Green groups can't sue US Export Import Bank over coal loans. DC Fed. judge says they lack standing. ExIm Bank Chair is Obama appointee-Courthouse News

Export Import Bank Chairman Hochberg is an Obama appointee.
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1/23/2015, "Greens Can't Sue ExIm Bank for Coal Loan," Rebekah Kearn, courthousenews.com

"The U.S. Export-Import Bank need not face claims that a $90 million loan guarantee to a coal company will damage the environment and threaten public health, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
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Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the Center for International Environmental Law and four other environmental groups sued in July 2013 , claiming that the bank and its Chairman Fred P. Hochbert authorized a 3-year, $100 million loan to Xcoal Energy and Resources from PNC Bank without conducting environmental analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The loan enabled Xcoal to mine $1 billion worth of coal from mines in Appalachia, transport it by rail to ports in Baltimore and Hampton Roads, Va., and sell it to overseas customers. .
The plaintiffs claimed that the loan deal would pollute the air and water with toxic coal dust, aggravating respiratory conditions such as bronchitis and asthma, and that toxic metals in coal dust from the mines would increase people's risk of cancer and kidney damage. .
They also claimed that small dust particles contribute to haze, alter the nutrient balance in water bodies, and diminish ecological diversity. .
In response, ExIm Bank claimed the plaintiffs lacked standing and that it was not necessary to conduct a NEPA-compliant environmental study for a loan guarantee.
.     On Wednesday, District of Columbia Federal Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed with the ExIm Bank, and found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the loan guarantee.
. To establish standing in cases alleging violation of procedural rights, such as NEPA lawsuits, the plaintiff must demonstrate a specific rather than general interest in the matter, show that the government's failure to conform to the procedure at issue will harm the plaintiff's interests, that the government's failure to act is the cause of the plaintiff's alleged injuries, and that the court can provide actual rather than speculative relief, the ruling states. .
The defendants acknowledged that members of the four environmental groups suing on behalf of their members would likely be harmed by pollution from coal exportation, but argued that the groups lacked standing because they did not prove that the loan would cause Xcoal to export more coal or that vacating the guarantee would force Xcoal to export less coal.
  In rebuttal, the groups asserted that ExIm's loan enabled Xcoal to export more coal than it could without the guarantee, and that canceling the guarantee until the bank completes NEPA analysis would force Xcoal to decrease coal exports and thus reduce pollution.
     Contreras was not persuaded. He found that the administrative record and declarations from the parties demonstrate no link between ExIm Bank's authorization of the loan guarantee and the amount of Xcoal's coal exports.
     Though the groups' members believed NEPA compliance could better protect them from the effects of coal pollution, their "hopes or beliefs than an order rescinding the guarantee would redress their injuries, however genuine, do not constitute 'specific facts' showing redressability," Contreras wrote.
. In contrast, the defendants supported their position with specific facts, such as Xcoal's using other lines of credit to boost its coal exports, to prove that rescinding the guarantee will accomplish little to protect the plaintiffs' members from pollution, the ruling states. .
     "The proposition that Xcoal would export less coal if the court orders the bank to rescind its guarantee is, at best, entirely conjectural in light of the availability of alternative funds and Xcoal's stated commitment to exporting the same volume of coal regardless of whether the loan guarantee is rescinded," Contreras wrote. .
     Since the four groups cannot refute the defendants' assertions that the European banking crises is easing up and that Xcoal is using only 30 percent of its available $535 million in credit, they lack standing for failure to establish redressabillity, Contreras added. .
     The Center for International Environmental Law's and Pacific Environment's claims for organizational standing based on suffering "injuries to their organizations' missions, activities, and resources" due to ExIm's guarantee also failed to impress the court because neither could not show that they suffered actual harm. .
     Both groups contended that the guarantee interferes with their express missions to protect the environment, and forced them to expend resources on environmental advocacy and public education, but neither could back up those claims with specific facts or explain how allocating additional funds for advocacy differed from their typical program activities and costs, according to the ruling. .
     An action that merely frustrates an organization's goals is not enough to prove actual injury, and without proof of such injury, the plaintiffs thus lack standing, Contreras wrote. .
     The court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and denied as moot the plaintiffs' motion to include extra-record evidence. .
     The plaintiffs were Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the Center for International Environmental Law, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and Pacific Environment."

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In 2013 Obama ExIm Bank Pres. appointee Hochberg was approved for a second four year term:
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6/6/13, "Senate panel backs Hochberg for second term at Ex-Im Bank," Reuters 
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"The Senate Banking Committee voted 20-2 on Thursday to back Fred Hochberg for a second term as president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which provides financial assistance to support U.S. exports."... .
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 Export Import Bank Board of Directors are also Obama appointees, exim.gov
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Sierra Club doesn't understand Hochberg is only carrying out Obama's wishes: 

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5/6/13, "U.S. Export-Import Bank Shady Coal Scheme in Mongolia," Daily Kos, nicoleghio
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"Once again, U.S. Export-Import Bank (Exim) Chairman Fred Hochberg is using our taxpayer dollars to finance a dangerous fossil fuel project. This time it’s Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mine and the associated coal-fired power plant in Mongolia. What’s even more galling is that Hochberg and the Exim board of directors approved the project in April despite what amounted to a vote of no confidence in the very same project by the U.S. Treasury, which abstained from a decision on funding from World Bank Group’s International Financial Corporation (IFC).
When explaining their abstention, Treasury officials stated, "The ESIA does not provide a sufficiently detailed analysis of associated facilities and cumulative impacts, notably concerning a coal-fired power plant that will likely be needed to provide reliable power for the project." Clearly these were trivial matters for Mr. Hochberg and Exim that should not come between them and a new destructive coal plant.
The sad part is we now know that the situation is much worse. At the time of the World Bank vote, Rio Tinto was telling officials that a final decision had not been made on whether or not they would construct a coal-fired power plant. But in Mongolia, they were already making preparations on the ground for the plant. In other words, Rio Tinto was lying in order to get funding from the IFC and the U.S. Government -- and it worked because neither the World Bank nor Exim did the necessary due diligence to check Rio Tinto’s claims. Did I mention this is your tax payer dollars at work?
Our partners at Accountability Counsel did check, and it wasn’t that hard. They traveled to Mongolia and took a tour of the mine with a Rio Tinto official. Not only did he tell Accountability Counsel that he had not heard any talk of reconsidering the decision to build the coal-fired power plant, he pointed out where the worker housing was already under construction. It is the white line in the distance of this photo provided by Accountability Counsel.
Of course, Hochberg has a long history of supporting controversial coal projects backed by unscrupulous companies, so we’re hardly be surprised. But we can’t let him, or the US Government off the hook for decisions like these. It’s clear that abstention votes are not enough. Going forward Exim and Treasury must vote “no” on fossil fuel projects, especially dirty coal projects. It’s way past time for the World Bank and the U.S. Export-Import Bank to get out of the coal business." . -- Nicole Ghio, Sierra Club's International Campaign

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Obama's Export Import Bank gave out $9.6 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2012: 
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Jan. 14, 2014, "U.S. spending bill aims to dilute curbs on overseas coal financing," Reuters, Valerie Volcovici
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"The Ex-Im Bank's fossil fuel financing reached a peak of $9.6 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, according to environmental group Pacific Environment."... . .  
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Sierra Club's concern about the Great Barrier Reef should've been directed to Obama though clearly he doesn't agree that Hochberg is "damaging the reputation" of his administration. In 2013 Obama re-appointed him to a second four year term:

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9/28/2012, "US Ex-Im Bank President Fred Hochberg Underwriting Destruction of The Great Barrier Reef, Again?" sierraclub.typepad.com
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"The US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), and its president Fred Hochberg, have never met a coal project they don’t like. At times it’s so bad we don’t know what century the institution thinks it is operating in. Now despite a worldwide uproar over their interest in one of the world’s largest coal ‘mega-mines’ in Australia they have been linked to another Australian mega mine (http://reut.rs/NRb26S). Underwriting the havoc this would wreak on the Great Barrier Reef is an unacceptable use of US tax payer dollars and it’s time Ex-Im Bank came clean on its involvement. 

It’s not surprising to hear over-eager developers link the Ex-Im Bank to these projects because the institution has a long history of supporting fossil fuel projects – and that track record is getting worse. It got so bad that the Sierra Club wrote an open letter to President Fred Hochberg because we have witnessed first hand the destruction these projects are wreaking on communities and livelihoods (check out our blog on the Sasan coal project in India).

But our pleas were callously ignored as President Hochberg ok’d a massive expansion of coal finance in every corner of the globe. From Kusile in South Africa, to Sasan in India, to Xcoal in the US, to these proposed mines in Australia, it appears that Ex-Im Bank cares little for the damage the institution is causing to communities around the world not to mention the reputation of this administration.

The problem however is that the public does. And that public stretches from Australia where the mining would take place, to India where the coal would be burned, to the US where the financing would come from. This global outcry was captured in part by Avaaz’s petition to #savethereef (consider taking a minute to tell Fred Hochberg personally via twitter: @fredhochberg), but also by media scrutiny in India, the US, the UK, and Australia. It appears that while President Hochberg may consider designations like ‘World Heritage Site’ pesky obstacles, the global public considers them treasures.

Which is why Greenpeace Australia’s recent report on massive coal export expansion plans that would trample the Great Barrier Reef, and the global climate, was so damning. They found that if underwritten by institutions like Ex-Im Bank the world would add emissions the size of the country of Canada while increasing traffic through one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. For an excellent visual representation of this lunacy check out Greenpeace’s short video:....
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So how did President Hochberg react? By quietly talking with another Indian company to finance another mega mine - this time with Adani group, whose record of violations (PDF) would give most institutions pause. Not Ex-Im though. After all, it makes sense that being linked to a scandal plagued Indian coal sector beset by ‘coal-gate’ investigations would be of little consequence if you are willing to finance the destruction of a global treasure like the reef.

But at the end of the day these may be over eager developers looking to increase the perception in the financial community that their projects have legs. The truth is with prices at near 2 year lows the Australian mining community is understandably worried that these projects are no longer viable. That is why the vociferous claims from Adani and GVK may be making their way into the press at this opportune moment.

But if that’s true, it’s easy enough for President Hochberg to condemn these public statements, and publicly dissociate the bank from this scandal. Instead he has been silent which leaves a huge question mark over US involvement. But let’s not put words in anyone’s mouth. Let’s let President Hochberg speak for himself.

So Mr. Hochberg, where do you stand? The world is waiting for your answer."
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- "Justin Guay, Sierra Club International Program"
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Comment: Obama's "answer" to the Sierra Club and "the world" was to re-appoint Hochberg in 2013 to a second four year term. 

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Ed. note: Please pardon messy appearance of this post, text either jammed together or separated by unnatural gaps. Google wasn't happy about this post.



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Billionaire who owns 5 mansions stopped by Davos via private jet to warn that Americans must reduce lifestyles because jobs aren't coming back, danger of social unrest. His yacht once damaged a coral reef off Belize

1/23/15, "The 5 mansions of the billionaire who wants America to live a 'smaller' existence," Adrian Glick Kudler, homes.yahoo.com

"Jeff Greene is a billionaire who made most of his fortune shorting subprime mortgages ahead of the last recession. Greene took a private jet to this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, along with his wife, children and two nannies, and then told Bloomberg that "America's lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence. We need to reinvent our whole system of life."
 
Green owns a $195-million palace in Beverly Hills with 23 bathrooms and a rotating dance floor, two other Los Angeles mansions, a mansion in Palm Beach, a mansion in the Hamptons, and a 145-foot party yacht called Summerwind that once severely damaged a protected coral reef off Belize. Here's a look:

Greene paid $35 million for Beverly Hills's Palazzo di Amore in 2007, when it was still only partly built. He finished the job and today the property has a 35,000-square-foot main house with 12 bedrooms, a 3,000-bottle wine cellar and tasting room, a separate 10,000-bottle cellar, a kitchen with walk-in fridge, a staff wing, and a Turkish spa; a 15,000-square-foot entertainment center with bowling alley, 50-seat theater, "a dressing room for live stage shows," and a disco/ballroom with "state-of-the-art laser light system and revolving dance floor"; a vineyard that produces 400 to 500 cases a year; a total of 23 bathrooms; a quarter-mile driveway; and the aforementioned rotating dance floor. He put it up for sale last fall for $195 million, the most expensive home on the market in America by far.

Click here or on the image above for more pictures of Greene's Palazzo di Amore.

Today when they're in Los Angeles, Greene and family mostly stay in this three-story, beachfront Malibu house, which he had built in 2010 (he bought the property for $5.5 million in 2007). The 4,110-square-foot home has four bedrooms, glass walls and direct ocean access. Greene's been trying to sell the house for years. It's now listed at $11.75 million.

Click here or on the image above for more pictures of Greene's Malibu house

In 2009, Greene decided to leave California (possibly for tax purposes) and move back to Palm Beach, Florida, where he grew up. He paid $24 million for La Bellucia, a 1920 estate with a nine-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot main house designed by Addison Mizner and 234 feet of oceanfront. During an extensive renovation of the house, he shacked up with his family in six suites at his own Omphoy Ocean Resort hotel, where he reportedly converted a banquet-equipment storage room into "a playroom with a photo booth, juke box and movie theater" and a meditation garden into a playground for his children.

Click here or on the image above for more pictures of La Bellucia.

Greene paid $36 million in 2011 for a Hamptons spread called Tyndal Point; it's a 55-acre parcel with 3,000 feet of beachfront, three houses, two carriage houses, and two docks.

Click here or on the image above for more pictures of Greene's Hamptons spread.

Greene bought his bachelor pad in Beverly Hills in 2002 for $1.575 million. It was recently renovated, but in its Greene heyday it had five bedrooms, a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, a dance club, a theater, a four-story elevator, and two dog runs. Also possibly an observatory. He's downsizing, though: After trying for years to sell it, just a couple of days ago he closed a sale on it for $8.9 million.

Click here or on the image above for more pictures of Greene's Beverly Hills bachelor pad." Images from Yahoo.com. via Free Rep. 

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1/21/15, "Billionaire Greene, Who Bet Against Subprime, Goes Long on U.S. While Bemoaning Jobs Crisis," Bloomberg, Matthew G. Miller

"Billionaire Jeff Greene, who amassed a multibillion dollar fortune betting against subprime mortgage securities, says the U.S. faces a jobs crisis that will cause social unrest and radical politics.
 
"America's lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence," Greene said in an interview today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We need to reinvent our whole system of life." 

The 60-year-old founder of Coral Gables, Florida-based Florida Sunshine Investments said his biggest fund was up more than 20 percent last year with bets on Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), bank stocks and mortgage-backed securities. 

"I'm remarkably long for my level of pessimism," he said. "Our economy is in deep trouble. We need to be honest with ourselves. We've had a realistic level of job destruction, and those jobs aren't coming back." 

Greene, who flew his wife, children and two nannies on a private jet plane to Davos for the week, said he's planning a conference in Palm Beach, Florida, at the Tideline Hotel called "Closing the Gap." The event, which he said is scheduled for December, will feature speakers such as economist Nouriel Roubini. 

"I live in Palm Beach, where no one wants to hear bad news," he said. "We need to have an event where people aren't just focused on predicting the price of oil." 

Greene says he has no investors or partners and manages about $2 billion in financial investments, more than $750 million in real estate and at least $1.5 billion in assorted property development projects. 

The billionaire said he's planning on having dinner tonight with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, and will attend several private meals and parties throughout the week."







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Palm trees grew in Arctic during several 50,000-200,000 year episodes around 50 million years ago, contradicting computer models-Nature Geoscience peer reviewed study in 2009

10/25/2009, "Warm and wet conditions in the Arctic region during Eocene Thermal Maximum 2," Nature Geoscience

"Appy Sluijs¹, Stefan Schouten², Timme H. Donders^1,5, Petra L. Schoon², Ursula Röhl³, Gert-Jan Reichart⁴, Francesca Sangiorgi^1,2, Jung-Hyun Kim², Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté^2,4 & Henk Brinkhuis^1"
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"Abstract

Several episodes of abrupt and transient warming, each lasting between 50,000 and 200,000 years, punctuated the long-term warming during the Late Palaeocene and Early Eocene (58 to 51 Myr ago) epochs^{1, 2}. These hyperthermal events, such as the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2) that took place about 53.5 Myr ago², are associated with rapid increases in atmospheric CO₂ content. However, the impacts of most events are documented only locally^{3, 4}. Here we show, on the basis of estimates from the TEX₈₆′ proxy, that sea surface temperatures rose by 3–5 ^°C in the Arctic Ocean during the ETM2. [37-41F] Dinoflagellate fossils demonstrate a concomitant freshening and eutrophication of surface waters, which resulted in euxinia in the photic zone. The presence of palm pollen implies5 that coldest month mean temperatures over the Arctic land masses were no less than 8 ^°C, in contradiction of model simulations that suggest hyperthermal winter temperatures were below freezing⁶. In light of our reconstructed temperature and hydrologic trends, we conclude that the temperature and hydrographic responses to abruptly increased atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were similar for the ETM2 and the better-described Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum^{7, 8}, 55.5 Myr ago."

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10/26/2009, "Palms once grew in ice-free Arctic," Reuters, Alister Doyle, via ABC.net.au

"Palms flourished in the Arctic during a brief sweltering period about 50 million years ago, according to a study that hints at gaps in our understanding of modern climate change.

The Arctic "would have looked very similar to the vegetation we now see in Florida," says Dr Appy Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands who led the international study. Evidence of palms has never been found so far north before.

The scientists, sampling sediments on a ridge on the seabed about 500 kilometres from the North Pole and up to 53.5 million years old, found pollen from ancient palms as well as of conifers, oaks, pecans and other trees.

"The presence of palm pollen implies that coldest month mean temperatures over the Arctic land masses were no less than 8°C [46.4F]", the scientists, based in the Netherlands and Germany, write in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That contradicts computer model simulations, also used to predict future temperatures, that suggest winter temperatures were below freezing even in the unexplained hothouse period that lasted between 50,000 and 200,000 years ago during the Eocene epoch.

Climate surprises

Sluijs says that it was also striking that palms, which do not lose their leaves in winter, grew in an area where the sun does not shine for about five months. Experiments with modern palms indicate that they can survive prolonged darkness.

The scientists say the presence of palms, it was not clear if they were trees or plants, hinted that the modern climate system could yield big surprises. 

According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global temperatures are rising, due in part to human-made greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels. 

In 2007, Arctic ice shrank to its smallest size since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

One possibility for the ancient spike in temperatures was an abrupt rise in carbon dioxide levels, far beyond current concentrations. That might have been caused by volcanic eruptions, or a melt of frozen methane trapped in the seabed.

"We cannot explain this with the current knowledge of the climate system," says Sluijs. One possibility was that new types of clouds formed in the Arctic as it warmed, acting as a blanket that trapped ever more heat and accelerated warming.

"If the ocean was very warm it's possible that these clouds form at a higher latitude than now," he says. Such effects caused by new cloud formation could be an unexpected tripwire in accelerating modern climate change."

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6/12/2009, "Ancient Arctic beasts ate rotting matter," abc.net.au, Michael Reilly, Discovery News

"Creatures roaming the balmy swamps and forests of the prehistoric Arctic survived the long dark season by switching diets, according to a new study.

Instead of migrating south or hibernating for the winter like most animals today, they endured, foraging in dormant forests through the long polar gloaming.

The research, which was led by Jaelyn Eberle, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, appears in the latest edition of the journal Geology. 

Canada's Ellesmere Island is a frigid tundra. But 53 million years ago it resembled a swamp, teeming with plants and crowded with alligators, turtles and tapirs. Even lemur-like creatures swung from the trees.

Scientists have long wondered how the animals survived the long winter.

Though temperatures didn't often get below freezing, plants must have gone into hibernation during the six months of darkness.

New evidence extracted from the teeth of the hippopotamus-like Coryphodon suggests they subsisted on leaf litter, decaying fruits and twigs through the winter.

Eberle and colleagues sampled carbon isotopes from the teeth of nine Coryphodons, three tapirs and two rhinoceros-like brontotheres, all of which lived on ancient Ellesmere.

The results show the plant-eaters lived off of abundant flowering plants, leaves and greenery in the spring and summer months. But in the winter they switched to eating dead and dying plant matter and fungi.

"People first discovered alligators in the high Arctic in 1975, and I've been going up there since the 1990's," says Eberle. "But we never thought to stop and ask 'why?' or 'how?' How were these animals able to survive up there - what made them special?"

Eberle speculates the land-bound creatures evolved a unique digestive system.

Dead plant matter is mostly low in nutritional value, so the animals must have compensated each winter by eating huge amounts of food, and thoroughly digesting it.

"In a way this is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. We don't have an ecosystem like this extinct ecosystem. It's amazing how resistant to changes in light these animals can be," says Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He says Eberle's theory is "a persuasive, interesting hypothesis," though he stresses that it's still far from certain.

As global warming affects the Arctic, Eberle expects animals will again move north. But she says it's unlikely alligators or hippos will soon return.

The early Eocone climate of Ellesmere was drastically warmer than present day, averaging temperatures 25°C [77F] more back then."

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Bob Murray of Murray Coal and 'Coal Country Stands with Mitt,' are you sorry that you supported Mitt Romney who now wants you to be signed to 'global climate agreements' which everyone knows have nothing to do with climate?

1/22/15, "Mitt Romney: 'I'm One Of Those Republicans' Who Believes In Climate Change," AP via Huffington Post, Michelle L. Price and Steve Peoples

""I'm one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that," he said of climate change, charging that federal leaders have failed to enact global agreements needed to tackle the problem."...

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Nov. 2012 article about Murray Coal support of Romney:

11/13/2012, "What Was Romney Doing In Coal Country?" NewRepublic.com, Alec MacGillis

"Last month, I reported on the very impressive political fundraising operation at Murray Energy, a privately-held, 3,000-worker coal company based in Ohio, where white collar employees have for years felt pressure to give to the company political action committee and to Republican candidates favored by CEO Robert Murray. This year, Murray hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for Mitt Romney in May and a Romney rally at one of the company's Ohio mines in August. The rally served as the backdrop for a Romney TV ad.

In letters to employees, Murray strongly urged them to give and warned of the severe consequences that the coal industry would suffer if Obama and other Democrats were not defeated. Last week, those warnings bore out. The day after the election, Murray Energy laid off 102 employees at its Utah mine and 54 at one of its southern Illinois mines. Murray read aloud a prayer to a group of employees to explain the decision:

Dear Lord: The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals of our Founders. And, away from the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility. Away from capitalism, economic responsibility, and personal acceptance. We are a Country in favor of redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom. My regret, Lord, is that our young people, including those in my own family, never will know what America was like or might have been. They will pay the price in their reduced standard of living and, most especially, reduced freedom.

The takers outvoted the producers. In response to this, I have turned to my Bible and in II Peter, Chapter 1, verses 4-9 it says, ‘To faith we are to add goodness; to goodness, knowledge; to knowledge, self control; to self control, perseverance; to perseverance, godliness; to godliness, kindness; to brotherly kindness, love.’ Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise. Amen.

Others have already called into question the notion of a direct link between Obama's reelection and the industry struggles that are forcing the company to downsize. Most notable is the fact that the industry is threatened above all by the boom in cheap natural gas as a rival energy source, as well as by the rising cost of coal production as supplies dwindle, and by lessened demand for coal exports as a result of China's economic slowdown. Then there is the fact that the Obama administration has not clamped down on coal and other emissions-producing sectors nearly as hard as many environmentalists would have liked, and continues to tout the potential for "clean coal" technologies in which carbon dioxide gases would be stored underground.

However, Murray's eye-catching prayer raises another question that I did not explore fully in my piece last month: What, exactly, was Mitt Romney thinking in making such an aggressive play for coal country, and allying himself with Bob Murray as part of that? The answer may seem obvious: three of the swing states Romney dearly wanted to win are coal-producing–Ohio, Virginia and Colorado–as is Pennsylvania, the state Republicans have been trying to get back in their column for two decades. Coal country tends to be dominated by just the sort of working-class white voters who have been cool to Obama from the get-go. And, whatever the reality of Obama's impact on the coal industry, there is a strong sense among its executives that he has indeed been engaged in a four-year "war on coal." (Never mind that as a senator in coal-producing Illinois he was for a time awfully cozy with the industry.) To the Romney campaign, this must've made for a seeming no-brainer: Want to win those three or four states? Go hard on coal.

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But was this the right calculation? It seems that this may have been another instance where the Romney campaign made the mistake of elevating anecdote and instinct over hard numbers. And the press may have been in complicit in this. We talk a lot about "coal country" as if it's a major swath of the country and a trove of swing-state votes, but it really isn't. According to the National Mining Association, there are only 2,800 mining jobs in Ohio, 5,000 in Virginia, 2,200 in Colorado and 8,300 in Pennsylvania. The largest coal-producing states are solidly Republican: West Virginia (21,000 jobs) and Kentucky (17,000 jobs). And it's not just the industry that doesn't have a whole lot of swing-state numbers–it's coal country as a whole. Simply put, coal country is very sparsely populated territory. The Murray operations in Ohio are concentrated in Belmont and Monroe counties in the Ohio River Valley in the southeastern part of the state. In 2008, slightly more than 32,000 people voted in Belmont County and fewer than 7,000 voted in Monroe (the second-lowest vote tally in the state). Romney improved on John McCain's numbers in this part of the state, but to little effect -- in Belmont, he picked up a swing of about 3,500 votes, and in Monroe, fewer than 1,200. Contrast that with the scale of the auto industry in the state: Roughly one in eight Ohio jobs are linked to auto makers and parts suppliers, and there's a plant or supplier in all but a few of the state's counties."...

Image above of Romney at Murray Coal in 2012 from New Republic

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2012 MITT ROMNEY TV AD at MURRAY COAL:

 

 

 

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Comment: Not that coal, CO2, or even "climate" are concerns of "global climate agreements."

 

 

 

 

 

 

World Bank has been funding African government actions forcing indigenous people off their lands in the name of "climate change" or "carbon offsets" projects. In Ethiopia land is then sold to investors-UK Guardian, icij

9/29/14, "World Bank accuses itself of failing to protect Kenya forest dwellers," UK Guardian, John Vidal

"A leaked copy of a World Bank investigation seen by the Guardian has accused the bank of failing to protect the rights of one of Kenya’s last groups of forest people, who are being evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of climate change and conservation. 

Thousands of homes belonging to hunter-gatherer Sengwer people living in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani hills were burned down earlier this year by Kenya forest service guards who had been ordered to clear the forest as part of a carbon offset project that aimed to reduce emissions from deforestation.

The result has been that more than 1,000 people living near the town of Eldoret have been classed as squatters and forced to flee what they say has been government harassment, intimidation and arrest.

The evictions were condemned in February by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination, and drew in the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, who expressed alarm at what was described by 360 national and international civil society organisations and individuals as “cultural genocide”. An Avaaz petition collected 950,000 names calling for the bank to urgently halt the “illegal” evictions.

Following a request by the Sengwer to assess the impact of the bank’s funding of the project, the bank’s inspection panel decided in May that it had violated safeguards in several areas. At the same time, the bank’s management decided to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the World Bank’s own leaked management response to the report denies many of the findings, evidently sees little importance in the fact that violation of safeguard policies has occurred, and presents an inadequate action plan to be considered by the bank’s board. It simply proposes more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt,” said a spokesman for the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

“President Kim said the bank would not be bystanders, but only by taking seriously the many breaches of its own safeguards and approving the action plan requested by the Sengwer people themselves to overcome the human rights violations that these breaches have contributed to will the bank be able to demonstrate that the president has been true to his word,” said Peter Kitelo, a representative of Kenya’s Forest Indigenous Peoples Network.

A final decision on the project will be made on Tuesday when the World Bank board meets in Washington under the chairmanship of Kim to decide on the bank’s response to the inspection panel report. If the board decides to endorse the action plan, the evictions are certain to be completed. More than half the people evicted are thought to have returned to their lands.

“The eviction of such ancestral communities leaves the indigenous forests open to exploitation and destruction; whereas securing such communities rights to their lands and responsibility to continue traditional conservation practices, protects their forests,” said the Forest Peoples Programme."

Image: "Families from the Sengwer community leave their homes in Embobut, Kenya. Photograph: Forest Peoples Programme"

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Taxpayer dollars from "rich countries" to pay for alleged climate injustice often become the property of the World Bank thus ensuring the world's poorest will become even poorer.  No protests mentioning "World Bank" were allowed inside 2010 UN Cancun Climate conference:

12/8/2010, "March to keep World Bank out of climate finance," Climate Justice 

Dec. 2010 UN Cancun Climate conf.

"Cancun: Anger grows at World Bank role in climate finance"

"As talks on long term climate finance for developing countries heat up today in Cancun, campaigners from around the world condemned rich countries’ efforts to carve out a special role for the World Bank in managing these funds.

Campaigners are furious that the World Bank is being promoted as the hub for climate finance. They insist that because the institution continues to bankroll dirty fossil fuel projects to the tune of $6.6 billion last year alone – they are in the wrong hands for the funds to fight climate change. They also cite the Bank’s recent history of imposing climate finance as loans, creating new debt for already impoverished countries, increasing the role of the private sector and imposing economic policy conditions that increase inequality.

The coalition of diverse groups from developed and developing countries launched a new campaign ‘World Bank our of climate finance’ today calling on governments to resist any role for the institution in climate finance. They are particularly angry that in an early draft of the negotiating text, the World Bank has been invited to serve as the interim trustee of a new global climate fund – and potentially its secretariat.

In response, 200 organisations from around the world, including Jubilee South, Friends of the Earth International and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance have signed an open letter to governments at the Cancun negotiations stating that the nature, structure, track record, and policies of the World Bank and other development banks contradict what should be the principles of fair and effective climate finance.

Ian Rivera, from Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) – Philippines said:

“It’s outrageous that the World Bank is being forced on to developing countries. Peoples of developing countries do not want to work with the World Bank in order to access much needed climate finance. Based on bitter experience, they know that the World Bank will increase their debts and poverty and will undermine their human rights and their independence. That’s why we have launched a new campaign to stop the World Bank being imposed on developing countries who need climate finance to cope with climate change.”

Campaigners are also angry that they are not being allowed to campaign against the World Bank inside the UN talks. They have been told that permission will not be granted for any protest that mentions the World Bank, so they are being forced to march and protest away from the conference centre.

Muhammad Reza, from KRUHA (People’s Coalition for the Right to Water)-Indonesia said: “We are not allowed to even whisper the World Bank’s name in a negative context within the UN. This is silencing civil society in a space where civil society’s voice must be heard and must be listened to.”
The UK government is believed to be playing a key role in pushing for the World Bank to take the role of climate finance manager, and provides over 80 per cent of its climate finance through the World Bank, with 60 per cent as loans to developing countries.

Kirsty Wright, from the World Development Movement said: “Donor countries, in particular the UK, are unfairly pushing for climate finance to be channelled as loans through the World Bank. Rich countries are undemocratically imposing the World Bank into these talks. The current negotiating text goes further than the Copenhagen Accord, by specifically inviting the World Bank to become the manager of climate finance. The World Bank cannot be trusted with climate finance given that it is a leader in investing in fossil fuel projects, like coal power stations. It’s absolutely disgraceful, and we will resist this strongly together with our allies from around the world.”"

Image above from Climate Justice Network, 12/8/2010

- For more information: worldbankoutofclimate.org

"World Bank manages 12 carbon funds through its Carbon Financing Unit, with an approximate value of US$ 2.5 billion. So far these have mainly involved projects in countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia."

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Genocide is now defined as "violating rules:"

1/20/15, "Leaked report says World Bank violated own rules in Ethiopia," Sasha Chavkin, icij.org

"Internal watchdog finds link between World Bank financing and Ethiopian government's mass resettlement of indigenous group."

"The World Bank repeatedly violated its own rules while funding a development initiative in Ethiopia that has been dogged by complaints that it sponsored forced evictions of thousands of indigenous people, according to a leaked report by a watchdog panel at the bank.

The report, which was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, examines a health and education initiative that was buoyed by nearly $2 billion in World Bank funding over the last decade. Members of the indigenous Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambella province charged that Ethiopian authorities used some of the bank’s money to support a massive forced relocation program and that soldiers beat, raped and killed Anuak who refused to abandon their homes. The bank continued funding the health and education initiative for years after the allegations emerged.

The report by the World Bank’s internal Inspection Panel found that there was an “operational link” between the World Bank-funded program and the Ethiopian government’s relocation push, which was known as “villagization.” By failing to acknowledge this link and take action to protect affected communities, the bank violated its own policies on project appraisal, risk assessment, financial analysis and protection of indigenous peoples, the panel’s report concludes.

“The bank has enabled the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral lands,” said David Pred, director of Inclusive Development International, a nonprofit that filed the complaint on behalf of 26 Anuak refugees.

The bank declined to answer ICIJ’s questions about the report.

“As is standard procedure, World Bank staff cannot comment on the results of the Inspection Panel’s investigation until the Executive Board of the World Bank Group has had the opportunity to review the Panel’s report over the coming weeks,” Phil Hay, the bank’s spokesman for Africa, said in a written response.

In previous responses to the complaint, bank management said there was no evidence of widespread abuses or evictions and that the Anuak “have not been, nor will they be, directly and adversely affected by a failure of the Bank to implement its policies and procedures.” 

Because the panel’s report has not yet been published, some of the language may be revised before a final version is released, but its basic conclusions are not expected to change.

The report stops short of finding the bank responsible for the most serious abuses. The panel did not attempt to verify the widely reported allegations of forced evictions and human rights violations, finding that the question was beyond the scope of its investigation. The bank did not violate its policy on forced resettlement, the report says, because the relocations were conducted by the Ethiopian government and were not a “necessary” part of the health and education program.

Since 2006, the World Bank and other foreign donors have bankrolled the Promoting Basic Services (PBS) program, which provides grants to local and regional governments for services such as health, education and clean water. The PBS program was designed to avoid funneling aid dollars directly to Ethiopia’s federal government, which had violently cracked down on its opposition after disputed 2005 elections.

By 2010, federal and provincial authorities had embarked on an effort to relocate nearly 2 million poor people in four provinces from isolated rural homes to village sites selected by the government. In these new villages, authorities promised to provide the relocated communities with health care, education and other basic services they had lacked. 

The government relocated 37,883 households in Gambella, roughly 60 percent of all households in the province, according to Ethiopian government statistics cited by the Inspection Panel. The Ethiopian government has said that all resettlements were voluntary.

Many members of the Anuak, a mostly Christian indigenous group in Gambella, have said they didn’t want to move. Anuak and their advocates say that they were pushed off their fertile lands by soldiers and policemen, and that much of the abandoned land was then leased by the government to investors. 

The evictions were “accompanied by widespread human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrest and detention, beatings, rape, and other sexual violence,” according to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch report and Anuak refugees’ complaint to the Inspection Panel contended that the bank’s money was being used by local and regional authorities to support forced relocations. For example, they say, money from the PBS initiative was used to pay the salaries of government officials who helped carry out the evictions.

The bank continued to fund the PBS program throughout the villagization campaign. The bank approved new funding for PBS in 2011 and 2012, and its support for the program continues today. Since the nationwide health and education initiative launched, Ethiopia has reported strides in reducing child mortality and increasing primary school enrollment.

The villagization campaign ended in 2013, and is believed to have resettled substantially fewer than the nearly 2 million people anticipated by the government.

The Ethiopia case is one of several recent World Bank-financed projects that have drawn fire from activist groups for allegedly funding human rights violations. These projects include a loan to a palm oil producer in Honduras whose security guards have been accused by human rights advocates of killing dozens of peasants involved in a land rights dispute with the company, and a conservation program by the Kenyan government that members of the Sengwer people say was used as tool for pushing them out of their ancestral forests.

In the Ethiopia case, the Inspection Panel decided that the most severe allegations of forced evictions and violence were beyond its mandate, in part because bank rules limited its investigation to only the most recent funding installment of the PBS program.

During its investigation, the Inspection Panel asked Eisei Kurimoto, a professor at Osaka University in Japan and an expert on the Anuak people, to travel to Gambella and help review the Anuak’s complaint.

Kurimoto told ICIJ that Anuak he spoke with told him Ethiopian authorities used the threat of violence to force them to move.

Ethiopian officials who carried out the villagization program “always went with armed policemen and soldiers,” Kurimoto said. “It is very clear that the regional government thought that people would not move happily or willingly. So they had to show their power and the possibility of using force.”

Inclusive Development International’s Pred said it is now up to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim to decide whether “justice will be served” for the Anuak. “Justice starts with the acceptance of responsibility for one’s faults – which the Inspection Panel found in abundance – and ends with the provision of meaningful redress,” he said."

http://www.icij.org/blog/2015/01/leaked-report-says-world-bank-violated-own-rules-ethiopia 

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1/5/15, "The people pushed out of Ethiopia's fertile farmland," BBC, by Matthew Newsome, Ethiopia

"The construction of a huge dam in Ethiopia and the introduction of large-scale agricultural businesses has been controversial - finding out what local people think can be hard, but with the help of a bottle of rum nothing is impossible. After waiting several weeks for letters of permission from various Ethiopian ministries, I begin my road trip into the country's southern lowlands. 

I want to investigate the government's controversial plan to take over vast swathes of ancestral land, home to around 100,000 indigenous pastoralists, and turn it into a major centre for commercial agriculture, where foreign agribusinesses and government plantations would raise cash crops such as sugar and palm oil."...
 

 




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No warming in Antarctica during satellite era

1/23/15, "No Warming In Antarctica During Satellite Record," Paul Homewood

"According to GHG theory, it is the poles which should be warming fastest. Apparently, nobody told the South Pole. 

 
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
 
Even in summer months, satellites show no trend. 

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
  
And to complete the picture, Southern Ocean temperatures have been way below average since 2005.

 


https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/december-2014-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/






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