Hey gang.
We didn’t focus so hard on any particular story or topic to make it the core of the show. So we’re titling this one as a good introductory episode to our program in general.
Category: Environmental
On Wednesday, West Coast crab fishermen filed a lawsuit alleging that 30 fossil fuel companies are to blame for the past several years of delayed seasons and disastrous economic losses due to ocean warming. Specific complaints include strict liability, failure to warn and negligence.
“The scientific linkage between the combustion of fossil fuels and ocean warming, which leads to domoic acid impacts in our fisheries, is clear,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which filed the suit in California State Superior Court in San Francisco on behalf of California and Oregon crab fishermen. “We know it, and it’s time to hold that industry accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
West Coast crab fishermen have experienced significant losses during the past three years, starting in the 2015-16 season when massive algal blooms caused by warm ocean temperatures resulted in a domoic acid outbreak that caused a months-long delay. The season was partially delayed again during the 2016-17 season for the same reason.
In California, Dungeness crab brought in over $47 million in 2017 and $83 million in 2016; the amount was down to $17 million in 2015, during the industry’s first major problem with domoic acid. Oppenheim said that that the 2015-16 closure cost the industry $110 million in lost revenue. There are nearly 1,000 Dungeness crab permit holders in California and Oregon.
This year, the commercial season is opening on time — Nov. 15 — but only south of Bodega Bay to the Mexican border. It will remain closed north of Bodega Head because domoic acid is showing up in crabs tested by the California Department of Public Health in certain parts of the north coast.
“Even though this year we’ve dodged a bullet, we still have a closed area, we’re still seeing hot tests,” said Oppenheim. “It could be that this year there could be a financial impact as well.”
In Oregon, the area of the coast that borders California has been closed to commercial and sports fishing since October because of domoic acid.
The lawsuit filed by the firm Sher Edling claims that the defendants, which include Chevron and Exxon Mobil, have known about the harm caused by climate change, including warming oceans, for 50 years.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue and requires global participation and actions. Lawsuits like this — filed by trial attorneys against an industry that provides products we all rely upon to power the economy and enable our domestic life — simply do not do that,” said Scott J. Silvestri, corporate media relations manager of Exxon Mobil Corp., in an email.
The cities of San Francisco and Oakland also filed lawsuits against five oil companies earlier this year, seeking to recover the cost of paying for seawalls to fend off sea-level rise. Those lawsuits were thrown out by a federal judge in June, who said that courts couldn’t decide who should be held accountable for as an issue as big as climate change.
In October, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations successfully sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Association to protect salmon and steelhead trout populations in the Columbia River basin from warm water temperatures caused by dams and climate change.
Hey gang. 
Let the folks down at Teen Vogue know that they need full time podcasters on ther staff.
This is the Morning Wine Cellar for 11/13/18.
William is here to do a solo riff real quick and we’ll be back later for the evening Wine Cellar.
Labour frontbencher Keir Starmer concerned about Met police’s handling of spate of robberies of premises used for sex work in London
Common Myths About Sex Work, Debunked By Sex Workers
Sex work is one of the most maligned forms of labor, and often subject to misrepresentation and speculation. We asked two leading sex worker activists to break down some of the most common misconceptions.
With 42 killed, California’s Camp Fire is state’s all-time deadliest
The Butte County Sheriff on Monday reported 13 more fatalities had been discovered on Monday from the Camp wildfire, which all but wiped out the town of Paradise, located about 90 miles north of Sacramento. This brings the death toll to 42, which eclipses the Griffith Park Fire of 1933 as the deadliest wildfire recorded in state history. It already holds the title of the most destructive wildfire on record.
Details: With more than 200 people still unaccounted for, the death toll may increase further. The wildfire has consumed over 6,400 homes. The latest death toll comes after President Trump said on Twitter that he had approved a request to declare the fires in California a major disaster. People affected would be eligible for federal government aid.
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Phoenix Calida of Berniegressive Twitter has had some reasonable and nuance back and forth action with very level headed and even handed partisan Democrats.
Aside from that, we have a fast blast of news and comment to work around it.
NORTH CAROLINA DOMINO’S WORKER WHO TYPED N-WORD ON ORDER FIRED, SAYS HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER’S NAME
A North Carolina Domino’s employee was fired after a customer came to pick up her order and saw a racial slur on the order board in place of her name.
Myasia Nelson told WFMY that she placed a carry-out order for two pizzas and a side of wings at a Domino’s in Burlington, North Carolina, on Monday night. When she was waiting for the food to be ready, she noticed on the order board that instead of her name, the n-word, spelled “NIGA,” was displayed.
The employee, who has not been named, told his supervisor, Junior Snyder, that there was no ill intent in the word he chose. He claimed that he simply couldn’t understand what she was saying. Snyder explained that the employee recounted the story to him and since he didn’t know how to spell her name, he just typed anything in to the order system.
However, Nelson wasn’t convinced it was a simple mistake. She claimed she was only asked to give her name once and Myasia, which is the name she gave the employee for the order, sounds nothing like the word he chose.
“Racial discrimination. That’s what I feel like it is because if it were anyone else they would have never done that,” Nelson told WFMY.
By Tuesday, Snyder had fired the employee because regardless of whether the incident was a mistake, he explained to WFMY that what happened doesn’t reflect the company’s values.
“You can’t work for your company,” Snyder said he told the employee. “We’re not like that.”
Although the Burlington Domino’s is an independent franchise, corporate fully supported Snyder’s decision to fire the employee and commended him for doing it immediately after he was made aware of what transpired.
“As you might expect, this behavior is repulsive and intolerable and has no place in our brand,” Domino’s told Newsweek. “There are more than 15,000 Domino’s units in 90 countries around the world – we are a diverse, inclusive brand and there is no tolerance for that behavior.”
Snyder apologized to Nelson and he explained to WFMY that moving forward, all he can do is ensure it doesn’t happen again, train employees and “make sure everyone understands we don’t tolerate this.”
Aside from the anger that Nelson felt on behalf of herself, the experience took on a deeper meaning when she viewed it through the lens of being a mother.
“I don’t want my daughter growing up being called the words that they wrote about me or being called any type of name,” she told WFMY.
Domino’s also offered Nelson a $50 gift card, but she refused it on the basis that $50 is not worth what she had to endure.
Eighth-grader claims teacher called him the n-word, hit him with clipboard
Updated ; Posted
The mother of a former eighth-grade student has filed a $300,000 lawsuit against Portland Public Schools, claiming a substitute teacher whacked the boy on the head with a clipboard and called him the n-word.
Lamar Warren is African American and was a 13-year-old student at Martin Luther King Jr. School at the time of the alleged assault in October 2017, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Plan to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gets underway
(CNN)An ambitious project to clean up the ocean’s plastic pollution got underway over the weekend as members of The Ocean Cleanup project began towing their system out to sea.
If it works as expected, they’ll try to take a bite out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge collection of floating trash that’s three times the size of France, or about double the size of Texas.
TIM TAI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Philadelphia’s transgender community members and supporters rallied Saturday afternoon in LOVE Park and then marched down Broad Street, packing more than a block, chanting for justice, carrying signs — “Trans is beautiful” and “Trans women are women” and “Trans men are men, period” — in a bid to shine a light on violence and discrimination.
The march, held annually since 2011, has taken on a particular urgency this year in the wake of the death of Shantee Tucker, 30, an African American trans woman who was gunned down Sept. 5 on Old York Road near Hunting Park.
This is the yard sign Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has drawn attention to this week. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s Facebook post
A campaign sign in Central Texas this week drew the scorn of an elected state official — and then it was confiscated by police.
At issue in the small community of Hamilton was a homemade yard sign featuring an elephant decorated in red, white and blue with its trunk up the skirt of a female saying the word “Help.” The sign said “Your vote matters.”
Other signs promoting Democrats from U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke to Agriculture Commissioner candidate Kim Olson were in the background.
This “is supposed to be Judge Kavanaugh’s young daughter,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller posted along with the photos on Facebook this week. “The Democrat sleaze knows NO bounds!”
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With William working extra hours to try to get promoted to another department, The Wine Cellar will be doing these fast action drive by episodes in an attempt to keep the content flowing to you.
Thank you for checking us out.
There are at least 11 major wildfires currently raging in the Artic Circle, and there are even more wildfires burning across Northern Europe. Sweden is one of the countries that been hit the hardest, and the government is scrambling to control the 40 wildfires currently ravaging the central and western parts of the country. This appears to be a trend as more and bigger blazes are reported in other far northern regions like Greenland, Alaska, Siberia and Canada.
The sparks come from a variety of sources- BBQs, cigarettes and increasingly lightning, which is becoming more frequent as the planet warms.
Swedish authorities say the risk of more fires in the days ahead is “extremely high” due to temperatures forecast in excess of 30C (90F). The Nordic region of Europe has experienced an intense heat wave in the past week. Temperatures have remained high throughout Finland, Norway and Sweden. Much of the northern hemisphere has sweltered in unusually hot weather in recent weeks, breaking records from Algeria to California and causing fires from Siberia to Yorkshire.
Two Canadair CL-415 water-bombing planes are on loan from Italy and have joined the firefighting efforts that have also included six fire-fighting helicopters from Norway in response to its neighbor’s request for assistance.
“This is definitely the worst year in recent times for forest fires,” Mike Peacock, a university researcher and a local resident said, according to the publication. “Whilst we get them every year, 2018 is shaping up to be excessive.”
(CNN)Right now, dozens of train cars carrying 10 million pounds of poop are stranded in a rural Alabama rail yard. Technically it’s biowaste, but to the 982 residents in the small town of Parrish, that’s just semantics.
They want it gone. The load has been there for almost two months, and it’s making the whole place smell like a rotting animal carcass.
To add insult to injury, it isn’t even their poop. For the last year, waste management facilities in New York and one in New Jersey have been shipping tons of biowaste — literally, tons — to Big Sky Environmental, a private landfill in Adamsville, Alabama. But in January, the neighboring town of West Jefferson filed an injunction against Big Sky to keep the sludge from being stored in a nearby rail yard.
It was successful — but as a result, the poo already in transit got moved to Parrish, where there are no zoning laws to prevent the waste from being stored.
‘God help us if it gets hot’
Parrish Mayor Heather Hall said she is doing everything in her power to get the feculent freight out of her town.
“It’s so frustrating,” Hall said. Last week, Hall met with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, and she and other Montgomery lawmakers told Hall they would help get it sorted out. “They’re trying to work behind the scenes to get us a little bit of help, but we’ve been told that for weeks, and there’s still no solution.”
Hall said the stench permeates everything. The rail yard is across from a baseball field and next to a softball field. Parrish only measures about 2 square miles, and pretty much everything is within smelling distance.
“It greatly reduces the quality of life,” Hall said. “You can’t sit out on your porch. Kids can’t go outside and play, and God help us if it gets hot and this material is still out here.” On Tuesday, when Hall spoke to CNN, the temperature in Parrish reached 81 degrees.
“You can’t open your door because that stuff gets in your house. It’s really rough,” Parrish resident Robert Hall told CNN affiliate WVTM. Other residents said the waste smelled like dead bodies.
‘Is that not a public health issue?’
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management have both told Hall the material isn’t dangerous, because it’s supposed to be Grade A biowaste, not raw sewage (which is also the reason for the unique smell).
She’s willing to take them at their word, but that doesn’t mean she and other Parrish residents aren’t concerned.
“Other than it smelling absolutely terrible, I have to trust them that it’s not going to hurt you,” she said. “But if you have asthma or COPD or breathing problems, what is that going to do to you? [The rail yard] is probably less than 50 yards away from homes. What happens if flies get into someone’s house? Is that not a public health issue?”
Hall said her colleagues in the capital city of Montgomery have asked her not to file an injunction against the landfill, not that it would be a smart idea anyway; if they went to court over the matter, the other matter would just sit there, stinking up Parrish, until the trial was over.
‘They keep telling us the situation is almost over’
So, in short, nobody knows when the poop will be moved.
“I’m just getting little bits and pieces of information, and I cannot tell you how frustrating it is,” Hall said. “My understanding is, they are really trying to work on the problem, and they keep telling us the situation is almost over.”
Hall hasn’t been in contact with Big Sky for a few weeks. When she first spoke to the company, when the cars of waste were just beginning to be stockpiled in Parrish’s rail yard, they told her it would take seven to 10 days to move them out. That was two months ago.
CNN contacted Big Sky and is waiting to receive comment.
Parrish isn’t the only town on the waste route that has been dealing with the fetid fallout. According to AL.com, residents in Birmingham were livid when at least 80 train cars full of the sludge came to a stop in their city in January.
Hall said, at one point, there were 252 tractor-trailer loads of the stuff stockpiled in her town.
“People need to understand that this waste does not need to be in a populated area,” she said. “There are places to put it, industrial places. We’re a very small town caught in the middle of this, and I feel like that’s part of the issue here. This shouldn’t be happening.”
Hey gang.
Phoenix And William are back for the tangent.
We have cops that rob people and cops that remind us why we need Sex Workers Rights.
We also do our best to do good news.
We really tried.
Seriously. We tried.
The Trump administration said it will allow the importation of body parts from African elephants shot for sport, contending that encouraging wealthy big-game hunters to kill them will aid the vulnerable species.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service said in a written notice issued Thursday that permitting elephants from Zimbabwe and Zambia to be brought back as trophies will raise money for conservation programs. A licensed two-week African elephant hunt can cost more than $50,000 per person, not including airfare, according to advertised rates.
In the Friday notice, FWS said it had determined that Zimbabwe’s conservation efforts for elephants are sufficient to protect the population and that hunting fees benefit conservation, both necessary factors in allowing trophy imports.
“The Service is able to make a determination that the killing of trophy animals in Zimbabwe, on or after January 21, 2016, and on or before December 31, 2018, will enhance the survival of the African elephant,” the agency wrote.
“With the information currently available, applications to import trophies hunted during this time period will be considered to have met this requirement unless we issue a new finding based on available information.”
The Trump administration also lifted the Obama administration’s ban on African elephant trophies from Zambia. But officials are not obligated to publish a Federal Register notice on that.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied Thursday that the policies had been made final.
“There hasn’t been an announcement that’s been finalized on this front,” she told reporters. “Until that’s done, I wouldn’t consider anything final.”
But Interior Department spokesman Russell Newell, whose agency includes FWS, confirmed Friday that both the Zimbabwe and Zambia elephant decisions are now final.
African elephants are considered both by FWS and by international conservation officials to be threatened species.
“By lifting the import ban on elephant trophies in Zimbabwe and Zambia the Trump Administration underscored, once again, the importance of sound scientific wildlife management and regulated hunting to the survival and enhancement of game species in this country and worldwide,” Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s advocacy arm, said in a statement.
TransCanada, the company that owns and operates the Keystone Pipeline, says that an estimated 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of oil have spilled near the small town of Amherst, S.D.
The cause of the leak is under investigation, according to the company’s website. TransCanada crews detected a drop in pressure at about 6 a.m. CT Thursday morning and shut down the pipeline, which runs from Hardesty, Alberta, to Cushing, Okla., and Wood River/Patoka, Ill.
Amherst is about 200 miles north of Sioux Falls, S.D., and about 25 miles from the state’s border with North Dakota.
The conduit is not the controversial and long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline that TransCanada is still shepherding through the approval process.
“TransCanada cannot be trusted,” said Jane Kleeb, head of the Nebraska Democratic Party and a longtime activist opposed to Keystone XL, as quoted by the Washington Post.
“I have full confidence that the Nebraska Public Service Commission is going to side with Nebraskans, not a foreign oil company,” she added.
Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist manager at the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said the company was aware of the spill at about 5:30 a.m. CT. But his agency wasn’t alerted until about 10:30 a.m. CT.
“There is a time lag there and I expect that that will be some of the questions we need to answer over the coming months,” he told Jeff.
In its statement, TransCanada said, “The section of pipe along a right-of-way approximately 35 miles (56 kilometres) south of the Ludden pump station in Marshall County, South Dakota was completely isolated with 15 minutes and emergency procedures were activated.”
The spill occurred about 3 miles southeast of Amherst on private land, which Walsh described as a “flat, grassy area for grazing.” The company tweeted a picture of the site late Thursday.
The company says that it is providing state and federal regulators “with accurate and confirmed information on an ongoing basis.”