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‘The Dust Bowl of 2012′: Drought Covers Majority Of U.S. And ‘Might Be A $50 Billion Event For The Economy’

By Rebecca Leber and Joe Romm on Jul 17, 2012 at 8:18 pm

This year’s drought ranks as one of the top 10 worst U.S. droughts for the last century. With more than half the country (54 percent) experiencing drought conditions, it’s the single worst drought since the 1950s.

It is hot all over. NOAA said in its June “State of the Climate Global Analysis“:

This is the second month in a row that the global land temperature was the warmest on record for that month.

While it has been hotter than the 1930s in many places in this country, the drought hasn’t been quite as bad as the worst of the original Dust Bowl. But if we don’t act soon to slash greenhouse gas emissions, we are on our way to far worse as climate change fuels more frequent and more extreme droughts across the U.S. (see “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temps — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming“).

Climate Progress has documented how unrestrained fossil fuel pollution is leading to worsening droughts. Texas’ severe drought of the past memory was made 20 times more likely from global warming, as one study explained. The Nature article last year, “The Next Dust Bowl,” explained, “warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil.”

Climatologist Jonathan Overpeck at Arizona University told the AP:

This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.

This drought is hitting farmers hard — and ranchers, too. As Reuters put it:

Ravaged by fires, Western ranchers face “scary” summer

… recent wildfires in states such as Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming have displaced thousands of cows from federal rangelands which may not be fit for grazing for years. Where range has not been destroyed, drought has lessened forage.

“We’re going to run out of grass. It’s shaping up to be scary,” University of Idaho Extension Agent Rauhn Panting said.

The next to be hit is the American consumer.The Agriculture Department has declared the largest federal disaster zone in its history for 26 states, as corn and grain crops dry up, particularly in the midwest where 63 percent of the midwest has moderate to extreme drought. Corn production shrunk 7 percent in the last week, according to a Reuters poll: “What began the season as a potentially record corn crop as farmers planted the biggest area since 1937, may now be the smallest in at least five years.”

Consumers will feel the drought’s burden through rising food prices:

“For sure, the full effect of this drought will not be until 2013. It’ll be 2013 when we see it and its in the whole supermarket,” Richard Volpe, an economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service said. ”But if the price of corn shoots up, we’d see this effect within about two to three months. That doesn’t mean we’ll see a complete jump into food prices. It’s just that we should start to see the effects.”

Michael Swanson, agricultural economist at the largest commercial agriculture lender, said:

“It might be a $50 billion event for the economy as it blends into everything over the next four quarters.”

Related Post:

Politics

How Romney Spent All Day Calling Obama A Foreigner

By Igor Volsky on Jul 17, 2012 at 6:28 pm

Mitt Romney’s campaign is hoping to distract voters from the growing drum beat of conservatives calling on the former Bain Capital executive to release his tax returns by smearing President Obama as a foreigner, in a not-so-subtle effort to revive the right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding his birthplace.

Indeed, the Romney team, and even Romney himself, spent all of Tuesday painting the president as not a “real” American. Here is a timeline of the campaign’s orchestrated smear:

11:00 AM — OBAMA IS ‘SMOKING SOMETHING,’ GREW UP IN INDONESIA: Obama “has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” [Co-chair John Sununu, Fox News]

11:30 AM — OBAMA HAS TO ‘LEARN HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN’: “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way. And I wish this president would learn how to be an American. [Co-chair John Sununu, Romney campaign conference call]

11:30 AM — OBAMA’S AMERICA IS ‘SOCIALISM’: “It seems to me that the Obama America, there’s no risk but there’s plenty of reward. That’s called socialism to me. In the small business America, there’s a lot of risk, and a chance of reward, and that’s called capitalism, and that’s what made the United States the greatest nation on the face of the earth.” [Businessman Kyle Koehler, Romney campaign conference call]

1:35 PM — ROMNEY SAYS OBAMA’S POLICIES ARE ‘EXTRAORDINARILY FOREIGN’: “Celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating making America strong. That’s the right course for the country. His course is extraordinarily foreign.” [Mitt Romney, Pennsylvania]

Education

GOP Bill Cuts Funds For Low-Performing Schools, Quadruples Funding For Abstinence Education

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 17, 2012 at 6:10 pm

House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee released their 2013 draft budget for the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education today. “A careful look was given to all programs and agencies in the bill, with the budget knife aimed at excess spending and underperforming programs, but also with the goal of making wise investments in programs that help the American people the most,” said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY).

However, included among those cuts are several that undermine investments in education, including eliminating the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program and School Improvement Grant program. But at the same time, House Republicans found the money to quadruple abstinence-only education:

The Obama administration’s signature K-12 initiative—the Race to the Top competition—would get axed under a spending proposal put forward by Republicans on the House panel that oversees K-12 spending.

Two other major Obama priorities—the School Improvement Grant program, which provides $533 million to help turnaround low-performing schools, and the nearly $150 million Investing in Innovation grant program—are also eliminated. [...]

Another winner? Abstinence education, which would get $20 million, a $15 million increase over last year’s funding.

Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Norm Dicks (D-WA) called the bill “the most partisan we’ve seen this year.”

As study after study has shown, abstinence-only education doesn’t actually work. In fact, teen pregnancies are highest in states with abstinence-only education programs. Meanwhile, New Hampshire, which has the lowest rate of teen pregnancy, requires comprehensive sex education. So the GOP managed to fund ineffective programs, at the same time that it cut programs aimed at turning around low-performing schools.

NEWS FLASH

Transportation Security Administration Ignores Court Ruling Requiring Public Comment On Body Scanners | A year ago this week, an appellate court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration breached federal law in 2009 when the agency instituted airport body scanners as its “primary” method of inspection without a 90-day period for public comment. The appellate court, second in authority to the Supreme Court, ordered the TSA to “promptly” undergo such a period before continuing to use the body scanners, which the court also ruled did not violate the constitution. A year later, the TSA has undergone no such public comment period. In March, lawyers for the agency argued to the court that holding the court-required period would hamper its mission to respond to “ever-evolving threats.” No further action has been taken to force the TSA to undergo such a period.

– Ben Sherman

By Guest Blogger on Jul 17, 2012 at 6:10 pm

NEWS FLASH

South Carolina House Overrides Governor’s Veto Of Rape Crisis Center Funding | The South Carolina House of Representatives has overridden Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R) veto of rape crisis center funding. Earlier this month, Haley vetoed nearly half a million dollars in money that would have gone to help victims, calling it a distraction from the Health Department’s mission. By a vote of 111 to zero, the House determined that they would continue funding the 15 centers that would have been affected by the cuts, rolling over Haley’s veto.

LGBT

STUDY: Families Headed By Same-Sex Couples Face Legal Obstacles To Parenting

By Guest Blogger on Jul 17, 2012 at 5:50 pm

Our guest blogger is Kimberly Barton, intern for LGBT Progress.

A coalition of organizations released a report today outlining the disparities LGBT parents and their children face due to states’ refusal to recognize their legal ties. Outdated, biased, and discriminatory laws, policies, and practices are preventing same-sex parents from securing the same legal recognition to their children that would otherwise be afforded to them if they were different-sex parents. This report — Securing Legal Ties for Children Living in LGBT Families — outlines the many ways states can remove barriers to legal parental recognition for same-sex couples, extended families, and unmarried couples who are raising a child or seek to foster or adopt a child.

Current laws and policies need to be evaluated in order to make the legislative changes that would provide stability and security to over two million children that are being raised in LGBT families today. The report points out several areas where legislative action is needed to promote security and stability for children of LGBT families. Donor insemination laws as well as foster care laws are of particular interest:

Donor Insemination Laws

When lesbian couples in committed relationships choose to become parents, often times they conceive through donor insemination. Although only one mother gives birth to the child, both mothers act as parents and should be recognized as such by the law. Unfortunately, in 35 states, this is not the case — the non-biological mother of a child conceived through donor insemination is viewed as a legal stranger and has no legal rights of parenthood.

States can respond to this issue with solutions that rightly recognize the legal status of same-sex parents and their children. For couples in legally recognized same-sex partnerships, parental presumption laws can allow non-biological mothers to become the presumed parent to the child their partner conceives through donor insemination. For couples not in a legally recognized partnership, consent-to-inseminate provisions can act as a legal recognition of parenthood. They require the non-biological parent to sign that they legally consent to the insemination of their partner and wish to be seen as a parent to their child in the eyes of law.

However, even if states do allow for these two means of obtaining legal parenthood for the non-biological mother of a child conceived through donor insemination, these protections do not always carry from state-to-state. Repealing the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act would offer more security and stability to children of LGBT families by enabling married LGBT couples to have full legal ties to their children no matter the state they live in.

Foster Care

LGBT parents currently foster an estimated 14,000 foster children — 3 percent of all foster children — even though only six states have laws on the books that specifically support LGBT foster parents. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia are silent on laws and policies regarding LGBT foster parents. When states are silent, discrimination and stigma sometimes prevent LGBT parents from becoming foster parents to the over 408,000 children in foster care (as of 2010). For example, in some states where there is no official law or policy against LGBT parents fostering children, child welfare agencies are allowed to reject LGBT foster parents based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Unless discrimination against LGBT parents is specially prohibited in foster care laws, this kind of discrimination can keep foster children from finding loving, supportive homes.

Children’s best interest is at stake when the law does not recognize their legal parents or allow them to become part of a family. The action steps outlined in the report are key to ensuring our laws and policies support the best interests of children across America.

Alyssa

Rob Gronkowski and the Social Capital of Tolerance

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 17, 2012 at 5:07 pm

My colleague Zack Ford flagged an interview with New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, in which he says he’d be fine with a gay teammate, and correctly noted that comments like this are critically important in setting a tone and creating an environment in which someday, an active professional athlete will come out. But for me, the most interesting part of the interview was the context reporter Cyd Zeigler Jr. provided for it.

Gronkowski initially refused on comment because “Gronk said he had no problem with me, he was just afraid of saying something wrong. I understood where he was coming from. While he’s been the darling of the media at times since first appearing in the NFL in 2010, he’s also been the target of some nasty attacks by the media and fans. It seems every time he opens his mouth or appears in the media, he gets roasted for it.” But he changed his mind, came back and answered Zeigler’s question about how he’d handle a gay teammate, and did just fine. We’ve reached a tipping point where neutrality on gay rights is becoming a riskier proposition than affirmation, the kind of thing it’s worth composing yourself to comment on even if you’ve got a history of press trouble. It’s important to be on the record on this, and to preserve your position on the right side of history.

Economy

GOP Sen. Ignores Reforms Sought By His State, Falsely Claims Obama Scrapped Welfare Reform With ‘Stroke Of A Pen’

By Travis Waldron on Jul 17, 2012 at 5:00 pm

A welfare reform waiver proposed by the Obama administration that would allow states more flexibility in employment programs tied to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has come under fire from conservative institutions and congressional Republicans since it was introduced last week. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) has led the charge against the policy, and in a fiery floor speech Monday, he accused the Obama’s administration of wanting to “undo welfare reform” with the “stroke of a pen”:

HATCH: In essence, by the stroke of a pen, and against the clear intent of bipartisan majorities of the American people, Congress and the law itself, President Obama’s administration has attempted to undo welfare reform, one of the signature bipartisan policy achievements of the last 20 years. [...] This landmark legislation, the product of a Republican-controlled Congress, ended an entitlement to welfare and replaced it with a block grant to the states. The block grant known as the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF, provided states with unprecedented control over welfare programs in exchange for meeting federal work standards.

But the changes sought by the administration seem similar to the program Hatch described in his rant. The administration’s waivers would give even more of the “unprecedented control” Hatch cites to state governments, a type of reform usually supported by Republicans. And though it waives certain federal requirements, the states will still have to meet federal standards (and establish their own benchmarks) under the waiver program.

Further, the reforms hardly “gut” welfare reform or its welfare-to-work requirement. Instead, they aim to improve a program that is woefully inadequate when compared to the federally-controlled welfare program that preceded it.

Though Hatch has a problem with the administration’s plan, other Republicans in his state actually began the push for waivers. Utah, under Republican control, began calling for the waivers in 2011 (along with Nevada, also under Republican control). “Utah is especially interested in the development of waiver authority in the TANF grant,” Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) wrote in a letter to HHS after the decision was announced.

Health

Planned Parenthood Sues Arizona For Blocking Low-Income Women’s Access To Health Clinics

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Jul 17, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona on Monday in an attempt to overturn HB 2800, which restricts funding for its health clinics. Under the bill, individuals who are eligible for Medicaid may not seek health services at Planned Parenthood because the organization also performs abortions — a tactic to defund Planned Parenthood clinics. Conservatives have used this attack in 13 states across the country this past year.

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed HB 2800 into law this May, and it will go into effect on August 2 unless Planned Parenthood’s efforts are successful. Under the law, nearly 3,000 Medicaid patients who currently receive birth control and other preventive care at Planned Parenthood clinics will no longer be eligible for services there. Of course, low-income women who are eligible for Medicaid are often the population that most benefits from access to affordable preventative care at health clinics like Planned Parenthood.

In a press release from earlier today, Planned Parenthood Arizona’s President and CEO Bryan Howard expressed concern about Arizona’s push to deny low-income women access to his organization’s health services:

HOWARD: It is wrong for the state to tell Arizonans who they can and cannot see for their health care. The men and women of this state have the right to see the health care provider they deem is best for them. [...] It is unfortunate that our state and its lawmakers continue to put ideology and politics before the welfare of Arizonans. Women and men who come to Planned Parenthood aren’t making a political statement, they are coming to the get the health care they need from the provider they choose.

Following the Arizona legislature’s most recent anti-choice crusade, this is the second recent lawsuit to be filed against the state over radical anti-abortion legislation. Last week, three doctors — represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona, and the Center for Reproductive Rights — sued Arizona over HB 2036, which has been widely considered the most extreme abortion ban in the nation because it criminalizes almost all abortions after just 20 weeks. Brewer signed HB 2036 into law this April.

Arizona is one of 26 states that the Guttmacher Institute considers “hostile to abortion rights.” Arizona’s two bills are in addition to the 37 other new laws restricting women’s access to abortion services that have been introduced in the first half of this year alone.

NEWS FLASH

Liberty Counsel: Scouts Need To Be Protected From ‘Homosexual Pressures And Predators’ | Today, the anti-gay Liberty Counsel used the decision by Boy Scouts of America to maintain its ban on gay scouts and leaders to endorse two of the most archaic and harmful myths about LGBT people. Praising the move on Facebook this afternoon, the Counsel wrote, “Congratulations! Boy Scouts affirm natural family! They will continue to protect young boys from homosexual pressures and predators.”  The paraphilia of pedophilia has no connection to the sexual orientation of homosexuality, and as in the Catholic Church, believing otherwise has not prevented sexual abuse from taking place within the scouting ranks. It is the ignorance, invisibility, and stigma that the Liberty Counsel promotes from which young boys truly deserve protection.

Update

Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel and Dean of the Liberty University School of Law, also offered comment yesterday, telling the American Family Association that “the agenda of the sexual anarchist movement” — the “threat of homosexuality and same-sex unions” — is the “biggest threat to our family, to our morality, and to our freedom that we face here in America.”

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