STOP “Trade” (Immigration Flood) Deal!

POPULATION-ENVIRONMENT BALANCE
www.balance.org

Action Alert





June, 2015

STOP “Trade” (Immigration Flood) Deal! & Support BALANCE’s Real Solution
  

Greetings!

The Senate has passed a TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) Bill giving President Obama “Fast Track” Authority to Unilaterally negotiate the Terms of the Trade Deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership with eleven (or more) Asian and Latin American Nations.

Only the House of Representatives can stop it now!

And it must be stopped because it would likely result in authorizing an almost unlimited number of Foreign “Guest Workers” to Flood the U.S. Job market via the L1 and other Visas, in addition to the Million+plus Immigrants already admitted legally each year and the hundreds of thousands coming illegally.

L1 Visa Holders typically use the L! as a stepping stone to getting a Green Card entitling them to achieve permanent residence. And Spouses of L1 Visa holders are allowed to work without restriction (via the L2) in the U.S. too. And there is no Firm CAP on the number of L1 and L2 Visas issued. And these workers would compete for jobs with Millions of Unemployed and Underemployed Americans.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)summarizes the seriously Negative Consequences.  "Fast Track is an affirmative decision by Congress to suspend several of its most basic powers for the next six years and to delegate those powers to the Executive. … Because TPP is a ‘Living Agreement’ it can be changed after adoption … (it) would empower the President … to admit more foreign workers into the United States — without ever coming to Congress for approval … (and for) immigration increases above current law — and precious few ways Congress could stop its happening.”

Thus, Approval of the TPA would allow potentially unlimited Immigration Increases above Current Law without Congressional Approval. The Sad History of these Trade Deals show they Hurt American Business and Workers.

Between 2000 and 2010 after NAFTA, GATT and MFN for China, 55,000 U.S. factories closed and 5 million to 6 million manufacturing Jobs Disappeared.  TPA and TPP would be worse because, besides jobs disappearing, immigration could go on steroids and more immigrants would be in the US taking jobs that Americans need.

HELP Stop TPA in the House, which intends to act on it very soon!

Contact your Representative in the House and Urge your Rep to VOTE No on the Fast Track TPA Bill and on any TPP Agreement. The Best Way to Raise American Workers’ Wages is to reduce increasing competition from Legal and Illegal Immigrants.

And for BALANCE Supporters it is time to help BALANCE in its Push for environmentally sustainable immigration policies.  Indeed, BALANCE and its ASAP! Coalition Allies are the only organizations which are actually pushing what would be a Real Solution to our Nation’s problems caused by Immigration-generated Population Growth.

If you have supported us in the past, but not within the last year, now is the time to renew your Annual Membership — only $35 / $50 / $100 / $250  or more

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation at balance.org or Mail a Check to our Mailing Address Below.

And if you have never supported BALANCE, NOW is the time.


Ensure you receive key information (often suppressed by the Main Stream Media!) about developments in Washington DC and across the country regarding these two important and interlinked issues facing our country and actually help BALANCE push Real Solutions.

For example, consider BALANCE’s Real Solution to the Water Crisis in the West (See BALANCE’s May 2015 Alert posted at www.balance.org ).

Indeed, the extent of and likely seriously Negative prospects for the intensifying Water Crisis are not being revealed to residents of California nor indeed to the entire West. Thus, the public is not prepared for the Havoc this Crisis will likely cause in the next few months.

Consider that virtually all of California’s 400,000 plus annual population growth is caused by Legal and Illegal Immigration. The added population causes a demand for an Additional Million Acre feet of Water per year, which is the entire Amount of Water actually in 9 Major California Reservoirs as we write.  A NASA/Cal-Tech Scientist correctly claims that California will literally run out of water in its Reservoirs within one year if present Trends continue.

We should be prepared to see this intensifying Crisis as an Opportunity. We need to work at raising public awareness of the underlying population problem, so that it creates a Genuine Chance of actually achieving substantial Immigration Reduction.

Only two other nonprofits have explicitly linked immigration-generated population growth to the Water Crisis, but one of them has done it in a counterproductive way by informing the public about the linkage, but then failing to push an Effective Immigration Solution -  one which would truly ameliorate the problem in the long run -  allows someone to conclude that “Toilet to Tap” Sewage Reprocessing and/or more Dams or Canals (for Non-Existent Water) are Realistic.

The Only Solution that would keep the Situation from getting much, much worse than it already will be, is to push for a zero-net Moratorium on Legal Immigration (as well as actually enforcing the border in accordance with existing law).

Advocating a demographically and ecologically realistic Solution is essential. Only Advocacy of a zero-net Moratorium is ALSO politically powerful enough to get Immigration Reductions and stop Mass Migration across the Border.

Only one Message is powerful enough to give immigration reduction a good chance of being enacted by the incoming President and Congress in Spring, 2017. That message is a zero-net Moratorium. Only BALANCE and its ASAP! Coalition Allies are pushing zero-Net, and we need to continue to build Momentum for a Real Solution. (Zero-net would still allow admission of about 150,000 immigrants per year.)

Nature, which always bats last, has given BALANCE and its Allies the Opportunity to actually Succeed in getting Dramatic Immigration reductions.

We ask for your support. Make a Tax-Deductible Donation at our Website, balance.org, or by mail to

Mailing address: 

Population-Environment Balance | P.O. Box 268 | San Francisco, CA 94104

Thank you,

Population-Environment Balance

 

Mailing address:
Population-Environment Balance | P.O. Box 268 | San Francisco, CA 94104

Washington, DC address:
Population-Environment Balance | 1629 K Street NW, Suite 300 | Washington DC, 20006


 

Read More

Humanity's Insanity - Impossible Growth Mantra

#Reuters - Poor #Climate Hampers #Economic Development

Weak climate deal would jeopardize new development goals: experts

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The world's chances of achieving new international development goals will be slim without more ambitious action to curb climate change, researchers said.

Pakistan, for example, is unlikely to be able to end poverty by 2030 if accelerating climate change brings worse weather disasters, water scarcity and other problems, a new report from the UK-based Climate and Development Knowledge Network said.

But if global warming is held to 2 degrees Celsius – the aim of negotiations toward a new U.N. climate deal at the end of the year in Paris – Pakistan would have only a "low" risk of failing to eradicate poverty, the report said. Read More.

No Way Out

Dr. Kinesa's - Global Edge

Climate  change leaves no chance for poor nations. Period

International Offices

May21,2015

Water Crisis: Will #California Soon Close Its Golf Courses?

California regulators urge 35 percent reduction in water use for some areas

Future Farmland?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In an aggressive push to reduce water usage statewide, California regulators are proposing that the biggest urban water users cut consumption by as much as 35 percent over the next year.

The State Water Resources Control Board's plan, unveiled Tuesday, would place the heaviest conservation burden on cities and towns with the highest rates of per-capita water consumption, which would include small rural communities as well as affluent enclaves like Newport Beach and Beverly Hills.

Cities that have the lowest per-capita water use — including East Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and Seal Beach — would be required to cut just 10 percent.

Agencies that don't comply with the rules could face fines of up to $10,000 a day. Read More.

Golf Courses Under Pressure

WATER CRISIS #BRAZIL - A Ghost of #Christmas Future?

Water crisis: 56 Northeastern cities 

are in situation of collapse, says 

Government

BRASILIA — in yet another Government meeting to evaluate the water crisis in part of the country, the diagnosis is that, in the Northeast, there are currently 56 cities in State of collapse, i.e. for more than four days without water.

Will IT Happen Here?

 According to the Government, there is an ongoing kite cars operation being managed by State and local governments. In the Southeast, despite the March rains, the water regime was lower than expected and the reservoirs of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are still operating below the average. Read More

Dicken's Scrooge Also Climate Allegory?

FIVE LEFT ON EARTH - Beautiful South Asian Dolphins

Dolphin's Death Leaves Only Five of Her Kind

The recent death of one of the remaining six Irrawaddy river dolphins in the Mekong River in Laos highlights the desperate situation for the already critically endangered animal.

Not the Only One, Too

Villagers in Cambodia discovered the female dolphin carcass on April 1, according to news reports in Phnom Penh. She was thought to have been one of the oldest and largest dolphins in the region — a trans-boundary river pool, called the Wang Paa Khaa, which straddles Laos and Cambodia; there are an estimated 85 dolphins remaining in all of the Mekong River, says WWF, of which Cambodia is home to the vast majority. Read More.

At Times There Are NO Words For Loss

Everyone You Know Going NUTS? Here's' WHY?

Before Civilization Collapses, It Will Go Stark-Raving MAD!

“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” – by Prometheus, in the Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

April 2015 – CIVILIZATION – The enormous cognitive dissonance between our growing awareness of our civilization’s accelerating collapse, and the ‘news’ in the media and the subjects of most public discourse, continues to baffle me. Though I suspect it shouldn’t. We are all slow learners, preoccupied with the needs of the moment, with a preference for reassurance over truth. I often find myself, these days, at social and other events, at a loss for words, not saying anything, as a result. It’s as if I speak an utterly different language from the people I meet in my day-to-day life, so what’s the point of saying anything? Perhaps this is Gaia’s way of teaching me patience. I continue to vacillate back and forth all the way from the humanist worldview (F. on the ‘map’ above’) to the near-term extinctionist worldview (L.), depending on what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with, or what I’m reading (Charles Eisenstein seems to best represent worldview F. and Guy McPherson best articulates worldview L., and I greatly admire them both). 

I’m happy with company anywhere along that continuum — they both speak my newly-acquired language, though with very different dialects. It’s sad to me that most people find collapse too terrifying to contemplate. I find it liberating. Read More.

Remember Nobody Can Just Fly Over The Cuckoo's Nest???

Are #Oceans Buffering Climate Shocks? For How Long?

How Long Can Oceans Continue To Absorb Earth's Excess Heat?

The main reason soaring greenhouse gas emissions have not caused air temperatures to rise more rapidly is that oceans have soaked up much of the heat. But new evidence suggests the oceans’ heat-buffering ability may be weakening.

by cheryl katz

For decades, the earth’s oceans have soaked up more than nine-tenths of the atmosphere’s excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. By stowing that extra energy in their depths, oceans have spared the planet from feeling the full effects of humanity’s carbon overindulgence. Read More 


Those Warmer Waters Affect Fish And...?



ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheryl Katz is a San Francisco Bay Area-based science writer covering energy, environmental health, and climate change. She has reported from Iceland to Africa on issues ranging from geothermal power to flood control. Her articles have appeared in Scientific American, National Geographic.com, and Science News. Previously for e360, she reported on promising new solar energy technologies and challenges inforecasting extreme weather.
MORE BY THIS AUTHOR

#Oregon Stars Are Dying - No More Twinkle, Twinkle...

Sea star disease epidemic surges in Oregon, local extinctions expected

 Contact: David Stauth, 541-737-0787; Kristen Milligan, 541-737-8862



CORVALLIS, Oregon (OSU) – Just in the past two weeks, the incidence of sea star wasting syndrome has exploded along the Oregon Coast and created an epidemic of historic magnitude, one that threatens to decimate the entire population of purple ochre sea stars.

Prior to this, Oregon had been the only part of the West Coast that had been largely spared this devastating disease.

The ochre sea star, which is the species most heavily affected by the disease in the intertidal zone, may be headed toward localized extinction in Oregon, according to researchers at Oregon State University who have been monitoring the outbreak. As a “keystone” predator, its loss could disrupt the entire marine intertidal ecosystem.

Researchers say this is the first time that die-offs of sea stars, more commonly known as starfish, have ever been identified at one time along such a wide expanse of the West Coast, and the sudden increase in Oregon has been extraordinary.
The best information is from the intertidal zone, which is easier to access for monitoring. In this area, less than 1 percent of the ochre sea stars in Oregon were affected in April, and only slightly more than that by mid-May.

Baffling Scientists?

Watch!

Today, an estimated 30-50 percent of the Oregon populations of this sea star species in the intertidal zone have the disease. The highest losses are at Fogarty Creek, where about 60 percent are affected. Researchers project that the epidemic will intensify and, at some sites, nearly 100 percent of the ochre sea stars could die.


Read More

"Say Dad, did you hear the news about Oregon?"

"Very sad, son"

Add caption

Top Insurer's Chairman Confirms Climate Risks - #Lloyds of London

Insurers must adapt to climate change

By John Nelson, 
Chairman of Lloyd's of London

(theguardian.com) – There is no doubt the climate is changing. Each of the past three decades has been warmer than the previous one, and the vast majority of scientific evidence points to this being caused by mankind's reliance on carbon-based fossil fuels.

While understanding weather patterns and the risks associated with major weather events has always been critical to the insurance industry, climate change has recently brought the need for better modelling of future weather into sharp focus.

According to the World Bank, weather-related losses and damage have risen from an annual average of about $50bn in the 1980s to close to $200bn. Lloyd's knows this all too well, the damage wrought on the US by the hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012 to name but a few all brought significant claims to the insurance market. 

Many types of business we insure are affected by climate change. There are the obvious ones such as property, catastrophe and crop insurance. But Superstorm Sandy taught us that the reach of extreme weather is far greater than that. The destruction Sandy brought to the eastern US seaboard was responsible for claims of up to $300m in lost fine art, a consequence of the many expensive US beachfront homes damaged. Modelling has shown that the approximate 20cm of sea-level rise at the southern tip of Manhattan Island increased Sandy's surge losses by 30% in New York alone. 

As a response, our recent Catastrophe Modelling and Climate Change report calls for the insurance industry to take seriously the impact of climate change and the implications it poses for the industry. The first step has to be making sure that catastrophe models can properly account


Read More