Tim Wise on Supporting Local and Sustainable Agriculture – Food Tank

Timothy A. Wise, Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit, “Investing in Discovery,” which will be held in collaboration with Tufts University and Oxfam America on April 1, 2017.

In addition to his work at Tufts University, Tim directs the Land and Food Rights Program at the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute. He is also currently working on a book, tentatively titled Feeding Illusions: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Future of Food, based on research conducted while he was on a fellowship from the Open Society Foundations.

Food Tank had the opportunity to speak with Tim about his inspiration, current work, and the need to support local and sustainable agriculture.

 

Timothy A. Wise, Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, is speaking at the inaugural Boston Food Tank Summit.

Go Boston 2030 : Imagining Our Transportation Future

https://www.boston.gov/transportation/go-boston-2030
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Go Boston 2030 is …

Go Boston 2030 is a City of Boston initiative to envision a bold transportation future for the city for the next 5, 10, and 15 years.

Based on your 5,000 questions and comments from the more than 600 people who participated in the Visioning Lab in the first half of 2015, we have drafted a vision framework.

In fall 2015, we collected transportation project and policy ideas at “Ideas on the Street” pop-ups and Idea Roundtables. We also gathered stories through “Share Your Trip with BTD.” In spring 2016, over 4,000 people selected the type of future and the projects and policies that they wanted to prioritize. These ideas and this feedback are being used to develop an Action Plan that will be released in the winter of 2017

Moving Toward Carbon Free Transportation in the U.S.: What Now?

Frontier Group

Published on Feb 8, 2017

Moving Toward Carbon Free Transportation in the U.S.: What Now?
Webinar presented by Tony Dutzik of Frontier Group in January 2017

Chief Environmental Justice Official at EPA Resigns, With Plea to Pruitt to Protect Vulnerable Communities | InsideClimate News

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09032017/epa-environmental-justice-mustafa-ali-flint-water-crisis-dakota-access-pipeline-trump-scott-pruitt
Mustafa Ali quits after 24 years, as new administrator prepares deep cuts in programs affecting the poor and minorities.

Phil McKenna

By Phil McKenna

Mustafa Ali is stepping down from his position as head of the environmental justice program at the EPA after a 24-year career at the agency. There appear to be no plans to replace him amid reports that the Trump administration is targeting deep cuts in EPA’s environmental justice and other efforts. Credit: Wilson Center, Environmental Change and Security program/flickr

The head of the environmental justice program at the Environmental Protection Agency has stepped down, departing the government with a lengthy letter to Scott Pruitt, the EPA’s new administrator, urging him not to kill the agency’s programs.

Mustafa Ali, a senior adviser and assistant associate administrator at the agency, worked to alleviate the impact of air, water and industrial pollution on poverty-stricken towns and neighborhoods during nearly a quarter century with the EPA. He helped found the environmental justice office, then the environmental equity office, in 1992, during the presidency of President George H.W. Bush.

Ali leaves the EPA as Pruitt, who took office Feb. 17, prepares to implement deep cuts in the agency’s budget and staff. A Trump administration proposal would cut the EPA’s $8 billion budget by $2 billion and reduce its roster of 15,000 employees by 20 percent. An internal memo obtained by multiple news outlets on March 1 called for a complete dismantling of the office of environmental justice and elimination of a number of grant programs that address low-income and minority communities. A story in the Oregonian reported that funding for the office would decrease 78 percent, from $6.7 million to $1.5 million.

Justice issues have become an environmental focal point in recent years—most recently in the battle to clean up lead-contaminated water in Flint, Mich., a largely African-American community, and in the fight to stop the nearly completed Dakota Access pipeline just upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

…(read more).

EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Questions Basic Facts About Climate Change : The Two-Way : NPR

National Public Radio Headlines – 10:00am on 9 March 2017

By 10:00am on 9 March, the NPR story had been “framed” in a different manner:

Scott Pruitt’s comments on carbon dioxide come just over two weeks after he took the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency with the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases as pollutants.  Susan Walsh/AP

March 9, 2017 11:48 AM ET   Geoff Brumfiel

President Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming.

“I would not agree that [CO²] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Scott Pruitt said Thursday in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen.

“I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact,” Pruitt said.

Those statements are at odds with an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing that humans are causing the climate to warm by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The view that CO2 is a major heat-trapping gas is supported by reams of data, included data collected by government agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

…(read more).