disruptions were raising costs for supply chains in both countries.
“Slowing down the flow of people and goods at the northern border is a very bad idea,” Ebrard said in a post on Twitter, using unusually frank language on an issue that has caused constant friction between Mexico and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ebrard said his ministry would get in contact on Wednesday with the new leaders of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department’s former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who had overseen Trump’s bitterly contested immigration policies during her tenure, stepped down at the weekend.
The border slowdowns have occurred after Trump late last month threatened to close the frontier if Mexico did not halt a surge in undocumented migrants reaching the United States.
On Monday, a judge in San Francisco said the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Mexico while their claims worked through a backlogged immigration court system was not authorized by U.S. law.
The White House said on Tuesday it would appeal the ruling and that its policy was part of a “cooperative program extensively negotiated with the government of Mexico.”
However, in a sign of ongoing tensions over the issue, Mexico’s foreign ministry noted afterwards that the return of the migrants was a “unilateral” measure with which it did not agree but was allowing on a “temporary” basis.
On Wednesday morning, only one of six lanes for commercial vehicles was open at the Bridge of the Americas border crossing between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, according to online data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Cloaked in black and carrying white buckets filled with artificial blood, the group filed in silence to the entrance of London’s Downing Street, behind a troupe of child and teen activists.
Ringing a bell as they walked, the 45 adults — all participants in Extinction Rebellion, a protest movement seeking rapid action to curb global warming — formed an arc facing the British prime minister’s residence and poured out their buckets, turning the surrounding road into a sea of red.
The liquid, they said, symbolized “the blood of our children,” on the hands of politicians who have failed to act on climate change and stem its impacts, from worsening floods and droughts to growing poverty and water and food shortages.
Among those at the protest in March were three members of Christian Climate Action, a small group of retirees and students who say their religious faith is compelling them to take an increasingly active role in trying to stop climate change.
Climate change “is leading to a social collapse. We need to respond in more caring and collective ways,” said Phil Kingston, 83, a Catholic church member from Bristol who took a train to London to participate in the Downing Street demonstration.
As climate change protests pick up in London and around the world, they are drawing an increasingly broad range of protesters, from students following in the footsteps of 16-year-old Swedish “school strike” leader Greta Thunberg to grandparents concerned about the growing risks their grandchildren face.
Religious groups — from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other faiths — are among those joining the protests, out of concern, in some cases, about the moral and spiritual implications of human-driven climate change.
Christian Climate Action took shape about six years ago, initially with just a handful of active members from a range of Christian denominations, said Ruth Jarman, 55, one of the group’s original members.
But as it has become involved with Extinction Rebellion — an emerging movement that uses nonviolent protest to demand action on climate change — interest in the Christian action group is growing, especially among younger generations, members say.
“Finding Extinction Rebellion really fitted in with our values so well. It’s very clear on using nonviolence, being motivated by values of love and care rather than anger,” said Jarman, who lives in Hartley Wintney in Hampshire.
Since November, Christian Climate Action activists have disrupted traffic, spray-painted government buildings with political messages and the Extinction Rebellion hourglass symbol, blockaded entrances — and prayed for action, Jarman said.
An Anglican parishioner, she has been arrested five times for those protests — a risk not all Christians are willing to take, she admitted.
But “for me, it’s the first verse of the Bible that hits home: If God created all that is, what does it mean for us to be destroying it?” she asked. “For us to be participating in its destruction is sacrilegious — not something believing Christians should be doing.”
Faith in action
Faith groups, in Britain and around the world, have taken a growing role in pushing action on climate change, with some churches, mosques and temples pulling their investments out of fossil fuels, championing efforts to cut food waste and raising awareness about climate risks.
Last July, the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, voted to disinvest by 2023 from fossil fuel companies that fail to meet the aims of the Paris climate agreement.
Under that 2015 deal, world governments agreed to hold global average temperature hikes to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
Because faith groups around the world control trillions of dollars in assets, such pledges can help drive action in companies that fear losing investment, or push much-needed cash to greener investments.
Experts say religions, which connect with people’s emotions and personal lives, could help mobilize them in the fight against climate change where facts and politics have failed.
Kingston, of Christian Climate Action, points to Laudato Si – Pope Francis’ 2015 papal encyclical that called on the world to unite against climate change impacts, particularly on the poor and powerless – as one of his motivations for taking action.
Most members of Christian Climate Action have a history of campaigning against climate change by writing letters to politicians, doing charity work or walking in marches, Jarman said.
But over time, they saw their efforts produce little action — one reason the group has stepped up its tactics, she said.
“As Christians, we should be prepared to make any sacrifice necessary to serve and protect God’s creation,” Jarman said.
Father Martin Newell, 51, a Catholic priest who works with the Congregation of the Passion, a religious order devoted to serving vulnerable communities, has been committed to activist causes for decades, having previously advocated against nuclear arms and weapons trading.
These days, however, Newell — who lives at Birmingham’s Austin Smith House, a shelter for refugees and asylum seekers — is also working with the Christian Climate Action.
“I realized when someone asked what keeps me up at night [that] I was having nightmares about climate change,” he said.
When the group asked Newell, who has been arrested many times as part of protests, how to get started taking a more active role in climate campaigning, “I thought this is maybe an answer to my prayer,” he said.
The priest has since educated members of the group on how to effectively use civil disobedience tactics and has become an active member of the group.
In late February, Christian Climate Action held a training session in London that featured everything from prayer and discussions about what the Bible says about non-violent action to practice with protest tactics, according to a flier for the event.
At such events, 83-year-old Kingston said he has “gained much clarity about the nuances of non-violent direct action,” including how to best interact with the police and other authorities.
“Being respectful in word and deed to all persons is the essential component,” he said.
Disapproval
Not all of the Christian Climate Action protesters have had the support of their churches, and some say they have faced strong disapproval.
Kingston’s priest, for instance, was “rather horrified” when the parishioner was sent to court in 2016 for criminal damage, stemming from a protest during which Jarman and Newell were also arrested and fined, Kingston said.
The activists had targeted the Department of Energy and Climate Change building in London, to point out that the U.K. government’s action at home on climate change didn’t match its rhetoric at talks leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“We painted whitewash — it’s from the Bible, it comes from Jesus talking about hypocrisy — on the building, and we painted in black paint, ‘Department for Extreme Climate Change,'” Jarman said.
“Then we kneeled down on the pavement and prayed, and got arrested.”
Kingston subsequently was banned him “from any kind of public face with the parish” by his priest at the time, the activist said.
But he has pushed ahead, contacting other parishioners through his private email and becoming increasingly public with his views.
“I don’t care — the stakes are too high. The church should be much more upfront and brave,” he said.
The protester said he began seeing climate change as a serious threat when his first grandchild was born nearly two decades ago.
He realized that “my grandchildren and all their generations in front of them … are voiceless” despite being likely to face climate change’s worst impacts, he said.
“It’s a justice issue. The upcoming generations need life, and we are creating tremendous suffering” by destabilizing the planet’s climate, he said.
He said having older protesters working alongside young activists in the Extinction Rebellion protests has its particular benefits.
“What we’ve realised is neither the corporations nor the government want to arrest us,” he said. “We are a liability in terms of health.”
The activists say their protests aim to achieve a few things in particular: big cuts in Britain’s climate-changing emissions, more honesty from politicians about climate threats, and the creation of a formal parliamentary “Citizen’s Assembly” to discuss needed changes to climate policy and advise the government.
The assembly is crucial in order to “do what is right rather than what is politically acceptable,” Jarman said.
But the protest movement is having a secondary effect as well, Jarman said, in bringing together people who might not otherwise have met and joined forces.
Mothiur Rahman, a legal strategist who works with Extinction Rebellion, for instance, said protesters who are members of faith groups have asked their churches to house out-of-town participants arriving to take part in a new round of protests set to begin April 15.
“One church has given their support and will have their doors open for us to sleep over in, and I am speaking to a mosque as well,” Rahman added.
Newell said he thinks faith-based protesters have found a solid welcome among more traditional environmental activists, and have a role to play as climate protests grow.
“The people who started Extinction Rebellion, and environmentalists, tend to be more secular. But they understand faith and trusting God and are open to people joining them,” the priest said.
“We appreciate them and they appreciate us,” he said.
After generations of trawling the same waters, the fishermen on the coast of Tamil Nadu in southeastern India know where to cast a net or park a boat without resorting to signs or GPS maps.
But their customary rights over this common space – a right won by families who have fished it for centuries – are under threat as the demands of modern life threaten age-old livelihoods and their once fertile habitat.
First, families’ land and precious sea access was usurped by factories and ports. Now, their rights are under fresh attack by a newly amended Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) law.
“Governments have treated the coastline as an empty space that economic actors can take over, forgetting that it is common property of coastal villages, towns and cities,” said Kanchi Kohli, a researcher at think tank Center for Policy Research.
“The changes to the law negate the socio-ecological uniqueness of this space and opens it up to mindless real estate development, mass-scale tourism and industry,” she said.
R.L. Srinivasan, who lives in Kaatukuppam – one of half a dozen villages by Ennore Creek near the city of Chennai – is typical of the fishermen under threat.
The Ennore Creek is drained by two seasonal rivers that empty into the Bay of Bengal through a network of canals, wetlands, salt marshes and mangroves, where villagers once harvested salt, caught crabs and filled their nets with fish.
Home to about 300,000 people, the area was protected by state and federal coastal zone laws, which banned construction, reclamation or alteration of the course of the water bodies.
But as Chennai expanded and industries fled the city, the state greenlighted ports, coal-powered thermal plants, and petroleum and chemicals factories, which destroyed the salt pans, polluted the water and killed the fish and the crabs.
“The Creek has been our life, our livelihood for generations,” said Srinivasan.
“Yet for the government, it is just land that can be used as an industrial zone and a dumping ground. The lives and livelihoods of the fishers do not matter,” he said.
Millions at risk
It is a scene playing out in thousands of coastal settlements dotting India’s 7,500-kilometer- (4,660 mile-) shoreline, from remote rural hamlets to bustling urban colonies.
With reduced no-development zones, and laxer rules for real estate and commercial projects, the new CRZ opens up common-use spaces such as beaches, salt marshes, and boat parking areas for tourism and industry, according to analysts.
More than 4 million people in India are estimated to make a living from fishing and related activities. They are often among the nation’s earliest inhabitants, yet have few formal rights over the land or the water on which they depend.
Amid urbanization and industrialization, India’s coasts have become dumping grounds for sewage, garbage and factory waste, even as they fight the rising threat of erosion and flooding.
The Congress party-led government sought to protect the fishing community and preserve their ecology by enacting the CRZ law in 2011.
But several states diluted it, so as to promote tourism and industry and generate jobs. In 2014, a new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a review of the CRZ.
Despite protests from coast dwellers and environmentalists, a cut in the no-development zones was announced in January, allowing eco-tourism and waste treatment in sensitive areas.
The government says the law was amended to “conserve and protect the unique environment of coastal stretches and marine areas, besides livelihood security to the fisher communities and other local communities in coastal areas.”
But life is about to get much harder for Srinivasan and his fellow anglers, said Pooja Kumar at the advocacy Coastal Resource Center in Chennai.
“Coastal communities are hanging by a thread,” she said. “The communities have fished and lived in these areas for generations, but with no record of their common spaces, their fishing grounds, they are extremely vulnerable.”
Mapping
Their one hope may be the modern mapping methods they once shunned.
The Coastal Resource Center began mapping coastal villages in Tamil Nadu about five years ago, using handheld GPS devices to mark common spaces – including where fishermen parked their boats and dried the catch – then plotting the spots on a map.
These maps are then sent to district and state officials for their approval, so they can be integrated into official maps under the coastal zone management plan.
Kumar and her colleagues have mapped about 75 of Tamil Nadu’s 650 coastal villages so far.
Not all their maps have been integrated with official survey maps, but they have been used to resolve disputes between fishing communities, and helped stop the construction of a road that would have passed through a coastal settlement, she said.
“The mapping gives the community a sense of confidence and security. They are seen as people with rights, rather than as encroachers,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “There is an urgent need to map the coastal commons. It is the most effective tool for assertion of the community rights.”
Of some 677 ongoing Indian land conflicts documented by research organization Land Conflict Watch, nearly a third involve commons, including forests, grazing lands and coasts.
But with no legal protection for the coastal commons, mapping them and having the states recognize them will still not protect them under the new CRZ notification, said Kohli.
The Congress party, in a manifesto released ahead of a general election starting on April 11, has vowed to reverse the dilutions of the CRZ, and preserve the coasts without affecting the livelihoods of fishing communities.
That may be Kaatukuppam’s only hope, after the state in 2017 released a map that did not show most of Ennore Creek. In its place stood land earmarked for a petrochemical park.
“We have seen the crabs disappear, the fish disappear. We had never seen a river disappear,” Srinivasan said. “But it is not just us who are suffering; people should realize this sort of development hurts everyone.”
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U.S. federal agents have smashed a worldwide medical care scheme that defrauded U.S. taxpayers of more than $1 billion.
The Justice Department said Tuesday 24 people have been charged, including doctors, telemarketers and the heads of companies that provide back, wrist and knee braces.
“This Department of Justice will not tolerate medical professionals and executives who look to line their pockets by cheating our health care programs,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said Tuesday.
The extensive and complex scheme stretched from the U.S. to call centers in the Philippines and across Latin America.
Telemarketers would phone patients offering them free medical braces. When call centers verified that the patients were covered by Medicare, they were transferred to telemedicine companies, where doctors — who never examined the patients — would prescribe the braces even if there was no medical reason to have one.
The medical equipment companies would bill the government and kickback a portion of the funds to the others in the scam.
The fraud was detected last year when a number of Medicare beneficiaries smelled what sounded like a scam and called a government hotline.
The FBI, Health and Human Services, and Internal Revenue Service investigated.
“The breadth of this nationwide conspiracy should be frightening to all who rely on some form of health care,” IRS investigations chief Don Fort said. “The conspiracy … details broad corruption, massive amounts of greed and systemic flaws in our health care system that were exploited by the defendants.”
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President Donald Trump will issue two executive orders in the heart of the Texas energy hub on Wednesday seeking to speed gas, coal and oil projects delayed by coastal states as he looks to build support ahead of next year’s election.
Trump’s orders will direct his Environmental Protection Agency to change a part of the U.S. clean water law that has allowed states, on the basis of environmental reasons, to delay projects such as pipelines to carry natural gas to New England and coal export terminals on the West Coast.
Trump will issue the orders at a training center for union members in the petroleum industry in Houston, an event sandwiched between fundraising events in Texas for the 2020 campaign.
“Outdated federal guidance and regulations issued by the EPA have caused confusion and uncertainty leading to project delays, lost jobs and reduced economic performance,” a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. “We are not trying to take away power from the states, but we are trying to make sure that state actions comply with the statutory intent of the law.”
An environmentalist decried the planned orders. “Trump can try to rewrite regulations in favor of Big Oil, but he can’t stop people power and our movement,” said May Boeve, the head of 350.org.
The orders will direct the EPA to review and update guidance issued during the administration of President Barack Obama on the so-called 401 provision of the Clean Water Act. The measure required companies to get certifications from states before building interstate pipelines approved by the federal government.
New York state used it to block pipelines that would send natural gas to New England, forcing the region at times to import liquefied natural gas from countries including Russia.
In 2017, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat and 2020 candidate for president, denied a water permit for the Millennium Bulk Terminal, a coal export facility that would have expanded the ability of companies to send western coal to Asian markets.
‘Energy Dominance’
The executive orders are part of the Trump administration’s policy of “energy dominance” to increase oil, gas and coal production, but forcing the EPA changes will take time. The official said the agency would have to follow normal procedures, including a comment period, and that projects already tied up in litigation “are obviously a much longer-term issue.”
One of the orders will direct the transportation secretary to propose allowing liquefied natural gas, a liquid form of the fuel, to be shipped in approved rail cars, a change that could increase its flow between terminals and markets.
The executive orders could also speed projects in Texas.
Energy investors vying for permits to build oil export terminals along the Gulf Coast say they have worked closely with Trump officials in a bid to speed regulatory reviews of facilities capable of loading supertankers.
U.S. and state agencies overseeing permit applications have taken too long to approve projects, the investors said, adding they were worried their projects would miss the most profitable years of the U.S. crude export boom.
Four energy groups led by Trafigura AG, Carlyle Group, Enterprise Products Partners LP and Enbridge have applied to build terminals in Texas.
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Rob Garver contributed to this report
The top Senate Democrat says President Donald Trump’s picks to fill two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve Board are unqualified for the job.
Trump has nominated former pizza chain boss Herman Cain and conservative economic commentator Stephen Moore for the Fed — posts that need Senate confirmation. Both are strong Trump supporters.
“I don’t see the qualifications of Cain or Moore fitting in with the mission of the Fed, which is to conduct monetary policy and not be political,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.
Cain is best known as the former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain and a failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
He had several top positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. But local Fed boards do not set monetary policy and do not have the global impact that the main Federal Reserve has.
Stephen Moore was a Trump campaign economic adviser and is a TV commentator and columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Opponents to their nominations say they could compromise the Fed’s credibility as an independent policymaking body that responds only to economic trends, not politics.
Chief White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNN television that Cain and Moore are both “very smart people” and said Trump has “every right to put people on the Federal Reserve board … who share his philosophy.”
But Cain has faced charges of sexual harassment, which he denies, and Moore owes more than $75,000 in back taxes. He was once found in contempt of court for failing to pay $300,000 in alimony and child support.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has not commented on the qualifications of either man, only saying “We’re going to look at whoever the president sends up.”
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China and the European Union agreed Tuesday to strengthen their trade relationship, pledging to work toward making it easier for foreign investors to get access to China, the world’s second biggest economy.
In a joint statement, the two sides said they committed to widening market access and eliminating discriminatory requirements for foreign companies and agreed that businesses should not be forced to transfer their technology — issues that foreign investors in China have long complained about.
EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang discussed the issues at their summit before claiming a breakthrough in their trade relationship.
“Negotiations have been difficult but ultimately fruitful,” Tusk said.” We managed to agree a joint statement which sets the direction for our partnership based on reciprocity.”
The stakes at the annual summit were high, with two-way trade between the EU and China worth around 575 billion euros ($648 billion) annually. The EU is China’s biggest trading partner, while for the EU, only the United States is bigger.
The EU and China also said they reaffirmed the “rules based multilateral trading system” with the World Trade Organization at its core and plan to intensify discussions aimed at beefing up international rules on industrial subsidies.
China wants a bigger role in the WTO and other international organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. But China’s ample financial support for state-owned companies has been the target of Western trade officials. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom has in the past called out China for “unfair trade practices” including government subsidies intended to give its companies a competitive advantage.
The summit statement shows “China is willing to make some concessions and that’s important,” said Mikko Huotari, deputy director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin-based think tank. The promises don’t mean China will quickly transform from a state-led economy into a market driven one, but “it’s about getting back on track with regard to reform promises and ambitions that the Chinese themselves have expressed,” he said.
The leaders discussed China’s policy of forcing foreign companies to turn over intellectual property as a condition for access to its big and growing market — an issue that Washington has also made a centerpiece of its trade dispute with Beijing.
In their closing statement, they said: “Both sides agree that there should not be forced transfer of technology.”
The EU in December stepped up a WTO legal challenge filed in 2018 against China’s forced tech transfers, calling it a major issue affecting European companies.
Li strongly denied that Beijing is behind industrial espionage, saying the government has never called on Chinese companies to infringe intellectual property rights or steal trade secrets.
The EU’s executive Commission said last month in a strategy report that China was a “systemic rival” which preserves its domestic markets for national champions while placing “onerous requirements” on EU companies doing business there.
Li said after the summit that will change.
“We will not treat EU companies, especially those registered in China, with discriminatory policy, including solely foreign-owned companies in China,” he said. “And likewise Chinese companies should not be discriminated against in their operation in the European Union.”
The summit comes two weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during a visit to Paris to work with European leaders to seek fairer trade rules.
The first woman to head one of Bangladesh’s biggest garment associations said on Tuesday she would boost female leadership as most factory workers were women, amid scrutiny over safety.
Rubana Huq, 55, is managing director of Mohammadi Group, which owns a string of factories supplying brands like H&M and Primark in Bangladesh, the world’s second largest garment exporter, employing 4 million people.
“I believe that in an industry where more than 80 percent of the workers are women, they should be given a greater chance to voice their interests,” said Huq, the new president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
“Today, the workforce is largely women but people in the managerial levels are mostly men. That needs to change.”
In Bangladesh’s 4,500 factories, women have traditionally had to negotiate with male managers over pay, workplace safety and respect on the job, a fact Huq wants to change.
Her election comes at a time when Bangladesh’s Supreme Court is deciding whether to shut down a factory inspection mechanism which was set up by European fashion labels after the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in 2013, killing 1,100 people.
Huq said that manufacturers needed to strengthen their own monitoring mechanisms to help the government take over from the Bangladesh Accord – signed by about 200 major brands.
The textile magnate, who was elected unopposed, said her decision to represent manufacturers and exporters was a natural extension of her two-decade career in the industry, where she is one of a handful of senior female executives.
“As a woman there is always a hiccup and always a mindset to change,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Dhaka.
“But I’m here now and, being a woman, I believe my attitude towards the challenges faced by women workers will be different and more empathetic.”
Huq said she planned to educate women workers to secure their futures and step up to mid-managerial levels in factories.
“I would like to have a gender-based leadership program that ensures more women are empowered to take on these roles,” said Huq, who is also an award-winning poet and columnist.
She dismissed allegations of labor abuse in the industry as “isolated, negative practices”.
“The fact that 80 percent of our women are freely working and contributing to the economy is a much bigger narrative,” she said.
Labor rights campaigners said that while Huq had broken through the glass ceiling for women, her loyalties – as head of Mohammadi Group – were more to businesses than workers.
“Her election is good but I am not sure how much impact she will have in an organization that is still dominated by men,” said Nazma Akter, a former child worker and founder of Awaj Foundation, which campaigns for labor rights.
“I wish she would look at issues of living wages, health of workers, maternity benefits and violence in factories.”
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The International Monetary Fund is downgrading its outlook for growth in the United States, Europe, Japan and the overall global economy and points to heightened trade tensions as a key reason.
The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018. That would match 2016 for the weakest year since 2009. In its previous forecast in January, the IMF had predicted that international growth would reach 3.5 percent this year.
For the United States, IMF economists downgraded their growth forecast for this year to 2.3 percent from 2.9 percent in 2018.
The IMF’s “World Economic Outlook” comes on the eve of meetings in Washington this week of the fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank.
In Europe, the IMF expects the 19 countries that use the euro currency to expand 1.3 percent collectively in 2019, weaker than last year’s 1.8 percent growth or in any year since 2013.
Japan is expected to eke out 1 percent growth this year, up from 0.8% in 2018 but slightly down from the fund’s earlier forecast.
The IMF foresees the Chinese economy growing 6.3 percent this year, down from 6.6 percent in 2018. But the fund’s latest 2019 outlook was a slight upgrade from the 6.2 percent growth it had forecast for China in January.
China’s prospects brightened, the fund said, after President Donald Trump decided to suspend a planned increase in tariffs on $200 billion worth of U.S.-bound Chinese exports.
Still, the fund is expressing worries about tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, which have traded tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of products in a fight over China’s aggressive push to supplant American technological supremacy. The prospect of Britain’s messy departure from the European Union also weighs on the global economy.
The IMF expects growth in world trade to drop to 3.4 percent this year — a sharp slowdown from the 4 percent it had expected in January and from 3.8 percent trade growth in 2018.
President Donald Trump says the United States will impose new tariffs on more than $11 billion worth of exports from the European Union, after the World Trade Organization ruled last year the EU was illegally subsidizing aircraft maker Airbus.
The WTO, in a decision last May, ruled the European countries had given $22 billion in state aid to Airbus to help build its A380 and A350 jets, damaging its U.S. rival, Boeing.
Trump said Tuesday that since the WTO had ruled that the subsidies had “adversely impacted the United States,” it “will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!”
Trump’s declaration aside, the new list of tariffs would not take effect until after a WTO arbiter rules on the allowable size of the tariff package, a decision not expected for several months.
The European Union and the United States have for years disputed each other’s reciprocal subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, long predating Trump’s 27-month presidency. At various times, the WTO has ruled against both.
In first announcing the proposed $11.2 billion in U.S. tariffs on European exports on Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said, “This case has been in litigation for 14 years, and the time has come for action. Our ultimate goal is to reach an agreement with the EU to end all WTO-inconsistent subsidies to large civil aircraft.”
He added, “When the EU ends these harmful subsidies, the additional U.S. duties imposed in response can be lifted.”
The U.S. Trade Representative’s list of products subject to new tariffs extends to 14 pages, including a number of civil aviation products, including Airbus, along with new levies on such food products as swordfish, salmon, cheeses, olive oil and wines, and clothes.
The United States said once the WTO issues its report on the allowable size of the tariffs, it would issue a final list of affected goods.
The European Union and the United States have been working toward a new trade deal after Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed last July that no new tariffs would be imposed while the two sides are negotiating.
The ongoing dispute over aircraft subsidies is occurring as Boeing is facing a weeks-long crisis over the worldwide grounding of its fleet of 737 Max aircraft while authorities investigate the cause of crashes of the jetliner in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed all 346 passengers and crew members aboard the two aircraft.
It’s minus eight degrees Celsius on a late winter morning in western Massachusetts. But electrician Ed Martell is on the job, helping build an 8,000-panel solar farm outside the town of Wales, 110 kilometers southwest of Boston.
Martell says solar installations have been going nonstop for the past several years.
“I thought it was going to be a flash in the pan a couple years ago,” he told VOA. “I’ve seen solar keep going and going and going.”
Although sunshine is not the first image that comes to mind in connection with Massachusetts, policy decisions have propelled the state to third place nationwide in solar jobs, behind sunny California and Florida, which is known as the Sunshine State.
Martell says the industry has been growing at a time when there has not been much other work for electricians.
“If it wasn’t for solar, there would have been a two-year period when I wouldn’t have worked at all,” he added. “So, yes, it’s very good for us.”
Greenhouse gases
As the planet heats up, experts say the world needs to stop burning the fossil fuels that have powered civilization for centuries and switch to energy sources that do not release greenhouse gases that drive up the Earth’s temperature and produce weather extremes.
The transition will not be easy. There will be winners and losers, economists say.
The smokestack and the rusting remains of the 1960s-turquoise turbine are the last identifiable remains of the Mount Tom Station coal-fired power plant located 145 kilometers west of Boston in Holyoke, Mass.
Former maintenance engineer Clancy Kaye kept the plant running for more than 30 years.
But between expensive environmental upgrades, the plunging price of natural gas, and concerns from neighborhood groups about climate change and air pollution, the plant’s owners pulled the plug in 2014.
They then built one of the largest solar farms with battery storage in New England just down the street.
Eighty people worked at Mount Tom at its peak. When it finally closed in 2014, the number was down to 28. Some of them retired. The company offered a generous severance package, Kaye said. But about a dozen employees had to take other jobs with 30 percent to 50 percent pay cuts and fewer benefits.
“It’s been really a very rude awakening for many people who used to make some very good money. And some very highly skilled people,” Kaye said.
As coal-fired plants close across the country, he added, “the good jobs — and I mean good paying, good benefits, good pension — those jobs are virtually all going away for your average middle-class person.”
More than half of the 530 coal-fired power plants that were running in 2010 have shut down or plan to by 2030, according to the Sierra Club, an Oakland, California-based environmental group.
There have been losses in Massachusetts.
Winners in state policy
But experts say the state’s policies to fight climate change have created more winners.
While Congress and the White House have feuded for years about what, if anything, to do, Republican and Democratic leaders in the Bay State have taken innovative steps to reduce greenhouse gases.
In 2008, Massachusetts was among the first U.S. states to set a greenhouse gas reduction target. By mid-century, the state aims to have cut emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels.
Accompanying legislation requires utilities to buy increasing amounts of renewable energy and charges power companies for carbon pollution. The state created aggressive programs to promote energy efficiency.
“Some detractors did say that this is going to turn the economy upside down, this is going to cost people more,” said Mark Sylvia, former Massachusetts energy resources commissioner.
“But in fact,” he said, “it did the exact opposite.”
With a clear signal from the government, the market responded. Clean energy is now a $13 billion industry in Massachusetts. Its workforce has grown 84 percent since 2010. The sector now employs more than 110,000 workers, three percent of the state’s workforce.
In Washington, the climate debate is polarized between Democrats calling for an end to fossil fuels and Republicans saying these proposals will destroy jobs, when they acknowledge the problem at all. Only recently did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky acknowledge that human activities are responsible for climate change.
Climate policy
But Massachusetts’ Republican Gov. Charlie Baker took over from a Democrat, Deval Patrick, and held firm on climate policy.
“In Massachusetts, climate change is not a partisan issue,” Baker told the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources in February.
“While we sometimes disagree on specific policies,” he added, “we understand the science and know the impacts are real because we’re experiencing them firsthand.”
Baker noted that since he took office in 2015, the state has suffered damage from record snowfall, record storm flooding and record drought. Rising temperatures have hurt the state’s winter sports industry and fisheries.
“While many of these challenges are not new, they are more frequent and more damaging than ever,” he said.
Baker’s position on climate change has evolved since his unsuccessful 2010 run for governor. At that time, he told The Boston Globe newspaper he was “not smart enough to believe that I know” whether humans were responsible for global warming.
But in his testimony, he called for a federal target for greenhouse gas emission reductions, a proposal congressional Republicans have repeatedly rejected.
He noted that since the state set its target in 2008, “far from being an economic burden, we have seen close to a 70 percent increase over 1990 levels” in the state economy.
Baker recently rolled out an updated incentive program for solar power and is planning major offshore wind installations that are expected to create 3,600 local jobs.
And to pursue the jobs of the future, the state has provided more than $2 million in loans and grants to Greentown Labs, a business incubator for startups working on clean technologies.
The growth will not help everyone, however.
In the power generation business, “if you want to know where the jobs are, take an aerial view of the parking lot,” said Donnie Colston, head of the utility department at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
A coal plant may have 150 to 200 cars in the lot, Colston said.
Workers
But a solar farm? No parking lot.
“We have members that will clean them, they’ll maintain them, they’ll make sure that they’re running properly,” Colston said. “But that’s not a full-time job.”
Environmentalists pushing to close coal-fired power plants are sympathetic to the threat of lost jobs.
From freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to local Sierra Club chapters, activists are calling for a “just transition” for displaced workers in fossil fuel industries — job retraining and other measures to cushion the blow.
But the workers don’t want to hear it.
“They want you to have a soft landing and a just transition,” said Kaye, the former Mount Tom coal plant worker, “but they have the saw in their hand that’s cutting the branch that you’re sitting on.”
Massachusetts closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2017. While the transition has been hard on many of his colleagues, Kaye is not bitter. He started a pool installation company that’s expanding.
He said he always knew the plant wasn’t helping the environment. And change happens.
“We used to say coal is king, King Coal. But it’s just not that way anymore,” he said. “And all in all, I think that’s probably a good thing.”
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