1. Abortion ‘gag’

Action:

Trump’s “global gag” on abortions blocks US funds to any organisation involved in abortion advice and care overseas. It means that even projects working on, for example, Aids or malaria are forced to strip all mention of abortion from their programmes in order for their funding to continue. The ruling could affect as much as $600m (£494m) of aid and millions of girls and women around the world, say campaigners.

Response:

Despite being hastily arranged, representatives from 50 governments attended the She Decides conference in Brussels on 2 March. Among those helping devise ways of plugging the gap? Kenya, Vietnam, Nepal and Japan. Organisers hope to raise $600m (£494m) from international pledges. “This is not a conference against the American administration; this is a conference for something,” said Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Isabella Lövin.

Lövin, who is also minister for international development cooperation and climate, made headlines when she appeared to parody Trump and the all-male lineup in the Oval Office that signed the global gag order. She tweeted a picture of herself and female colleagues, as she signed Sweden’s climate law.

Care about how the media influences our world?

We believe that excessive negativity in the press is destructive for society, so we’re working to create a more constructive and compassionate media. But to do that, we need your support. Help us change the news for good.

2. Gender equality

Action:

Trump’s sexist rhetoric in last year’s presidential election race brought women’s rights sharply to the fore. One commentator said the US leader “wears his disdain for women like a badge of honour”.

Response:

From London to Washington, women’s marches took place across the world to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration and advocate for women’s rights. Political scientists estimate that between 3.3 million and 4.6 million marchers took part across the US alone, describing it as the largest – and most peaceful – day of protest in the country’s history.

Civic groups promoting women’s rights have also seen a surge in support, with US reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood netting 300,000 donations in the month and a half following Trump’s election – 40 times more than usual. They included 82,000 donations made by pro-choice advocates in the name of US vice-president Mike Pence, a longtime opponent of women’s reproductive rights.

3. Travel ban

Action:

On 27 January President Trump signed an executive order halting all refugee admissions and temporarily barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. It was described as the most significant hardening of immigration policy in generations, and condemned by many as being racist and anti-Islamic. It was revised on 6 March, narrowing the countries to six – Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Somalia and Libya – and allowing for case-by-case exceptions.

Response:

Thousands of lawyers worked pro-bono at airports to help travellers caught up in the chaos, and some courts across the US blocked the implementation of the ban. The US tech community united in the face of the travel ban too: more than 2,000 employees staged walkouts at eight Google campuses across the US, holding up signs including “Resist” and “No ban no wall” and tweeting them under the hashtag #GooglersUnite.

Artists also got in on the act: the Museum of Modern Art in New York replaced works by Picasso and Matisse with those by artists from countries affected by the ban, and a museum at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, placed “shrouds” over artworks created or donated by immigrants.

4. Immigration

Action:

Trump pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, using an expanded Border Patrol — and perhaps also military troops — at an estimated cost of $5 trillion (£3.8 trillion) over 10 years. Trump also wants to strip federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to hand undocumented residents over to federal authorities. His administration has launched a new government office to publicise crimes committed by immigrants. Immigrant advocates say the move does not align with actual crime data and appears designed to demonise immigrants.

Response:

Thousands took part in ‘day without immigrants’ protests in the US on 16 February. Some businesses closed for the day, children were kept away from schools and families with migrant roots purposefully spent no money during the day. Judges subsequently blocked a Trump order targeting sanctuary cities and, in a major U-turn, Trump announced that he had no plans to deport undocumented “dreamers,” who were brought to the US as children.

Good journalism matters

As the first media organisation to take good news seriously, we are committed to rigorous standards. Plus we are a media co-op owned by readers and reinvest all profits into our journalism. Support inspiring, trustworthy journalism by subscribing to Positive News magazine.

5. The border wall

Action:

Trump seized the Republican presidential nomination by promising to build a physical wall along the Mexican border. “I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall,” he pledged.

Response:

Mexican officials rebuffed Trump’s plan, and countered it by proposing an entry fee for American visitors. In the US, polls found most border-state residents oppose the wall, and that just 16 per cent of people believed Mexicans would pay for it. Many of the US’s largest construction companies declined to bid on contracts to build the wall, and California lawmakers moved to blacklist companies that may get involved in its construction.

6. LGBTQ rights

Action:

Despite claiming to support the rights of the LGBTQ community, Trump swiftly canceled an Obama rule that allowed transgender schoolchildren to use bathrooms that they felt best matched their gender identity. Next up, a leaked draft of President Trump’s ‘Religious Freedom’ order revealed plans to create sweeping exemptions from anti-discrimination laws for people and organisations who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and transgender identity.

Response:

People held a ‘kiss-in’ outside Trump Tower in New York City. As night fell, it turned into a dance party. “You need some joy in resistance, and I feel that getting out in the street and being with community refills your tank,” teacher and writer Liz Dalton told NBC News. LGBTQ supporters also got a boost when North Carolina lawmakers repealed a controversial ‘bathroom bill’ barring transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity. The change came after a wave of grassroots activism, and a corporate boycott threatened to cost the state $3.6 billion (£2.8 billion).

7. Healthcare

Action:

President Trump pushed for a repeal of Obama’s flagship healthcare reforms, offering a replacement that would have left 52 million Americans without health insurance. Meanwhile, it was estimated that the repeal of the act would have meant $144 billion (£112 billion) in tax cuts to millionaires.

Response:

Thousands of voters, including many in Republican states, attended boisterous town hall meetings to urge their representatives to oppose Trump’s healthcare plan. US digital organising group MoveOn mobilised 100,000 people in February for its ‘resistance recess’ – a campaign to lobby Republican lawmakers during the congressional break.

Lacking support from both Democrats and Republicans, Republican leaders were ultimately forced to cancel a vote on the repeal bill. “Obamacare is the law of the land,” conceded house speaker Paul Ryan in the wake of the defeat.

8. The far right

Action:

Some believe that Trump’s heated rhetoric, and his hiring of Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, empowered the far right. Many anti-racism campaigners blame Trump as being partly responsible for a wave of hate crimes in recent months, including bomb threats targeting Jewish community centres.

Response:

Using a slogan created by a third-grade school pupil, a Chicago neighbourhood group launched the ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ campaign. Their striking multilingual posters went viral, and are now displayed in homes and businesses across the country. “As adults, we’ve become immune to the idea that there is bigotry, there is hatred, there is ugliness in the word. Children don’t get that,” Carmen Rodríguez, one of the campaign’s founders, told the Chicago Tribune.

9. Climate change

Action:

Trump’s team rushed to dismantle Obama’s environmental protections, including key rules covering clean air and water, fuel efficiency, and power plant emissions. Trump also distanced himself from the Paris climate deal, approved the Keystone XL pipeline, barred federal scientists from communicating with the public, and moved to slash funding for federal scientific bodies.

Response:

Twitter accounts run by the National Park Service went ‘rogue’ and started posting messages about global warming. Numerous unofficial accounts sprang up to promote climate science. Corporations including General Electric and ExxonMobil pushed Trump to acknowledge the reality of climate change, and major players including China and the EU said they would keep championing global climate efforts. On Earth Day, the March for Science saw tens of thousands of people join protests in support of evidence-based policymaking. “It’s important to show this administration that we care about facts,” roboticist Chris Taylor told the Washington Post.

10. Conflicts of interest

Action:

Trump is the first modern president to refuse to release his tax returns, has hired family members in senior roles, and has failed to sever his ties with his business empire. He has used weekends to tour Trump-branded resorts, and used the State Department to promote Mar-a-Lago, the Trump-owned club in Florida where initiation costs $200,000 (£155,183).

Response:

Congressional Republicans have arguably given Trump a free pass on his conflicts of interest, but protestors held Tax Day demonstrations demanding the president’s tax returns. Journalists are using freedom of information laws to track his business ties. In a closely watched case, two restaurant-owners in Washington DC are suing Trump under a clause in the constitution, arguing that his continued ownership of the Trump Hotel in the city — where foreign dignitaries now routinely stay — puts competitors at an unfair disadvantage. “This is about purchasing access, and that’s not fair,” said one of the restaurateurs’ lawyers.

Illustration: Spencer Wilson

Subscribe to the magazine that’s bursting the bad news bubble, and help us shine a light on progress and possibility

The post 10 inspiring responses to Trump’s first 100 days appeared first on Positive News.

As captains of the fossil fuel industries and their lobbyists prepare to take over the White House – appointed by a president elected by a minority, claiming to represent the people on an anti-elite ticket yet possessing by far the highest cumulative wealth of any cabinet ever – they will face evidence breaking out all around them of a fast-moving global energy transition threatening to strand the fossil fuels they seek to boost.

‘World energy hits a turning point’, a Bloomberg headline read on 16 December. “Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity,” the article marvelled. Analysis of the average cost of new wind and solar in 58 emerging-market economies – including China, India, and Brazil – showed solar at $1.65m (£1.34m) per megawatt and wind at $1.66 (£1.35m).

Bloomberg reported in December that solar power is the cheapest form of new electricity for the first time. Photo credit: Activ Solar

Google leads the giant corporations eagerly going with this flow. The largest corporate buyer of renewable energy announced on 6 December that it expects to hit its target of 100 per cent renewable power in, wait for it, 2017. Google is a huge consumer of power, and going solar means deep emissions cuts. Especially when solar infrastructure is hooked up with all the digital efficiency enhancement fandangos that Silicon Valley giants are zeroing in on in the fast emerging era of artificial intelligence in an internet of things.

Google’s emissions reductions will be meaningful even considering full product life cycles. Solar panels made today pay back the energy used to make them in little more than a year, a Belgian research team from the University of Louvain reported in December. “For every doubling of installed photovoltaic capacity”, Atse Louwen and his colleagues write, “energy use decreases by 13 and 12 per cent and greenhouse gas footprints by 17 and 24 per cent, for poly and monocrystalline-based photovoltaic systems, respectively.”

This means that solar panels now return more energy than American oil: an average energy-return on energy-invested of around 14 (and rising) versus around 11 (and falling).

This is excellent news not just for rich Californians but for the developing world, where “solar lanterns and rooftop photovoltaics are becoming the energy of choice”, so Bloomberg reports. In India, “the millions not connected to the grid may never connect” now, dooming much coal to be stranded underground in the process. The cumulative market of new Indian households accessing small-scale energy is potentially 200 gigawatts, with only a tiny fraction currently served. In Myanmar the government needs no further persuasion: it announced plans to bring solar to all as soon as 2030.

Reasons to support Positive News 

#1: Media shapes society
Media has a powerful influence on our world. We believe excessive negativity in the press is destructive for society, so instead we are working to create a more constructive and compassionate media. To do this, we urgently need your support.

The technical advances in batteries and electric vehicles also became ever clearer in December. ‘Diesel faces global crash as electric cars shine’, the Financial Times announced. According to a UBS report, this whole category of oil use will be gone from the global market within ten years.

The positives of electric vehicles (EV) synergise with the negatives of air pollution to create a perfect storm for diesel. At the C40 cities summit, Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens all vowed to ban diesel vehicles by 2025. In China, the worst air pollution this year put 24 cities on red alert, with schools shut and flights grounded. Half a billion people were affected by this ‘airpocalypse’. In Chengdu, protestors took to the streets, putting smog masks on statues in the city centre. A heavy handed response by the police suggested that the government is super sensitive to this issue.

Trump’s prospects of resurrecting coal, and giving the oil and gas industry the expansionist dream ticket most of it wants, are very low

Which is not to say that the Chinese authorities aren’t trying to abate the problem at source. I have summarised their rapid advances in renewables in earlier monthly reports. This month, a presentation in London by Zhang Gang, counsellor of the State Council of China, revealed that China’s efforts to use electricity more efficiently, cutting the need for coal, now involve 317m smart meters in operation across 100 per cent of urban areas and 70 per cent of rural areas. These are hooked up in smart coordination, spanning all aspects of grids, at all scales, in a vast project involving 230 million users. Part of this coordination involves China’s first expressway fast-charging EV network, stretching for 1,262 km between Beijing and Shanghai.

No other country comes remotely close to this kind of smart grid deployment. On 12 December, the International Energy Agency issued a report concluding that China’s coal fired power plants “make no economic sense”. Small wonder.

India is on a similar rapid transition path. On 12 December the Central Electricity Authority there announced that India does not need more coal-based capacity addition until 2022. The authority now plans for non-hydro renewables to meet 43 per cent of electricity needs as soon as 2027. Such an ambition would have been inconceivable until recently. On 20 December, Bloomberg analysed the widening gap between projected and actual demand in the world’s third largest emitter, and put their conclusion in an encouraging headline: “India’s energy forecasts are falling short and climate could win.”

What are investors to make of all this? Well, it is rare for a report to hold the potential to change the world. But one published on 14 December did. The recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) aim to give investors, lenders and insurers visibility of how climate change risk will affect individual businesses, and a road map for reacting to it. The report presents the results of a year of deliberations by 32 representatives of companies with market capitalisation of $1.5tn and financial institutions responsible for assets of $20tn. Their intention is for the capital markets to behave consistently with the aims of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which is to say progressively retreat from fossil fuels, and increasingly favour clean energy investments, not least renewables.

The International Energy Agency issued a report concluding that China’s coal fired power plants ‘make no economic sense’

A reminder of the background. The target of the Paris Agreement, agreed by every independent nation on the planet in December 2015, is to keep global warming at less than 2˚C. If society is to do that, most reserves of fossil fuel will have to stay under ground, unburnt. Since companies view all reserves as having financial value, this means a risk – should governments do what they promised to do in Paris, or some it – of what investors call stranded assets: having money invested in a resource that you then can’t realise. Investing any more money to add to this stock of potentially unburnable reserves creates what can be thought of as a carbon bubble. The risk of stranded assets is growing with every decision made by fossil fuel companies to invest in yet more unnecessary fossil fuel projects: new coal mines, new oil and gas fields, new fracking, new fossil fuel power plants, and so on and so on.

The Bank of England awoke to this issue as a systemic risk in September 2015. After listening to arguments by Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank I chair, and other worried financial experts, they came to fear that fossil fuel asset-stranding would risk wasting a lot of investment capital, and might even threaten global financial stability.

Clean energy expert Jeremy Leggett says investment in clean energy is gaining more traction

The effort to stop this threat soon went international. The G20’s Financial Stability Board set up a taskforce in December 2015 with a brief to specify the information investors need to be provided with in order for them to avoid stranded-asset risk. It is chaired by no less a figure than Michael Bloomberg. As soon as his taskforce’s report came out, more than 30 organisations – including Aviva, Axa, BHP Billiton, JPMorgan and Daimler – announced their support for its conclusions. Many more will surely follow, because the starting point in the TCFD’s proposed roadmap is that companies should include climate-related financial disclosures in their public financial filings. Not to do so would be to ignore material risks to organisations, the taskforce professes.

Those disclosures should span the core elements of how organisations operate: governance, strategy, risk management and the setting of metrics and targets. Crucially, the TCFD advocates, companies should align business models with a 2°C future. Remuneration of chief executives and boards should be linked to the extent to which their companies are hitting targets aimed at a sub-2˚C world.

Even before the Paris Agreement was adopted last year, climate risk was high on the agenda of the world’s largest institutional investors and asset managers. Resolutions asking oil and gas companies to stress test their business models against a 2°C-consistent climate outcome were generally opposed by boards, but received record-high support levels from shareholders. Now there will be no hiding place. The TCFD report provides a template for best practices and a road map for better disclosure. Neither fossil fuel companies nor asset managers investing in them will easily be able to ignore it.

Some investors have not waited for the G20 taskforce’s advice. By the time of the December 2015 Paris climate summit, investment funds with collective assets of $3.4tn had either divested from all or some fossil fuels, or announced their intention to. This movement has continued to grow in 2016. On 12 December the value of funds divested passed $5tn. Some 80 per cent of the funds involved, spanning 688 institutions, are managed by commercial investment and pension funds. This shows that the campaign is now mainstream in the capital markets. Capital is fleeing fossil fuels just as the fossil fuel industries manoeuvre their representatives into the White House for the first time.

What damage can a Trump administration do to this analysis? According to a PWC report this month, the impact they can have on global greenhouse emissions will be “pretty small”, if others hold course. With the trends I have chronicled in 2016, and the declaration by all governments in Marrakech in November that the Paris process is “irreversible”, a holding of course seems a more than a reasonable assumption.

Trying to derail Paris, and revive coal, Trump will have to somehow suppress the progressive American states. His problem is that 33 states and the District of Columbia have cut carbon emissions while expanding their economies since 2000, including some Republican states. How do you persuade officialdom in those states to revert to a failed economic model that seeks essentially to recouple economic growth and fossil fuel use? Fifteen of the states, led by California, New York, Virginia, Vermont and New Mexico, have already told Trump that if he tries to kill US climate plans, they will see him in court.

My conclusion is that the global energy transition is progressing faster than many people think, and is probably irreversible

How has Big Energy coped on the transition frontier as 2016 came to a close? Two snapshots. The utility industry continues to be split into companies seeking to defend the fast shrinking status quo, and those now rushing to be part of the new world. One of the latter, Engie (formerly GdF Suez) announced that it sees the oil price falling to $10 as a result of current trends in energy markets, and the wave of clean energy investments it and other major corporates are making. That would be interesting, should it transpire. For example, on 1 December, BP gave the green light to a $9bn investment in a deepwater oilfield, rather appropriately named Mad Dog 2, due onstream (cue laughter, based on the industry’s record of delivering major projects on time) in 2021. Good luck to them in recouping their investment if Engie’s view of the world comes to pass.

My conclusion, as the new year begins, is that the global energy transition is progressing faster than many people think, and is probably irreversible. Trump’s prospects of resurrecting coal, and giving the oil and gas industry the expansionist dream ticket most of it wants, are very low.

There is a caveat, of course: that he doesn’t manage to blunder into a world war. All bets would be off then.

Jeremy Leggett is founding director at Solarcentury; founder of SolarAid; chairman at Carbon Tracker; and an author and climate and energy historian.

Main image: Kevin Krejci

Reasons to support Positive News 

#2: Help Positive News survive
The whole media industry is having to find new sources of income in a struggle for survival. We are no different. Your ongoing support will bring us closer to a sustainable future.

The post ‘Never mind Trump, the global clean energy transition is racing forward’ appeared first on Positive News.

Speaking Hindi with a thick Indian American accent, Donald Trump filled the screen of a video advertisement. Condemning the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and promising the Hindu and Indian community would have “a true friend in the White House” were he elected, the on-screen translation reads: “This time Trump government”. The 30-second video was carefully timed to coincide with Diwali celebrations unfolding up and down the country.

Some four million Indian Americans live in the US, according to 2015 census figures, forming one of the US’s most affluent ethnic groups. Parts of the community have expressed fears about extremist terrorism, something Trump has seized upon in trying to win their votes. And seeing some Indian Americans waving ‘Hindus for Trump’ signs at an anti-terrorism charity concert in New Jersey, his attempt to resonate with the community seemed to be working.

But Trump’s attempt to woo Hindu Americans was also answered by another ad campaign. Young Hindu Indian Americans launched the grassroots, independent #VoteAgainstHate campaign, urging older family members to reconsider casting their vote for the Republican nominee. Some think that Trump spreads a message of hate and have baulked against the suggestion that their community is aligned with his politics.

Our generation is growing up connected to the rest of the world, which affords us this amazing privilege of perspective

The video, which features some of Trump’s most controversial campaign trail soundbites as well as appearances by US actors Arjun Gupta, Sheetal Sheth and Utkarsh Ambudkar, suggests Trump may not be as sensible a candidate for presidency as he claims. The cast argue that Trump’s anti-Muslim stance, nativist tendencies and sometimes-erratic actions make him ill-suited to represent their relatives’ cross-cultural backgrounds.

“Please, please don’t be on the wrong side of history,” say the actors in the video as they address their family members directly, urging them to realise the significance of their votes.

“Like many people, me and the other creators of the video were getting really sick of all the negativity surrounding this election,” video director Doug Patterson told Positive News. “At the same time, we were realising that we all have people in our lives – good hearted people – who are actually going to vote for Donald Trump, simply because they identify as Republican.

“We were seeing really positive responses to some public service announcements while also reading statistics that said something like 20 per cent of Indian American voters were either undecided or leaning towards Republican. Trump had given us a lot to work with in making a case for why people shouldn’t vote for him, and at the same time, we wanted to do something that could empower the south Asian community.”

Those behind the #VoteAgainstHate campaign hope to highlight what they see as the hypocrisy at the heart of Trump’s attempts to woo Indian Americans: acknowledging on one hand that “generations of Hindu and Indian Americans have strengthened our country” while also urging strict immigration controls. While Trump has targeted Muslims specifically in his anti-extremism rhetoric, the mindset that comes with Islamophobia will negatively impact everyone in the south Asian community, believes Patterson.

We’ve had a lot of people reach out to tell us that the video affected them which is an amazing feeling

“The biggest concern is that many people in our country don’t have the drive or the means to step outside of what they know. They adopt their parents’ political views and don’t consider that maybe their parents were wrong about some things. We have to change the way people think,” he said.

“Our generation is growing up connected to the rest of the world, which affords us this amazing privilege of perspective. I can understand why our parents might be xenophobic, but if you were born in the 90s and you think we should build a wall around our country, then you’ve missed something along the way.”

So how is the video being received by family members?

“My parents are proud of me and admit that it’s powerful,” said Patterson, “but when I suggested posting it directly on a Trump-supporting second cousin’s Facebook wall, my mother bristled – she thinks it’s too confrontational. I hope that it’s worked on some. We’ve had a lot of people reach out to tell us that the video affected them which is an amazing feeling. I’ll tell you if I think it worked on 8 November – election day.”

Image: Vote Against Hate[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_html]JTNDaDMlM0VJbiUyMG5lZWQlMjBvZiUyMG1vcmUlMjBQb3NpdGl2ZSUyME5ld3MlM0YlM0MlMkZoMyUzRQ==[/vc_raw_html][vc_column_text][contact-form-7 id=”19770″ title=”Mailchimp Homepage Form”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post As Trump attempts to woo Hindu Americans, young people respond with anti-hate campaign appeared first on Positive News.