Monday Mailing 061719

Monday Mailing

Year 25 • Issue 38 17 June 2019 1.

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Quote of the Week:

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oregon Fast Fact #44

In 1905 the largest long cabin in the world was built in Portland to honor the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The Defense Department Is Worried About Climate Change – And Also A Huge Carbon Emitter (Michael Hoch) America’s Rural Radio Stations Are Vanishing – And Taking The Country’s Soul With Them (Corum Ketchum) Bergen County’s Collaborative Model Reduces Homelessness (Sarah Abigail) Mid-Sized Farms Are Disappearing. This Program Could Reverse The Trend.

Do Younger Generations Care More About Global Warming?

Willamette Confluence Preserve: Abandoned Mining Pits Become Valuable Habitat Temperatures Leap 40 Degrees Above Normal As The Arctic Ocean And Greenland Ice Sheet See Record June Melting Convicts Are Returning To Farming – Anti-Immigrant Policies Are The Reason What It’s Like To Navigate Life Below The Poverty Line Cities On The Verge Of A Housing Crisis

1. The Defense Department Is Worried About Climate Change

– And Also A Huge Carbon Emitter

Scientists and security analysts have warned for more than a decade that global warming is a potential national security concern.

They project that the consequences of global warming – rising seas, powerful storms, famine and diminished access to fresh water – may make regions of the world politically unstable and prompt mass migration and refugee crises.

Some worry that wars may follow.

Yet with few exceptions, the U.S. military’s significant contribution to climate change has received little attention. Although the Defense Department has significantly reduced its fossil fuel consumption since the early 2000s, it remains the world’s single largest consumer of oil – and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

I have studied war and peace for four decades. But I only focused on the scale of U.S. military greenhouse gas emissions when I began coteaching a course on climate change and focused on the Pentagon’s response to global warming. Yet, the Department of Defense is the U.S. government’s largest fossil fuel consumer, accounting for between 77% and 80% of all federal government energy consumption since 2001.

To access the full story, click here.

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2. America’s Rural Radio Stations Are Vanishing – And Taking The Country’s Soul With Them

When I arrive at the radio station, Mark Lucke is standing in the doorway, looking out at the spitting, winter rain. He’s slim and stoic, with sad, almost haunted, eyes. The first thing he asks is if I’d like to see “the dungeon”. Who wouldn’t?

Lucke pulls on a Steeler’s jacket and a baseball cap over brown hair that falls halfway down his back, and leads me across the five-acre yard. Out here, 90 miles east of Tucson, the desert is a long sweep of brush the color of beach sand. Lucke seems to slip through the rainy day like a ghost.

The radio station, whose call letters are KHIL, has long been the daily soundtrack for this frontier town (population 3,500) that prides itself on its cowboy culture and quiet pace of life. But six decades after the founding of the station, the property is in foreclosure, with utility disconnect notices coming nearly every month.

Small-town radio is fizzling nationwide, as stations struggle to attract advertisement dollars. And as station owners are forced to sell, media conglomerates snap up rural frequencies for rockbottom prices, for the sole purpose of relocating them to urban areas. In a more affluent market, they can be flipped for a higher price. With limited frequencies available, larger broadcasters purchase as many as possible – especially those higher on the dial – in a race not dissimilar to a real estate grab.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Bergen County’s Collaborative Model Reduces Homelessness

A New Jersey county has established a collaborative housing-first model that is making a difference in the fight to end homelessness.

Bergen County, N.J. was named the first community in the country to end, or reach “functional zero,” for chronic homelessness in 2017, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). People who are chronically homeless have experienced homelessness for at least one year or repeatedly while struggling with a disabling condition, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“Functional zero” occurs when the number of people who come into the system every month is equal to or less than the number of people who go out of the system every month, according to Julia Orlando, the director of the Bergen County Housing, Health and Human Services Center.

Bergen County was also the first county in New Jersey to end veteran homelessness, according to HUD. In 2008, the county received HUD funding and created a 10-year plan to end homelessness, Orlando explained. Part of the plan was to create a new homeless center. The idea for the center stemmed from interviews with 200 stakeholders who felt the county should consider a Page 2 of 6

housing-first model and create a “one-stop” location where all services are offered in one building.

“Having a building where you can all work together and you’re not playing phone tag because you can do face to face and you can triage immediately, that’s a tremendous help,” Orlando said.

The housing-first model focuses on putting individuals into stable housing and providing them with services before requiring sobriety or mental health compliance, she said.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Mid-Sized Farms Are Disappearing. This Program Could Reverse The Trend.

Four years ago, Christina and Zach Menchini started Campfire Farms, 30 miles south of Portland, Oregon. They decided to raise pigs on pasture to support animal welfare and replenish the soil after decades of pesticide-heavy Christmas tree farming.

They slowly ramped up production—from 20 to 40 to 60 pigs—over their first few seasons, selling the pork exclusively at three different farmers’ markets. While Christina loves the customer connections that retail markets provide, and the Menchinis were able to charge a premium for the meat they sold, they soon realized they needed to take a hard look at the financial sustainability of their business. Growing the business was daunting. The couple apprenticed together at an operation based on the farmers’ market model, and the wholesale market was uncharted terrain. “It was hard to imagine what that would look like,” she says.

The Menchinis are far from alone in this challenge. The hollowing-out of the agricultural middle has been taking place for several decades, as American farms have grown and consolidated at a rapid pace. The 2017 Agriculture Census data recently out confirmed the continuing decline of medium-sized family farms, as the overall number of farms dropped by 3 percent and the only categories that saw any growth were very large and very small operations.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Do Younger Generations Care More About Global Warming?

Younger Americans have grown up with more exposure to the effects of global warming than their parents and grandparents. Perhaps it isn’t surprising then that polls find young adults are particularly concerned about global warming. A 2018 Gallup analysis found a “global warming age gap” in some beliefs, attitudes, and risk perceptions. For example, 70% of adults aged 18 to 34 say they worry about global warming compared to 56% of those aged 55 or older.

Although young adults in the U.S. may be more concerned about the climate than older adults, it is unclear to what degree they are engaged with the issue. In fact, one study found that younger generations exhibit less civic engagement on many issues, including the environment.

In this report, we examine age differences in global warming beliefs and engagement across four generations of adults in the U.S.

Are younger generations narrowing the political divide in climate change opinions?

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Using data from several waves of our Climate Change in the American Mind surveys (June 2017 to April 2019), we find important evidence of generational differences among Republicans.

Millennial Republicans are more likely to say global warming is happening, is human-caused, and that most scientists agree it is happening, and they are more likely to worry about global warming than older Republicans. Further, the gap between Republican and Democratic views on global warming is smaller for Millennials than for older generations, indicating that there is less political polarization over this issue among younger Americans.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Willamette Confluence Preserve: Abandoned Mining Pits Become Valuable Habitat LANE COUNTY — Rivers are more than just water.

When you think of the ways a river benefits people, your first thought is almost certainly related to water. But the fine gravel that forms the riverbed is nearly as important in the establishment of permanent settlements. It’s a key ingredient in concrete and other mixes used to build roads, sidewalks, foundations and other structures. People have been mining such gravel from pits at the edges of the Willamette River for decades—a practice that often leaves behind step-sided holes of stagnant water cut off from the healthy flow of the river itself.

This has certainly been the case near Eugene-Springfield at the confluence of the Middle and Coast Forks of the Willamette River. There a levee had been built to protect pits mines that pockmarked the riverbank for several miles, keeping them dry to accommodate mining equipment. After mining at this location ceased in the 1980s, these holes filled up with ground water and rain. Their steep sides made access difficult for land animals, and many were choked off with blackberries and other invasive growth. The flooded pits provided little benefit for wildlife and were potentially dangerous to humans. They had been fenced off from public access ever since.

In 2010, however, The Nature Conservancy acquired 1,400 acres of the former mining site and its associated floodplain. Their goal was to restore the area and eventually turn it over to public ownership. Under the leadership of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and partially funded by grants from the Oregon Lottery, they have worked to lower the top of the levee so that the river can overflow it and reach the pits during all but the driest part of the year. New side channels allow the water to escape back to the river, providing fish with access to these valuable, protected pools. The sides have been smoothed so that land animals can better reach these deep waterholes. Invasive vegetation was removed and replaced with native plantings.

Thousands of trees and shrubs were added after the heavy construction was complete.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Temperatures Leap 40 Degrees Above Normal As The Arctic Ocean And Greenland Ice Sheet See Record June Melting

Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while

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the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in mid-June during the age of weather satellites.

Greenland saw temperatures soar up to 40 degrees above normal Wednesday, while open water exists in places north of Alaska where it seldom, if ever, has in recent times.

It’s “another series of extreme events consistent with the long-term trend of a warming, changing Arctic,” said Zachary Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California at Irvine.

And the abnormal warmth and melting of ice in the Arctic may be messing with our weather.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Convicts Are Returning To Farming – Anti-Immigrant Policies Are The Reason Prison inmates are picking fruits and vegetables at a rate not seen since Jim Crow.

Convict leasing for agriculture – a system that allows states to sell prison labor to private farms – became infamous in the late 1800s for the brutal conditions it imposed on captive, mostly black workers.

Federal and state laws prohibited convict leasing for most of the 20th century, but the oncenotorious practice is making a comeback.

Under lucrative arrangements, states are increasingly leasing prisoners to private corporations to harvest food for American consumers.

Why now?

The U.S. food system relies on cheap labor. Today, median income for farm workers is US$10.66 an hour, with 33% of farm-worker households living below the poverty line.

Historically, agriculture has suppressed wages – and eschewed worker protections – by hiring from vulnerable groups, notably, undocumented migrants. By some estimates, 70% of agriculture’s 1.2 million workers are undocumented.

As current anti-immigrant policies diminish the supply of migrant workers (both documented and undocumented), farmers are not able to find the labor they need. So, in states such as Arizona, Idaho and Washington that grow labor-intensive crops like onions, apples and tomatoes, prison systems have responded by leasing convicts to growers desperate for workers.

To access the full story, click here.

9. What It’s Like To Navigate Life Below The Poverty Line

When she discovered that she was pregnant, Stephanie Land ripped up her application for the University of Montana’s creative writing program. Yet her dream of being a writer in Missoula endured, shining like a beacon above the daily grind of poverty she now found herself trapped in as a single mother. She yearned for Missoula, a laid-back, picturesque college town, but knew that good-paying jobs there were hard to come by, and housing costs disproportionately high.

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She told herself that, once in Montana, she could reinvent herself and set an example for her daughter by becoming “the person I expected myself to be.”

But it would be years before Land managed to escape. Her debut memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, takes place mostly in Washington’s Skagit County, a rural area north of Seattle. Like many of its Western counterparts, it suffers from the ripple effects of a nearby big city’s lack of affordability without any of the benefits of urban living — reliable public transportation and a geographic concentration of jobs and amenities — that can help offset housing costs.

Land gives little more than a paragraph to her decision to have a child, and it can be tempting for the reader to judge her choices. But Land’s openness highlights the injustice of our culture’s eagerness to criticize the personal decisions of poor people, particularly of women. (How many women are judged equally harshly for not having children?) Poor women have it especially hard; at least their more privileged sisters have a chance of keeping their private lives private. Often it’s only the maid who sees the struggles they hide from the world.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Cities On The Verge Of A Housing Crisis The American housing bubble that wreaked havoc on the global economy was a long time in the making. Largely the product of exploitative lending practices that put people in homes they could not afford, the housing market bust dragged the median American home value down by 37% — from a pre-recession high of $230,000 in the third quarter of 2005 to a post-recession low of $145,000 in the first quarter of 2011.

Today, with the housing collapse a decade behind us, new regulations safeguard home buyers from predatory lenders. Since the housing market crash, home prices have regained the value lost — and then some. Through the first quarter of 2019, home prices have risen by nearly 70% since the post-recession low.

While steady year-over-year growth in home value is generally considered healthy, too much growth too quickly can lead to market instability and a risk of a collapse in the long term. In some U.S. cities, home values might be climbing at a rate that could prove disastrously unsustainable.

Reviewing quarterly median home price data for 123 metropolitan statistical areas from real estate data firm ATTOM Data Solutions, 24/7 Wall St. identified 15 U.S. metropolitan areas where home prices are at least 20% higher than at their nearest pre-recession peak. In several of these cities, prices are over 50% above that level.

To sign up for the webinar, click here.

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