Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

New Obama Admin. Report on Keystone XL Pipeline Has Enviros Worried

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Mar. 1, 2013 4:22 PM PST

On Friday afternoon, the State Department released a draft of its much-anticipated new analysis of the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Although the report makes no firm statement one way or the other about whether the controversial pipeline from Canada to Texas should be approved, some of its conclusions have enviros worried that a greenlight is inevitable.

The administration has spent more than two years considering whether to approve the 1,600-mile pipeline that would carry oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries in Texas. Because the pipeline crosses an international border, the State Department gets to decide whether it should be built. Climate change activists have been holding rallies and civil disobedience actions outside the White House for the past year and a half in an effort to convince the administration to block the project. Obama delayed a decision on the pipeline in November 2011, asking the State Department to produce more research on the pipeline's potential environmental impact—the report, a "supplemental environmental impact statement," or SEIS, that was issued Friday afternoon.

Enviros immediately seized on the new report, arguing against its claim that any spills associated with the pipeline are "expected to be rare and relatively small," and said it underestimated the project's contribution to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. They also challenged the idea that TransCanada's pipeline will not make a huge difference in the development of the tar sands, pointing to the industry's own claims that the pipeline is essential to their plans to expand export of this type of oil.

"If they don't have [Keystone XL], they won't be able to expand the tar sands like they've been planning to," said Bill McKibben, the author and activist whose group, 350.org, has organized the pipeline protests. He called the pipeline "the most important issue for the environmental movement in a very long time," noting that it has brought "huge numbers of Americans into the streets."

Michael Brune, president of the Sierra Club, noted the timing of the draft's release. "You know the news is bad when it's buried at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon," he said on a call with reporters shortly after the release. Enviros have framed the pipeline as a test of Obama's sincerity on dealing with climate change. Brune acknowledged that the SEIS likely "makes the president's job more difficult" because it will increase pressure on him to approve the pipeline.

But, Brune added, "this is the president's decision. He can either lead our country to a clean energy future … or he can approve a pipeline that will bring the dirtiest oil on the planet through the US, and for the next decades we will know that the Keystone XL was approved under Obama at the time that we needed strong leadership on this issue."

The report is in draft form and will be open for public comment for 45 days. After that, the State Department will issue a final report and, eventually, a final decision on whether the pipeline should be built.

McKibben said the pipeline's critics will not be deterred by Friday's draft report. "I don't think anybody is going to walk away form this fight," McKibben said. "My guess is this will produce more determination in a lot of people."

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In South Dakota, Women Can't Think on Weekends

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Mar. 1, 2013 9:26 AM PST

On Thursday, South Dakota lawmakers approved a bill that will make its waiting period for abortions—already the most restrictive in the country—even more cumbersome. As we have reported here previously, the state already has a 72-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, but this new bill will exclude weekends and holidays from that time period—since, you know, women are not capable of thinking about their abortion adequately on a Saturday or Sunday.

Current law already requires a woman to consult with her doctor, then visit an anti-abortion organization called a crisis pregnancy center, and then wait 72 hours before she can actually have an abortion. This new law, which passed in the Senate on Thursday by a 24 to 9 vote, will mean that a woman who goes in for her initial consultation for an abortion on a Wednesday would have to wait five days before she can have actually have the procedure—six if she goes in before a long weekend. The governor is expected to sign the bill into law.

South Dakota has only one abortion provider, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, and its doctors fly in from out of state. Women already travel from as far as six hours away to reach the clinic. While the clinic has said that has been able to find a way to make the 72-hour waiting period work, it thinks this new law will make it next to impossible for many women to access an abortion.

"It could mean that abortion is virtually inaccessible for many women, if not all women," Alisha Sedor, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota, told Mother Jones. "It doesn't matter if abortion is legal in South Dakota if de facto women can't access services."

South Dakota voters have twice rejected a ban on abortion at the polls, in 2006 and 2008. But lawmakers have continued to chip away at access over the past few years. "South Dakotans have spoken on this issue and they do not want politicians interfering with the personal medical decision-making," said Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.

The new law's critics have been having some fun on bill sponsor Jon Hansen's Facebook page, asking him for advice about weekend decisions since their tiny woman brains obviously can't handle them. Here are a few gems:

Could Chris Christie Bring the GOP Around on Climate?

The governor of New Jersey "talks a good game" on global warming, but so far he hasn't followed through.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Feb. 19, 2013 4:02 AM PST

Chris Christie, the combative Republican governor of New Jersey, thinks that climate change is a problem and humans are causing it. "Climate change is real…[and] impacting our state," he said in August 2011. "Human activity plays a role in these changes." Christie hasn't shown much willingness to act on the issue: In the same speech, he announced he was pulling New Jersey out of a Northeastern regional plan to cut carbon emissions. But in simply acknowledging that climate change is not some liberal conspiracy, Christie is standing out from the GOP pack. He's a popular Republican with national ambitions who seems to recognize the threat. That's raised a question among some hopeful activists: Can Chris Christie shift the politics of climate change?

If Christie decided to lead on climate, he wouldn't be the first New Jersey Republican to do so. Tom Kean Sr., the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990, was one of the first politicians to pay attention to climate change as a threat. In 1989, Kean issued an executive order noting the scientific consensus on that greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet, and directing state agencies to start figuring out how to deal with that. Although Kean is a Christie fan, he's also criticized him not doing more on climate. "We've got some climate change policies in the state," Kean says. "He's accepted those. I can't say he's been leader on them. He hasn't been." But that could change, Kean adds.

[Read the full article]

Revealed: Morning-After Pill Not Making Women Slutty

These four charts show who uses emergency contraception, and how.

—By Hannah Levintova and Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 15, 2013 4:01 AM PST

The so-called morning-after pill has exploded in popularity since it was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration 15 years ago. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5.8 million American women used emergency contraception (EC) between 2006 and 2010. Nearly a quarter of sexually active women ages 20 through 24 have used it.

All told, 11 percent of fertile, sexually active women said they had used EC, whereas back in 2002, the last time CDC surveyed women, only 4 percent had.

While more people are using EC, what's most interesting is who is using it and how. For instance, only 5 percent of women over 30 have used it. And most who have say they have only done so once—a rebuttal to the stereotype that the morning-after pill is enabling women to be irresponsible hussies.

EC is still a source of controversy. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that Plan B One Step could be sold to women under 17 only by prescription, despite the FDA's determination that it is safe for all women who are old enough to bear children. HHS cited safety concerns, but reproductive rights and scientific advocacy groups accused the Obama administration of playing politics on the issue.

[Read the full article]

Government Watchdog Says Climate Change and Weird Weather Will Cost Big Bucks

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Feb. 14, 2013 2:16 PM PST

Every two years, the Government Accountability Office—the independent agency charged with keeping an eye on how Congress spends our money—releases a list of programs and issues that present a high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. This year, for the first time, the agency added climate change planning and response to the list—a reflection of the fact that the agency sees climate as a big fiscal risk for the US.

The GAO only added two new areas to its list this year that it believes creates risk. Climate change was one of them, along with the gaps in our weather satellite program. Here's how the GAO summed up the risks:

Limiting the Federal Government’s Fiscal Exposure by Better Managing Climate Change Risks. Climate change creates significant financial risks for the federal government, which owns extensive infrastructure, such as defense installations; insures property through the National Flood Insurance Program; and provides emergency aid in response to natural disasters. The federal government is not well positioned to address the fiscal exposure presented by climate change, and needs a government wide strategic approach with strong leadership to manage related risks.

Mitigating Gaps in Weather Satellite Data. Potential gaps in environmental satellite data beginning as early as 2014 and lasting as long as 53 months have led to concerns that future weather forecasts and warnings—including warnings of extreme events such as hurricanes, storm surges, and floods—will be less accurate and timely. A number of decisions are needed to ensure contingency and continuity plans can be implemented effectively.

On climate, the full report notes that the federal government was asked to pay out $60.4 billion in recovery funds for Hurricane Sandy alone. That's just part of an overall trend in increased disasters in the US that the GAO flags—including a record 98 disaster declarations in fiscal year 2011, up from 65 in 2004. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was on the hook for more than $80 billion in federal assistance between 2004 and 2011. And the federal government owns or insures a lot of at-risk property, in addition to managing 29 percent of the total land in the US.

The whole idea of the GAO list is to identify problem areas and try to fix them, so that we're not wasting money in the future. But the GAO notes that, since it started the list in 1990, only one-third of the issues it flagged have been addressed to the point that they could actually be removed from the list.