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.

Insurers on Climate Change: Whatevs

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Mar. 7, 2013 12:24 PM PST

Despite record heat and extreme weather disasters in recent years, insurers aren't adequately planning for climate change, according to a report issued Thursday. Only 13 percent of insurance companies have a "specific, comprehensive strategy" to deal with global warming.

Researchers at Ceres, a nonprofit that advocates for businesses to become more sustainable, looked at 184 responses from major insurance companies to a new National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) survey on climate risk. They found that only 23 of those companies—which include property and casualty, life, and health insurers—are really taking climate change seriously. Thirteen of those are foreign-owned companies.

Major insurers like Allstate and Travelers expressed "strong ambivalence about the state of the science" in their disclosures.

Out of a potential score of 50 points for climate readiness, insurers averaged a 7.3 overall. Property and casualty insurers—the ones that have to pay out when a monster storm wrecks your house, for example—were more on the ball, with eight actually describing concrete ways they are taking climate change into account in their business. But major insurers like Allstate and Travelers expressed "strong ambivalence about the state of the science" in their disclosures, Ceres found.

Ten percent of responders—many of them life and health insurers—argued that the survey was "not relevant" for their business. The report flags one response from health insurer Excellus that argues that "the Company is not aware of any conclusive data that there are health effects directly (or indirectly) related to climate change." But, as we've reported here before, climate impacts like heat waves, the spread of vector-borne diseases, among others, pose what some in the medical community have dubbed the "biggest global health threat of the 21st century." Only one health insurer, Kaiser Permanente, had a strong position on climate change.

The report's authors found that 88 of the 184 companies said they see climate change as a "potential future loss driver," rather than a current threat. They note, however, that these responses were collected in May 2012—well before Hurricane Sandy which, along with other extreme weather events, caused $58 billion in losses for the insurance industry last year.

This could be bad business for insurance companies, but it's also bad for the rest of us that rely on insurance, Ceres argues. "The insurance sector is a key driver of our overall economy," said Mindy Luber, president of Ceres. "Every segment of insurance industry faces climate risks, and yet the industry's response has been uneven." Luber argued that even just accounting for the risks would go a long way toward helping them address them. "What gets measured gets managed."

Insurance regulators care too, because allowing the risks to go unmanaged could be expensive for policy holders. "Climate has the potential of being a game changer for the insurance industry and we want to make sure it stays on their radar," said Mike Kreidler, the insurance commissioner for Washington State, which is one of three states mandating climate disclosures. "A lot of companies aren't doing much yet."

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We Are Hot-Boxing Ourselves With Dangerous Gases at a Furious Pace

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Mar. 6, 2013 12:33 PM PST

Global greenhouse gas emissions were way up in 2012, which shows that the world's (admittedly limited) efforts to stop hot-boxing ourselves with dangerous gases aren't going very well.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 2.67 parts per million last year. That puts us at 395 parts per million, according to scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—which is already well past the 350 ppm that some scientists say is ideal for keeping the planet livable. The Associated Press first reported on the jump in emissions:

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

More coal-burning power plants, especially in the developing world, are the main reason emissions keep going up—even as they have declined in the U.S. and other places, in part through conservation and cleaner energy.

Scientists note that this is the second-largest annual increase in CO2 that they've seen since they've been recording it. Only 1998 was higher, at 2.93 parts per million. Between 2000 and 2010, humans put an average of 2 million additional ppm into the atmosphere each year.

All of this is just another indication that we're likely to blow right past the goal of keeping the global average temperature increase to 2°C (3.6°F) that world leaders have agreed to and continue on toward 4° or more by as early as 2060.

Personhood Advocates Pledge to Try Again in Mississippi

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Mar. 6, 2013 4:00 AM PST

Advocates of "personhood" for zygotes have decided that if at first you don't succeed in banning all abortions, try again. And again, and again.

The anti-abortion group Personhood USA tried to pass a ballot measure granting fertilized eggs the same rights as adult humans in Colorado in 2008, and it failed. They tried again in Colorado in 2010, and it failed again, this time by a 3-to-1 margin. So then they tried in Mississippi in November 2011, where it lost yet again, with 58 percent of the voters even in this conservative state rejecting it.

So, the only logical next step for them, it appears, is to try again in Mississippi. On Tuesday, the group's Mississippi chapter announced that it is working to get personhood back on the ballot. The Associated Press reports that the group filed paperwork with the secretary of state's office on Tuesday in hopes of getting it on the 2015 ballot:

After a ballot title and summary are prepared by the attorney general's office, the initiative's sponsors would have one year to gather at least 107,216 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. That means the earliest likely date for a vote would be in November 2015, coinciding with the next governor's election.

Mississippi only has one abortion clinic—which we reported on in a story and photo essay recently—that could be shut down in the next few weeks due to a new state law requiring the doctors there to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. So even without a "personhood" amendment making all abortion illegal, the state could be on its way to making abortion totally inaccessible for women living there anyway.

Reproductive rights groups reacted immediately to the news that the "personhood" folks were back at it. "Mississippi voters have already spoken: Health care decisions should be left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her faith—not politicians," said Felicia Brown-Williams, director of public policy at Planned Parenthood Southeast in a statement. "Mississippians expect real solutions to the real crises facing our state–not government intrusion into private medical decisions."

Arkansas Gov. and Legislature Locked in Fight Over Abortion Bans

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Mar. 5, 2013 10:02 AM PST

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D).

In Arkansas, Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe is finding himself at odds with an extreme anti-abortion legislature, vetoing one bill that would ban abortion at 12 weeks and another bill that bans them after 20 weeks. The Republican-controlled legislature overrode his veto on the 20-week ban last week, and will attempt to do so on the 12-week ban as well.

Beebe vetoed the 12-week ban, called Senate Bill 134, on Monday. The bill is "blatantly unconstitutional," Beebe said in a statement:

In short, because it would impose a ban on a woman’s right to choose an elective, nontherapeutic abortion well before viability, Senate Bill 134 blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. When I was sworn in as Governor I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend both the Arkansas Constitution and the Constitution of the United States. I take that oath seriously.

Last week, Beebe vetoed House Bill 1037, a measure banning abortions after 20 weeks. But the legislature had enough votes to override his veto, making Arkansas the ninth state to impose this type of ban in the past three years. These bans contradict the Supreme Court's previous ruling that abortion should be legal up until the point that the fetus is viable—which is usually 24 weeks or later. (The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed suit against one of those laws in Arizona.)

But Arkansas' latest bill goes ever farther, and if the legislature overrides Beebe's veto, it will be the strictest ban in the country. "Lawmakers in Arkansas are placing women's lives on the line by passing the most severe ban on access to safe, legal medical care this country has seen in recent years," Talcott Camp, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a press release. "Nobody can predict what kinds of decisions a woman may have to make during a pregnancy, and it is outrageous for politicians to attempt to interfere in this serious and personal decision that a woman has to make with her family and her doctor."

Beebe isn't stridently pro-choice; NARAL Pro-Choice America says he has a "mixed" record. The main argument he gave for vetoing the 12-week ban is that it will cost the state a lot of money to defend the inevitable legal challenges. "The adoption of blatantly unconstitutional laws can be very costly to the taxpayers of our State," he said, noting that a 1999 case against a previous state abortion law cost the government $147,000 in legal fees. "Lawsuits challenging unconstitutional laws also result in the losing party—in this case, the State—being ordered to pay the costs and attorneys' fees incurred by the litigants who successfully challenge the law. Those costs and fees can be significant."

Enviros Cheer Obama EPA Pick

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Mar. 4, 2013 9:16 AM PST

On Monday, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of Gina McCarthy as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency—a promotion for the deputy who has been behind some of the toughest new environmental regulations in the past four years.

As the assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, McCarthy has helped implement a raft of new or improved national standards for pollutants such as mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions, and soot, and she oversaw the first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.

"Every American is—or will soon be—breathing cleaner air because of McCarthy," says Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.

Her appointment to the top spot at EPA is seen by enviros as good news for the future of greenhouse gas regulations. After rolling out emission limits for new power plants last year, the EPA is now expected to set rules for existing power plants—a huge task given the number of old, dirty plants around the country. That's just one item on a long list of environmental regulations that were delayed until after the 2012 election. Now McCarthy will manage the implementation and/or drafting of these regs.

Another reason enviros are cheering McCarthy's appointment is her bipartisan history. Before coming to the EPA, McCarthy worked for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his undersecretary for environmental policy. After that, she worked for Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, another Republican. "McCarthy's stellar work under two Republican governors as well as her excellent work over the past four years at the EPA is proof that when it comes to protecting our health and environment, it isn't about who you work for or what party you represent," says Margie Alt, executive director for Environment America. "It's about whether you can get the job done. And Gina McCarthy can get the job done."