Capital News & Notes
For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – Trending: #PresidentNewsom
- COVID-19 Shifts Balance of Power to State Capitals
- Senate, Assembly Set Special Hearings to Probe Gov’s COVID-19 Response
- Legislative Sessions Resume May 4; Focus on New Recovery Budget
- Assembly Speaker Rendon: “We Have Serious Work to Do”
- Homelessness Program Accelerated
- Will Pandemic Slow Climate Change Initiatives?
- Chicken Wings Grounded – Huge Surplus…Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 10, 2020
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
Stay current daily! For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup
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COVID-19 Shifts Balance of Power to State Capitals
CalMatters
#PresidentNewsom.
That’s the hashtag that was trending on Twitter after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement on CNN’S “Rachel Maddow Show” that California will soon receive 200 million medical-grade masks per month, enough to meet the state’s needs and maybe those of others, too.
It didn’t hurt that Newsom sent 500 ventilators to seven states, including the particularly hard-hit New York and New Jersey.
“We need to coordinate and organize our nation-state status as we can, only in California with our procurement capacity that is quite literally second only to the United States,” the governor told reporters this afternoon. California would act as “a catalyst to increase supply” not only for the state’s health care workers, but for those in other states and perhaps other countries “across the globe.”
“That’s how we perceive our role.”
Newsom’s offer to share California’s public health resources surely makes for good public health policy. No doubt, sharing extra health equipment during a pandemic is also good karma.
But it’s also good politics. Unsurprisingly Newsom, widely believed to harbor national political ambitions, refuses to characterize it in those terms.
“This is not political, this is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining, this is all in the spirit of all of us stepping into this moment and doing what we can,” he said in response to a question from CalMatters. “California is just uniquely resourced.”
In another crisis or under a different president, that’s a role one might expect of the White House. After spending the first weeks after the novel coronavirus made landfall in the United States downplaying its severity, President Donald Trump has since taken a rather hands-off approach when it comes to providing necessary supplies, coordinating purchases of protective equipment or using national emergency powers to force manufacturers to produce more of it.
“Try getting it yourselves,” the president advised state governors in a conference call in mid-March, a decentralized approach that former Massachusetts Gov. Martin O’Malley described as “a Darwinian approach to federalism.”
With the federal government receding, governors’ offices have attained a new kind of prominence, said California political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.
“We’re returning to the Articles of Confederation where the federal government is just there for war and printing money,” she said. “It’s the local and state governments — the governors — that are moving into the vacuum and creating the leadership and exercising the power in this crisis.”
For at least a decade, political focus and news coverage has been increasingly nationalized, with governorships, once a predictable stepping stone to the White House, fading from public view, she said. No longer.
Newsom still can’t compete with the star power of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Chief executive of the state that has been hardest hit by the pandemic — and which is home to some of the country’s most prominent television and print news — Cuomo’s widely televised daily briefings have earned him a degree of national trust that seems to rival the president’s.
According to a Monmouth University poll conducted in the first week of April, 23% of respondents named Cuomo as the public official they trust most to deal with the pandemic. 20% put their trust in Trump. Only 3% named Newsom.
That may change now that Newsom is suggesting he could come to the rescue of some other states if California has spares from its equipment bounty. It’s yet another way that California’s governor has distinguished himself from his counterparts in other states.
Newsom was the first to call for a statewide shelter-in-place order, issuing the edict days before Washington, New York and Louisiana and weeks before Arizona and Florida. In the weeks since, there are signs that California may escape the worst ravages of the virus — though it’s still too early to say whether Newsom and local leaders can take credit.
Another contrast in leadership styles: Amid a coronavirus outbreak aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship, Newsom coordinated with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Trump administration to offload and quarantine the passengers in the Bay Area. He praised Schaaf and other local elected leaders for “showing the world what makes our state great — coming to the rescue of thousands of people trapped aboard this ship and helping tackle a national emergency.”
In Florida, where cruise ships loaded with sick passengers await disembarkation, Gov. Rob DeSantis said the state would only accept the Floridians.
In announcing his new plan this afternoon, Newsom evoked his Jesuit education.
“The Bible teaches us we are many parts, but one body,” he said. “Father Coz was my econ teacher at Santa Clara University and he began every single lecture by reminding us of our web of mutuality.”
Despite their past Twitter cage-matches, Newsom, a progressive Democrat, has been uncharacteristically friendly with the Republican president since the beginning of the pandemic. Now he regularly praises his former political nemesis. Any criticisms of the federal government have been indirect, sandwiched between compliments.
“We have received just over 1 million (medical masks) from the federal government,” Newsom told Maddow last night. “It’s not an indictment. It’s not a cheap shot. At the end of the day they don’t have the masks at the national stockpile.”
That’s earned him high praise from Harmeet Dhillon, the Republican Party’s national committeewoman from California.
“I can’t say I’m ashamed of the governor,” she said. “Overall I give the governor an ‘A’ in terms of his tone and his suspending of the normal partisan attacks on the president.”
She does not even begrudge him trying to glean a political advantage as he leads the “nation-state” of California through this crisis.
“When you look at him offering aid to other states, I think that’s American, that’s neighborly. But clearly every politician is looking at the next job,” she said. “I think he’s gunning for president — as is Andrew Cuomo.”
and
https://calmatters.org/newsletter/newsom-trump-cuomo-masks-ventilators-supply/
Senate, Assembly Set Special Hearings to Probe Gov’s COVID-19 Response
Associated Press & Legislative Media Notice
State Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) issued the following statement to announce COVID-19 hearings next week:
“As we remain on legislative recess to do our part to help flatten the COVID-19 curve and work from our districts to help our constituents through this time of crisis, we in the Senate and the Assembly are planning committee hearings to be held before the full Legislature returns to the Capitol.
“Each house is finalizing preparations to hold hearings within the next two weeks, focusing on the state’s COVID-19 spending. We strongly believe the Governor and his team are working diligently on the behalf of Californians, but we promised the people of California we would provide this oversight when we passed emergency COVID-19 funding in March. Details will be forthcoming from the Assembly and the Senate as the hearings are finalized.
“The need for continued physical distancing and other related considerations mean these hearings will work somewhat differently from past hearings in order to make every effort to ensure public participation and protect public health.”
The first hearing will be Thursday – the new Senate Special Budget Committee on COVID-19. In a letter to Newsom’s finance director, committee chair Sen. Holly Mitchell asked for details on the contract Newsom is executing to buy 200 million masks per month through an American subsidiary of a Chinese company. Newsom announced the deal Tuesday and asked lawmakers for authority to quickly spend some of the money needed to purchase the masks.
In total, Newsom expects to spend nearly $1 billion on the masks. The state plans for the first shipment to arrive in early May, and the initial contract will last 2 1/2 months, said Brian Ferguson, spokesman for the Office of Emergency Services.
Lawmakers gave Newsom approval to spend more state money in response to the new coronavirus last month before halting their session over concerns about spreading the virus. He’s using that authority and tapping other disaster preparedness funds to increase the state’s supply of personal protective equipment desperately needed by health care workers.
But Mitchell, also chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, said Newsom needs to be more transparent with lawmakers about the spending. She asked for details such as what performance standards would be used for the manufacturer of the masks, the price per mask, and production and delivery timelines. Lawmakers also announced plans to hold oversight hearings on coronavirus spending.
“Under normal circumstances, the Legislature would have had more time to deliberate an expenditure of this magnitude and would have been allowed to thoroughly vet the details of the contract before proceeding,” Mitchell wrote to Newsom’s finance director.
Lawmakers have yet to see a copy of the contract that Newsom’s office signed with BYD North America, the Los Angeles-based subsidiary of a Chinese company. The administration has not provided a copy of the contract to The Associated Press.
The deal Newsom announced Tuesday is a massive ramp up in California’s mask supply. So far, the state has distributed roughly 41 million masks. Of the 200 million masks expected to come in monthly, about 150 million will be N-95 masks and another 50 million will be surgical masks.
Newsom projects California will hit its peak of coronavirus cases in mid-May. They will first go to health workers in hospitals and nursing homes and first responders. But they could also be shared with workers deemed essential, such as grocery store clerks, Newsom said Thursday.
Mitchell asked Newsom’s administration to tell lawmakers how it would decide where to send the masks. If the administration wants to give the masks to other states, Mitchell also asked for details.
She also urged the establishment of a regularly updated website with details on the state’s inventory on personal protective equipment, including masks, gloves and gowns, as well as where it’s being shipped.
Newsom told lawmakers in a Tuesday letter that he’s spent $1.4 billion already on such equipment. The AP has repeatedly asked the administration for a breakdown of spending on different types of PPE, but the request has not been fulfilled.
Newsom suggested in a Tuesday interview on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show that California could distribute some of the 200 million masks to other Western states. California recently loaned 500 ventilators to states in need.
But Ferguson, the OES spokesman, said no formal effort is underway to turn California into a multi-state distributor of masks. Discussions about sharing with other states is more informal, he said.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
https://apnews.com/70299d14ebe2f7506474e5b8d0179468
Full Legislative Sessions Resume May 4; Focus on New Recovery Budget
Sacramento Bee & CalMatters
Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, said in a joint statement the Legislature will return May 4, instead of the earlier planned date Monday.
“Our priority continues to be bending the curve of infection,” they said. “We must continue to support the efforts of our first responders and health care personnel.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom had said in recent days that the legislative calendar remained “fluid” and that the world had “radically changed” since mid-March. “It’s their houses, and we will support them and accommodate them.”
Atkins and Rendon both said they were working with the governor “to ensure effective deployment of state resources.”
Rendon told a college class recently that the number of bills lawmakers will hear this year will likely be trimmed to around 600 or 700 — from the more than 3,000 that have been introduced — and that responding to the coronavirus is the top priority.
Skyrocketing unemployment and a crashing stock market mean less revenue will be coming to the state. The Assembly’s budget chair has sent a memo to colleagues telling them to pare down their ambitions accordingly.
“I do not believe we will have the resources to fund many Member priorities this year, beyond a small few that deal with the response and recovery to COVID 19,” wrote Assemblyman Phil Ting late last month.
California’s Legislature hasn’t stopped its normal workflow like this since 1862, when a flood covered Sacramento streets and lawmakers relocated to San Francisco, according to legislative historian Alex Vassar. Now, the National Conference on State Legislatures says, it’s one of at least 26 states that have halted their legislative sessions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Most of them are grappling with the mechanics of running a government from the confines of home.
“There has been a flurry of activity on the question of whether voting during session can be done virtually. In most legislatures, the answer is no,” Natalie Wood, a director at the National Conference on State Legislatures, said on a podcast about government response to the coronavirus.
The answer in California is more nuanced. Before leaving the Capitol the week California’s coronavirus shutdown began in March, the state Senate passed a rule allowing senators to meet and vote remotely, such as by phone or videoconference, during a state of emergency. The Assembly did not pass a similar rule, and would probably have to reconvene in person to do so.
“Nothing in California law prohibits the state legislature from conducting its business remotely, with members distancing themselves to prevent infection during this pandemic emergency,” said David A. Carrillo, executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley’s law school. “Of course, the Legislature will need to provide public access to its open sessions.”
It’s not yet clear how the Legislature will achieve that, or whether remote decision-making will be necessary. If lawmakers reconvene in May or June, they can still meet the constitutional mandate to pass a budget by June 15th.
“That’s the one deadline we can’t change,” said Assemblyman Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican who sits on the budget committee.
Deadlines for passing bills are a lot easier to change during the session that ends on Aug. 31. Lawmakers have been busy figuring out how to lighten their load, so they’ll have fewer bills to process when they start voting again. Already moved to the back burner: Assemblyman Miguel Santiago’s measure to give community college transfer students two tuition-free years at the California State University, and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s bills to extend a tax break on diapers and expand civics education.
“We are looking through all our bills and saying, ‘Is this necessary this year? Does it relate to an economic issue we need to deal with?’” said Gonzalez, a San Diego Democrat.
She and other members of the Legislature’s Latino Caucus are still pushing for the state to expand government-subsidized health care to cover undocumented residents over age 65. Newsom proposed doing that in his January budget — at a cost of about $80.5 million in the first year and about $350 million annually in the future — but deflected when asked Thursday if he still sees it as a priority.
“I don’t think we should expect to see any of that,” said Sen. Holly Mitchell, who chairs the Senate’s budget committee. Instead, she’s expecting “a keep-the-lights-on kind of budget.” The Los Angeles Democrat said she doesn’t think Newsom will continue backing spendy proposals from January, such as extending Medi-Cal to undocumented seniors.
Before their recess, the Senate and Assembly each gathered for about seven hours to pass a relief package to send $1.1 billion in support to hospitals, facilities, local governments and schools to mitigate the spread of the virus called COVID-19.
“Responding to the coronavirus is one of the biggest challenges to face the California Legislature in modern times,” Atkins said in March. “The responsible thing for us to do is flatten the curve, reduce transmission, keep our health care system above water. That is the intent of the action we are taking.”
Rendon said he is still working in the Capitol with a handful of staff who are helping coordinate the Legislature’s emergency response to the pandemic. He said that lawmakers are working in their district and will get to Sacramento as soon as public health officials deem it safe to return.
“We have serious work to do in Sacramento and we need to make sure that we do that,” he said.
The speaker said it’s unclear what committee hearings, floor sessions and deadlines will look like when they do return, but Newsom said his January budget proposal “is no longer operable.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article241764776.html#storylink=cpy
and
Assembly Speaker Rendon: “We Have Serious Work to Do”
Politico California e-newsletter, no link
It’s been quite the 2020 legislative session … or lack of one? The Legislature on Friday announced that it will not reconvene until May 4. That means a tight timeline to pass a state budget by the June 15 deadline.
Politico California caught up with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood for a Q and A on this very unusual session. Interview edited for length and clarity.
How is legislating from home going?
RENDON: I’m in Sacramento, have been for almost a month, continuing to come into the Capitol on a daily basis, where my senior management team is. It’s also the easiest way, to me, to coordinate all that we have to coordinate, when members have questions about anything from small business closures to unemployment assistance and all the various agencies we’re working with. The members are on the ground in their districts getting valuable information. It seems as though this crisis is impacting every district a little differently.
How has the work changed?
RENDON: I come from nonprofit social services. That’s where I spent 20 years of my life and it feels to an extent to be back in that world. A lot of what we are doing is connecting people to services, to programs, and to government agencies that can help them or nonprofits that can help them.
Is policy on hold right now? I’m thinking of the calls for a strong production package, homelessness.
RENDON: The priorities are different. This isn’t just a crisis. This is a crisis that is and will be multifaceted. It’s going to impact all aspects of the state, all aspects of the economy, all levels of education, so we have to make sure that the virus and our response addresses all aspects of what we do. At the same time, we had a homeless crisis before COVID, we had climate change before COVID. We need to address education as a state, health care as a state. We are going to make sure we address COVID but at the same time, we started the year with certain efforts and we’re going to continue to do so.
Does this present an opportunity for the Legislature to consider new ways to legislate, remote work policies, alternative voting mechanisms, etc.?
RENDON: In terms of remote work, yeah we are. I’m in the Capitol but there are less than a dozen people in the Capitol and generally there are 1,000 people in the Capitol. the vast majority of staff is working remotely, and that goes for the district offices as well.
For remote voting, yeah, we’ve looked at it. We know there are a number of constitutional concerns, we know that you have to establish a quorum in person in Sacramento, so that’s certainly a challenge we have to face.
We also know an LA city council meeting was hacked on Zoom recently. The job is still a job that takes place in Sacramento. The nature of the work will largely remain the same.
You said during your March 16 floor speech that democracy must continue. How has that been a struggle?
RENDON: Our system of representative democracy has been helped by having members return to their districts, serving their constituents, having their member on the ground. From that standpoint, democracy has continued and flourished. At the same time, yeah we have serious work to do in Sacramento.
Is this among the most memorable moments you’ve experienced in the Capitol?
RENDON: It’s part of the tapestry. We had worked on homelessness, climate change, obviously the #MeToo movement was moment in time that we were challenged as well. It’s part of the whole overall picture that has been an interesting four years so far.
Have any of the members tested positive for COVID-19?
RENDON: No, not that I’m aware.
What about staff?
RENDON: Only speaking for the Assembly? No.
So the January budget is “no longer operable,” Newsom said .
RENDON: We’re going to need to adjust our budget. We’ll have more specific details in the future, but members are certainly being asked to be realistic in terms of their budget requests.
What about committee hearings, floor sessions, deadlines, etc?
RENDON: We really don’t know. It will be condensed to some degree, but it’s hard to tell.
You have a new baby, so are you able to spend time with your family?
RENDON: My wife and daughter are both up here in Sacramento. My daughter is seven months old. She’s not too aware of what’s happening. My wife is working on her dissertation and working full time. We’re a busy group but we have time to spend together. Being in the same city is super helpful.
Homelessness Crisis Cure Maybe Part of COVID Response
Sacramento Bee
Before California had a coronavirus emergency, it had a homeless crisis.
Gov. Gavin Newsom devoted nearly all of his Feb. 19 State of the State address to homelessness, calling the California’s situation “a disgrace” normalized by years of disinvestment and “institutional failures.”
This week, the Democratic governor announced that the state has found a way to house — at least temporarily — thousands of people as the coronavirus pandemic takes hold in California.
“We’re already seeing hundreds and hundreds of individuals off the streets and sidewalks,” he said Friday at a press conference outside a hotel in West Sacramento, where 30 homeless people now live.
On March 16, the Legislature was forced to suspend its 2020 session as COVID-19 spread.
Before lawmakers dispersed to their districts, they unanimously passed a $1.1 billion aid package to help finance California’s quest to conquer the coronavirus.
Newsom issued a series of executive orders, including one to allow the state to use hotels and housing facilities as temporary shelter for homeless Californians. He then signed the emergency aid legislation into law on March 17, freeing up funds to finance those directives.
Among the first checks Newsom cut was $150 million on March 18 to support local efforts to funnel vulnerable homeless people into travel trailers, hotels, motels and other emergency shelters.
By Thursday, the governor said the state had identified more than 8,100 of the 15,000 rooms in what Newsom called the “First Phase” — to shelter COVID-19 positive homeless patients, those who’ve been exposed to the virus or those most at-risk of infection.
Within a “matter of days,” said Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, the Legislature accomplished what “used to take decades.”
More than 150,000 people are homeless in California, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nearly three-quarters of the population are unsheltered, living on the streets, or in parks and make-do encampments.
For the advocates who’ve long rallied at the Capitol and protested for policy changes, the coronavirus represents the emergency they’ve warned about for decades.
Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said his agency has for years tried to heighten awareness over the lack of sanitation stations and bathrooms in Sacramento’s more than 200 parks.
During the state’s 2016-2018 hepatitis A outbreak and now with COVID-19, Erlenbusch said limited resources make it all but impossible for people experiencing homelessness to routinely wash their hands and practice other good hygiene habits.
“Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, (homelessness has) not only been a humanitarian crisis,” Erlenbusch said, “but it’s an affordability crisis and it’s a public health crisis.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued homelessness guidelines that instruct public health officials and emergency planners, among other authorities, to provide hygienic products near encampments, and highlight how vulnerable the homeless population is to contracting COVID-19.
The elderly and those with chronic illnesses like asthma, heart and lung disease and immunocompromised conditions like HIV and diabetes — which the homeless population experience at a higher rate — are at greater risk of complications from COVID-19.
The guidance also encourages individuals to set up tents and sleeping quarters at a safe distance from one another.
“In other words, to the homeless people, staying in place is staying in your tent,” Erlenbusch said. “A lot of people don’t have tents.”
Margot Kushel, professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, said she’s waited years for California to execute a homelessness housing plan with the speed witnessed today.
“The positive way of looking at it is in the face of an incredibly quickly moving crisis, how many resources have been garnered, how much political will has been garnered,” Kushel said. “We’ve always known what to do, but it’s the question of getting it done.”
Even with the swift action to free up emergency funds, however, Newsom said it will take some time for the state to get the housing in place.
It’s taken two and a half weeks for the plan to unfold in the Sacramento region. Although county officials said they’d already identified 221 beds and three hotels as shelter sites, they won’t be available until mid-April.
Newsom said 870 homeless people have been sheltered since mid-March, but acknowledged advocates’ concerns.
“They’re right,” he said. “Good enough never is.”
Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Marina del Rey, said the coronavirus underscores the need for her “right to housing” proposal, which would require cities and counties to submit plans to the state to house their homeless populations by January 1, 2022.
Burke said the state will need to build on its housing process during the coronavirus, and recognize it’s not enough to shelter individuals.
Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley of Rocklin agreed.
“I welcome the governor’s efforts to slow the spread of the virus and protect our vulnerable homeless population,” Kiley said. “Those goals require more than shelter. Mental health services and substance abuse treatment must be given to those who need them.”
California has now authorized a total $800 million in emergency funds for the sheltering process, Newsom said. The Legislature’s most recent investment compounds the $650 million local jurisdictions were already using in emergency grants provided through last year’s budget.
In addition, Newsom said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has promised to refund local governments 75 percent of the money they spend to specifically house high-risk and coronavirus-infected homeless individuals.
The federal government also provided $118.5 million in direct homeless grants in the CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion federal stimulus package passed at the end of March. The money allows California to extend contracts with some of the hotels, motels and other temporary housing services on a month-to-month basis, Newsom said.
And for the 85 percent of Californians who are worried about homelessness in their community, that concern will likely return.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article241716466.html?#storylink=cpy
Will Pandemic Slow Climate Change Initiatives?
Yale e-360
A year from now, how will the battle to slow global warming look in a post-coronavirus world? That’s a question being asked a lot these days by policy experts and activists, and it’s one with huge implications. Some hope it will bring out the best in us and our leaders, and that the resurgence of government action during the pandemic offers a way forward for fighting climate change. Others fear the worst, that the rush to resuscitate a badly battered global economy will push climate back down the international agenda.
Optimists side with Bill Gates that fighting the pandemic and climate change are, in policy terms, two peas in the same pod. He says they both require “innovation and science, and the world working together.” Optimists say that the sudden transformation of our lives by COVID-19 will teach us about the virtues of mutual aid, and that it will shock policymakers into being more precautionary in the face of future risks — more inclined to believe the warnings of experts, and less inclined to imagine that the worst may never happen.
And they hope that society as a whole will recognize the power and ultimate duty of governments to act decisively in the common interest, whether enforcing lockdowns or moving aggressively toward zero emissions. “Governments have the critical central role in maintaining our health and safety in times of crisis,” says Mark Maslin, a climatologist at University College London. “We need to harness this new acceptance of government dominance of our lives and shift national and global economies to a more sustainable footprint.”
Optimists are encouraged by people such as the director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, who last month called the crisis an “historic opportunity today to steer [energy] investments onto a more sustainable path.” With G20 governments already pledging around $5 trillionto stimulate their economies in the wake of the shutdown, Birol called on them to “put clean energy at the heart of stimulus plans to counter the coronavirus crisis.”
But there is a pessimistic narrative, too. It warns against hyping the environmental benefits of the short-term shutdown. Most analysts agree that the reduction in emissions will be very short-lived. In China, carbon dioxide emissions fell by around 25 percent in February, as many coal-fired power stations shut. But according to Lauri Myllyvirta of the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research institute based in Finland, coal burning was back to normal by the end of March.
Globally, the drop in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 overall is likely to be very small – probably between 0.5 and 2.2 percent — say Zeke Hausfather and Seaver Wang, climate scientists at the Breakthrough Institute, a research institute in Oakland, California. Most likely, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — the planet’s thermostat — will continue to rise. “The COVID-19 crisis appears likely to cost us more time to act on climate than it buys us,” he says.
Politically, pessimists fear a leap backward rather than forward. Public fear and desperate measures by governments and bankers to kick-start economic growth will combine to encourage political short-termism and nationalism. The economic stimuli will prop up the old energy-intensive and fossil fuel industries, and give a green light to ransacking natural resources such as rainforests, the pessimists warn.
“The virus has created an economic crisis, and people will be less willing to pay for saving future generations,” says Dieter Helm, an energy economist at the University of Oxford and advisor to successive British governments. He wonders if the arrival of the virus might “mark the point of passing peak net-zero,” meaning the moment when the newly accepted target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century disappears from political discourse.
This pessimistic narrative also foresees a scramble to cut “red tape” by eliminating or refusing to enforce environmental standards. And it expects that the “war” to conquer the virus will eclipse strategies to reduce other existential risks, such as climate change.
“If handled badly, the pandemic could suck the energy out of public action and public policy,” says Andrew Norton, director of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development. With trillions of dollars spent on propping up business as usual, “we will not have the financial muscle to invest in a low-carbon future,” agrees Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.
So which way are things going?
The answer:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/after-the-coronavirus-two-sharply-divergent-paths-on-climate
Chicken Wings Grounded – Huge Surplus…Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!
Washington Post
The NCAA basketball March Madness tournament is the second of two big annual events for chicken wings. (The first is the Super Bowl.) Wing prices and production run in predictable cycles each year, ramping up for the NFL playoffs and championship game in early February, then again for college basketball’s frenzied tournament a month and a half later.
American consumers have relatively predictable patterns when it comes to meat consumption. They buy more in the spring and summer, experts note, so they can grill or entertain, or while they’re on vacation. Certain types of meats peak at different time of year: Think turkey on Thanksgiving or ham for Christmas.
But with society in lock down because of the novel coronavirus and the NCAA tournament canceled, that’s left a whole bunch of wings lying around, and now they’ve flooded the market. Ergo, we have a giant national surplus of chicken wings.
“That is fact,” said Will Sawyer, lead animal protein economist at CoBank. “That is real.”
Wings, the most expensive part of the bird, haven’t been this cheap since September 2011, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data. They sold for close to $2 per pound the weekend of the Super Bowl. Now, they sell for half of that.
Poultry producers sold 1.24 million pounds of wings the week the tournament was supposed to start. Last week, they sold 433,000 pounds.
“Those are millions of pounds of wings that people don’t eat,” said Erik Oosterwijk, president of Fells Point Wholesale Meats in Baltimore. “And if [coronavirus] happened in January and February, it would have been the Super Bowl that got hit. There’s no doubt there’s a lot of food out there today.”
“The major wing chains that should be hot this time of year are closed,” Sawyer added. “The food service side of things, they probably still have wings they bought weeks ago getting ready for March Madness and for people to come watch the games, but they’re not selling them.”
So how’d all this happen?
Selling chicken isn’t like selling any other commodity: The supply chain that connects farmers to meatpackers to restaurants or consumers is governed by biology, in addition to consumer demand. A hen lays an egg and the countdown begins. There’s only so much time before a chick emerges, then grows into a bird ready for harvest.
The whole process takes close to 10 weeks, Oosterwijk said. Processors can’t let chickens grow much bigger, because then they’re too large to harvest efficiently. Meanwhile, hens keep laying eggs.
Public health orders to slow the spread of covid-19 crashed down so quickly that consumers flocked to stores and filled their carts with protein. Chicken saw a 35-percent bump in demand, Sawyer said. But with most restaurants shuttered save for carryout orders, people are mainly eating out of their refrigerators instead of dining out. And most consumers don’t cook wings; they cook healthier and meatier cuts like breasts, tenderloins and legs.
All that means a few things:
- The restaurants that would serve wings aren’t doing as brisk of a business.
- They’re not placing orders for wings from vendors, even though vendors’ supplies keep growing.
- The small share of wings sold at grocery stores are sitting on the shelves, or are being purchased as a meat of last resort.
“All the stocking up the consumers did in March, that’s over,” Sawyer said, “and prices for the industry are at or even a little below break-even.”
And remember, this is all because a basketball tournament got called off.
“The basketball, it’s for real,” Oosterwijk said. “The basketball didn’t happen. People are not going to restaurants and there’s a lot of excess.”
The chicken industry has a couple options to control supply, Sawyer said, but none that can snap into place fast enough to keep pace with volatile demand. Producers can cull the number of eggs they allow to hatch, in essence destroying inventory before it reaches the market, or they can feed the chickens less food so they grow at a slower pace.
They can also close processing and packing plants, which serves the dual purpose of keeping workers safe at home and reducing supply.
Tom Super, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, wrote in an email that suppliers were also trying to divert food, including wings, from restaurants to grocers. Other wings will be frozen.
Oosterwijk said he expects those items to be back on the market in around six months, during the middle of football season.