Tuesday, 1 August 2017
MIT Technology Review/David Talbot: Desk-Size Turbine Could Power a Town GE sees its new turbine as a strong rival to batteries for storing power from the grid.
MIT Technology Review
Sustainable Energy
Desk-Size Turbine Could Power a Town
GE sees its new turbine as a strong rival to batteries for storing power from the grid.
by David Talbot April 11, 2016
GE Global Research is testing a desk-size turbine that could power a small town of about 10,000 homes. The unit is driven by “supercritical carbon dioxide,” which is in a state that at very high pressure and up to 700 °C exists as neither a liquid nor a gas. After the carbon dioxide passes through the turbine, it's cooled and then repressurized before returning for another pass.
The unit’s compact size and ability to turn on and off rapidly could make it useful in grid storage. It’s about one-tenth the size of a steam turbine of comparable output, and has the potential to be 50 percent efficient at turning heat into electricity. Steam-based systems are typically in the mid-40 percent range; the improvement is achieved because of the better heat-transfer properties and reduced need for compression in a system that uses supercritical carbon dioxide compared to one that uses steam. The GE prototype is 10 megawatts, but the company hopes to scale it to 33 megawatts.
Doug Hofer, a GE engineer in charge of the project, shows off a model of the turbine.
In addition to being more efficient, the technology could be more nimble—in a grid-storage scenario, heat from solar energy, nuclear power, or combustion could first be stored as molten salt and the heat later used to drive the process.
While such a heat reservoir could also be used to boil water to power a steam turbine, a steam system could take 30 minutes to get cranked up, while a carbon dioxide turbine might take only a minute or two—making it well-suited for on-the-spot power generation needed during peak demand periods.
GE's system might also be better than huge arrays of batteries. Adding more hours of operation just means having a larger or hotter reservoir of the molten salt, rather than adding additional arrays of giant batteries. “The key thing will come down to economics,” says Doug Hofer, the GE engineer in charge of the project. While there’s work ahead, he says, “at this point we think our economic story is favorable compared to batteries.”
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Tagged
solar thermal, GE Global Research, EPRI, Southwest Research Institute
Credit
Photo courtesy of GE Global Research
David Talbot
David Talbot Senior Writer
I’m MIT Technology Review’s senior writer, interested in a wide range of topics including climate change, energy, and information and communication technologies. Recent projects have included traveling to China to write about GMO crop… More
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Investopedia: What is 'Return On Assets - ROA'?
Return On Assets - ROA
What is 'Return On Assets - ROA'
Return on assets (ROA) is an indicator of how profitable a company is relative to its total assets. ROA gives an idea as to how efficient management is at using its assets to generate earnings. Calculated by dividing a company's annual earnings by its total assets, ROA is displayed as a percentage. Sometimes this is referred to as "return on investment".
The formula for return on assets is:
Return On Assets (ROA)
Note: Some investors add interest expense back into net income when performing this calculation because they'd like to use operating returns before cost of borrowing.
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BREAKING DOWN 'Return On Assets - ROA'
Highest ROA Stocks in the S&P 500
Symbol ROA Price
CBOE
39.77% 94.53
MO
36.23% 64.97
EBAY
35.00% 35.73
Lowest ROA Stocks in the S&P 500
Symbol ROA Price
CHK
-28.97% 4.96
NFX
-26.61% 28.73
PRGO
-24.13% 74.92
ROA tells you what earnings were generated from invested capital (assets). ROA for public companies can vary substantially and will be highly dependent on the industry. This is why when using ROA as a comparative measure, it is best to compare it against a company's previous ROA numbers or the ROA of a similar company.
The assets of the company are comprised of both debt and equity. Both of these types of financing are used to fund the operations of the company. The ROA figure gives investors an idea of how effectively the company is converting the money it has to invest into net income. The higher the ROA number, the better, because the company is earning more money on less investment. For example, if one company has a net income of $1 million and total assets of $5 million, its ROA is 20%; however, if another company earns the same amount but has total assets of $10 million, it has an ROA of 10%. Based on this example, the first company is better at converting its investment into profit. When you really think about it, management's most important job is to make wise choices in allocating its resources. Anybody can make a profit by throwing a ton of money at a problem, but very few managers excel at making large profits with little investment.
Things to Remember
The ROA is often referred to as ROI
We add the interest expense to ignore the costs associated with funding those assets.
Are you ready to use ROA in your trading strategies? Check out -- ROA And ROE Give Clear Picture Of Corporate Health and Use ROA To Gauge Company’s Profits.
Next Up Rights of Accumulation - ROA
Return On Assets - ROA
Rights of Accumulation - ROA
Cash Return On Assets Ratio
Average Return
Return
Residual Dividend
Calculated Intangible Value - CIV
Profitability Ratios
Capital Intensive
Return On Assets Managed - ROAM
Rights of Accumulation - ROA
Share
A right that allows a shareholder to receive reduced sales charges when the amount of mutual funds purchased, plus the amount already held, equals an ROA breakpoint. In addition, there is no time limit on how long the mutual fund needs to be held to qualify for a ROA.
BREAKING DOWN 'Rights of Accumulation - ROA'
For example: You wish to buy $2,000 of Fund ABC with a sales charge of 5.50% to add to your existing $19,000 of the same fund in your account. Given that Fund ABC is linked to an ROA and that the breakpoint is $20,000, you would qualify for a reduced sales charge (i.e. 5.25%). Also, the entire purchase ($2,000) would qualify for the reduced sales charge and not just the amount in excess of $20,000.
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Ehiedu Iweriebor: Nigerian Economic Recovery through Industrialization and Diversification by Public and Private Sector Synergy
Nigerian Economic Recovery through Industrialization and Diversification by Public and Private Sector Synergy
By Ehiedu Iweriebor
NEW YORK, United States of America, August 1, 2017/ -- The current economic crisis and recession in Nigeria has brought to the fore what is already known: that the existent Nigerian national economy is not organized for internal self-propulsion and autonomous economic and business activities. The Nigerian economy, since independence, has been operated by the maintenance of the neo-colonial system of development incapacitation, primary commodity export, dependency and poverty generation. Its basic and long-standing focus has been on the expanded production and export of primary commodities, such as agricultural products like palm oil, groundnut, cotton, cocoa, rubber in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently crude oil since the 1970s. But as raw material export depends on external demand, it does not activate autonomous and secure economic activity. Therefore, the Nigerian economy has no internal capacity for mass production and self-propulsion. It is a large, unfree, dependent and unviable economy.
It is well established globally that successful national economic development is a function of domestic technology capacitation and industrialization, agricultural modernization and mineral exploitation, beneficiation and use by local industries for the mass production of value-added goods. Therefore, economically successful countries focus on expansive industrial development to achieve self-actuated development, mass production and domestic prosperity generation. This is the path followed by old and new advanced societies.
The current campaign for economic diversification also demonstrates the backwardness of Nigeria, officially thought as its primary prescription to move from one exported mineral raw material – crude oil to agricultural raw materials like yam and rice export. But those are all raw materials whose demand depends on buyers, and not sellers. Against all global historical evidence and the nation’s own experience that raw materials production and export does not promote any form of advanced development, Nigerian leaders in the 21st century remain arrested in the 1960s imagery of groundnut and cocoa pyramids and barrels of palm oil, as Nigeria’s economic golden age.
However, in order to achieve effective economic recovery, an enlightened and ideologically autonomous Nigerian state, and especially its Ministry of Industry should actively promote economic diversification through mass industrialization and the production of manufactured goods for the home and export markets. This can best be achieved by proactively identifying catalytic industrial development projects and programmes that will yield a variety of new industrial products. In this context, a good example of this possibility is to promote large, medium and small scale endogenous investors to utilize the intermediate goods from the catalytic plants that will generate a multiplicity of manufactured products for internal use and export within and outside Africa.
The best approach for achieving this is to survey the entire national investment environment and identify catalytic, local resource-based projects that have the potential to foster broad-based industrialization and national economic diversification for internal use and export of value added goods. Today in Nigeria, the best example of forthcoming critical catalytic projects that can contribute to national industrial development and serious economic diversification are the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Petrochemical and Fertilizer complexes under construction in Lekki, Lagos. These plants will not only supply their basic goods like refined petroleum, petrochemicals and fertilizer; the intermediate products of these plants if recognized and effectively promoted by the Nigerian state and especially the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment can transform Nigeria into a vast centre of the production of value-added petrochemical products that will convert Nigeria into an economic power house in the petrochemical sector. This can be illustrated by identifying the modern products that can be converted into manufactured products from the intermediate products of the petroleum refinery, petrochemical complex and the fertilizer plants.
For example, the petroleum refinery in addition to its basic products such as Petrol, Diesel, Jet Fuel, and Kerosene, will also produce Slurry for Carbon Black. In addition to the direct benefits of the beneficiation and utilization of domestic raw materials – crude oil and natural gas, each of these projects has the potential to generate a multiplicity of cognate manufacturing industries that would use their products as feed-stock or intermediate raw materials for production of new products. The petroleum refinery for instance, in addition to its basic products will also produce Slurry which is used in the manufacture of Carbon Black. Carbon Black is used in making of tires and numerous other rubber products including for example belts, hoses, gaskets, bushings, wiper blades, conveyors and others. It is also used in plastics and electronic products, for coatings and for making toners and printing ink. In short, just from Carbon black a whole range of critical manufacturing industries can be developed to deepen Nigeria’s manufacturing economy. With the current expansion of computers and printers; toners and printing inks are in very high demand and are all imported into Nigeria. And much of Africa. Thus, carbon black can be used to develop an expansive toner and printing ink industry to serve Nigeria and the vast African market.
Petrochemicals are usually derived from petroleum and natural gas. They are usually classified into three major groups: Olefins, Aromatics and Synthesis Gas. Olefins include ethylene, propylene and butadiene which are used in plastic and synthetic rubber industries. The primary products of the Dangote Petrochemical Plant are within the Olefin sub-group, specifically polypropylene and polyethylene - collectively known as polymers. They can provide the intermediate materials requirements of the entire domestic plastics manufacturing industry. With their availability, Nigeria’s plastic products manufacturing industry would no longer be dependent on the importation of feedstock and there would be a guaranteed and secure domestic source of raw materials supply. The production activities of the plastic subsector manufacturers will now be unconstrained by foreign exchange shortage. Some products made from Ethylene include garbage bags, camera films, milk crates, bags and other products.
All these ancillary industries will contribute to expanded manufacturing production in the various sub-sectors of the plastics industry and other economic activities and the generation of substantial employment opportunities.
In the light of these potential impacts of the Dangote Petrochemical complex on industrialization and economic diversification, a nationalist and pro-active Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investments should now be actively organizing workshops, seminars and awareness programmes across the country, complete with ready-made project profiles for large, medium, small and cottage level Nigerian industries to prepare to start their factories as soon as the petrochemical plant takes off.
This is how a proactive and patriotic Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, as well as other MDAs that are primarily committed to Nigeria’s interests should work to advance Nigeria’s development. This would be in complete contrast to the current posture and vocation of Nigerian MDAs which now works for the World Bank and implements its anti-development dogmas, policy and programmes diktats that render Nigeria prostrate.
The fertilizer plant will produce ammonia and urea, intended primarily for agricultural production. However, it is important to note that numerous other industries can be established with the use of urea as feedstock. For example, UREA is used in making paints, adhesives, polyurethanes, pharmaceuticals, such as toothpaste, cosmetics, flame proofing, acid, fabric softeners, cattle feed, formaldehyde and as an additive to paper, board and plywood; for surface coating, moulding resins, leather coating, textiles and for products that reduce noxious emissions in diesel engines. In short, a multiplicity of fine chemical industries can be developed from the products of the fertilizer plant.
Thus, with the availability of this feedstock from the various refinery, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, there is clearly potential to create a multiplicity of basic and ancillary industries, all of which will contribute to the country’s advanced economic development.
Taken together with all these by-products made from intermediate products of the petroleum refinery, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, it is actually feasible to develop Nigeria as one of the primary global and African centres of the mass production of basic petrochemicals and their by-products like plastics and hundreds of other derivative chemicals. In this way, and with these value-added products, Nigeria would move into the league of industrially developed countries that sell and export diverse manufactured goods, rather than agricultural and mineral raw materials. These would help diversify country’s revenue streams away from dependence on raw materials export. More fundamentally, it would put the country on the pathway of economic freedom and self-actuated development, development capacitation, mass production, mass employment, export of value-added products, domestic prosperity generation and national empowerment.
Ehiedu Iweriebor, Phd, is a professor of history in the Department of Africana and Puerto, Rican/Latina Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.
Distributed by APO on behalf of Ehiedu Iweriebor.
View multimedia content
Media Contacts:
Ehiedu Iweriebor
Professor, Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College
EIwerieb@Hunter.CUNY.edu
Barbara Saunders
Admin assistant to Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College
BSaunder@Hunter.CUNY.edu
212-772-5035
SOURCE
Ehiedu Iweriebore
By Ehiedu Iweriebor
NEW YORK, United States of America, August 1, 2017/ -- The current economic crisis and recession in Nigeria has brought to the fore what is already known: that the existent Nigerian national economy is not organized for internal self-propulsion and autonomous economic and business activities. The Nigerian economy, since independence, has been operated by the maintenance of the neo-colonial system of development incapacitation, primary commodity export, dependency and poverty generation. Its basic and long-standing focus has been on the expanded production and export of primary commodities, such as agricultural products like palm oil, groundnut, cotton, cocoa, rubber in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently crude oil since the 1970s. But as raw material export depends on external demand, it does not activate autonomous and secure economic activity. Therefore, the Nigerian economy has no internal capacity for mass production and self-propulsion. It is a large, unfree, dependent and unviable economy.
It is well established globally that successful national economic development is a function of domestic technology capacitation and industrialization, agricultural modernization and mineral exploitation, beneficiation and use by local industries for the mass production of value-added goods. Therefore, economically successful countries focus on expansive industrial development to achieve self-actuated development, mass production and domestic prosperity generation. This is the path followed by old and new advanced societies.
The current campaign for economic diversification also demonstrates the backwardness of Nigeria, officially thought as its primary prescription to move from one exported mineral raw material – crude oil to agricultural raw materials like yam and rice export. But those are all raw materials whose demand depends on buyers, and not sellers. Against all global historical evidence and the nation’s own experience that raw materials production and export does not promote any form of advanced development, Nigerian leaders in the 21st century remain arrested in the 1960s imagery of groundnut and cocoa pyramids and barrels of palm oil, as Nigeria’s economic golden age.
However, in order to achieve effective economic recovery, an enlightened and ideologically autonomous Nigerian state, and especially its Ministry of Industry should actively promote economic diversification through mass industrialization and the production of manufactured goods for the home and export markets. This can best be achieved by proactively identifying catalytic industrial development projects and programmes that will yield a variety of new industrial products. In this context, a good example of this possibility is to promote large, medium and small scale endogenous investors to utilize the intermediate goods from the catalytic plants that will generate a multiplicity of manufactured products for internal use and export within and outside Africa.
The best approach for achieving this is to survey the entire national investment environment and identify catalytic, local resource-based projects that have the potential to foster broad-based industrialization and national economic diversification for internal use and export of value added goods. Today in Nigeria, the best example of forthcoming critical catalytic projects that can contribute to national industrial development and serious economic diversification are the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Petrochemical and Fertilizer complexes under construction in Lekki, Lagos. These plants will not only supply their basic goods like refined petroleum, petrochemicals and fertilizer; the intermediate products of these plants if recognized and effectively promoted by the Nigerian state and especially the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment can transform Nigeria into a vast centre of the production of value-added petrochemical products that will convert Nigeria into an economic power house in the petrochemical sector. This can be illustrated by identifying the modern products that can be converted into manufactured products from the intermediate products of the petroleum refinery, petrochemical complex and the fertilizer plants.
For example, the petroleum refinery in addition to its basic products such as Petrol, Diesel, Jet Fuel, and Kerosene, will also produce Slurry for Carbon Black. In addition to the direct benefits of the beneficiation and utilization of domestic raw materials – crude oil and natural gas, each of these projects has the potential to generate a multiplicity of cognate manufacturing industries that would use their products as feed-stock or intermediate raw materials for production of new products. The petroleum refinery for instance, in addition to its basic products will also produce Slurry which is used in the manufacture of Carbon Black. Carbon Black is used in making of tires and numerous other rubber products including for example belts, hoses, gaskets, bushings, wiper blades, conveyors and others. It is also used in plastics and electronic products, for coatings and for making toners and printing ink. In short, just from Carbon black a whole range of critical manufacturing industries can be developed to deepen Nigeria’s manufacturing economy. With the current expansion of computers and printers; toners and printing inks are in very high demand and are all imported into Nigeria. And much of Africa. Thus, carbon black can be used to develop an expansive toner and printing ink industry to serve Nigeria and the vast African market.
Petrochemicals are usually derived from petroleum and natural gas. They are usually classified into three major groups: Olefins, Aromatics and Synthesis Gas. Olefins include ethylene, propylene and butadiene which are used in plastic and synthetic rubber industries. The primary products of the Dangote Petrochemical Plant are within the Olefin sub-group, specifically polypropylene and polyethylene - collectively known as polymers. They can provide the intermediate materials requirements of the entire domestic plastics manufacturing industry. With their availability, Nigeria’s plastic products manufacturing industry would no longer be dependent on the importation of feedstock and there would be a guaranteed and secure domestic source of raw materials supply. The production activities of the plastic subsector manufacturers will now be unconstrained by foreign exchange shortage. Some products made from Ethylene include garbage bags, camera films, milk crates, bags and other products.
All these ancillary industries will contribute to expanded manufacturing production in the various sub-sectors of the plastics industry and other economic activities and the generation of substantial employment opportunities.
In the light of these potential impacts of the Dangote Petrochemical complex on industrialization and economic diversification, a nationalist and pro-active Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investments should now be actively organizing workshops, seminars and awareness programmes across the country, complete with ready-made project profiles for large, medium, small and cottage level Nigerian industries to prepare to start their factories as soon as the petrochemical plant takes off.
This is how a proactive and patriotic Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, as well as other MDAs that are primarily committed to Nigeria’s interests should work to advance Nigeria’s development. This would be in complete contrast to the current posture and vocation of Nigerian MDAs which now works for the World Bank and implements its anti-development dogmas, policy and programmes diktats that render Nigeria prostrate.
The fertilizer plant will produce ammonia and urea, intended primarily for agricultural production. However, it is important to note that numerous other industries can be established with the use of urea as feedstock. For example, UREA is used in making paints, adhesives, polyurethanes, pharmaceuticals, such as toothpaste, cosmetics, flame proofing, acid, fabric softeners, cattle feed, formaldehyde and as an additive to paper, board and plywood; for surface coating, moulding resins, leather coating, textiles and for products that reduce noxious emissions in diesel engines. In short, a multiplicity of fine chemical industries can be developed from the products of the fertilizer plant.
Thus, with the availability of this feedstock from the various refinery, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, there is clearly potential to create a multiplicity of basic and ancillary industries, all of which will contribute to the country’s advanced economic development.
Taken together with all these by-products made from intermediate products of the petroleum refinery, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, it is actually feasible to develop Nigeria as one of the primary global and African centres of the mass production of basic petrochemicals and their by-products like plastics and hundreds of other derivative chemicals. In this way, and with these value-added products, Nigeria would move into the league of industrially developed countries that sell and export diverse manufactured goods, rather than agricultural and mineral raw materials. These would help diversify country’s revenue streams away from dependence on raw materials export. More fundamentally, it would put the country on the pathway of economic freedom and self-actuated development, development capacitation, mass production, mass employment, export of value-added products, domestic prosperity generation and national empowerment.
Ehiedu Iweriebor, Phd, is a professor of history in the Department of Africana and Puerto, Rican/Latina Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.
Distributed by APO on behalf of Ehiedu Iweriebor.
View multimedia content
Media Contacts:
Ehiedu Iweriebor
Professor, Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College
EIwerieb@Hunter.CUNY.edu
Barbara Saunders
Admin assistant to Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College
BSaunder@Hunter.CUNY.edu
212-772-5035
SOURCE
Ehiedu Iweriebore
The Federal Government Begs Dangote to Complete Refinery Before 2019
LAGOS, Nigeria, August 1, 2017/ -- The Federal Government has said it relies heavily on the Dangote refinery (www.Dangote.com) to fulfill its promise to Nigerians to end fuel importation by December 2019.
To this end, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, who visited the Dangote oil refinery site at Lekki Free Trade Zone, in Lagos, said the government is ready to play its part as a responsible government to assist in making sure the project is completed before the scheduled date.
The minister, who said he was overwhelmed by the dimension of the project, explained that the present government had always believed that the private sector holds the ace in industrialization efforts of the government, and noted that the belief has been reinforced by what Dangote Group is doing.
Said he: “It is good to say that private sector is the answer to Nigeria’s problems with a project as big as this. The challenge I will give you today is that of time; I see your time for completion is 2019 December, but I am sure you will understand my greed if I tell you that the refinery component of this project should come earlier than the set date.
“I have made very firm commitment to Nigerians that I must stop the importation of petroleum products by 2019 and I am going to keep to it. It is absolutely important that we do this early and given the feat that we have achieved in terms of speed of construction and I urge you to do all within you to achieve its completion before the due date.
“I am sure His Excellency President Buhari will be absolutely enthused if he were to find himself, not only crystallizing the policy position we have taken so far, but also coming here himself to come and open a facility as big as this before the end of his first term. Whatever configurations your engineers have come up with, I urge that they go back to the drawing board and get me my refined products before your said date.”
In his response to the government’s challenge, Dangote said he has accepted the challenge and would do all possible to achieve the feat.
In this regard the President of Dangote Group, stated: “On the honorable minister’s challenge, we are going to make it by the grace of God. I am sure the minister will support us to make sure that we meet his challenge.
“What the minister is trying to do is the best so far for our country, his own version is that Nigeria should not think of exporting crude; you know the problem we have in Africa is that we only export raw materials, not finished goods, so he is saying that, look, we should all do this by adding value and I pray that even at 2.5 million barrels, we should not export much, in terms of the crude.
“We will go back and see what to do to make this happen by fast tracking our processes since the Minister has assured of government’s cooperation and support”.
Earlier in his welcome address, Dangote explained that his group is building the world’s largest single line refinery, Petrochemical Complex, and the world’s second largest Urea Fertiliser plant. The refinery, according to him will have the capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The Petrochemical Plant will produce 780 KTPA Polypropylene, 500 KTPA of Polyethylene, while the Fertiliser project will produce 3.0 million metric tons per annum (mmtpa) of Urea.
“In addition, we are also building the largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in any country in the world, with a length of 1,100 km, to handle 3 billion SCF of gas per day. We also plan to construct a 570 MW power plant in this complex. As a matter of fact, gas from our gas pipeline will augment the natural domestic gas supply and we estimate an additional 12,000MW of power generation can be added to the grid with the additional gas from our system.
“We will be adding value to our economy as all these projects will be creating about 4,000 direct and 145,000 indirect jobs. We will also save over $7.5 billion for Nigeria annually, through import substitution and generate an additional $5.5 billion per annum through exports of the refined petroleum products, fertilizer and petrochemicals. We envisage that these projects, which would cost over $18billion, would be completed in 2019”.
Distributed by APO on behalf of Dangote Group.
View multimedia content
Media Contact:
Francis Awowole-Browne
Francis.Awowole@Dangote.com
+234 806 630 4898
SOURCE
Dangote Group
RenewEconomy/Sophie Vorrath: Solar and battery storage underway at WA Garden Island Microgrid
Solar and battery storage underway at WA Garden Island Microgrid
By Sophie Vorrath on August 1, 2017
Construction has begun on the final components of what will be the world’s first solar plus wave plus battery storage and desalination microgrid, at Carnegie Clean Energy’s Garden Island Microgrid Project in Western Australia.
The WA-based, ASX-listed company said on Tuesday that works had begun on the 2MW of solar and 0.5MWh battery storage system, which would result in the largest embedded, grid-connected solar and battery microgrid in Australia.
The solar and storage join Carnegie’s 240kW CETO 5 wave energy units, built off Garden Island (61km south of Perth) between 2012 and 2016 – the world’s first commercial-scale, grid-connected wave array.
The project is expected to serve as a template for many more such island-based renewable energy microgrids, starting with a wave energy integrated hybrid power station Carnegie has designed for the Mauritian island of Rodrigues, which will also include 2MW of solar PV and a 2MW/0.5MWh battery system.
The WA Garden Island facility, in conjunction with the desalination plant already built by Carnegie on the island, will supply power and water to the HMAS Stirling naval base, which is the largest of its kind in Australia.
The project will also integrate with the existing Department of Defence diesel generators and the Western Power grid, to demonstrate both off-grid and on-grid functionality, and the possibilities of a “bumpless” transfer between the two operating modes, the company said.
“Renewable microgrids can deliver improved security of supply with clean, reliable power and water,” said CCE CEO Dr Michael Ottaviano on Tuesday.
“Carnegie Clean Energy is at the forefront own the design and delivery of renewable microgrid solutions that are revolutionary,” he said.
Along the way, Carnegie has been well supported in the project by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which has provided $28.5 million in combined grant funding.
In a joint statement with federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg – who was on-site on Tuesday morning to help “turn the sod” – minister for defence Marise Payne said that her department was committed to improving energy efficiency and resilience, reducing costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“This project will integrate with the existing Defence power infrastructure to increase the energy resilience of the base,” the statement said.
Last month, Carnegie’s wholly owned subsidiary, Energy Made Clean, won the contract to design, construct and install another hybrid solar and battery storage microgrid for the Australian armed forces, this time at Delamere Air Weapons Range in the Northern Territory of Australia.
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Washington Post/Ishaan Tharoor: The West's anti-liberal backlash can't escape its racism
The turbulent politics of the past year have hinged on a grand historical premise: The status quo of the West is in crisis. Figures such as President Trump swept into power promising jobs for the disaffected, closed borders for migrants and economic protectionism; his fellow leaders in Europe preached an even more xenophobic message.
But in the chaotic months since Trump's inauguration, Europe's far right suffered electoral setbacks and the president's own agenda proved something of a muddled mess. His campaign-trail populism quickly gave way to policies that favored the mega-rich. What has endured are the identity politics — the resentments toward multiculturalism and immigration — that galvanized his base, which has remained loyal to Trump even while the president racks up historically low approval ratings.
And although the Trump administration tries to distance itself from "white nationalism" and its supposedly fringe adherents, ethnic grievances anchor the West's anti-liberal backlash. It's at the heart of the "traditionalist" Christian nationalism embraced by White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who despite various rounds of West Wing purges has held onto his post.
"I think Trump was a legitimatizer," said William Regnery II, a secretive funder of a slew of "alt-right" organizations that champion extreme anti-immigration politics in the United States. Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Regnery said that white nationalism has gone "from being conversation you could hold in a bathroom to the front parlor."
Over the weekend, a group of committed white nationalists, including some figures directly connected to Regnery's funding networks, held a conference in Tennessee, debating everything from Trump's record on race to the prospect of fashioning some chunk of America into a whites-only "ethno-state."
Jared Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance, the far-right website that staged the event, spoke to the Guardian about the millennials turned on by his message. "These young white guys," Taylor said, "they have been told from infancy that they are the villains of history. And I think that the left has completely overplayed its hand."
Orban smiles before delivering a speech in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on July 22. (Nandor Veres/European Pressphoto Agency)
Orban smiles before delivering a speech in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on July 22. (Nandor Veres/European Pressphoto Agency)
A similar argument is made by considerably more powerful people in Europe. Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivered a speech in a leafy Romanian town where a majority of the population is ethnic Hungarian. Not many international outlets covered the event — far-right website Breitbart was an exception, gleefully quoting the right-wing premier at length for his call to stop a "Muslimized Europe."
This rhetoric is familiar coming from Orban, an outspoken leader among the European statesmen railing against immigration and the challenge of Muslim integration into Western societies. (No matter that the E.U. refugee quotas Orban resists would do little to change his nation's demographic composition.) But this time, he offered a shout-out to Trump, whose nationalist speech in Warsaw in early July clearly thrilled the Hungarian leader.
Orban quoted from Trump's Warsaw address, in which the president warned of an existential threat facing the West and appealed to a narrow Christian cultural identity in the face of enemies at the gates. "Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory," Orban said, echoing Trump. (Absent in either of their remarks were similar paeans to Western ideals such as democracy and the rule of law.)
The Hungarian prime minister also celebrated the fact that such statements are being made in public at all: "These words would have been inconceivable anywhere in the Western world two years ago," he said.
He went on to bemoan what is afflicting Europe. "Christian democratic parties in Europe have become un-Christian: we are trying to satisfy the values and cultural expectations of the liberal media and intelligentsia," Orban said, swatting at the transnational commitments of technocrats in Brussels and growling over his bete noir, Jewish American financier George Soros.
"In order for Europe to be able to survive and remain the Europeans’ continent, the European Union must regain its sovereignty from the Soros empire," Orban said. "Until that happens, we have no chance of retaining Europe for the European people."
Others on the far right are taking matters more directly in their hands. This summer, a group called "Generation Identity" set about trying to challenge the efforts of NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders that are operating ships in the Mediterranean to rescue migrants whose own vessels have sunk or become inoperable. Hoisting a "Defend Europe" banner, they tried to disrupt rescue efforts and even threatened to tow stranded migrants back to sea. Over the weekend, they were confronted by leftist activists in the Sicilian port city of Catania.
British journalist Rossalyn Warren described Identity Europe in The Washington Post's Global Opinion section:
"The group is known for its publicity stunts and creepy promotional videos showing white Europeans playing sports in what looks like summer camp for fascists. Their reach hasn’t just been limited to Europe either. Though the group is small — around 400 to 500 members in several countries including Austria, France and Germany — they’ve since been joined in Sicily by high-profile, far-right activists from Canada and the United States. They’ve also been supported by neo-Nazi leaders, including former KKK head David Duke, a vocal supporter of the Defend Europe mission."
Duke, of course, was also a vocal supporter of Trump during last year's election. The president may disavow these links, but leading far-right ideologues, including Regnery and Bannon, are more coy. Bannon, after all, once described Trump as a "blunt instrument" for his agenda. And although the effect of months of bludgeoning is still hard to measure, it's impossible to ignore the rhetoric that binds politicians in Central Europe to once-fringe radicals in Tennessee — and Washington.
• The BuzzFeed profile of Regnery is worth reading in full. A scion of a wealthy Chicago family, his grandfather was a key bankroller of the “America First” committee that sympathized with fascist Europe and sought to prevent the United States from entering World War II. Trump, of course, went and enshrined the “America First” slogan at the heart of his administration’s agenda. Regnery spoke to Buzzfeed about his personal politics:
“’I’m most comfortable around Europeans,’ he went on, as if describing a preference for tweed suits rather than twill. But soon his preoccupation got serious: ‘I just like living around people with whom I’m most comfortable, and that’s white.’…
"‘In my ethnostate,’ he explained, ‘I would exclude, as a rule of thumb, non-whites, non-Europeans, wherever, however you want to define them. So, that includes blacks. We keep getting back to blacks, but we've got to throw in Han Chinese, have to throw in Amerindians, people who are distinctly different.’”
• Fare thee well, Mooch. On Monday, White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci resigned his post just ten days after accepting the job — and 15 days before actually ever reporting to work. His farcically short-lived tenure will be remembered for the expletive-laden interview he gave the New Yorker, including a memorably nasty attack on Bannon. Scaramucci’s ouster was prompted by new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who replaced Scaramucci foe Reince Priebus earlier this week. Kelly had no time for Scaramucci.
From my colleagues: “The abrupt decision signals that Kelly is moving quickly to assert control over the West Wing, which has been characterized by interpersonal disputes and power struggles during Trump's six months in office.
• In other White House news, my colleagues have another scoop: In early July, Trump personally dictated a statement about the actions of his son Donald Trump Jr., who arranged a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. The statement said that the meeting was about the adoption of Russian children, a claim that was later proven to be false by Trump Jr.’s own released emails. From my colleagues:
"The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.
"As Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III investigates potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president’s direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup.
"‘This was . . . unnecessary,’ said one of the president’s advisers, who like most other people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. ‘Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.’”
• The Trump administration slapped new sanctions on the Venezuelan government and President Nicolas Maduro, whom Kelly called a “dictator.” In the wake of a controversial election yesterday that was boycotted by the opposition, the country has effectively picked a new legislature operating in parallel with a National Assembly dominated by the opposition. The new state of affairs has Maduro’s opponents worried about an uncertain road ahead.
From my colleagues: “Despite the tough talk from the White House, the sanctions fell short of the crippling pressure many observers were expecting. Potentially more sweeping measures — including the targeting of Venezuela’s all-important oil industry — are still on the table. But the opposition here is running out of time to turn the tide, and is now facing new and significant threats.”
• Leaked emails show that the United Arab Emirates once competed with Qatar to host an office for the Afghan Taliban. The revelations, reported in the New York Times, are important given how the UAE has invoked Qatar’s supposed coddling of extremists as grounds to justify an ongoing diplomatic and economic boycott of the tiny peninsular state.
South Korea's Hyunmoo II missile system fires during an exercise with the U.S. military on July 29. (South Korea Defense Ministry via Associated Press)</p>
South Korea's Hyunmoo II missile system fires during an exercise with the U.S. military on July 29. (South Korea Defense Ministry via Associated Press)
Two can play that game
North Korea has nuclear weapons and an ever-advancing ballistic missile program. So why shouldn't South Korea have nuclear weapons, too?
That question resurfaced after North Korea's missile test on Friday: South Korean officials suggested they would seek to further develop their ballistic missiles, perhaps renegotiating an agreement with the United States that places limits on its missile capabilities.
Nuclear weapons would be a step further, but South Korea has a civilian nuclear power program and could probably pull together the expertise to begin developing weapons in relatively short order.
The idea has significant support within South Korea. Won Yoo-chul, a senior figure in the then-ruling conservative party, said last year that his country should develop “peaceful” nuclear weapons to counteract North Korea's “fearful and self-destructive” ones. A few months later, a poll found that 60 percent of the nation supported such a move, in keeping with most polls conducted in South Korea since 2006.
South Korea has tried to join the nuclear club before. In the early 1970s, President Park Chung-hee began to investigate building nuclear weapons but was pressured to drop those ambitions by the U.S. and Canada. South Korea eventually ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, in 1975, but it is widely believed that Seoul secretly pursued nuclear weapons thereafter.
Some experts now suggest South Korea might be able to develop a nuclear weapon in as little as 18 months. But many analysts worry a South Korean nuclear program might only add to a problem it claims to resolve.
If South Korea violated the NPT, it could tarnish the country’s standing on the world stage and lead to sanctions. It could cause problems for its nuclear power industry, which accounts for about 30 percent of the country's energy consumption. Worse still, some fear that a South Korean nuclear program could spur a broader regional arms race, with Japan or Taiwan perhaps developing nuclear weapons or China expanding its own program.
When the issue flared up again last year, then-President Park Geun-hye dismissed the idea. Park's successor, Moon Jae-in, has pushed for peace talks with the North as opposed to military solutions to the conflict.
“I don’t think that South Korea actually wants nuclear weapons,” Park Syung-je, chairman of the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, recently told The Washington Post. But with tensions rising with every day, that attitude may not last. — Adam Taylor
A Russian meme mocking Vladimir Putin's attempts to punish the West. The caption reads: "If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Omsk!" (Demotivation.me)</p>
A Russian meme mocking Vladimir Putin's attempts to punish the West. The caption reads: "If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Omsk!" (Demotivation.me)
The big question
After Congress approved new sanctions on Russia last week, it was only a matter of time until the Kremlin responded with a punitive move of its own. It came on Sunday, when Russia announced that U.S. diplomatic missions across the country will have to reduce their staffs by 755 people. Booting diplomats from each others' soil is a time-honored tradition (the U.S. did this to Russia just last year), but the massive cuts ordered by President Vladimir Putin were unprecedented and eye-catching, signaling the Kremlin's growing anger with the U.S. So we asked Post Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth: How big of a deal is Moscow’s retaliation?
"Russia’s decision sounds dramatic, but it's ultimately a petty jab that falls hardest on the ordinary Russians who make up the majority of the U.S. diplomatic workforce here. Yes, it will make life harder for U.S. diplomats and hamper the U.S. Mission’s work, but it won’t put much pressure on Congress or the Trump administration to repeal sanctions.
"Putin mainly wants to show he’s fed up. As often happens, he’s sacrificed his own people to make that point.
"This follows a familiar plot. When Putin wants to punish the West, he does it by limiting access to the Russian market. Whether it's stopping food imports in 2014, banning adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents in 2013, or now preventing the U.S. embassy from hiring Russian labor, his weapon of choice is the Russian people.
"Why does Putin do this? Because it’s one of the only weapons he has. The two countries do little trade, and America is a far more influential global economic player. Russia needs to think creatively to compete with America's punitive measures. As Fyodor Lukyanov, an influential Russian political analyst, told me this week, 'it’s very difficult for Russia to do anything to harm the U.S. interests unless Russia is ready to take steps which will harm ourselves.'
"As you can see above, the Russian Internet even has a meme for this: a photo of Vladimir Putin snarling self-defeating threats into a microphone. 'If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Voronezh!' (or Omsk, another Russian city) reads one.
"In English, we call this cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. And under Putin, the joke goes, Russia’s always ready to do just that."
The Guardian — and many others — see a global crisis of democracy at hand, and an op-ed by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that lit up Washington on Monday lays out how his own party has failed to rein in President Trump's own anti-democratic tendencies. But the White House could trigger a different kind of global crisis: an economic one, depending on how it deals with the country's debt ceiling. Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs says Vladimir Putin's isn't looking for a decisive break with the U.S. even as relations with Washington grow worse.
Democracy is dying – and it’s startling how few people are worried
There is a concerted and combined effort by the likes of Putin, Erdogan and Trump to hollow out democracy. To stop them, we must change how we view the world
By Paul Mason | The Guardian • Read more »
My party is in denial about Donald Trump
We created him, and now we're rationalizing him. When will it stop?
By Jeff Flake | Politico • Read more »
The most dangerous man in Washington
Mick Mulvaney has the potential to instigate a global crisis within a matter of months.
By Catherine Rampell | The Washington Post • Read more »
If Putin wanted to step up his fight with America, you’d know it
The Russian president’s decision was not the act of a man ready to give up on relations with the United States.
By Dmitri Trenin | Foreign Policy • Read more »
Remember almost two Scaramuccis ago, when President Trump declared it “Made in America” week? In keeping with the president’s “America First” agenda, the idea was to promote products made in the U.S. But Quartz highlights a glaring problem with the promotion: More manufacturing doesn't automatically lead to economic growth. In other news, The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles a black philosophy professor at a Texas university who was inundated with death threats after one of his statements was taken out of context, while The Pudding shows you who Americans eat with and what that says about the stage of life they’re in.
Donald Trump believes manufacturing equals prosperity. Our data analysis proves him wrong.
A visual tour through 12 years of data.
By Ana Campoy, Youyou Zhou and Christopher Groskopf | Quartz • Read more »
Who’s left to defend Tommy Curry?
A black philosopher at Texas A&M thought forcing a public discussion about race and violence was his job. Turns out people didn't want to hear it.
By Steve Kolowich | The Chronicle of Higher Education • Read more »
Table for one
An exploration of the dining habits and companions of Americans.
By Henrik Lindberg | The Pudding • Read more »
For Taylor Miller, the debate about transgender people serving in the U.S. military is not theoretical. She is the first Coast Guard officer to serve while transitioning, a process that has included painful facial and genital hair removal, constant medical appointments and staggering medical expenses. Miller suffers isolation in the Coast Guard and her parents have disowned her. "It’s a crap life," she said "I hate being trans. I don’t fight it. I know it’s what I am, it’s not going to stop me from being trans — but sometimes I just really hate it." This is what the past year of her life has looked like. (Amy Osborne)
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But in the chaotic months since Trump's inauguration, Europe's far right suffered electoral setbacks and the president's own agenda proved something of a muddled mess. His campaign-trail populism quickly gave way to policies that favored the mega-rich. What has endured are the identity politics — the resentments toward multiculturalism and immigration — that galvanized his base, which has remained loyal to Trump even while the president racks up historically low approval ratings.
And although the Trump administration tries to distance itself from "white nationalism" and its supposedly fringe adherents, ethnic grievances anchor the West's anti-liberal backlash. It's at the heart of the "traditionalist" Christian nationalism embraced by White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who despite various rounds of West Wing purges has held onto his post.
"I think Trump was a legitimatizer," said William Regnery II, a secretive funder of a slew of "alt-right" organizations that champion extreme anti-immigration politics in the United States. Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Regnery said that white nationalism has gone "from being conversation you could hold in a bathroom to the front parlor."
Over the weekend, a group of committed white nationalists, including some figures directly connected to Regnery's funding networks, held a conference in Tennessee, debating everything from Trump's record on race to the prospect of fashioning some chunk of America into a whites-only "ethno-state."
Jared Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance, the far-right website that staged the event, spoke to the Guardian about the millennials turned on by his message. "These young white guys," Taylor said, "they have been told from infancy that they are the villains of history. And I think that the left has completely overplayed its hand."
Orban smiles before delivering a speech in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on July 22. (Nandor Veres/European Pressphoto Agency)
Orban smiles before delivering a speech in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on July 22. (Nandor Veres/European Pressphoto Agency)
A similar argument is made by considerably more powerful people in Europe. Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivered a speech in a leafy Romanian town where a majority of the population is ethnic Hungarian. Not many international outlets covered the event — far-right website Breitbart was an exception, gleefully quoting the right-wing premier at length for his call to stop a "Muslimized Europe."
This rhetoric is familiar coming from Orban, an outspoken leader among the European statesmen railing against immigration and the challenge of Muslim integration into Western societies. (No matter that the E.U. refugee quotas Orban resists would do little to change his nation's demographic composition.) But this time, he offered a shout-out to Trump, whose nationalist speech in Warsaw in early July clearly thrilled the Hungarian leader.
Orban quoted from Trump's Warsaw address, in which the president warned of an existential threat facing the West and appealed to a narrow Christian cultural identity in the face of enemies at the gates. "Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory," Orban said, echoing Trump. (Absent in either of their remarks were similar paeans to Western ideals such as democracy and the rule of law.)
The Hungarian prime minister also celebrated the fact that such statements are being made in public at all: "These words would have been inconceivable anywhere in the Western world two years ago," he said.
He went on to bemoan what is afflicting Europe. "Christian democratic parties in Europe have become un-Christian: we are trying to satisfy the values and cultural expectations of the liberal media and intelligentsia," Orban said, swatting at the transnational commitments of technocrats in Brussels and growling over his bete noir, Jewish American financier George Soros.
"In order for Europe to be able to survive and remain the Europeans’ continent, the European Union must regain its sovereignty from the Soros empire," Orban said. "Until that happens, we have no chance of retaining Europe for the European people."
Others on the far right are taking matters more directly in their hands. This summer, a group called "Generation Identity" set about trying to challenge the efforts of NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders that are operating ships in the Mediterranean to rescue migrants whose own vessels have sunk or become inoperable. Hoisting a "Defend Europe" banner, they tried to disrupt rescue efforts and even threatened to tow stranded migrants back to sea. Over the weekend, they were confronted by leftist activists in the Sicilian port city of Catania.
British journalist Rossalyn Warren described Identity Europe in The Washington Post's Global Opinion section:
"The group is known for its publicity stunts and creepy promotional videos showing white Europeans playing sports in what looks like summer camp for fascists. Their reach hasn’t just been limited to Europe either. Though the group is small — around 400 to 500 members in several countries including Austria, France and Germany — they’ve since been joined in Sicily by high-profile, far-right activists from Canada and the United States. They’ve also been supported by neo-Nazi leaders, including former KKK head David Duke, a vocal supporter of the Defend Europe mission."
Duke, of course, was also a vocal supporter of Trump during last year's election. The president may disavow these links, but leading far-right ideologues, including Regnery and Bannon, are more coy. Bannon, after all, once described Trump as a "blunt instrument" for his agenda. And although the effect of months of bludgeoning is still hard to measure, it's impossible to ignore the rhetoric that binds politicians in Central Europe to once-fringe radicals in Tennessee — and Washington.
• The BuzzFeed profile of Regnery is worth reading in full. A scion of a wealthy Chicago family, his grandfather was a key bankroller of the “America First” committee that sympathized with fascist Europe and sought to prevent the United States from entering World War II. Trump, of course, went and enshrined the “America First” slogan at the heart of his administration’s agenda. Regnery spoke to Buzzfeed about his personal politics:
“’I’m most comfortable around Europeans,’ he went on, as if describing a preference for tweed suits rather than twill. But soon his preoccupation got serious: ‘I just like living around people with whom I’m most comfortable, and that’s white.’…
"‘In my ethnostate,’ he explained, ‘I would exclude, as a rule of thumb, non-whites, non-Europeans, wherever, however you want to define them. So, that includes blacks. We keep getting back to blacks, but we've got to throw in Han Chinese, have to throw in Amerindians, people who are distinctly different.’”
• Fare thee well, Mooch. On Monday, White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci resigned his post just ten days after accepting the job — and 15 days before actually ever reporting to work. His farcically short-lived tenure will be remembered for the expletive-laden interview he gave the New Yorker, including a memorably nasty attack on Bannon. Scaramucci’s ouster was prompted by new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who replaced Scaramucci foe Reince Priebus earlier this week. Kelly had no time for Scaramucci.
From my colleagues: “The abrupt decision signals that Kelly is moving quickly to assert control over the West Wing, which has been characterized by interpersonal disputes and power struggles during Trump's six months in office.
• In other White House news, my colleagues have another scoop: In early July, Trump personally dictated a statement about the actions of his son Donald Trump Jr., who arranged a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. The statement said that the meeting was about the adoption of Russian children, a claim that was later proven to be false by Trump Jr.’s own released emails. From my colleagues:
"The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.
"As Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III investigates potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president’s direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup.
"‘This was . . . unnecessary,’ said one of the president’s advisers, who like most other people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. ‘Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.’”
• The Trump administration slapped new sanctions on the Venezuelan government and President Nicolas Maduro, whom Kelly called a “dictator.” In the wake of a controversial election yesterday that was boycotted by the opposition, the country has effectively picked a new legislature operating in parallel with a National Assembly dominated by the opposition. The new state of affairs has Maduro’s opponents worried about an uncertain road ahead.
From my colleagues: “Despite the tough talk from the White House, the sanctions fell short of the crippling pressure many observers were expecting. Potentially more sweeping measures — including the targeting of Venezuela’s all-important oil industry — are still on the table. But the opposition here is running out of time to turn the tide, and is now facing new and significant threats.”
• Leaked emails show that the United Arab Emirates once competed with Qatar to host an office for the Afghan Taliban. The revelations, reported in the New York Times, are important given how the UAE has invoked Qatar’s supposed coddling of extremists as grounds to justify an ongoing diplomatic and economic boycott of the tiny peninsular state.
South Korea's Hyunmoo II missile system fires during an exercise with the U.S. military on July 29. (South Korea Defense Ministry via Associated Press)</p>
South Korea's Hyunmoo II missile system fires during an exercise with the U.S. military on July 29. (South Korea Defense Ministry via Associated Press)
Two can play that game
North Korea has nuclear weapons and an ever-advancing ballistic missile program. So why shouldn't South Korea have nuclear weapons, too?
That question resurfaced after North Korea's missile test on Friday: South Korean officials suggested they would seek to further develop their ballistic missiles, perhaps renegotiating an agreement with the United States that places limits on its missile capabilities.
Nuclear weapons would be a step further, but South Korea has a civilian nuclear power program and could probably pull together the expertise to begin developing weapons in relatively short order.
The idea has significant support within South Korea. Won Yoo-chul, a senior figure in the then-ruling conservative party, said last year that his country should develop “peaceful” nuclear weapons to counteract North Korea's “fearful and self-destructive” ones. A few months later, a poll found that 60 percent of the nation supported such a move, in keeping with most polls conducted in South Korea since 2006.
South Korea has tried to join the nuclear club before. In the early 1970s, President Park Chung-hee began to investigate building nuclear weapons but was pressured to drop those ambitions by the U.S. and Canada. South Korea eventually ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, in 1975, but it is widely believed that Seoul secretly pursued nuclear weapons thereafter.
Some experts now suggest South Korea might be able to develop a nuclear weapon in as little as 18 months. But many analysts worry a South Korean nuclear program might only add to a problem it claims to resolve.
If South Korea violated the NPT, it could tarnish the country’s standing on the world stage and lead to sanctions. It could cause problems for its nuclear power industry, which accounts for about 30 percent of the country's energy consumption. Worse still, some fear that a South Korean nuclear program could spur a broader regional arms race, with Japan or Taiwan perhaps developing nuclear weapons or China expanding its own program.
When the issue flared up again last year, then-President Park Geun-hye dismissed the idea. Park's successor, Moon Jae-in, has pushed for peace talks with the North as opposed to military solutions to the conflict.
“I don’t think that South Korea actually wants nuclear weapons,” Park Syung-je, chairman of the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, recently told The Washington Post. But with tensions rising with every day, that attitude may not last. — Adam Taylor
A Russian meme mocking Vladimir Putin's attempts to punish the West. The caption reads: "If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Omsk!" (Demotivation.me)</p>
A Russian meme mocking Vladimir Putin's attempts to punish the West. The caption reads: "If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Omsk!" (Demotivation.me)
The big question
After Congress approved new sanctions on Russia last week, it was only a matter of time until the Kremlin responded with a punitive move of its own. It came on Sunday, when Russia announced that U.S. diplomatic missions across the country will have to reduce their staffs by 755 people. Booting diplomats from each others' soil is a time-honored tradition (the U.S. did this to Russia just last year), but the massive cuts ordered by President Vladimir Putin were unprecedented and eye-catching, signaling the Kremlin's growing anger with the U.S. So we asked Post Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth: How big of a deal is Moscow’s retaliation?
"Russia’s decision sounds dramatic, but it's ultimately a petty jab that falls hardest on the ordinary Russians who make up the majority of the U.S. diplomatic workforce here. Yes, it will make life harder for U.S. diplomats and hamper the U.S. Mission’s work, but it won’t put much pressure on Congress or the Trump administration to repeal sanctions.
"Putin mainly wants to show he’s fed up. As often happens, he’s sacrificed his own people to make that point.
"This follows a familiar plot. When Putin wants to punish the West, he does it by limiting access to the Russian market. Whether it's stopping food imports in 2014, banning adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents in 2013, or now preventing the U.S. embassy from hiring Russian labor, his weapon of choice is the Russian people.
"Why does Putin do this? Because it’s one of the only weapons he has. The two countries do little trade, and America is a far more influential global economic player. Russia needs to think creatively to compete with America's punitive measures. As Fyodor Lukyanov, an influential Russian political analyst, told me this week, 'it’s very difficult for Russia to do anything to harm the U.S. interests unless Russia is ready to take steps which will harm ourselves.'
"As you can see above, the Russian Internet even has a meme for this: a photo of Vladimir Putin snarling self-defeating threats into a microphone. 'If NATO invades Syria, we’ll bomb Voronezh!' (or Omsk, another Russian city) reads one.
"In English, we call this cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. And under Putin, the joke goes, Russia’s always ready to do just that."
The Guardian — and many others — see a global crisis of democracy at hand, and an op-ed by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that lit up Washington on Monday lays out how his own party has failed to rein in President Trump's own anti-democratic tendencies. But the White House could trigger a different kind of global crisis: an economic one, depending on how it deals with the country's debt ceiling. Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs says Vladimir Putin's isn't looking for a decisive break with the U.S. even as relations with Washington grow worse.
Democracy is dying – and it’s startling how few people are worried
There is a concerted and combined effort by the likes of Putin, Erdogan and Trump to hollow out democracy. To stop them, we must change how we view the world
By Paul Mason | The Guardian • Read more »
My party is in denial about Donald Trump
We created him, and now we're rationalizing him. When will it stop?
By Jeff Flake | Politico • Read more »
The most dangerous man in Washington
Mick Mulvaney has the potential to instigate a global crisis within a matter of months.
By Catherine Rampell | The Washington Post • Read more »
If Putin wanted to step up his fight with America, you’d know it
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Donald Trump believes manufacturing equals prosperity. Our data analysis proves him wrong.
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For Taylor Miller, the debate about transgender people serving in the U.S. military is not theoretical. She is the first Coast Guard officer to serve while transitioning, a process that has included painful facial and genital hair removal, constant medical appointments and staggering medical expenses. Miller suffers isolation in the Coast Guard and her parents have disowned her. "It’s a crap life," she said "I hate being trans. I don’t fight it. I know it’s what I am, it’s not going to stop me from being trans — but sometimes I just really hate it." This is what the past year of her life has looked like. (Amy Osborne)
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Dr. Mercola: Why Have 45 Prominent Health Experts Revolted Against This New Film?
Developments in Chemical Biotechnology Continue to Threaten Environmental and Human Health
August 01, 2017 • 8,097 views Disponible en Español
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Story at-a-glance
Corporate GMO propaganda is hitting the big screen. Forty-five scientists, academics and writers have signed a statement calling the food industry-funded film, “Food Evolution,” a piece of corporate propaganda that misrepresents the GMO issue
EPA has approved RNAi corn for human consumption, which is based on “gene silencing” technology. Research suggests RNA may have the ability to silence genes inside your body as well
A new generation of GMO crops resistant to dicamba is wreaking havoc across the U.S., as neighbors to farms growing dicamba-resistant crops report massive crop destruction from dicamba drift
By Dr. Mercola
Pesticides are taking a major toll on health across the globe. According to a recent United Nations (UN) report,1 pesticides are responsible for 200,000 acute poisoning deaths each year, and chronic exposure has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.2
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research arm of the World Health Organization and the “gold standard” in carcinogenicity research, found glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world — is a probable human carcinogen.3,4 As of July 2017, glyphosate is listed as a known carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65,5 which means products containing glyphosate must carry a cancer warning label.
Pesticides like Roundup also threaten the health of the soil, thereby threatening the very future of agriculture itself, as healthy soils are key for growing food.6 So grave are the concerns over the health and environmental effects of pesticides, the UN’s report proposes a global treaty to phase them out and transition to a more sustainable agricultural system.
All of this is terrible news for the chemical industry in general, and Monsanto in particular. Last year, Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer AG,7,8,9 which would make the new entity the largest seed and pesticide company in the world. The merger is expected to be finalized by the end of 2017. However, as noted in the Bloomberg video report above, suspicions of carcinogenicity now pose a serious threat to this deal.
Court Will Determine Roundup’s Role in Cancer
Plaintiffs10 in a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto claim Roundup caused or contributed to their non-Hodgkin lymphoma.11,12 The outcome of this lawsuit may influence Bayer’s decision to acquire Monsanto or back out of the deal. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) reevaluation of glyphosate’s toxicity may also have a bearing on the planned merger, although it will not influence the litigation against Monsanto.
U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who presides over multidistrict litigation currently involving 310 cancer victims’ lawsuits against Monsanto, has stated that the scientific evidence presented at trial is what will settle the question of whether glyphosate can cause cancer — not the determination by the IARC or the EPA. According to Bloomberg:13
“Chhabria has allowed the plaintiffs wide latitude to collect evidence on Monsanto’s health-effects research over the years, which the plaintiffs hope will show the company manipulated the data.
In March he unsealed dozens of Monsanto’s confidential documents for the public to see. The records show internal deliberations on how to present the science on glyphosate’s health impacts and manage a global public-relations campaign to assure consumers and regulators that Roundup is safe.”
EPA Has a History of Protecting Chemical Industry
The litigation has brought to light evidence showing how the EPA has colluded with Monsanto to protect the company’s interests. For example, email correspondence reveals Jess Rowland — who was the associate director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs and a key author of the EPA’s controversial glyphosate report — helped stop a glyphosate investigation by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) on Monsanto’s behalf.14,15
Correspondence also suggests Monsanto was planning to rely on Rowland’s influence after his retirement from the EPA. In an email to a colleague, Dan Jenkins, Monsanto’s regulatory affairs manager, noted Rowland “could be useful as we move forward with ongoing glyphosate defense.”16 Indeed, Rowland’s post-EPA work includes consulting for three chemical companies that are close associates of Monsanto.17
Adding insult to injury, the new head of the EPA is Scott Pruitt, who has a long history of protecting the interests of the chemical industry. As attorney general for Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the agency he now leads more than a dozen times, each time to prevent environmental regulations rather than enforce them. He’s already canceled the ban on chlorpyrifos, a highly toxic pesticide shown to cause cognitive damage. As noted by Bloomberg, “The chances that Pruitt will move against glyphosate, with all the attendant repercussions for industrial agriculture, appear slim.”
Peer-Review Raises Doubts About EPA’s Evaluation of Glyphosate
The expert panel convened last December to peer review the EPA’s conclusions on glyphosate has also criticized the agency, raising doubts about its ability to protect public health. As reported by Bloomberg:
“[E]ight of the 15 experts expressed significant concerns about the EPA’s benign view of glyphosate, and three more expressed concerns about the data. Their skepticism also raised, again, questions about the independence of the Office of Pesticide Programs, which has the final say on permitting pesticides…
The EPA’s report on the peer review … raises obfuscation to a high bureaucratic art. While spelling out the panel’s criticisms, the report gives no indication which, or how many, reviewers felt strongly about which particular problems. Instead, it uses the phrase “some panel members” 76 times — as in “some panel members noted,” “some panel members emphasized,” “some panel members suggested.”
The imprecision obscures that the majority of peer reviewers expressed doubts about the EPA’s methods or conclusions. Under the law, the agency must consider the panel’s input in its final evaluation of glyphosate, scheduled for completion later this year. By enshrining the reviewers’ comments in such vague terms, however, the EPA can more easily ignore them.”
Independent Glyphosate Testing Now Available
Tests by the Organic Consumers Association show 93 percent of Americans have glyphosate in their urine,18 and independent testing19,20 by The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now!, published last year, found many popular processed foods sold in the U.S. have potentially unsafe levels of glyphosate in them. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has also reported 30 percent of grains sampled were contaminated with glyphosate. Nearly 4 percent of samples had excessive levels.21,22
I recently got tested for glyphosate and had no detectable levels. According to Health Research Institute Laboratories, where I got my glyphosate testing done, the average level of glyphosate in the U.S. population is 3.3 parts per billion (ppb),23 significantly higher than the average of 0.2 ppb found in Europeans.24
If you're interested in getting tested, I provide both a glyphosate water test kit and an environmental exposure test kit in my online store. As a general rule, people who eat primarily organic foods and/or filter their water will have far lower levels. My own test result is a testament to this. So, yes, it is possible to avoid glyphosate and its associated health risks.
Be aware that desiccated crops tend to be particularly high in glyphosate. Desiccation is the process where the crop is doused with glyphosate just before harvest to increase yield. This includes non-GMO oats, wheat, garbanzo beans and lentils. According to Health Research Institute Laboratories, these foods can contain glyphosate levels exceeding 1,000 ppb, and people who eat organic oats have half the glyphosate levels than those who eat non-organic oats on a regular basis.
How Chemical Companies Have Taken Over International Regulation of GMOs
That there are revolving doors between government agencies and Monsanto is well known. This is true not only in the U.S., but in other countries as well. For example, GMWatch recently revealed that 26 of the 34 members of the National Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology of Argentina (CONABIA), are either employed by chemical technology companies or have major conflicts of interest.25
As reported by Independent Science News,26 the international conference of GMO regulators, ISBGMO, run by the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR), has also been hijacked by corporate interests. According to one ISBR board member, the 2015 meeting in St. Louis was primarily paid for by Monsanto, which has its headquarters there. According to Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., writing for Independent Science News:
“[This year] in Guadalajara, industry speakers were clearly working from a scripted list. That list translates as the key regulatory objectives of the biotech industry. Prominent on that list was ‘data transportability’ … the idea that regulators from different jurisdictions, say India, or the EU, should accept identical biosafety applications.
Implementation of data transportability would mean that although each country has unique ecosystems and species, applicants ought not to have to provide studies tailored to each. For example, when it comes to assessing effects of non-target organisms, for example of a GMO crop producing an insecticide, regulators in Australia should accept tests on European ladybird species or earthworms as showing that a GMO cotton can safely be grown there.”
You don’t need to be a biologist or scientist to predict that this kind of non-specificity has the potential to be absolutely devastating. The chemical biotechnology industry is also pushing for the global implementation of Canada’s “trait-based GMO regulation,” which does not take the method of development into account. As Latham explains:
“The trait is the sole focus. So if a GMO crop contains an insecticide it is assessed for risk against non-target organisms. If a GMO improves flavor or nutrition, then since there is presumably no risk from flavors or nutrients, then the crop receives what amounts to a free pass.”
In my view, this is insanely risky, as genetically modifying a crop to contain more or less nutrients or altering its flavor can produce any number of environmental and biological side effects that really should be evaluated before being released into the environment and our food supply.
University Professor of Journalism Outed as GMO Industry Shill
Another trick used to promote industry propaganda and shape public opinion is to secretly hire or form mutually beneficial bonds with academics who then present “evidence” supporting the safety and benefits of GMOs. As noted in a recent Huffington Post article, which is well worth reading in its entirety:27
“Few science writers have worked as hard as Keith Kloor to impact public opinion on genetically modified organism (GMO) agriculture. An adjunct professor at New York University and former editor for Audubon and blogger for Discover, Kloor has spent years championing GMO products and portraying skeptics and critics as scientifically illiterate quacks …
The public has known for some time that Keith Kloor loves GMOs. What they haven’t known, until now, is how hard he’s worked with industry-funded “experts” to present corporate talking points as journalism and then try to cover his tracks.
An avalanche of documents released through court proceedings and freedom of information requests point to a coordinated effort by corporate front groups, scientists secretly funded by agrichemical industry giants, and allied reporters attempting to portray themselves as arbiters of scientific expertise while condemning critics of GMO technology as “antiscience.” While some of this story has been told, Kloor’s level of involvement has so far gone unremarked — and there have been no corrections or retractions of his work.”
Kloor and Folta
Kloor, it turns out, formed a close working relationship with Kevin Folta, chair of the department of horticulture at the University of Florida, who in 2015 was publicly disgraced after being outed as having repeatedly lied about his financial relationship with Monsanto.
As explained by Huffington Post, in 2014, Kloor and Folta collaborated on a strategy to discredit a registered dietitian, Carole Bartolotto, after she’d published a critical article noting that the issue of GMO safety was based solely on animal studies. “These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be farther from the truth,” she wrote. Kloor’s article ultimately appeared in an August 2014 issue of Discover Magazine. It read in part:28
“… Bartolotto is a semi-regular Huffpost “contributor.” She is identified as a registered dietitian. Many of her articles for HuffPost have an anti-GMO bent. On twitter, when I said to Bartolotto that her latest piece was an example of denialism, she suggested I was not qualified to judge it, because I wasn’t a scientist or health professional.
So I asked two scientists who receive no funding from the biotech industry and who work in the field of plant biotechnology to review her article for accuracy.
They are Kevin Folta, Professor and Chairman, Horticultural Sciences Department, University of Florida, and Karl Haro von Mogel, a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Chair and co-Director of Biology Fortified, Inc. Their comments appear under their initials in the review, after Bartolotto’s italicized sections.”
Note his qualification of Folta as a scientist who receives NO funding from the biotech industry. Kloor knew this was a lie, as email correspondence shows they discussed the issue. Becky Lang, editor-in-chief of Discover Magazine, told Huffington Post: “Of course, it’s not our policy now, and never has been, to prompt sources to write criticism, edit criticism and then run it as independent. It’s also not our policy to ever help sources try to hide their industry relationships.” Still, Discover has not retracted or corrected Kloor’s work.
GMO Propaganda Hits the Big Screen
Corporate GMO propaganda is now also hitting the big screen. Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, the documentary “Food Evolution” examines “whether GMOs, despite their controversial reputation, are actually a safe and reasonable answer to the inevitable problem of feeding an overpopulated planet.”29 As reported by Munchies:
“Earlier this month, 45 prominent scientists, academics, and writers — many from UC Berkeley — signed a statement30 that blasted the film as a ‘piece of propaganda.’ The eminent nutritionist and academic Marion Nestle wrote her own refutation of the film, dubbing it ‘a slick piece of GMO industry propaganda.’
Then, a second backlash followed, with many of the signatories of the letter suddenly receiving Freedom of Information Act requests asking for their emails about the film. Nestle's blog was so overrun by trolls and she had to shut the comments section down.”
In her review, Nestle objects to being included in the film despite her firm objections to the director’s use of quotes taken out of context:31
“I have asked repeatedly to have my short interview clip removed from this film. The director refuses. He believes his film is fair and balanced. I do not. I am often interviewed and hardly ever quoted incorrectly or out of context. This film is one of those rare exceptions. In my 10-second clip, I say that I am unaware of convincing evidence that eating GM foods is unsafe — this is what I said, but it is hugely out of context …
I think there are plenty of issues about GMOs in addition to safety that deserve thoughtful consideration: monoculture; the effects of industrial agriculture on the environment and climate change; the possible carcinogenicity of glyphosate (Roundup); this herbicide’s well documented induction of weed resistance; and the how aggressively this industry protects its self-interest and attacks critics, as this film demonstrates.
‘Food Evolution’ focuses exclusively on the safety of GMOs; it dismisses environmental issues out of hand … It says nothing about how this industry spends fortunes on lobbying and in fighting labeling transparency. Instead, this film hammers hard on three out-of-context points: 1. GMOs are safe. 2. Anyone who thinks otherwise is anti-science, ignorant, and stupid. 3. Organic foods are bad and proponents of organic foods are deceitful.”
As reported by Munchies, the film was commissioned and funded by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), a professional association of food scientists working in the processed food industry.
Nestle suspects Monsanto or the Biotechnology Innovation Organization may have given the IFT a grant to make the film, although IFT insists the funding was generated "primarily through membership dues, scientific publishing, events and advertising, and without contribution from any other organization or company." As the following section will show, such assurances are virtually worthless these days.
More Industry-Funded Shenanigans
Besides hiring academics, researchers and, now, film directors, the food industry (which is now in reality governed by the chemical biotechnology industry) uses dozens of front groups to promote its agenda. As reported by the Huffington Post last summer,32 the nonprofit group Academics Review, described as “a nonprofit led by independent academic experts in agriculture and food sciences,” published a report attacking the organic food industry back in April 2014.
Academics Review was co-founded by “two independent professors,” Professor Emeritus Bruce Chassy, University of Illinois, and David Tribe, Ph.D., senior lecturer at University of Melbourne. At the time, the organization went to great lengths to assure the public of its independence, noting in its press release that “Academics Review has no conflicts of interest associated with this publication, and all associated costs for which were paid for using our general funds without any specific donor’s influence or direction.”
Alas, correspondence obtained last year by U.S. Right to Know via Freedom of Information Act requests reveal that Monsanto executives and key Monsanto allies raised these funds, and collaborated with Chassy and Tribe on strategy. Emails also reveal discussions about how to hide industry funding. The industry also has zero qualms when it comes to silencing detractors.
Monica Eng, a journalist for WBEZ in Chicago was viciously attacked by industry “sock puppets” after reporting Chassy’s extensive ties to Monsanto, revealing how Chassy even instructed the company how to hide those ties by depositing money to a University foundation — a tactic that prevents public disclosure of funding. The University of Illinois accused Eng of being “an activist” rather than a journalist, and industry trolls went to work to discredit her personally. Eng told Progressive.org:33
“I’ve worked as a professional journalist in Chicago for more than three decades. I’ve uncovered questionable activity in government groups, nonprofits, and private companies. But I don’t think I have ever seen a group so intent on trying to personally attack the journalist covering the issue.”
Glyphosate to Dicamba — From Bad to Worse
Unfortunately, even if the EPA finally recognizes glyphosate as the poison it is, there’s no shortage of other agricultural toxins in the pipeline. A new generation of GMO crops resistant to dicamba is already wreaking havoc across the U.S., as neighbors to farms using dicamba-resistant crops report massive crop destruction. In July, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture reported investigating two dozen complaints involving dicamba damage caused by drift.34
In essence, any crop that is not resistant to dicamba is severely damaged by the herbicide, even if it’s a genetically engineered variety. Farmers in Arkansas are reporting the same problem. Last October, a soybean farmer named Mike Wallace was shot to death in a dispute over dicamba damage caused by drift from a neighboring farm growing dicamba-resistant soy. According to Winona Daily News:35
“Concern about the herbicide drifting onto unprotected crops, especially soybeans, has spawned lawsuits and prompted Arkansas and Missouri to impose temporary bans on dicamba.
Losses blamed on accidental chemical damage could climb into the tens of millions of dollars, if not higher, and may have a ripple effect on other products that rely on soybeans, including chicken. The number of complaints "far exceeds anything we've ever seen," Arkansas Plant Board Director Terry Walker recently told lawmakers.”
EPA Approves New GMO Tech
But that’s not all. In July, the EPA also approved RNAi corn for human consumption, which is based on a whole new kind of technology.36,37,38 RNAi stands for RNA interference. Noncoding RNA molecules have the ability to inhibit gene translation and/or expression by neutralizing target messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules. In other words, RNAi is “gene silencing” technology.
The problem is, research suggests these RNAs can survive digestion, and may end up silencing genes inside your body as well. The first product expected to hit the market within the next two or three years is SmartStax Pro corn, a collaboration between Monsanto and Dow. Scientists are also considering using “synthetic biology” (aka synbio) as a tool in environmental conservation to eradicate certain invasive species while strengthening endangered ones. As noted by Yale Environment 360:39
“[M]any conservationists consider the prospect of using synbio methods as a tool for protecting the natural world deeply alarming. Jane Goodall, David Suzuki, and others have signed a letter warning that use of gene drives gives ‘technicians the ability to intervene in evolution, to engineer the fate of an entire species, to dramatically modify ecosystems, and to unleash large-scale environmental changes, in ways never thought possible before.’”
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Dr. Mercola: Stop Subsidizing the Wrong Food Crops
Stop Subsidizing the Wrong Food Crops
August 01, 2017 • 356 views
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subsidizing wrong food crops
Story at-a-glance
A two-crop planting cycle of corn and soybeans has become the dominant model in the Midwest, thanks to the federal farm policy that subsidizes these crops, with devastating consequences to human health and the environment
Switching to diverse crop rotations and no tillage (plowing) could significantly reduce soil erosion while reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
Policymakers should expand incentives and strengthen up front financial support to encourage farmers to shift to diverse crop rotations
By Dr. Mercola
As farming has transitioned from a once localized industry to an international one, it's brought with it a new set of challenges for U.S. farmers. Spurred in part by a growing demand for biofuel, along with federal subsidy programs, about 180 million additional acres of corn and soybeans have been planted around the world over the last decade.
In the U.S., this two-crop cycle of corn and soybeans has become the dominant model in the Midwest, thanks to the federal farm policy that subsidizes these crops, with devastating consequences to human health and the environment.
Rotating between these two genetically engineered (GE) crops is problematic for many reasons. By leaving fields bare for much of the nongrowing season, erosion levels are high, as is pollution from fertilizer and pesticides, which are applied heavily. Pollution runoff from Midwest farms is so bad that it contributes to the "dead zone" of oxygen-depleted water that's killing marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Even the farmers, who experienced record-high harvests in 2016, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), are in trouble. The abundance has led to an oversupply that has driven down prices, such that "U.S. farm incomes are expected to drop to their lowest levels since 2002."1
In October 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would be making more than $7 billion in payments to bail out farmers due to market downturns that occurred during the 2015 crop year.2 The payments were intended to "provide reassurance to Americans' farm families" affected by low commodity prices and unfavorable growing conditions. But further bail outs and subsidizing of the problematic two-crop system are only going to worsen the problem.
Instead of subsidizing this unsustainable model, federal farm policy should provide incentives for farmers to diversify their crops, which UCS found could lead to remarkable benefits all-around.
Crop Diversification Benefits Farmers and the Environment
The UCS report highlighted modified cropping systems being studied by Iowa State University researchers. They've compared the typical two-year corn-soybean rotation system with two more diversified systems: a three-year program that adds in oats with a cover crop of red clover in the cool season and a four-year system that adds in oats with an alfalfa cover crop followed by another year of alfalfa for harvest.
Cover crops more than double carbon inputs into the soil,3 and when you add carbon back into the soil the carbon feeds mycorrhizal fungi that eventually produce glomalin, which may be even better than humic acid at retaining water. This means you naturally limit your irrigation needs and make your garden or fields more resilient during droughts. Cover crops also improve soil structure and reduce erosion.
So, not surprisingly, the Iowa State research found the longer, more diversified crop rotations led to improved yields and profits with less chemical usage and pollution. Specifically, UCS reported that, compared to the corn-soy rotation, the more diversified systems:4
Increased average corn yields by 2 percent to 4 percent, and average soybean yields by 10 percent to 17 percent
Were just as profitable
Reduced herbicide use by 25 percent to 51 percent
Reduced herbicide runoff in water by 81 percent to 96 percent
Reduced nitrogen fertilizer application by 43 percent to 57 percent
This is impressive, but it doesn't end there. UCS then analyzed what would happen if diverse crop rotations and no tillage (plowing) were adopted in the 25 Iowa counties with the most erodible soils. This relatively simple swap led to dramatic improvements, including:5
Reducing soil erosion by 91 percent compared with tilled corn-soy
Saving taxpayers and downstream communities $196 million to $198 million per year in surface water cleanup costs
Net reductions in heat-trapping gases valued at $74 million to $78 million per year
The report found that diverse crop rotations could eventually be adopted on 20 percent to 40 percent of Iowa's farmland, without changing crop prices, and would reduce soil erosion by 88 percent compared with the current predominant tilled corn-soy model. "Taxpayers would gain a total of $241 million to $505 million in environmental benefits every year," UCS noted.6
The Des Moines Register reported on one farmer, Seth Watkins, who has already transitioned to crop diversification, grazing cattle on pasture and even restoring hundreds of his acres to natural prairie and wildlife reserves — with improved profits. "My job as a farmer is not to produce; my job is to care for the land," Watkins said. "And when I do this properly, this provides for all of us."7
Federal Farm Policies Created the Disastrous Corn-Soybean Cropping System
While it would seem that farmers would be scrambling to adopt a more diversified cropping approach, many barriers stand in their way. There can be significant costs in the short term to stray from their usual rotation, for instance, and markets for oats and other grains are not as developed as those for corn and soy.
Further, many farmers lack the practical know-how to convert to more complex crop rotations, as well access to research showing that doing so would be beneficial. Public funding for such initiatives is scarce, according to UCS, which also pointed to major crop insurance and credit constraints:8
"Until recently, federal crop insurance programs have discouraged complex rotations. In 2014, Congress extended coverage to diversified farmers with a new Whole Farm Revenue Protection program. But many county insurance agents lack training on this program and may not recommend it to farmers who could benefit from it. And lenders unfamiliar with the potential profitability of longer rotation systems may be unwilling to make the loans that farmers need in order to adopt them."
Farmers may also receive premium discounts and higher premium subsidies when they plant corn and soybean acres.9 Unfortunately, only 2.6 percent of U.S. croplands are planted with cover crops.10
Food & Environment Reporting Network noted that nearly half of farmers who say they're interested in trying cover crops hold back because of concerns about crop insurance, and a 2015 National Wildlife Federation survey found "over one-third reported that they'd been told by an agent or adjuster that using cover crops could put a claim at risk of denial."11,12
Kansas regenerative farmer Gail Fuller experienced this firsthand, when his federally funded crop insurance company denied his six-figure claim for compensation during the 2012 drought. Their basis was Fuller's use of cover crops, which the company requires be killed off before the cash-crop is planted. High winds prevented Fuller from doing so. He took the case to court and was eventually given the payment, but there's still a perception among farmers that using cover crops could put their insurance payments at risk.
Since federal farm policies helped create the problem, they should also be part of the solution, which is why the UCS report suggested policymakers should expand incentives and strengthen up front financial support to encourage farmers to shift to diverse crop rotations.
They also advise strengthening crop insurance coverage for diversified farms while increasing public support for research and demonstration projects on diverse rotations.13 "I don't know that I need to be subsidized for doing the right thing. I just want us to stop subsidizing the wrong things," Watkins told The Des Moines Register.14
Grass Fed Beef, Bison Are Part of the Solution
By mimicking the natural behavior of migratory herds of wild grazing animals — meaning allowing livestock to graze freely, and moving the herd around in specific patterns — farmers can support nature's efforts to regenerate and thrive. This kind of land management system promotes the reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by sequestering it back into the soil where it can do a lot of good. Once in the earth, the CO2 can be safely stored for hundreds of years and adds to the soil's fertility.
While still thought of as a niche market, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in New York released a report showing that grass fed systems could be expanded — enough so to compete with the polluting and inhumane concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) currently supplying the majority of U.S. beef.15 Two major hurdles stand in their way, the first being CAFOs, which have access to more efficient supply chains and slaughterhouses.
For instance, farmers must use USDA-approved slaughterhouses, and laws place special restrictions on grass fed slaughtering. If a grass fed rancher doesn't have access to a slaughterhouse, he cannot stay in business. This shrewd strategy effectively maintains the CAFO status quo because grass fed farmers are often forced to ship their animals hundreds of miles for "processing" — a move that's both costly and stressful.
Imports of grass fed beef, which make up 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. grass fed beef sales by value, are another hurdle. Australia and Brazil can produce grass fed beef at a lower cost, as their climate allows for year-round grazing. U.S. consumers may not know the grass fed beef they purchase isn't from the U.S., however, because as long as a piece of imported beef passes through a USDA-inspected plant, it can be labeled as a "Product of the USA."
These hurdles, and others, are not insurmountable. The report found that the U.S. grass fed beef market could grow from niche to mainstream if the following actions are taken:16
The grass fed industry should focus on producing high-quality, grass fed beef year-round
Stronger standards for the grass fed label, accompanied by consumer education about grass fed beef
Utilize existing infrastructure used for conventional beef to "unlock supply chain inefficiencies"
Establish well-managed, scaled-up finishing systems to produce grass fed beef at low cost
Although not addressed in the report, bison could also be part of the solution. The National Bison Association, which recently launched a "Bison Hump Day" campaign to encourage people to eat bison meat on Wednesdays and increase the bison population in North America to 1 million in the next decade. As with grass fed beef, free-ranging bison also have the potential to increase natural grasslands and reduce pollution in the U.S. Dave Cater, executive director of the National Bison Association, told Delicious Living:17
"We think that more bison on the land is a good thing, not only for people that love to eat bison and people who love to raise bison, but for the land itself. This is the animal that helped shape the ecosystem of North America. We think that bringing more bison back helps restore acres of native grasslands and range lands."
Grass Fed Dairy Is Also an Expanding Market
What goes hand in hand with crop diversification and grass fed meat? Grass fed dairy. There are a number of reasons to seek out grass fed dairy products. Milk from cows raised primarily on pasture has been shown to be higher in many nutrients, including vitamin E, beta-carotene and the healthy fats omega-3 and CLA.18 And on an environmental level, grass fed dairy has a considerably reduced footprint compared to the way most dairy is produced on CAFOs.
Farms producing grass fed dairy products are able to naturally regenerate the soil and maintain ecological balance without relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And on an ethical level, cows are designed to eat grass. When they eat corn and grain, not only does the quality of their milk degrade but they live in a state of chronic inflammation, which increases their risk of infection and disease.
While all organic dairy is supposed to be grass fed, not all organic dairy is created equal. While some are offering truly superior milk that comes from grass fed cows raised on pasture, others are passing off industrially produced milk as organic — and pocketing the increased profits while small family farms struggle to survive.
As noted by the Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog whose core constituencies are family farmers across the U.S. and consumers concerned about the availability and quality of organic foods:19
"Despite the benefits of grass-based dairying, it is still important for consumers to know their product suppliers. Buyers should beware of a grass-fed label that does not take into account how grazing practices impact the environment. A grass-fed label reflects what animals are fed and doesn't necessarily distinguish whether the milk product was produced on well-managed, environmentally friendly farms that are not overgrazed."
The solution is to either get to know a local farmer who is producing grass fed milk the right way, or look for the American Grassfed Association (AGA) certification. AGA-approved producers are certified according to strict standards that include being raised on a diet of 100 percent forage; raised on pasture and never confined to a feedlot; never treated with antibiotics or hormones; and born and raised on American family farms.
You can also check out Cornucopia's Organic Dairy Scorecard.20 Their goal is to empower you to make informed purchasing decisions. You might be surprised to see many big-name organic brands that rank near the bottom of the list, even receiving a "zero" rating.
In this case, it's not worth your money to pay for an "organic" product that's likely no better than conventional. You'd be better served by supporting the ethical farms that received a 4- or 5-cow rating instead (meaning their farming practices are either excellent or outstanding).
Where You Get Your Food Matters
Sourcing your foods from a local farmer is one of your best bets to ensure you're getting something wholesome. And, you'll be supporting the small farms — not the mega-farming corporations — in your area. Ideally, support farmers who are using diverse cropping methods, such as planting of cover crops, raising animals on pasture and other methods of regenerative agriculture.
Another option is to join a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. Doing so can make a big difference in how well a small family farm can survive and thrive. As a CSA member, you buy a "share" of the vegetables the farm produces, and each week during growing season (usually May through October) you receive a weekly delivery of fresh food.
Joining a CSA is a powerful investment not only in your own health, but in that of your local community and economy as well. If you live in the U.S., the following organizations can help you locate CSAs and other farm-fresh foods in your area:
EatWild.com
EatWild.com provides lists of certified organic farmers known to produce safe, wholesome raw dairy products as well as grass-fed beef and other organic produce. Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass-fed products.
Weston A. Price Foundation
The Weston A. Price Foundation has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.
Grassfed Exchange
The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.
Local Harvest
This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats and many other goodies.
Farmers Markets
A national listing of farmers markets.
Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food From Healthy Animals
The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA)
CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.
FoodRoutes
The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs and markets near you.
The Cornucopia Institute
The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO "organic" production from authentic organic practices.
RealMilk.com
If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws. California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.
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