Monday Mailing 011419

Monday Mailing

Year 25 • Issue 18 14 January 2019 1.

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Speak Your Piece: The ‘Hard Truths’ of Dismissing Rural Philanthropy The Sobering Details Behind the Latest Seed Monopoly Chart The Green New Deal, Explained (Michael Hoch) Microsoft Is helping America’s Largest Grocery Chain Fight Off Amazon (Emily Bradley) Pop-Up Shops: Lessons Learned And How You Can Start One In Your Downtown (Corum Ketchum) U.S. Carbon Emissions Surged In 2018 Even As Coal Plants Closed (Michael Hoch) Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree-Planting Next President Could Declare Climate Emergency, GOP Fears (Michael Hoch) Oregon Starts Killing Sea Lions At Willamette Falls WEBINAR – Embedding Environmental Justice and Equity Into Your Work

1. Speak Your Piece: The ‘Hard Truths’ of Dismissing Rural

Philanthropy

Quote of the Week:

“It's all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family.”

- Philip Green

Oregon Fast Fact #50

The Seaside Aquarium was the first facility in the world to successfully breed harbor seals in captivity.

Rural communities are creative and resourceful when it comes to community development. They have to be. Foundations that avoid rural investment are missing opportunities for innovation and success. Eduardo Porter’s recent New York Times piece, “The Hard Truths of Trying to Save the Rural Economy,” is misguided and patronizing, even if his intention is not. Unfortunately, he is not alone as an urban-based influencer who passes judgment on rural places from urban bubbles. Large national and regional urban-based philanthropy also can be misguided and patronizing.

To access the full story, click here.

2. The Sobering Details Behind the Latest Seed Monopoly

Chart

As four seed companies now control more than 60 percent of the global market, a seed policy expert argues that consolidation poses major risks to our food supply. When Philip Howard of Michigan State University published the first iteration of his now well-known seed industry consolidation chart in 2008, it starkly illustrated the extent of acquisitions and mergers of the previous decade: Six corporations dominated the majority of the brand-name seed market, and they were starting to enter into new alliances with competitors that threatened to further weaken competition.

Howard’s newly updated seed chart is similar but even starker. It shows how weak antitrust law enforcement and oversight by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has allowed a handful of firms to amass enormous market, economic, and political power over our Page 1 of 4

global seed supply. The newest findings show that the Big 6 (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, Bayer, and BASF) have consolidated into a Big 4 dominated by Bayer and Corteva (a new firm created as a result of the Dow–DuPont merger), and rounded out with ChemChina and BASF. These four firms control more than 60 percent of global proprietary seed sales.

To access the full story, click here.

3. The Green New Deal, Explained

An insurgent movement is pushing Democrats to back an ambitious climate change solution. If the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed, humanity has just over a decade to get carbon emissions under control before catastrophic climate change impacts become unavoidable.

The Republican Party generally ignores or denies that problem. But the Democratic Party claims to accept and understand it.

It is odd, then, that Democrats do not have a plan to address climate change.

Their last big plan — the American Clean Energy and Security Act — passed the House in 2009 but went on to die an unceremonious death before reaching the Senate floor. Since then, there’s been nothing to replace it.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Microsoft Is Helping America’s Largest Grocery Chain Fight Off Amazon

Kroger, America’s largest grocery store chain, has partnered with Microsoft to create a pair of hi-tech grocery stores. The stores, which are located in Washington and Ohio, are filled with digital shelf labels and image recognition cameras, and aim to create a retail environment that’s easier for both customers and retail employees to navigate. The two companies also hope to use the digital signage to sell targeted ads based on customer demographics.

Kroger is the second major retailer to have partnered with Microsoft after Walmart announced a partnership of its own last year. America’s retail incumbents are wary of the growing threat Amazon poses to their businesses, both via its Whole Foods acquisition and the 3,000 Amazon Go stores it’s reportedly planning to launch across the US, and hope that Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and AI will help them better compete with Amazon’s data-driven approach.

Kroger’s prototype stores aren’t nearly as advanced as the cashierless Amazon Go experience, but they’re a lot more hi-tech than the company’s other 2,800 retail food stores.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Pop-Up Shops: Lessons Learned And How You Can Start One In Your Downtown

Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a weekly Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.

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It’s the Little Things features Strong Towns Community Builder Jacob Moses in conversation with various guests who have taken action in their own places and in their own ways.

Here’s a question we often get at Strong Towns: How can I encourage more retail in my downtown? And understandably so. Downtown is most likely your city’s or town’s most safe and economically productive place.

So when we notice that our downtown retail landscape is a little lacking, it’s only natural that we want to do something about it.

To access the full story, click here.

6. U.S. Carbon Emissions Surged In 2018 Even As Coal Plants Closed

America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday.

Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last year, illustrating how difficult it could be for the country to make further progress on climate change in the years to come, particularly as the Trump administration pushes to roll back federal regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The estimate, by the research firm Rhodium Group, pointed to a stark reversal. Fossil fuel emissions in the United States have fallen significantly since 2005 and declined each of the previous three years, in part because of a boom in cheap natural gas and renewable energy, which have been rapidly displacing dirtier coal-fired power.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree-Planting

Detroiters were refusing city-sponsored “free trees.” A researcher found out the problem: She was the first person to ask them if they wanted them. A landmark report conducted by University of Michigan environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor in 2014 warned of the “arrogance” of white environmentalists when they introduce green initiatives to black and brown communities. One black environmental professional Taylor interviewed for the report, Elliot Payne, described experiences where green groups “presumed to know what’s best” for communities of color without including them in the decision-making and planning processes.

“I think a lot of the times it stems from the approach of oh we just go out and offer tree plantings or engaging in an outdoor activity, and if we just reach out to them they will come,” Payne told Taylor.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Next President Could Declare Climate Emergency, GOP Fears

Republicans are increasingly concerned that President Trump's threat to build a border wall by declaring a national emergency might be repeated by a future president who sees climate change as an existential danger to the United States.

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A number of Republicans, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and Marco Rubio of Florida, expressed dismay at the potential reverberations of issuing an emergency order to achieve a political victory.

"We have to be careful about endorsing broad uses of executive power," Rubio said Wednesday on CNBC. "If today the national emergency is border security, tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change."

Democrats and Republicans have been clashing for three weeks — the length of the partial government shutdown — over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding. Neither side is showing signs of a compromise, prompting Trump to intensify his rhetoric about violence along the U.S.-Mexico border while pushing closer to an emergency declaration that would empower him to build a wall using the military.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Oregon Starts Killing Sea Lions At Willamette Falls

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has started killing sea lions below Willamette Falls to protect a fragile run of winter steelhead.

The state got a federal permit in November to kill up to 93 California sea lions per year below the falls. So far, officials have killed three sea lions using the same traps they used last year to relocate the animals to the coast.

A recent study found sea lions were eating so many threatened winter steelhead at Willamette Falls that certain runs were at a high risk of going extinct. One year, they ate about a quarter of a run that was already down to about 500 fish.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR – Embedding Environmental Justice And Equity Into Your Work (Jan. 29 @ 1 pm PST) Please join us on Tuesday, January 29 from 4:00-5:00 pm ET to launch a new year of NAAEE's monthly webinar series! We'll kick off 2019 with Angela Park, founder of Mission Critical and an independent consultant, researcher, and writer dedicated to making social justice and equity hallmarks of progressive advocacy, policymaking, philanthropy, and business.

To learn more, click here.

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