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Post Number One (10/18/2019) Trump administration sues California over cap-and-trade agreement with Canada

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Post Number One (10/18/2019) Trump administration sues California over cap-and-trade agreement with Canada

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This Article talks about the White House suing California for over stepping their authority on making agreements internationally with Quebec, Canada. In 2013 California and Canada came into an agreement of regulating gas emissions and polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. The Cap-and-trade agreement caps the amount of pollution California can make causing companies to reduce pollution standards or if they pass the cap, they have to buy state auctioned permits that allows them to pollute. The Trump administration claims that this agreement can come between the Presidents future ability to negotiate with other countries.
This article shows how politics can come between environmental factors. California wants to reduce pollution and Trump administration cares more about the political leverage they have, even though we all live on this earth and we have to take accountability for our actions.

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The Trump administration took aim Wednesday at one of California's premier climate change policies, suing the state for entering into a cap-and-trade agreement with the Canadian province of Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions.

The lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice argues that California overstepped its legal authority by forging an agreement with another country designed to limit air pollution and climate-warming greenhouse gases. Only the federal government has this power, according to the suit. Also named as defendants are state's top air quality regulator and the Western Climate Initiative, a nonprofit group California created with neighboring states to promote similar policies.

"The state of California has veered outside of its proper constitutional lane to enter into an international emissions agreement," said Assistant Atty. Gen. Jeffrey Bossert Clark of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement. "California's unlawful cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec undermines the President's ability to negotiate competitive agreements with other nations, as the President sees fit," Clark added.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement criticizing the lawsuit as another episode in what he called the Trump administration's ongoing "political vendetta against California."

"For years our state has proudly participated in a number of environmental partnerships that tackle the devastating effects of climate change to our health and economy," the governor said. "This latest attack shows that the White House has its head in the sand when it comes to climate change and serves no purpose other than continued political retribution."

The Trump administration has steadily escalated its attacks against California's ability to crack down on air and water pollution. In September, it revoked a decades-old rule that empowered California to set tougher car emissions standards than those required by the federal government, prompting the state to file a lawsuit in response. Then, in the span of about a week, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency sent letters threatening to cut federal highway funding for California over alleged Clean Air Act violations and accusing the state of failing to protect its water.

In addition, the Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into whether four automakers violated federal competition law by reaching a voluntary emissions agreement with California.

California's cap-and-trade program has been in operation since 2013 and is considered essential if the state is to meet its targets for reducing carbon pollution.

The program works by establishing an annual limit, or a cap, on nearly all of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. California oil refineries, cement plants and other industries can meet this requirement by either lowering their emissions or buying state-auctioned permits that allow them to pollute. These permits can then be bought and sold within an open market - the "trade" part of the program.

The theory underlying the program is that as the emissions cap is lowered, companies will find it more cost effective to decarbonize rather than continue to pay for pollution permits.

Quebec has participated in the program from the beginning, expanding the size of the emissions-trading market. Companies in California can trade carbon emission allowances with companies in Quebec.

David Wright, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, who has studied California's agreement with Quebec, said that while there is some case law supporting the Trump administration's legal argument, "the case is extremely far from a slam dunk."

"I would suggest that this litigation will not be successful because the cap-and-trade regime was carefully structured to not have key characteristics of formal international agreements," he said. "Even if unsuccessful, though, this litigation is problematic because it will affect market confidence in this emissions trading regime."

Wright added that the administration's lawsuit could ultimately backfire. If courts uphold the California-Quebec agreement, it could encourage other states to join.

Other legal experts said Trump may have weakened his administration's own case by announcing plans to withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement on climate change, under which nearly 200 countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is deeply ironic for the United States to make an argument that California is interfering with the United States' ability to conduct foreign policy on greenhouse gas emissions when it has no foreign policy on greenhouse gas emissions," said Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA.

California's cap-and-trade program has raised billions of dollars since its launch through the auction of pollution permits. But so far, the program is not a major driver of cuts in greenhouse gases - most of which are being achieved through other, more traditional regulations including those on fuels, vehicles and power generation.

This has prompted some state lawmakers and other critics to question the program's stringency, and whether an oversupply of allowances will be an obstacle to its efficacy.

Regardless, California regulators say the program's role must increase dramatically in the coming years if the state is to meet its ambitious target of slashing greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The state Air Resources Board's plan calls for cap-and-trade to become the single biggest driver of emissions reductions by 2030, responsible for more than one-third of emissions cuts.

The state's plan to achieve its 2030 climate goal not only depends on a more stringent cap-and-trade program with a continually declining cap on emissions, but also calls for preserving the program's linkage with Quebec as well as "future linkages with other jurisdictions, thus facilitating international action to address climate change."

Though California officials hoped the program would spread to other states, that has not been the case. An attempt in Oregon to pass cap-and-trade legislation fell apart over the summer after Republican senators fled the state to avoid a vote on the measure and Democrats lost support for the bill within their own caucus.

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Trump administration sues California over cap-and-trade agreement with Canada

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The Trump administration took aim Wednesday at one of California's premier climate change policies, suing the state for entering into a cap-and-trade agreement with the Canadian province of Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions. The lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice argues that California overstepped its legal authority by forging an agreement with another country designed to limit air pollution and climate-warming greenhouse gases.

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Post #2 (10/19/2019) Chinese demand heats up Brazil’s ethanol industry

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Post #2 (10/19/2019) Chinese demand heats up Brazil’s ethanol industry

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This article talks about how China will be adding ethanol fuel into their gasoline which is currently all petrol fuel. China has the most cars on the road which is 332 million cars. China will be importing vast quantities of ethanol fuel from brazil, they have a very big market for ethanol fuel there. Environmentalists are optimistic on adding ethanol fuel to Chinese petrol and will cut greenhouse gas emissions. Although it will be great for the environment in some ways, their will be consequences because the biofuel industry requires large maize and sugarcane plantations that can encroach on forests.
This is a tricky situation because China integrating ethanol fuel into their market reduces fossil fuel, on the flip side the production of corn and cane sugar can damage forests. The WTO is working on taking away tariffs for the exports from Brazil to China, but what we see here is a good attempt to make the environment better and reduce global warming.

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(Image: Jonathan Wilkins)

There are 332 million cars on the road in China, more than anywhere in the world. Most run on pure petrol, but from next year Chinese fuel companies will add 10% ethanol, a move that could have far reaching implications for the consumption of fossil fuels.

Brazil's biofuel industry is the world's second largest behind the US. In recent years it has suffered from fuel price shocks resulting from shifts in government policy, but it has been buoyed by the enormous potential of the Chinese market.

In May, China and Brazil resolved a Brazilian complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about Chinese tariffs on sugar, paving the way for greater imports. Brazilian farmers also expect the agreement to open the door for more Brazilian ethanol.

Environmentalists are optimistic that adding ethanol to Chinese petrol will cut greenhouse gas emissions but they are wary of unintended consequences because the biofuel industry requires large maize and sugarcane plantations that can encroach on forests.

"There is the risk of trading one problem - fossil fuels - for one that is much worse: deforestation," said Ricardo Junqueira Fujii, a conservation analyst at NGO WWF-Brazil.

He added that the country's potential to produce low-carbon fuel could double without compromising food production.

Brazil has a responsibility to define adequate public policies for land use and conservation of the Amazon, Cerrado, and other Brazilian biomes, Fujii said.

Cleaner fuel

The Chinese government announced the new biofuel quota in September 2017 as part of its commitment to reduce fossil fuel consumption under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

"Adding it increases the degree of octane in the fuel, improving mileage. It avoids the use of heavy metals (especially lead), and reduces global carbon dioxide emissions," said ldo Sauer of the University of São Paulo.

However, planting crops to produce ethanol can bring about a change in land use, Brazil's main source of emissions.

Since 2009, Brazil has had a process of Agro-Ecological Sugarcane Zoning that blocks cane fields from encroaching onto indigenous lands or areas of native vegetation. It can only be planted on degraded pastures.

However, the ruralista agribusiness caucus in Brazil's legislature has pushed to change the law.

In 2017, Senator Flexa Ribeiro proposed a bill to clear land in the Cerrado savannah and grassland areas within the Amazon region. Protests from environmentalists and even some farmers eventually led to the proposal being shelved last year.

The region earmarked for sugarcane expansion is not the Amazon but the area known as Matopiba that straddles the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia in the Cerrado, which is already impacted by the expansion of soy farming.

Oversight agencies are struggling to keep pace with developments as they are still fighting to implement existing protections.

In 2014, the Brazilian government started implementing a rural environment registration programme for farmers to register their land, thereby making it easier for law enforcement to trace illegal deforestation on private property. But five years later, many farms are still unregistered.

"The deadline for rural environment registration has been delayed several times, and compliance with environmental regularisation programmes, where farmers present their plans to resolve any identified environmental risks, is low," said Fujii.

There are also labour concerns. The harvest is mostly mechanised, which has reduced slave labour in cane fields but increased unemployment in rural areas.

According to the University of São Paulo's Centre for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics (CEPEA), cane production formally employs approximately 750,000 people in Brazil, some 42% fewer than the 1,283,258 formal workers registered in 2008.

Nonetheless, Eduardo Leão, executive director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA), told Diálogo Chino that the economic benefits are undeniable.

"The sugarcane energy sector is an important source of employment and income. In each municipality where a plant is installed, the per capita income increases by US$1,000 per year," he said.

Opportunities for Brazil

China is expected to consume 15 million tonnes of biofuels in the coming year. The country currently has the capacity to produce approximately three million tonnes annually, a figure that could hit five million in 2020, according to market data provider IHS Markit.

This would leave a shortfall of around 10 million tonnes, which could allow Brazil, whose largest trading partner is China, to become a leading supplier. Brazil's domestic ethanol production for the 2018/2019 season was around 33.1 million tonnes.

"The prospects are excellent," said Artur Yabe Milanez, head of biofuels at Brazilian development bank BNDES. "For years, Brazil has tried to open the Chinese market to ethanol, and it appears that the efforts are now paying off."

Brazil is also capable of producing diverse biofuel crops and is turning to maize as an alternative to sugarcane, which has traditionally been used for domestic production.

"The sector receives large investments, especially in Mato Grosso and Goiás, including [for] flex mills that run on maize and sugarcane," explained Ricardo Tomczyk, president of the National Union of Maize Ethanol (UNEM).

Tomczyk added that China is making preparations to produce its own ethanol from imported raw materials but there may be limits to its production capacity, which would create opportunities for Brazil.

Food vs fuel

Following a biofuels boom a decade ago that coincided with a spike in global food prices, there is still some unease about the industry.

"The addition of ethanol to petrol has been mandatory in Brazil since 1938, and since that time there has been bargaining with sugarcane producers," Sauer said. "When sugar prices on the international market were bad, there was pressure to increase the level of ethanol in petrol, and this still happens today."

A recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report highlighted how biofuels can drive up crop prices when oil prices rise.

However, the debate is less heated than in 2012, when then FAO chief José Graziano da Silva, said the use of corn for ethanol in the US was increasing grain prices the world over. He later softened his stance.

"We need to move from the food versus fuel debate to a food and fuel debate. There is no question: food comes first," Graziano said in 2015. "But biofuels should not be simply seen as a threat or as a magical solution. Like anything else, they can do good or bad."
This article was first published on Diálogo Chino

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Chinese demand heats up Brazil's ethanol industry

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There are 332 million cars on the road in China, more than anywhere in the world. Most run on pure petrol, but from next year Chinese fuel companies will add 10% ethanol, a move that could have far reaching implications for the consumption of fossil fuels.

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Post #3 (10/20/2019) DHS Signs Deal To Send Asylum-Seekers From U.S. Border To Honduras

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Post #3 (10/20/2019) DHS Signs Deal To Send Asylum-Seekers From U.S. Border To Honduras

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This article talks about how the Trump administration recently signed a deal with Honduras to send people seeking asylum in the U.S to Honduras. People coming from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, from Cuba, from other places in south America will be sent back. It was shocking to find that also people immigrating from outside the American continent like people from Bangladesh, India, West Africa or East Africa. Honduras has one of the highest crime rates in the world, there is a lot of gang violence. People from Honduras have been trying to flee the country because they are sick of it not being safe. Trump administration says that the president of Honduras is great although Honduran people say otherwise.
This article shows how people in the global south are always trying to migrate and look for a better life; what happens when they are rejected? people are sent back or just sent to a place nothing like the U.S.

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NPR's Mary Lousie Kelly talks with Clara Long of Human Rights Watch about the Trump administration's agreement that would allow the U.S. to send asylum-seekers from the border to Honduras.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Let's catch up now on a story that got buried in the avalanche of impeachment news these last few days. The story is Honduras, one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America, and an announcement of a deal that would allow U.S. immigration officials to send asylum seekers from the U.S. border to Honduras. This is a so-called asylum cooperation agreement. The Department of Homeland Security signed a similar deal with El Salvador two weeks ago. They signed another one in July with Guatemala. Joining us to talk about the Honduran deal is Clara Long of Human Rights Watch. Welcome.

CLARA LONG: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

KELLY: So I know there are a lot of details still to be figured out here, but in principle, how is this supposed to work? Why does the Trump administration say this is a good idea?

LONG: Well, in principle, this deal would allow the Trump administration to take asylum seekers from the U.S. border and then ship them to Honduras and, from a prior agreement, to El Salvador as well as Guatemala. So that would basically allow the administration, instead of processing these people and providing them a chance to claim protection in the United States, a way to send them away almost immediately.

KELLY: And just to make sure I understand, this would not apply necessarily just to Hondurans. It wouldn't apply - you wouldn't have had to have transited through Honduras. You could show up at the border, claim asylum or ask for asylum and then you would be shipped to Honduras.

LONG: Right. In theory, this wouldn't apply to Hondurans because that would be returning someone to the country from which they fled, but it could apply to people who had either transited Honduras on their way to the U.S. or even people who had not transited Honduras but who would be returned there anyway.

KELLY: So we're talking people - I don't know - coming from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, from Cuba, from other places.

LONG: Right, but you also have a flow of people who are coming from places outside of the, you know, American continent - people from Bangladesh, India, West Africa or East Africa.

KELLY: So they would have reached the U.S. border, and then they would be sent to Honduras, which prompts me to ask, is Honduras a safe place to send these people?

LONG: Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. You have hundreds of thousands of people who are fleeing Honduras because of gang violence. You see these waves of mass migration.

KELLY: Right. I was just checking the numbers, and I saw something like a quarter of a million. More than 250,000 Hondurans crossed the U.S. border just in the last 11 months, suggesting they don't seem to think Honduras is safe.

LONG: No, and you know, the thing about these agreements is that they don't change the underlying conditions in any place that people flee. They just make the harshness of the reception and the potential consequences that much more severe. What the Trump administration is building with these agreements is basically an externalized wall in which it will attempt to keep asylum seekers as far away from the U.S. border as possible.

KELLY: What is in this for Honduras? Why have they agreed to this?

LONG: You know, there is an enormous amount of U.S. power here when it comes to economics. These countries own interests with respect to their nationals in the United States. One of the things I found really notable about the announcement of the El Salvador agreement was that the representative from El Salvador spent the whole time in the press conference talking about El Salvadorans who have temporary protected status in United States and the importance of providing them a way forward in terms of legal status. So they have other sort of chips on the table, including the outcome for their nationals who are already living here, that they're also thinking about.

KELLY: And to circle us back to this latest news, the deal with Honduras, I was noting that in terms of what's going on domestically there - the U.S. prosecutors have just named the president Juan Orlando Hernandez as a coconspirator in this big American drug trafficking case.

LONG: Right. I mean...

KELLY: Do we know if that came up during these negotiations, if the Trump administration took that into account?

LONG: We don't know, or at least I don't know. I haven't seen that reported anywhere, and - but what I did see reported was acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary McAleenan calling Juan Orlando Hernandez a great partner and really praising his action, which seems pretty deaf to the reality of pretty serious allegations.

KELLY: Clara Long, thanks very much.

LONG: Thank you.

KELLY: She is a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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DHS Signs Deal To Send Asylum-Seekers From U.S. Border To Honduras

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NPR's Mary Lousie Kelly talks with Clara Long of Human Rights Watch about the Trump administration's agreement that would allow the U.S. to send asylum-seekers from the border to Honduras. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Let's catch up now on a story that got buried in the avalanche of impeachment news these last few days.

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Post #4 (10/20/2019) Mexico's President Says He Will Not Be Inhumane While Trying To Stem Surge Of Migrants. 

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Post #4 (10/20/2019) Mexico's President Says He Will Not Be Inhumane While Trying To Stem Surge Of Migrants. 

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This Article talks about the migration situation between Mexico and the United States. This is an important topic to me because I have seen many immigrants in San Diego that cross from Tijuana Mexico to the United States. The article highlights that president Trump threatens Mexico that he is going to put tariffs if they don't do anything about the 100,000 immigrants flowing into the United States. Mexico claims that they have been doing everything in there power to capture and deport a lot of immigrants coming from south America and other places. The president of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador explains that they have been and currently acting upon it, the thing is that a lot of immigrants goal is to not stay in Mexico but to continue all the way to the United States. Also they don't have enough resources and men to deal with all the amount of immigrants as well as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to deal with the migrant situation in a humane way.
This article really highlights how immigration is a big deal. The amount of people involved are so many but as well as counties. The United States really sells the American Dream, and people really do go on and try to obtain it.

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Mexico's president says President Trump's threat of tariffs will not stem the flow of migrants from Central America. He says Mexico deports tens of thousands of people a month, but the number getting through is larger.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The president of Mexico says he's doing what he can to stem the surge of migrants flowing north, but he says he will not be inhumane to desperate people. This is in reaction to President Trump's threat of tariffs on Mexican imports unless more is done to stop illegal immigration. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador got right to the point in his regular 7 a.m. weekly press conference. We are fulfilling our migration responsibilities, Lopez Obrador told reporters.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR: (Speaking Spanish).

KAHN: "We're not just standing around with our arms crossed. We have not ignored this painful issue," he said, "a situation that wouldn't happen if justice existed in the world and there wasn't so much poverty and inequality," he added. Lopez Obrador, who campaigned for office by pledging to bring jobs and opportunities to the disenfranchised, insists the way to stop people from migrating is to tackle the root cause of that exodus. He says he will not violate anyone's human rights or be authoritarian, but he says it is wrong to say Mexico is not doing anything.

Mexico has detained and deported tens of thousands of Central Americans during his administration. The latest figures released by Mexico's immigration institute shows that nearly 53,000 migrants were deported in the first five months of this year. That's nearly 20% increase over last year's figures. But while Mexico may be apprehending up to 20,000 a month, nearly 100,000 migrants are being caught each month lately at the U.S. southwest border, according to Customs and Border Patrol figures. Clearly many migrants are passing through Mexico.

Carlos Heredia, an international relations expert at CIDE, a Mexico City university, says that's because the destination for most migrants, especially those from Central America, is the U.S. That's despite promises by Lopez Obrador to give them humanitarian visas and jobs.

CARLOS HEREDIA: They don't want to stay in Mexico. They want to go to the United States because that's where most of their families are, and that's a place where they can save money, not in Mexico.

KAHN: He says Mexico can't fix the problems of poverty and violence in their home countries either. And it's not just migrants from Central America who are now travelling through Mexico. Africans, Cubans and Haitians have been arriving in large numbers lately. This has put a strain on the Mexican immigration institute's long underfunded and ill-equipped workforce, says Alejandro Hope, a Mexican security analyst.

ALEJANDRO HOPE: Its personnel is not necessarily deployed where it's needed. It's not necessarily trained to handle such a big number of people coming through the borders.

KAHN: And, he adds, Mexico has other priorities for its limited resources like fighting drug trafficking, organized crime and halting a record-setting homicide rate. Controlling the surge of migrants headed to the U.S. is not at the top of Lopez Obrador's list these days, he says.

HOPE: The U.S. does not have the resources to stop this. What makes them think that Mexico does have the resources?

KAHN: As Mexico grapples with its security troubles, the threats by President Trump do little to help cooperation agreements and commitments between the U.S. and Mexico in other areas like counterterrorism and drug trafficking, says Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

ROBERTA JACOBSON: It throws an element of confusion into the relationship that I think makes it very difficult to carry out the policies of cooperation that many in the U.S. government want to continue trying to do.

KAHN: Lopez Obrador sent his foreign minister to Washington to show the Trump administration officials that Mexico is doing its part to stop migration. When asked if he had a plan B, Lopez Obrador says, let's just wait a few days and see what happens. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Mexico's President Says He Will Not Be Inhumane While Trying To Stem Surge Of Migrants

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Mexico's president says President Trump's threat of tariffs will not stem the flow of migrants from Central America. He says Mexico deports tens of thousands of people a month, but the number getting through is larger.

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Post #5 (12/2/2019) Russia Begins Sending Natural Gas To China As Putin And Xi Open New Pipeline

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Post #5 (12/2/2019) Russia Begins Sending Natural Gas To China As Putin And Xi Open New Pipeline

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This Article is about Russia and China installing a nature gas pipeline that sends natural gas from a Siberian gas field to a city in northeastern China. The deal is worth $400 billion and was started in 2014. The goal is to make it bigger and longer eventually terminating in Shanghai. That would be a span of more than 5,000 miles, joining 1,864 mile section in Russia with 3,176 miles stretch in China. This will improve on China using more natural gas. There is also a 30-year energy agreement stated that relies on a push to convert China's border city of Heihe from coal to gas. This will minimize greenhouse emotions and will benefit the environment. "Heihe has registered 30,000 households for switching to natural gas for heating". Because parts of china rely on coal as a primary source to create heat, the natural gas pipeline from Russia will really benefit them.
We see her how global countries and trade can be beneficial for the future of improvement. This works both ways because it is better for the environment. I can see how depending on huge projects like these could lead for chaos, but looking at the bright side the Russian natural gas can really benefit China.

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Russia Begins Sending Natural Gas To China As Putin And Xi Open New Pipeline

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When it’s fully completed, the Russia-China pipeline will span more than 5,000 miles, connecting Siberian gas fields to cities in northeastern China that currently rely on coal.

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Post #6 (12/2/2019) With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future?

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Post #6 (12/2/2019) With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future?

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This article talks about how the effects of global warming have put the city of Venice in a difficult situation. This November the floodwaters in Venice have done a lot of damage, more than in the last 50 years. This has caused a lot of people who live in Venice to flee, Venice risks becoming an empty shell sinking under mass tourism. The future of Venice doesn't look good either,  a city that for over a thousand years has built a wonderful equilibrium between a human component, ecological component, art, nature. And in the last century, we have basically almost destroyed that balance. Global warming is a cause of mass production and mass pollution. The consequences are clearly being seen in Venice.
In class we talk about how the globally we have been causing global change, it is very sad to see a place like Venice going under water because of the world being carless of the ecosystem and environment. In the next years there are going to be a lot of researchers seeing how we can change the way we have been going. Venice is a place I would love to visit before it disappears.

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The lagoon city of Venice - a unique experiment nurtured by man and nature - suffered heavy damage in November as floodwaters reached their highest peaks in more than 50 years.

But rising sea levels are not the only threat. As Venetians continue to leave their city, Venice risks becoming an empty shell sinking under mass tourism.

Two weeks after the floods, St. Mark's Square resonates with a cacophony of languages - Spanish, Chinese and Russian. Awestruck visitors shriek and marvel as they take selfies in what Napoleon described as Europe's drawing room.

But across the lagoon, Venetians are taking stock of the damage caused by a wave of exceptionally high tides known as "acqua alta" - high water.

Pellestrina is home mostly to fishermen. For centuries, this 7 1/2-mile-long barrierisland protected the Venetian lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. But on Nov. 12, a near-record high tide of more than 6 feet, combined with strong winds, made for a perfect storm and washed over Pellestrina's high embankments, flooding the island for a full day. Nearly everything on ground floors was destroyed.

Along the waterfront, trash collectors load now-useless refrigerators and washing machines onto trucks.

Fisherman Dino Vianello stares forlornly toward the lagoon, at what was once his shed on wooden pilings. For 40 years, he stored his nets there. Now his livelihood is gone.

Nobody, he says, had ever seen waves nearly 7 feet high and the sea roiling inside homes.

"The lagoon's ecosystem is unique," says Vianello, "the ancient Venetians who built the Republic of Venice worked in harmony with nature, not against it."

Many Venetians believe excavation of deep canals in the 1960s to accommodate oil tankers irreparably harmed the lagoon's delicate ecosystem. There's also widespread skepticism about a long-term project to build large, movable floodgates to hold back rising sea levels.

The project is called Mose, an Italian acronym that also means Moses, suggesting a parting of the waters. Still unfinished after 16 years and $5.5 billion in public funds, it has been plagued by corruption and won't be in operation for two more years.

Meanwhile, many residents of Venice feel ignored by local authorities.

In the central Castello District, master artisan Paolo Brandolisio - one of only four remaining makers of oars and oar posts for the city's legendary gondolas - is trying to put his workshop back in order. Brandolisio is trying to salvage his waterlogged oak worktable.

"We've always managed on our own. In the last 40 or 50 years, city authorities didn't safeguard artisans' workshops," says Brandolisio. "If no one's left to make wooden boats, they'll disappear and be replaced by plastic ones."

Brandolisio laments that most shops now sell Chinese-made souvenirs.

"Shops for residents are vanishing because Venetians are vanishing," he says. "So those who are left are those making money selling the cheapest possible goods."

Besides the shrinking Venice that's home to local residents, there are two other Venices. One is the city of giant cruise ships as high as skyscrapers that - along with other forms of transport - disgorge some 30 million visitors a year into a city of about 50,000. Central Venice's population is down by about a third from a generation ago.

And there's the Venice of international institutions - of education, heritage and creative endeavor - that make it a world capital of art and culture.

"International Venice takes the social fabric of Venice for granted. We need to change the vision of the city," says Shaul Bassi, director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Across the world, he says, big cities look more and more alike, with the same architects creating more or less the same skyline. Venice, Bassi believes, represents the very idea of a city.

"It's a city that for over a thousand years has built a wonderful equilibrium between a human component, ecological component, art, nature. And in the last century, we have basically almost destroyed that balance," Bassi says.

In the battle against rising sea levels, Venice is on the front line. That's why, says Bassi, it's the ideal laboratory in which to study climate change. Next year, his university will offer a new degree in environmental humanities, in which scientists provide the data, "but we need to imagine what climate change is going to be like. And for that, you need the artist, you need the intellectual, you need the poets, you need philosophers, you need the historians."

Bassi is urging people in all the fields of science and art to come to Venice to reflect, study, create and compose, to help make it a truly living city for the whole world.

Regardless of whether more people come, though, many Venetians fear there is a serious danger the prediction made by Lord Byron two centuries ago could come true:

O Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls

Are level with the waters, there shall be

A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!

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With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future?

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The lagoon city of Venice - a unique experiment nurtured by man and nature - suffered heavy damage in November as floodwaters reached their highest peaks in more than 50 years. But rising sea levels are not the only threat. As Venetians continue to leave their city, Venice risks becoming an empty shell sinking under mass tourism.

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Post #7 (12/2/2019) At least 20 dead after Mexico gun battle between police and cartel near Texas border

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Post #7 (12/2/2019) At least 20 dead after Mexico gun battle between police and cartel near Texas border

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This article talks about Mexican security forces killed seven  members of a presumed cartel assault force that rolled into a town near the Texas border a day earlier and staged an hourlong attack, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least 20. Cartels have been vying for control of smuggling routes in northern Mexico, the violence and crime rate is rising. The United States and Mexico border has always been a dangerous place, the location is a strategic point for cartels and drug lords in Mexico, doing deals with their connection in the United States. President Trump announced that he wants to declare cartels as a terrorist threat, the president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not yet seen to act on this rising of violence. Federal officials said recently that there have been 29,414 homicides so far in 2019.
This is a huge deal and priority for Mexico to start acting on the increasing violence because this example was very close to the United States. In class we see how global south countries struggle with mass amount of violence and crime, the call for action is that Mexico needs more resources to tackle on big problems like these. The border is a sticky situation, not only organized crime but also mass amount of immigrants.

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Mexican security forces on Sunday killed seven more members of a presumed cartel assault force that rolled into a town near the Texas border a day earlier and staged an hourlong attack, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least 20.

The Coahuila state government said in a statement that law enforcement officers aided by helicopters were still chasing remnants of the force that arrived in a convoy of pickup trucks and attacked the City Hall of Villa Union on Saturday.

Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme said late Sunday afternoon that authorities had determined the casualty count from the gun battles stood at 14 assailants dead and four police officers killed. He said two civilians also were slain by gunmen after being abducted.

The governor said six more officers were wounded, as were four young people who had been taken by the attackers.

The reason for the military-style attack also remained unclear Sunday. Cartels have been vying for control of smuggling routes in northern Mexico, but there was no immediate evidence that a rival group had been targeted in Villa Union.

The governor said the armed group - at least some in military-style garb - stormed the town of 3,000 residents in a convoy of trucks, attacking local government offices and prompting state and federal forces to intervene. Bullet-riddled trucks left abandoned in the streets bore the initials CDN - for Cartel of the Northeast.

Several of the gunmen stole vehicles as they fled and kidnapped residents to help guide them on dirt tracks out of town, the governor said. At least one of the stolen vehicles was a hearse headed for a funeral, according to the newspaper Zocalo of Saltillo.

The town is about 35 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas, and 12 miles from the town of Allende - site of a 2011 massacre involving the Zetas cartel in which officials say 70 died.

In videos posted to social media, rapid gunfire could be heard, along with frantic people telling friends to stay indoors. Images of the aftermath of the shootout showed burned-out vehicles, while the facade of Villa Union's City Hall was riddled with bullets.

The governor said security forces would remain in the town for several days to restore a sense of calm.

Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the nonprofit International Crisis Group, which seeks to promote peace, said there are few incentives for armed groups in the country to refrain from violence.

"Solving this issue - which underpins impunity - would have to be the centerpiece of an integrated security strategy. But such a thing is yet to be presented by" President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his team, Ernst said.

"The price of that absence is not least the flaring up of regional conflict scenarios," he said.

Mexico's homicide rate has increased to historically high levels, inching up by 2% in the first 10 months of López Obrador's presidency. Federal officials said recently that there have been 29,414 homicides so far in 2019, compared with 28,869 in the same period last year.

The November slaughter by Mexican drug cartel gunmen of three women who held U.S. citizenship and six of their children focused international attention on the rising violence.

Saturday's attack showed cartels again resorting to quasi-military operations in a brazen challenge to state authority.

In October, a massive operation by the Sinaloa cartel prompted the federal government to release the captured son of a drug lord and pull back the army, which found itself outmaneuvered on the streets of Culiacan.

President Trump said in a radio interview last week that he plans to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, though he declined to say what actions might follow that designation.

Mexican officials have opposed such a designation, worried it could lead to unilateral U.S. interventions in its territory.

Coahuila state has been far from the worst-hit part of Mexico amid violence in recent years. The government census bureau's survey of public perceptions of security found that Coahuila ranked well this year, with only three other states having a higher public perception of safety.

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At least 20 dead after Mexico gun battle between police and cartel near Texas border

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Mexican security forces on Sunday killed seven more members of a presumed cartel assault force that rolled into a town near the Texas border a day earlier and staged an hourlong attack, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least 20.

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Post #8 (12/3/2019) Raiders Of The Lost Crops: Scientists Race Against Time To Save Genetic Diversity

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Post #8 (12/3/2019) Raiders Of The Lost Crops: Scientists Race Against Time To Save Genetic Diversity

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This article talks about the Crop Trust project. An international team of researchers that have spent six years going across the globe, gathering thousands of samples of wild relatives of crops. Their goal is to preserve genetic diversity that could help key crops survive in the face of climate change. More than 100 scientists in 25 countries have been out to collect wild relatives of domesticated crops like lentils, potatoes, chickpeas and rice. These are crops that people rely on around the world the overall goal of the Crop Trust project is to make sure that this kind of valuable genetic diversity is preserved in seed banks before wild crop relatives disappear as urban development encroaches on once wild habitats.
It is such a beautiful topic to read about when the world of researchers are leaving boundaries and borders behind to come together and do something great and important. The goal of Crop Trust project is crucial for the people that grow their crops as well as the simple crops we eat everyday. In class we learn about farmers being undercut and world hunger, but if we do more projects to save and help humanity, the world will be globalized in a better way. Seeing this really makes me analyze how the world needs more projects like these.

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Call it a tale of science and derring-do. An international team of researchers has spent six years fanning across the globe, gathering thousands of samples of wild relatives of crops. Their goal: to preserve genetic diversity that could help key crops survive in the face of climate change. At times, the work put these scientists in some pretty extreme situations.

Just ask Hannes Dempewolf. Two years ago, the plant geneticist found himself in a rainforest in Nepal, at the foot of the Himalayas. He was riding on the back of an elephant to avoid snakes on the ground - and to scare away any tigers that might be lurking about. Then all of a sudden came an attack from above.

"There were leeches dropping on us from all directions," Dempewolf recalls - "bloodsucking leeches."

Now, this is far from where he thought he'd be when he got his Ph.D. But as a senior scientist and head of global initiatives at the Crop Trust, Dempewolf has been overseeing an ambitious international collaboration. More than 100 scientists in 25 countries have been venturing out to collect wild relatives of domesticated crops - like lentils, potatoes, chickpeas and rice - that people rely on around the world. The Crop Trust has just released a report detailing the results of this massive effort, which secured more than 4,600 seed samples of 371 wild relatives of key domesticated crops that the world relies on.

The "collecting teams are heading out into wild places and hard-to-reach corners within their countries to try to find and track down some of these wild species that have either never been collected before or are very underrepresented in seed banks," Dempewolf explains. So he says it's not surprising that many of the stories coming out of the project have an Indiana Jones-like sense of adventure to them.

Take, for example, an effort to collect Oryza glumaepatula, a wild rice species found in Latin America. Griselda Arrieta Espinoza, a crop genetics and biotechnology researcher at the University of Costa Rica, was part of a collecting team that set out to northern Costa Rica to collect a particular population of this wild rice that grows in a river. "Collecting it was quite the adventure," she tells me in Spanish - because the river is also home to crocodiles.

While the effort was dangerous, Arrieta says it was also worth it, because Oryza glumaepatula is known to be resistant to a fungus that attacks domesticated rice grown around the world. And she notes that researchers in Brazil have already managed to cross Oryza glumaepatula with domesticated rice to improve crop yields.

The overall goal of the Crop Trust project is to make sure that this kind of valuable genetic diversity is preserved in seed banks before wild crop relatives disappear as urban development encroaches on once wild habitats. Dempewolf says that this is already happening.

"Some of the populations that the [research teams] were hoping to collect, when they reached the areas where they had seen populations before, they had disappeared," Dempewolf says.

Steven Tanksley, a professor emeritus of plant breeding at Cornell University, who was not involved in the Crop Trust project, praised the effort. He notes that the domesticated crops we eat today were selected from wild plants over thousands of years. He says this "natural reservoir of diversity ... has allowed plant breeding to attempt to keep pace with the demands of the growing human population."

That diversity took shape over millions of years, molded by natural selection, so "when you lose it, you really can't repeat that process," says Tanksley, who is also chief technology officer for Nature Source Improved Plants, which focuses on the genetic improvement of plants.

In the past, he notes, breeders have used wild crop relatives to improve disease resistance in many domesticated crops, including tomatoes, potatoes, rice and wheat.

A growing global population and changing environmental conditions because of climate change present urgent new challenges for crop breeders, Tanksley says.

"If we're going to have a sustainable world with a sustainable environment, we have to produce a lot more food per hectare than we ever have in the past," he says, adding, "I think people don't really grasp that - the urgency of it."

And without the genetic diversity of wild crop relatives, he says, the world will have little chance of keeping up with growing demand for food.

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Raiders Of The Lost Crops: Scientists Race Against Time To Save Genetic Diversity

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Call it a tale of science and derring-do. An international team of researchers has spent six years fanning across the globe, gathering thousands of samples of wild relatives of crops. Their goal: to preserve genetic diversity that could help key crops survive in the face of climate change.