Revenge of the Lunch Lady, The Huffington Post Highline
In a country where cheap mass-produced food is king and pizza counts as a vegetable, healthy lunches for kids can be hard to come by. But a recent revamp of school fare in Huntington, W.V., previously designated as the nation’s unhealthiest city, provides a hopeful model. There, an enterprising employee managed to implement a healthy lunch program, starring locally grown produce, while maintaining the district’s minuscule $1.50-per-meal budget.
Getting a Busy Signal When You Call Congress? Here’s How to Get Through, The Christian Science Monitor
Since President Trump’s inauguration last month, there’s been a surge in citizens reaching out to Congress, but not all forms of communication are equally effective. If you really want your voice heard, say experts, try meeting with your representative in person, writing a personal letter and focusing on policy rather than cabinet picks.
The Compost King of New York, The New York Times
New York City alone generates 1 million tons of organic waste per year, but a new plant on Long Island will process this waste into both fertilizer and clean energy, generating significant returns. This new large-scale industrial waste processing is both more environmentally friendly and more profitable than traditional composting, and could revolutionize American energy.
Continue reading “The Surprising Story Behind One School’s Healthy Lunch Program, The Best Way to Reach Your Reps and More”
Tag: congress
7 Ways to Be an Effective 21st-Century Political Activist
Earlier this year, Erin Schrode, a 25-year-old Californian, ran to be America’s youngest female Congresswoman. The New York University graduate and founder of the environmental nonprofit, Turning Green, waged an underdog fight against fellow Democratic incumbent, Jared Huffman. The opponents were in agreement about the issues facing the state’s liberal North Coast (which stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the forested Oregon border), but Schrode argued it was time for young people to take the reins in Washington. Although she came in a distant third in the June primary, Schrode brought a youthful energy to staid Congressional politics and believes she switched up the dynamics of the race.
NationSwell spoke to her recently while she was on a visit to New York City about the lessons she’s learned about political organizing in the era of hashtag activism.
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MORE: #ComeClean About Where That Vanilla Aroma Really Comes From
Here’s What 15 Experts Think of President Obama’s Record on the Environment
Ask people for their opinion, and they’ll usually give you an honest response. Which is exactly what we wanted when we asked government officials, legislators, environmental experts, scientists and historians what President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy would be. Read on for their judgments.
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“I think and hope President Obama will establish a legacy as one of the most consequential Presidents dealing with the environment, particularly with regard to climate change, which is the greatest threat we face today.”
— Former Rep. Harry Waxman, a 20-term California Democrat who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee until 2011 and authored the amendments that strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990
“President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy…The innovation of independent producers and the scale of larger companies has combined to make the United States a world economic leader in clean energy — one of our few areas of industrial domination. Yet the President has chosen to brand oil and gas as evil forces and essentially shut down federal lands as source of production.”
— Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Republican who implemented higher standards for ozone and other air pollutants and spearheaded a federal cleanup of the Great Lakes while serving as EPA administrator from 2003 to 2005.
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“While President Obama has taken significant steps to address climate change — establishing the first-ever carbon emissions limits for power plants and new fuel economy standards for cars — his administration continues to lease massive amounts of publicly-owned fossil fuels…It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
— Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA
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“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history. By the time he leaves office some 15 months from now, he will have instituted game-changing programs to slash carbon pollution from our vehicles and trucks, and from our power plants – together accounting for two-thirds of all U.S. greenhouse gases, the primary driver of dangerous climate change.”
— Ed Chen, national communications director for the National Resources Defense Council
“Even as Obama has talked an increasingly tough game on climate change and the need for dramatic reductions [in emissions], he has also pursued policies that have exacerbated the environmental impacts of domestic energy development — and have increasingly exported our dirty energy sources even as we embrace clean renewables. His environmental achievements, then, have been hamstrung by politics — both the unyielding political opposition as well as his own sense of what’s politic in a nation craving economic growth and energy independence.”
— Paul Sutter, professor of modern U.S. history at the University of Colorado in Boulder
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“Looking at individual policy accomplishments doesn’t do justice to President Obama’s legacy on climate change…The component parts of his actions — from making cars and power plants cleaner to preserving major swaths of land and sea for future generations to leading on global ocean policy to beginning to take on industrial methane pollution — tell a story about how he and his administration addressed the problem. But the story is larger than that. I’d say the president’s legacy on climate change lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation, getting millions of Americans to care about it, bringing along industry and other stakeholders, and tackling the problem in the face of withering opposition from Congress. So I wouldn’t say that setting fuel efficiency standards is a legacy, I’d say that achieving the cooperation and buy-in of all the stakeholders is the legacy accomplishment. This president, more than others, has had to build those coalitions to overcome the legislative obstruction of climate action and he’s changed how climate policy is developed and implemented.”
— Carol M. Browner, former EPA adminstrator during the Clinton administration and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011
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“As soon as Obama took office, [the] EPA began moving vigorously to regulate greenhouse gas emissions…Obama strongly advocated environmental protection and took several highly publicized trips to advance concern about environmental issues and to promote renewable energy. After his first two years, he was confronted with the most anti-environmental Congress in history, so new legislation was challenging, to say the least. However, he pushed against the limits of his authority under existing laws, especially on climate change.”
— Michael B. Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law School in New York City who teaches courses on environmental regulation and climate change policy
“Obama has ignored not only bipartisan solutions but Congress itself after it rejected his approach on climate change even when Democrats controlled that body. He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues. His partisanship has been destructive of any consensus on major enviro-energy issues…Meanwhile, the huge energy event that happened during his watch – the shale oil and gas revolution – flourished not thanks to his administration, but in spite of it.”
— Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association
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“Mr. Obama is the most radical president in terms of environmental policy in the history of the U.S. It is as if the spirit of Rachel Carson – author of “Silent Spring” – is occupying the Oval Office. Every imagined environmental threat takes on the utmost urgency in this president’s mind, no matter how weak the scientific evidence…He leaves behind a legacy of narcissism, grandiosity and political correctness that will be hard for anyone to match, though Mrs. Clinton, should she survive the FBI probe of her national security lapses, might be able to come close.”
— Gene Koprowski, director of marketing for the Heartland Institute, a conservative public policy think tank
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“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms. In 2009 and 2010, there was an apparent window of opportunity to promote a carbon cap and trade bill in Congress, but the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care. Whether with Obama’s support this could have happened is a good question, but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.”
— D. James Baker, former administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and current director of the Global Carbon Measurement Program at the William J. Clinton Foundation
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“President Obama will be remembered for strong leadership on climate change. He implemented two key policies in the United States that will substantially cut the emissions of heat trapping gases — fuel economy standards for vehicles, and limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. He also brokered a deal with China to cut emissions from that country, which is critical to the success of a worldwide agreement expected to emerge in Paris this year. The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and congress failed to pass.”
— Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit
MORE: Which Presidents Are the Greenest in U.S. History?
The Easy Way to Find Out If Your Elected Officials’ Votes Are Biased
Making the decisions about the welfare our country are 435 representatives and 100 senators in Washington, D.C. Their responsibility is a hefty one, but so is ours when choosing the best one while voting.
At times, however, it seems almost impossible to keep tabs on our own elected officials, let along 535 of them. But with one click of a computer, that’s all about to change.
There’s a new browser plug-in called Greenhouse, and it’s exposing all the money that’s flowing into politicians’ campaigns.
Invented by 16-year old Nick Rubin, Greenhouse’s motto is “Some are red, Some are blue, All are green.” And that’s the purpose of this browser plug-in, to provide an accurate breakdown of politicians’ campaign contributions.
So how did a teenager become an aficionado of political campaign donations? Well, it all started when Rubin was giving a presentation on corporate personhood in the seventh grade. While doing research, he found that the sources of income for Congress members aren’t readily available.
Rubin then began learning how to code, and he decided to combine his two great passions – politics and coding – into one. From that, Greenhouse emerged.
The plug-in’s name is a play on words: Green for the color of money and house for the two houses of Congress. For Rubin, it’s also a metaphor for the purpose of his app.
“The name also implies transparency,” Rubin tells Vice. “Greenhouses are see through and they are built to help things thrive.”
Using Greenhouse is easier than, well, growing a plant. Once the plug-in is downloaded, the name of every politician will be highlighted in any article you’re reading. All you have to do is hover over the name and a little box will appear containing detailed contribution information‚ including amounts and where the money come from. This way, when your representative is supporting a bill, you can see if there’s money talking and swaying the vote.
All of the information comes from the 2012 election data, which was the last full election cycle. With the completion of the 2014 elections, Rubin plans to update the app to include those numbers. In the meantime, it’s possible to view 2014 data now by clicking on the name of the politician at the top of the window or the Opensecrets.org link in the pop-up.
Right now, Greenhouse is available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers, and it’s completely free. That’s because for Rubin, accessibility is the most important thing.
“That’s exactly why I designed Greenhouse with simplicity in mind, so that everyone — even kids — are able to understand it,” Rubin says. “Easy access to data empowers voters to make better decisions. Once people are informed, they will reject elected officials who are motived by money instead of principles.”
We certainly can hope, right?
MORE: Can Cloud Technology Improve the Relationship Between City Officials and Residents?
This Is What the Path to Citizenship Really Looks Like
One of the criticisms of the immigration reform bill making it’s way through Congress is that it’s going to give amnesty to illegal immigrants. Makes getting citizenship sound easy, doesn’t it? Maybe this graphic will help you get a better idea of what “amnesty” really means. Immigrants have to be continuously employed for 10 years, they don’t get benefits and they must pay more than $2,000. That’s a lot of hurdles to jump over.
Washington Needs to Be Fixed. These Innovators Aren’t Waiting for Congress to Do It.
Do you remember where you were when the government shut down? Chances are we’d have to be more specific. Lawmakers–who these days are not doing so much of the making–have quibbled so many times over debt ceilings and defaults and health care and taxes that stalemate is officially the new normal.
And that countdown clock you see on cable news, ticking away toward the next shutdown? Let’s just say the producers have it bookmarked in their graphics file.
It’s no wonder that the record levels of toxicity dripping from the halls of Congress has spurred some fresh minds to come up with a way around it. Political groups committed to breaking through the logjam/stalemate/gridlock that is The District have been trying for a few years now to gain ground among the independent minded and those just sick of all the stalling. But thus far, their efforts have yet to move all those alienated voters to action; their names remain barely known outside the Beltway.
Recently Americans like you expressed a huge jump in faith in Congress–all the way up to 19 percent!
But when people say they’re sick of the do-nothing atmosphere, they almost always blame the party they like least, says John Sides, who writes The Monkey Cage, a straight-shooting political science blog now hosted by The Washington Post. No matter which shutdown it is, Democrats blame Republicans, and the other way around.
“Part of the problem is just that independent groups and third parties are naturally disadvantaged by the rules of the American electoral system,” Sides says. “Compared to a system of proportional representation, winner-take-all elections tend to produce two-party systems.”
NationSwell reached out to the would-be compromisers to see what they’ve done and what they’re planning to do.
Continue reading “Washington Needs to Be Fixed. These Innovators Aren’t Waiting for Congress to Do It.”