by Corinne Murdock | Jan 28, 2023 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
A Northern Arizona University (NAU) study declared that America needs to cooperate with China more for climate change.
The lead author of the study, Hubert Cheung, advocated for greater cooperation with the communist country. In addition to being adjunct faculty in NAU’s School of Earth and Sustainability, Cheung is part of the University of Tokyo in Japan as well as the University of Queensland in Australia. Cheung grew up in Hong Kong, China.
“We need to cooperate with China if we are to find effective solutions to climate change, for illegal wildlife trade, for sustainability transitions,” stated Cheung. “Understanding the Chinese leadership’s core strategic interests—and where political will already exists in Beijing to deliver on these strategic interests—will help conservation scientists and practitioners find opportunities and manage challenges.”
The paper’s abstract advocated for increasing China’s political power in order to advance sustainability and conservation. The paper went on to issue a defense of the Chinese government’s core interests, such as maintaining its current level of authority over its citizens and expanding its power onto the global stage.
“‘[A]n environmentally healthy and secure China can benefit the world, and this will only become more apparent over the course of the 21st century,’” stated the paper. “The scale and reach of China’s environmental footprint — and global geopolitical influence — is such that an exploration of its leadership’s political agenda and political will is valuable and timely for conservation.”
The other NAU researcher involved in the study, Duan Biggs, is also part of the same school as Cheung. Biggs indicated that sustainability efforts were the way to brokering a unified front between governments.
“The environment and conservation represent an opportunity for soft-diplomacy and for countries and societies to maintain dialogue and collaboration despite growing tension,” stated Biggs.
The only researcher hailing from a Chinese university was Tien Ming Lee. He’s a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Biological Control and Schools of Life Sciences and Ecology at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
The other researchers hailed from Japan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the leading organization attempting to create a new world order of global governance, identifies China as a leader in combating climate change on an international level. The WEF Global Future Council is also attempting to increase trust in China as a world leader.
Last year, China’s President Xi Jinping opened up the WEF’s annual meeting in Switzerland by calling on stronger international cooperation in overcoming COVID-19, revitalizing the economy, and addressing climate change. Jinping encouraged more open relations between all nations, not less.
“We should remove barriers, not erect walls. We should open up, not close off. We should seek integration, not de-couple,” said Jinping.
The WEF invented the social credit score system — similar to the one used by the Chinese government currently. China keeps a database on its citizens to ensure compliance with government interests.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Jan 1, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Flagstaff Mayor Becky Daggett will focus first on addressing climate change and affordable housing.
Daggett issued this promise during her swearing-in at last week’s city council meeting. She said she would direct her staff to tackle these two issues first.
“[We are going to emphasize] affordable housing and climate action, and also scheduling meetings with the public and really trying to hit the ground running,” said Daggett.
Affordable housing and climate action are the leading two of several priorities Daggett pledged on the campaign trail. After those priorities, Daggett listed small business growth, job creation, and increased investment in “greener” multi-modal transportation: pedestrian pathways, biking, and busing.
A week prior to her swearing-in, Daggett attended a bipartisan meeting with 12 other mayors to discuss housing as well as public safety, American Rescue Plan funds, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and CHIPS and Science Act. Daggett met with President Joe Biden, the White House Intergovernmental Affairs staff, Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Labor Secretary Martin Walsh, and Housing & Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge.
Both Daggett and the former mayor, Paul Deasy, ran their campaigns on promises to tackle climate change and affordable housing. On the trail, Daggett indicated that she would lean into higher density housing (high rise apartments, etc.) or missing middle housing (duplexes, townhomes, bungalow courts, carriage houses, etc.) to expand neighborhood walkability. Daggett also indicated a desire to reduce parking minimums.
Daggett noted that state law precludes Flagstaff from implementing its ideal affordable housing initiatives. Daggett said that until state law relaxes, the city would rely on incentives such as Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, partnerships with nonprofit and for-profit developers on city-owned land, and prioritize affordable housing during budget talks.
Climate change has been a winning topic for Flagstaff’s voters for the better part of the past decade; former mayor Coral Evans committed the city to carbon neutrality by 2030, a plan which Daggett supports. Affordable housing presents a newer concern prompted by the hot-turned-cold housing market, combined with the glut of short-term rental properties in the area.
Last June, Daggett and the Flagstaff City Council passed a Carbon Neutrality Plan. The plan noted that every action would integrate equity as a foundational element. The council pledged to encourage alternatives to cars such as walking, biking, rolling, and busing; reduce citizens’ dependence on driving; electrify its buses; expand micro-mobility devices; support citizens’ transition to electric vehicles; transition to 100 percent renewable electricity for municipal needs; increase renewable energy installations and usage in new buildings while supporting solar installations on existing buildings; reduce or remove natural gas usage in municipal buildings; encourage electrical grid reliance on new buildings; require new homes to be net zero energy homes by 2030; encourage sustainable consumption; divert waste from the landfill; reduce organic waste to the landfill to feed people; and develop a portfolio of local and regional carbon dioxide removal initiatives to achieve carbon neutrality.
Last August, Daggett said she would look to use American Rescue Plan Act funding to expand emergency shelter and affordable housing initiatives. In June, Daggett said that the city should apply its $5 billion budget surplus to climate action and affordable housing.
According to Flagstaff’s profile on the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), the city has about 971,600 annual GHG emissions. It’s completed five out of nine phases spanning mitigation, adaption, and energy access & poverty initiatives.
GCoM is a coalition of over 11,500 cities and local governments across six continents and 142 countries pledging to lower emissions and establish climate resiliency. GCoM is co-chaired by Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor, and Frans Timmersman, European Commission executive vice president for the European Green New Deal.
GCoM ex-officio members include Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC executive secretary; Maimunah Mohd Sharif, UN-Habitat executive director; and the Global Covenant of Mayors executive director. On the board are the mayors of Guelph, Canada; Warsaw, Poland; Heidelberg, Germany; Colombo, Shri Lanka; Kloto 1, Togo; Makati, Philippines; and Hobart, Australia.
Phoenix is also a member of GCoM, with reported annual GHG emissions of 16.45 million.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Dec 18, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The Phoenix City Council approved $1.5 million to fund climate-change friendly urban farming, with up to 60 percent of grant money exclusively for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). The grant term lasts up to five years.
The Biden administration prompted this program; they will fund it entirely, as part of their greater goal of equity. The city council revealed that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) selected Phoenix as a pilot location for this type of program.
In addition to creating jobs and innovating farming practices in an urban setting, the city will require farmers to “advance equity” in the food system, mitigate production and distribution-induced climate change, and adopt or expand upon sustainable food production or aggregation.
The deadline for the grant proposal passed earlier this month, Dec. 5. The city will announce grant recipients this coming spring.
In all, the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) may invest up to $43 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into urban, underserved nonprofit or private farmers. Those classified as “underserved” include beginners, the socially disadvantaged, those with limited resources, and military veterans. The USDA will target areas where FSA hasn’t been present before to implement this funding, or Resilient and Sustainable Agriculture (RSA) grants.
The $43 million is the first portion of $75 million to “support a fairer food system” while expanding nutritional food accessibility and strengthening the crippled supply chain.
The FSA focus on urban farming expanded with the 2018 Farm Bill, which established the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (UAIP). Over the past two years, the Biden administration’s USDA has allocated hundreds of millions in funding to urban, minority-focused initiatives.
The USDA has a county office committee devoted to urban agriculture in Phoenix, as well as in 16 other cities: Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cleveland, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Dallas, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Chicago, Illinois; New York, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; and Oakland, California.
These FSA committees recently held their elections. The deadline for ballots was the same day as the deadline for Phoenix’s grant proposal. A total of 506 people voted in the last FSA committee election in 2019.
The newly elected county committee members take office on Jan. 1.
President Joe Biden appointed former Democratic congressional candidate Ginger Sykes Torres to serve as the State Executive Director for FSA Arizona at the beginning of this month. Sykes Torres formerly served as chair of Phoenix’s Urban Heat Island Tree and Shade Subcommittee
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Dec 9, 2022 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Last month U.N. members met once again to live the good life for a few days and push for the unlikely elimination of climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened COP27 in the impressive Egyptian coastal city of Shark El-Sheik. 100 heads of state and 25,000 attendees (carbon footprint alert!) met to advocate for a “giant leap on climate ambition.”
To win “this battle for our lives,” round tables galore were held, coalitions were formed, roles for youth and even children in the crusade were created. Curiously, no actions were taken that would directly limit greenhouse gas emissions, possibly because the much-ballyhooed Paris Agreement had proved worthless, with almost no nations honoring their commitments.
The signal achievement of the meeting was instead a comprehensive agreement on “loss and damage,” which is essentially code for reparations. Rich nations are to pay trillions to poor nations to atone for the doleful effects of industrialization.
China and India, the world’s foremost polluters, took a powder. The U.S., the nation that has reduced pollution the most since 1990, was at the front of the line volunteering to bankroll the effort.
Americans have traditionally contributed generously to international aid efforts. Yet the notion of climate reparations is problematic.
It’s not clear, in spite of the persistent claims in the media, that weather events are related to emission-caused climate change. But we do know that the human cost of disasters is much smaller today than in years past.
In his book Unsettled, Stephen Koonin, formally in the Obama Energy Department, points out that weather related deaths were actually 80 times more frequent a century ago, before the technological improvements in infrastructure and mitigation provided by industrialization.
Much of the insistence on reparations is rooted in resentment over the colonial past. But take Pakistan, a leader in the reparations movement. Pakistan claims its devastating floods are the direct result of climate change.
North America and Europe have seen significant recent reforestation. But since Pakistan left colonial status in 1947, its forests have shrunk from 1/3 to 1/20 of its total area. Water and silt run straight off the mountains causing the massive flooding.
Britain, the former colonizer of Pakistan, has cut its carbon emissions in half since 1990, mostly by closing coal mines at great expense. Meanwhile Pakistan has over 100 operating coal mines and can still afford to develop nuclear weapons. But you can’t go wrong blaming the colonialists.
U.N. climate change proposals in the past were more modest. They mostly financed specific infrastructure programs in poor countries, often bypassing local governments. But COP27 was written in a U.N. now dominated by aggressive socialist dictatorships with appalling human rights records.
As a result, the COP27 plan would call for $1.3 trillion in annual retribution payments that would go not to the practical needs of poor countries, but to the kleptocratic governments which plague foreign aid efforts. The effect would be to further strengthen the petty tyrants and save them from forces of reform.
The notion that the West should pay damages for the Industrial Revolution is poppycock. It was the capitalist democracies that produced the ideas, the economic system, and the innovations that have produced previously unimaginable income growth around the world.
Deadly diseases have been eliminated, infant mortality reduced, and life expectancy extended. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of hunger and poverty, and for this we should pay?
There’s one more problem with paying reparations: we don’t have the money. The U.S. is the deeply indebted con man living on borrowed funds who continues to make extravagant gifts to adoring friends. And why not? It’s not really his money anyway.
If the socialist autocrats demanding compensation were the least sincere about creating more prosperous nations on their own, the guiding principles are well known: free markets, secure property rights, low and fair taxes, independent courts, and reasonable regulation. But don’t expect the dictators to sacrifice their power and privileges any time soon.
“Loss and damage,” is based on feel-good morality, false history, and imaginary economics. It would do nothing to improve the environment of our planet. We can in good conscience just say no.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Oct 27, 2022 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
America’s political class can no longer put off the inevitable. They soon will have to pay for their insanely reckless fiscal practices.
It’s not going to be pretty. America’s debt has reached an appalling $31 trillion. Annual interest payments will exceed $1 trillion this year. Debt service is well on its way to crowding out other priorities, a trend which will only accelerate.
Unfortunately, a steep rise in interest rates occurred near the end of the biggest spending binge ever. Economists are warning we are nearing the dreaded “doom loop” in which interest costs can be covered only by more borrowing which further drives up interest expense, creating a vicious cycle.
There is a weird, almost preternatural calm about our dire fiscal future during this campaign season. We’ve seen much consternation about inflation, public safety, the border, and other critical issues. Yet politicians and the media hardly mentioned the debt crisis, so the public seems to assume everything is under control.
It isn’t, not by a long shot. Uncle Sam issued $7 trillion in new debt to finance the recovery from the COVID pandemic and our panicked overreaction to the disease. It’s too bad we can’t take back that $7 trillion.
Much of it was stolen by fraud and bureaucratic bumbling. Funds went to school districts, that haven’t spent them so far, to finance the indolence of those who preferred not to work and to Democrat pet projects like “climate change.” Millions of voters in no distress whatsoever got checks, as did some illegal immigrants.
Many economists predicted that injecting that much cash into the economy would cause inflation, especially since supply was limited by weakness in the labor market, fuel shortages, and supply chain problems. They were mostly ignored but turned out to be absolutely correct. After decades of relative price stability, we are now experiencing 8% inflation with no end in sight.
Millions of non-economists are experiencing what that does to your standard of living. Suddenly, food, fuel, and shelter have become existential concerns to millions of Americans, and the economic future looks dim.
Inflation also increases government spending. Social Security benefits are inflation-adjusted, resulting in an 8%, $100 billion increase. Total government healthcare costs will grow from $710 billion last year to $915 billion.
Financial markets cannot ignore the cloud of government debt hanging over our economy. A serious recession will almost certainly soon be upon us. Already, declining stock and bond values over the past nine months assure a steep decline in capital gains tax revenue, another contributing factor to the deficit.
The Federal Reserve board is doing the only thing it can to address inflation, which is to raise core interest rates. That also directly adds to the national deficit, increasing the interest cost and driving up the balance, since no other source of funds is available.
So, to summarize, unnecessary COVID-related spending of $7 trillion has combined with chronic overspending, which caused inflation, which increased borrowing costs, which drove up the deficit, thus precipitating a recession which will deprive the government of revenues to pay down the surging debt load. Way to go, guys.
The principle response of the Biden administration has been denial. Our president claims the economy is thriving. A monthly .1% drop in the inflation rate was the pretext for claiming inflation was in decline. The national debt is never mentioned, nor are the untold trillions in future promises we have made to senior citizens and others.
Instead, Biden issued a probably unconstitutional executive order “canceling” unpaid college loans – i.e., transferring the liability to taxpayers. It was terrible public policy, penalizing those who had behaved responsibly and incentivizing student indebtedness in the future. It spent yet more money in a desperate attempt to bribe some votes for the midterm elections.
Yet there seems to be little taxpayer resentment. Why should they care? Their taxes aren’t going to increase. The obligation will be added to the great river of debt passed on to future generations—you know, those little people who don’t vote yet.
They will inherit an America feeble and impoverished, that will have forfeited its greatness because of our greed and selfishness. STOP THE SPENDING!
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
