The infrastructure bill isn't all great

They had to do this, to get "bipartisan" support. That is, the votes of many legislators that were provided only at the behest of their corporate masters. I'm not just referring to Party of Trumpers, either.

The recently passed $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will provide desperately needed federal dollars to fix our roads, water systems and other public infrastructure. But the bill is not all sunshine and rainbows.

A provision in the bill incentivizes state and local governments to hand control over some of the new projects to corporations and private investors. And that will create opportunities for bad things to happen.

Much of the new federal spending will go to fill potholes, repair bridges, lower the cost of high-speed internet, and build other things our communities need. But for large, federally supported transportation projects, state and local governments will be required to consider additional funding from private investors.

The danger is that this additional funding comes with strings attached. The private investors negotiate contracts — called “public-private partnerships” — that allow them to profit from raising water rates or hiking tolls on highways, or from charging the government expensive lease payments.

These contracts are not only more expensive than if the state or locality used traditional public financing, but they also often empower private investors to shape public policy. - The Progressive

Some cities really are reducing emissions

Decent news, in context.

After the Cop26 conference ended in Glasgow, many activists and climate scientists felt the agreement didn’t go far enough and that the US government was among those who had not backed strong words with enough actual deeds.

But action on a smaller level in the US – in cities and states – is gaining traction and beginning to make a significant difference. Smaller-scale initiatives to cut emissions have been the significant way that America has made climate progress in the last few years, in the absence of stronger federal leadership.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution calculated that in 2018, these climate action plans generated 6% emissions savings for the country – the equivalent of removing 79m cars from the road that year.

“These are significant benefits,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at Brookings Metro. “None of this is large enough, but they add up to a meaningful trend of emissions reductions. Those are real contributions.” - The Guardian

Enbridge is not slowing down

These arrogant greedheads need to be stopped.

As Indigenous Water Protectors and allies in northern Minnesota are stuck with legal and environmental fallout of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline’s construction and operation, Enbridge is already moving on — eyeing ways to streamline and further expand its ability to deliver Canadian tar sands to the Gulf Coast for export to global markets.

The Canadian oil giant is looking to increase capacity across its fossil fuel infrastructure systems that connect to the Texas Gulf Coast, including potentially building a pipeline linking the Houston area to its newly acquired crude-export hub at the Port of Corpus Christi in order to accommodate Line 3’s ramped up capacity, according to reporting by S&P Global Platts.

The company is also looking at ways to expand its capacity across its Southern Access Extension and Flanagan South pipelines, corporate officials reportedly said on its third-quarter earnings call. It’s just waiting on a major Canadian regulatory decision later this month that will determine whether Enbridge can overhaul the way it awards space on its biggest tar sands pipeline network into the U.S., allowing it to contract up to 90 percent of its capacity on its Mainline system by signing long-term deals with potential shippers, rather than operating as a so-called “common carrier.” Corporate officials say they will provide more details on future projects at a December investors event. - Truthout

Food waste and climate change

The Project Drawdown website actually has information on a great many climate change emissions issues, and ways of mitigating them. I'm noting this one in particular, here.

A third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork. Producing uneaten food squanders a whole host of resources—seeds, water, energy, land, fertilizer, hours of labor, financial capital—and generates greenhouse gases at every stage—including methane when organic matter lands in the global rubbish bin. The food we waste is responsible for roughly 8 percent of global emissions.

Losing food to one waste heap or another is an issue in both high- and low-income countries. In places where income is low, wastage is generally unintentional and occurs earlier in the supply chain—food rots on farms or spoils during storage or distribution. In regions of higher income, willful food waste dominates farther along the supply chain. Retailers and consumers reject food based on bumps, bruises, and coloring, or simply order, buy, and serve too much. - Project Drawdown

Big changes are needed for a big dam out West

I found this article fascinating. In the bigger picture, it's a high-profile example of how water management practices in general need to change, at an accelerated rate.

Nearly 25 years later, the campaign to bypass Glen Canyon Dam has never been stronger. Now may seem like an odd time to make the case for draining the second-largest reservoir in the country, with the West in the depths of a megadrought unmatched since the Medieval Period. Tree ring cores and remote sensing data indicate a paucity of soil moisture unseen in at least 1,200 years. Lake Powell itself, along with reservoirs across the West, are at record lows, and climate change is set to exact an even more severe toll with rising temperatures killing the snowpack that feeds them, evaporating what are essentially ponds in the middle of the desert. Yet it is the drought itself that has revealed precisely why now is the moment to execute Dominy’s plan to bypass his dam, lower Lake Powell to river level, and restore Glen Canyon. - Earther

The U.S. child care system needs a lot more resources

This article has a lot of good info.

The irony, of course, is that modern child care is far from free. But that’s not because the workers are making high wages — or even living wages, in many instances. It’s because of the comparative lack of public investment.

The average European Union country spends $4,700 per child from infancy to age 5 — a number that climbs to $7,400 in France — compared with just $2,400 in the United States, according to a new US Department of the Treasury report.

“Every ‘civilized’ country has some system of early care and education regardless of [family] income,” Sykes says. “We do not have that commitment.” - The Hechinger Report

Biden food/ag policy is mostly the same old

It's well past time to get going on big changes, but that doesn't look likely.

The federal government appears not to have learned from the experience. At the U.N. Food Systems Summit held on 23 September, U.S. Secretary for Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a new “Coalition of Action on Sustainable Productivity Growth for Food Security and Resource Conservation.” The accompanying document succinctly presents the current global food security challenge as one of a growing population, a deteriorating natural resource base, an urgent need to reduce and cap climate emissions, and for farmers and food workers to earn more from agriculture to reduce global poverty. It’s a decent list of the challenges. From there, though, the document makes a leap to claim that “increasing agricultural productivity growth” is the only solution to all these problems. The proposed solution is to grow (a lot) more food using less water, soil and labour, with the help of genetic manipulation.

Secretary Vilsack’s call for a new coalition follows a long line of U.S. agriculture leaders who have boasted that U.S. agricultural productivity "feeds the world”. As ever, that boast does not spare a glance to the problems — including hunger — at home. The Biden administration has promised to tackle persistent systemic racism, including environmental racism, to end child poverty, and to make sharp, real cuts to climate emissions. Instead of confronting these problems, the secretary is pushing to globalize an agricultural system that has impoverished rural communities, polluted waterways, stripped soils, and created such surpluses that we don’t just feed most of our production to animals, but also to fuel tanks and methane-producing landfill. The share of U.S. productivity given over directly to food is shockingly small. - IATP