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I do not think that conservatives are convinced that affordable health care for all is not feasible. I think they want to maintain a big business for profit at the expense of the American people’s health . There is a vast network of very rich corporations , pharmaceuticals , hospitals and doctors who profit enormously from the present system of healthcare in the US. I will use a summary of the study done at Yale University and Published in the Lancet medical journal to emphasize my point.SummaryAlthough health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68 000 lives and 1·73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.• View related content for this articleThis article is available free of charge.Simply log in to access the full article, or register for free if you do not yet have a username and password.1.Collins SR Gunja MZ Doty MMHow well does health coverage protect consumers from costs? Findings from the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, 2016.http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/files/publications/issue-brief/2017/oct/collins_underinsured_biennial_ib.pdfDate: Oct 11, 2017Date accessed: March 27, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar2.United States Census BureauAnnual estimates of the resident population for selected age groups by sex for the United States, States, Counties, and Puerto Rico Commonwealth and Municipios: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2017 2017 population estimates.https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2017/PEPAGESEXWe're sorry but this website doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2017/PEPAGESEXDate: Feb 18, 2018Date accessed: July 3, 2018View in ArticleGoogle Scholar3.Auter ZU.S. uninsured rate steady at 12·2% in fourth quarter of 2017.U.S. Uninsured Rate Steady at 12.2% in Fourth Quarter of 2017The uninsured rate among U.S. adults held steady at 12.2% in the fourth quarter of 2017, but is up 1.3 points since the end of 2016.https://news.gallup.com/poll/225383/uninsured-rate-steady-fourth-quarter-2017.aspxDate: Jan 16, 2018Date accessed: July 3, 2018View in ArticleGoogle Scholar4.Fiedler M Adler LHow will the Graham-Cassidy proposal affect the number of people with health insurance coverage?.How will the Graham-Cassidy proposal affect the number of people with health insurance coverage?Matthew Fiedler and Loren Adler estimate that the Graham-Cassidy legislation would reduce the number of people with insurance coverage by around 22 million each year during the 2020 through 2026 period.https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-will-the-graham-cassidy-proposal-affect-the-number-of-people-with-health-insurance-coverage/Date: Sept 22, 2017Date accessed: March 27, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar5.Organisation for Economic Co-operation DevelopmentOECD Health Statistics 2015.OECD Health StatisticsThis dataset includes comparative tables analysing various health care resources such as total health and social employment, physicians by age, gender, categories, midwives, nurses, caring personnel, personal care workers, dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, hospital employment, graduates, remuneration of health professionals, hospitals, health equipment, hospital beds, medical technology with their respective subsets. The statistics are expressed in different units of measure such as number of persons, salaried, self-employed, per population.https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/data/oecd-health-statistics_health-data-enDate: 2015Date accessed: March 27, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar6.Centers for Medicare and Medicaid ServicesNHE Fact Sheet.NHE Fact Sheet | CMSHistorical NHE, 2019: NHE grew 4.6% to $3.8 trillion in 2019, or $11,582 per person, and accounted for 17.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Medicare spending grew 6.7% to $799.4 billion in 2019, or 21 percent of total NHE. Medicaid spending grew 2.9% to $613.5 billion in 2019, or 16 percent of total NHE. Private health insurance spending grew 3.7% to $1,195.1 billion in 2019, or 31 percent of total NHE. Out of pocket spending grew 4.6% to $406.5 billion in 2019, or 11 percent of total NHE. Hospital expenditures grew 6.2% to $1,192.0 billion in 2019, faster than the 4.2% growth in 2018. Physician and clinical services expenditures grew 4.6% to $772.1 billion in 2019, a faster growth than the 4.0% in 2018. Prescription drug spending increased 5.7% to $369.7 billion in 2019, faster than the 3.8% growth in 2018. The largest shares of total health spending were sponsored by the federal government (29.0 percent) and the households (28.4 percent).   The private business share of health spending accounted for 19.1 percent of total health care spending, state and local governments accounted for 16.1 percent, and other private revenues accounted for 7.5 percent. For further detail see NHE Tables in downloads below. Projected NHE, 2019-2028: National health spending is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.4 percent for 2019-28 and to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028. Because national health expenditures are projected to grow 1.1 percentage points faster than gross domestic product per year on average over 2019–28, the health share of the economy is projected to rise from 17.7 percent in 2018 to 19.7 percent in 2028. Price growth for medical goods and services (as measured by the personal health care deflator) is projected to accelerate, averaging 2.4 percent per year for 2019–28, partly reflecting faster expected growth in health sector wages. Among major payers, Medicare is expected to experience the fastest spending growth (7.6 percent per year over 2019-28), largely as a result of having the highest projected enrollment growth. The insured share of the population is expected to fall from 90.6 percent in 2018 to 89.4 percent by 2028. For further detail see NHE projections 2019-2028 in downloads below. NHE by Age Group and Gender, Selected Years 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014: Per person personal health care spending for the 65 and older population was $19,098 in 2014, over 5 times higher than spending per child ($3,749) and almost 3 times the spending per working-age person ($7,153). In 2014, children accounted for approximately 24 percent of the population and about 11 percent of all PHC spending. The working-age group comprised the majority of spending and population in 2014, almost 54 percent and over 61 percent respectively. The elderly were the smallest population group, nearly 15 percent of the population, and accounted for approximately 34 percent of all spending in 2014. 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For this Statistical Brief, we collapsed the NCHS categories into either urban or rural according to the following: Urban: Large Central Metropolitan: includes metropolitan areas with 1 million or more residents Large Fringe Metropolitan: includes counties of metropolitan areas with 1 million or more residents Medium and Small Metropolitan: includes areas with 50,000 to 999,999 residents. Rural: Micropolitan and Noncore: includes nonmetropolitan counties (i.e., counties with no town greater than 50,000 residents). Median community-level income Median community-level income is the median household income of the patient's ZIP Code of residence. The cut-offs for the quartile designation are determined using ZIP Code demographic data obtained from the Nielsen Company. The income quartile is missing for patients who are homeless or foreign. Payer Payer is the expected primary payer for the hospital stay. To make coding uniform across all HCUP data sources, payer combines detailed categories into general groups: Medicare: includes patients covered by fee-for-service and managed care Medicare Medicaid: includes patients covered by fee-for-service and managed care Medicaid Private Insurance: includes Blue Cross, commercial carriers, and private health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs) Uninsured: includes an insurance status of self-pay and no charge Other: includes Worker's Compensation, TRICARE/CHAMPUS, CHAMPVA, Title V, and other government programs Hospital stays billed to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) may be classified as Medicaid, Private Insurance, or Other, depending on the structure of the State program. Because most State data do not identify patients in SCHIP specifically, it is not possible to present this information separately. 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It considers how countries have used available health care resources to reduce the overall burden of CVD and diabetes, and it focuses on the variation in OECD health systems’ ability to convert health care inputs (such as expenditure) into health gains.https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/cardiovascular-disease-and-diabetes-policies-for-better-health-and-quality-of-care_9789264233010-enDate: June 17, 2015Date accessed: July 2, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar75.Thomas K Ornstein CAmid opioid crisis, insurers restrict pricey, less addictive painkillers.Amid Opioid Crisis, Insurers Restrict Pricey, Less Addictive Painkillers (Published 2017)Drug companies and doctors have been accused of fueling the opioid crisis, but some question whether insurers have played a role, too.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/health/opioid-painkillers-insurance-companies.htmlDate: Sept 17, 2017Date accessed: December 1, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar76.Amos OWhy opioids are such an American problem.BBC, Oct 25, 2017Why opioids are such an American problemPeople in America take more opioids - such as morphine and codeine - than in any other country. 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Most of the original guidance remains the same, but limited changes have been made as a result of: (1) the Supreme Court's decision in US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S., 122 S. Ct. 1516 (2002), and (2) the Commission's issuance of new regulations under section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act. The major changes in response to the Barnett decision are found on pages 4-5, 44-45, and 61-62. In addition, minor changes were made to certain footnotes and the Instructions for Investigators as a result of the Barnett decision and the new section 501 regulations. EFFECTIVE DATE: Upon receipt. EXPIRATION DATE: As an exception to EEOC Order 205.001, Appendix B, Attachment 4, . a(5), this Notice will remain in effect until rescinded or superseded. ORIGINATOR: ADA Division, Office of Legal Counsel. INSTRUCTIONS: File after Section 902 of Volume II of the Compliance Manual. Enforcement Guidance: Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the Americans with Disabilities Act Table of Contents INTRODUCTION GENERAL PRINCIPLES REQUESTING REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION AND JOB APPLICANTS REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION RELATED TO THE BENEFITS AND PRIVILEGES OF EMPLOYMENT TYPES OF REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS RELATED TO JOB PERFORMANCE JOB RESTRUCTURING LEAVE MODIFIED OR PART-TIME SCHEDULE MODIFIED WORKPLACE POLICIES REASSIGNMENT OTHER REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION ISSUES UNDUE HARDSHIP ISSUES BURDENS OF PROOF INSTRUCTIONS FOR INVESTIGATORS APPENDIX: RESOURCES FOR LOCATING REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS INDEX This Enforcement Guidance clarifies the rights and responsibilities of employers and individuals with disabilities regarding reasonable accommodation and undue hardship. Title I of the ADA requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities who are employees or applicants for employment, except when such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. This Guidance sets forth an employer's legal obligations regarding reasonable accommodation; however, employers may provide more than the law requires. This Guidance examines what "reasonable accommodation" means and who is entitled to receive it. The Guidance addresses what constitutes a request for reasonable accommodation, the form and substance of the request, and an employer's ability to ask questions and seek documentation after a request has been made. The Guidance discusses reasonable accommodations applicable to the hiring process and to the benefits and privileges of employment. The Guidance also covers different types of reasonable accommodations related to job performance, including job restructuring, leave, modified or part-time schedules, modified workplace policies, and reassighttps://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/accommodation.html#leaveDate: 2002Date accessed: January 6, 2020View in ArticleGoogle Scholar82.Blinder V Eberle C Patil S Gany FM Bradley CJWomen with breast cancer who work for accommodating employers more likely to retain jobs after treatment.Health Aff. 2017; 36: 274-281View in ArticleScopus (41)CrossrefGoogle Scholar83.Aizer AA Falit B Mendu ML et al.Cancer-specific outcomes among young adults without health insurance.J Clin Oncol. 2014; 32: 2025-2030View in ArticleScopus (83)PubMedCrossrefGoogle Scholar84.Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services AdministrationBehavioral health trends in the United States: results from the 2014 national survey on drug use and health.https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FRR1-2014/NSDUH-FRR1-2014.pdfDate: Sept 10, 2015Date accessed: March 27, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar85.National Institute of Mental HealthMental Illness.NIMH " Mental IllnessMental Illness Mental illnesses are common in the United States. Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (51.5 million in 2019). Mental illnesses include many different conditions that vary in degree of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe. Two broad categories can be used to describe these conditions: Any Mental Illness (AMI) and Serious Mental Illness (SMI). AMI encompasses all recognized mental illnesses. SMI is a smaller and more severe subset of AMI. Additional information on mental illnesses can be found on the NIMH Health Topics Pages . Definitions The data presented here are from the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). For inclusion in NSDUH prevalence estimates, mental illnesses include those that are diagnosable currently or within the past year; of sufficient duration to meet diagnostic criteria specified within the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV); and, exclude developmental and substance use disorders. Any Mental Illness Any mental illness (AMI) is defined as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder. AMI can vary in impact, ranging from no impairment to mild, moderate, and even severe impairment (e.g., individuals with serious mental illness as defined below). Serious Mental Illness Serious mental illness (SMI) is defined as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. The burden of mental illnesses is particularly concentrated among those who experience disability due to SMI. Prevalence of Any Mental Illness (AMI) Figure 1 shows the past year prevalence of AMI among U.S. adults. In 2019, there were an estimated 51.5 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with AMI. This number represented 20.6% of all U.S. adults. The prevalence of AMI was higher among females (24.5%) than males (16.3%). Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (29.4%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (25.0%) and aged 50 and older (14.1%). The prevalence of AMI was highest among the adults reporting two or more races (31.7%), followed by White adults (22.2%). The prevalence of AMI was lowest among Asian adults (14.4%). Figure 1 Past Year Prevalence of Any Mental Illness Among U.S. Adults (2019) Demographic Percent Overall 20.6 Sex Female 24.5 Male 16.3 Age 18-25 29.4 26-49 25.0 50+ 14.0 Race/Ethnicity Hispanic or Latino* 18.0 White 22.2 Black or African American 17.3 Asian 14.4 NH/OPI 16.6 AI/AN 18.7 2 or More 31.7 *Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race; all other racial/ethnic groups are non-Hispanic. NH/OPI = Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander | AI/AN = American Indian / Alaskan Native Mental Health Services — AMI Figure 2 presents data on mental health services received within the past year by U.S. adults aged 18 or olhttps://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtmlDate: Nov, 2017Date accessed: June 8, 2018View in ArticleGoogle Scholar86.Firth J Kirzinger A Brodie MKaiser Health Tracking Poll: April 2016.Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: April 2016 - Substance Abuse and Mental HealthThe April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll examines public opinion on the severity of health problems in the U.S. and takes a closer look at attitudes towards current health problems; including access t…https://www.kff.org/report-section/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-april-2016-substance-abuse-and-mental-health/Date: April 28, 2016Date accessed: March 27, 2019View in ArticleGoogle Scholar87.National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)A Long Road Ahead: Achieving True Parity in Mental Health and Substance Use Care.NAMI, 2015https://www.nami.org/about-nami/publications-reports/public-policy-reports/a-long-road-ahead/2015-alongroadahead.pdfDate accessed: January 6, 2020View in ArticleGoogle ScholarUncited References64.Sommers BD Long SK Baicker KChanges in mortality after Massachusetts health care reform: a quasi-experimental study.Ann Intern Med. 2014; 160: 585-593Scopus (128)PubMedCrossrefGoogle Scholar65.Sommers BDState medicaid expansions and mortality, revisited: a cost-benefit analysis.Am J Health Econ. 2017; 3: 392-421Scopus (30)CrossrefGoogle Scholar66.Kronick RHealth insurance coverage and mortality revisited.Health Serv Res. 2009; 44: 1211-1231Scopus (38)PubMedCrossrefGoogle Scholar67.Franks PHealth insurance and mortality. Evidence from a national cohort.JAMA. 1993; 270: 737-741Scopus (259)PubMedCrossrefGoogle Scholar68.Sorlie PD Johnson NJ Backlund E Bradham DDMortality in the uninsured compared with that in persons with public and private health insurance.Arch Intern Med. 1994; 154: 2409-2416PubMedCrossrefGoogle ScholarArticle InfoPublication HistoryPublished: 15 February 2020IdentificationDOI: Improving the prognosis of health care in the USACopyright© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.ScienceDirectAccess this article on ScienceDirectLinked ArticlesThe effect of Medicare for All on rural hospitals – Authors' replyFull-Text PDFThe effect of Medicare for All on rural hospitalsFull-Text PDFRelated Specialty CollectionsThis article can be found in the following collections:Public Health

The explanation is that Carbon dioxide is not carbon pollution thus reducing it will not make the Earth cleaner.Alarmist leaders have told the public a big lie about the nature of carbon dioxide in their campaign to support carbon taxes.Further carbon dioxide is invisible and the media misleads us showing dark smoke stacks from industry that cannot possibly be based on CO2. Here is a blatant example of a false photo showing black smoke that is impossible to attribute to CO2THIS PHOTO IS NOT INVISIBLE LIFE GIVING CO2. IT IS A LIE.ref. New report shows New England – and the world – needs to pick up the pace when it comes to cutting climate pollutionOCT 29, 2018 DAVID ISMAYNo Time to Spare in Cutting Carbon Emissions | Conservation Law FoundationAttacking carbon dioxide as climate pollution is a great error and will not make the earth cleaner. Calling out fake carbon pollution has been an effective lie about climate change from the mouths of presidents and prime ministers because everyone favours reducing pollution. We harmlessly breathe out invisible non-toxic clean CO2 at 35,000 ppm with each breath.Without doubt photosynthesis is the most important role of Co2 and we contribute to this vital process with every breath.Thursday, November 20, 2008Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not PollutionCarbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant and the global warming debate has nothing to do with pollution. The average person has been misled and is confused about what the current global warming debate is about - greenhouse gases. None of which has anything to do with air pollution.People are confusing smog, carbon monoxide (CO) and the pollutants in car exhaust with the life supporting, essential trace gas in our atmosphere - carbon dioxide (CO2). Real air pollution is already regulated under the 1970's Clean Air Act and regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) will do absolutely nothing to make the air you breath "cleaner".They are also misled to believe that CO2 is polluting the oceans through acidification but there is nothing unnatural or unprecedented about current measurements of ocean water pH and a future rise in pCO2 will likely yield growth benefits to corals and other sea life.Thus, regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through either 'carbon taxes', 'cap and trade' or the EPA will cause all energy prices (e.g. electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil) to skyrocket."CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality."- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science, MIT"CO2 is not a pollutant. In simple terms, CO2 is plant food. The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric CO2. These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times what it is today. Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2. In and of itself, therefore, the increasing concentration of CO2 does not pose a toxic risk to the planet."- John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alabama"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere. For the past few million years, the Earth has existed in a state of relative carbon dioxide starvation compared with earlier periods. There is no empirical evidence that levels double or even triple those of today will be harmful, climatically or otherwise. As a vital element in plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is the basis of the planetary food chain - literally the staff of life. Its increase in the atmosphere leads mainly to the greening of the planet. To label carbon dioxide a "pollutant" is an abuse of language, logic and science."- Robert M. Carter, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Earth Sciences, James Cook University"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. On the contrary, it makes crops and forests grow faster. Economic analysis has demonstrated that more CO2 and a warmer climate will raise GNP and therefore average income. It's axiomatic that bureaucracies always want to expand their scope of operations. This is especially true of EPA, which is primarily a regulatory agency. As air and water pollution disappear as prime issues, as acid rain and stratospheric-ozone depletion fade from public view, climate change seems like the best growth area for regulators. It has the additional glamour of being international and therefore appeals to those who favor world governance over national sovereignty. Therefore, labeling carbon dioxide, the product of fossil-fuel burning, as a pollutant has a high priority for EPA as a first step in that direction."- S. Fred Singer, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia"To state in public that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is a public advertisement of a lack of basic school child science. Pollution kills, carbon dioxide leads to the thriving of life on Earth and increased biodiversity. Carbon dioxide is actually plant food."- Ian R. Plimer, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne"Carbon and CO2 (carbon dioxide) are fundamental for all life on Earth. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas. CO2 is product of our breathing, and is used in numerous common applications like fire extinguishers, baking soda, carbonated drinks, life jackets, cooling agent, etc. Plants' photosynthesis consume CO2 from the air when the plants make their carbohydrates, which bring the CO2 back to the air again when the plants rot or are being burned."- Tom V. Segalstad, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Geology, University of Oslo"To suddenly label CO2 as a "pollutant" is a disservice to a gas that has played an enormous role in the development and sustainability of all life on this wonderful Earth. Mother Earth has clearly ruled that CO2 is not a pollutant."- Robert C. Balling Jr., Ph.D. Professor of Climatology, Arizona State University"C02 is not a pollutant as Gore infers. It is, in fact essential to life on the planet. Without it there are no plants, therefore no oxygen and no life. At 385 ppm current levels the plants are undernourished. The geologic evidence shows an average level of 1000 ppm over 600 million years. Research shows plants function most efficiently at 1000-2000 ppm. Commercial greenhouses use the information and are pumping C02 to these levels and achieve four times the yield with educed water use. At 200 ppm, the plants suffer seriously and at 150 ppm, they begin to die. So if Gore achieves his goal of reducing C02 he will destroy the planet."- Tim F. Ball, Ph.D. Climatology"Many chemicals are absolutely necessary for humans to live, for instance oxygen. Just as necessary, human metabolism produces by-products that are exhaled, like carbon dioxide and water vapor. So, the production of carbon dioxide is necessary, on the most basic level, for humans to survive. The carbon dioxide that is emitted as part of a wide variety of natural processes is, in turn, necessary for vegetation to live. It turns out that most vegetation is somewhat 'starved' for carbon dioxide, as experiments have shown that a wide variety of plants grow faster, and are more drought tolerant, in the presence of doubled carbon dioxide concentrations. Fertilization of the global atmosphere with the extra CO2 that mankind's activities have emitted in the last century is believed to have helped increase agricultural productivity. In short, carbon dioxide is a natural part of our environment, necessary for life, both as 'food' and as a by-product."- Roy Spencer, Ph.D. Meteorology, Former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies, NASA"I am at a loss to understand why anyone would regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Carbon dioxide, a natural gas produced by human respiration, is a plant nutrient that is beneficial both for people and for the natural environment. It promotes plant growth and reforestation. Faster-growing trees mean lower housing costs for consumers and more habitat for wild species. Higher agricultural yields from carbon dioxide fertilization will result in lower food prices and will facilitate conservation by limiting the need to convert wild areas to arable land."- David Deming, Ph.D. Professor of Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a colorless, odorless trace gas that actually sustains life on this planet. Consider the simple dynamics of human energy acquisition, which occurs daily across the globe. We eat plants directly, or we consume animals that have fed upon plants, to obtain the energy we need. But where do plants get their energy? Plants produce their own energy during a process called photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to combine water and carbon dioxide into sugars for supporting overall growth and development. Hence, CO2 is the primary raw material that plants depend upon for their existence. Because plants reside beneath animals (including humans) on the food chain, their healthy existence ultimately determines our own. Carbon dioxide can hardly be labeled a pollutant, for it is the basic substrate that allows life to persist on Earth."- Keith E. Idso, Ph.D. Botany"To classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant is thus nothing short of scientific chicanery, for reasons that have nothing to do with science, but based purely on the pseudo-science so eagerly practiced by academia across the world in order to keep their funding sources open to the governmental decrees, which are in turn based on totally false IPCC dogma (yes, dogma - not science)."- Hans Schreuder, Analytical Chemist"Atmospheric CO2 is required for life by both plants and animals. It is the sole source of carbon in all of the protein, carbohydrate, fat, and other organic molecules of which living things are constructed. Plants extract carbon from atmospheric CO2 and are thereby fertilized. Animals obtain their carbon from plants. Without atmospheric CO2, none of the life we see on Earth would exist. Water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide are the three most important substances that make life possible. They are surely not environmental pollutants."- Arthur B. Robinson, Ph.D. Professor of Chemistryhttp://www.populartechnology.net/2008/11/carbon-dioxide-co2-is-not-pollution.htmlCarbon neutral sounds catchy but it is very bad science and thankfully impossible to achieve. It is part of the lie best perpetrated by Obama that Co2 is pollution. It is not. It is the air we breath and it is vital to all living things through photosynthesis. We need more not less. The goal is equal to a goal to slowly kill off life on earth.Science By Decree, Washington Tries To Declare A Science Settled And A Debate Over“The President of the United States stepped up to the podium and announced to the land that he was hereby officially declaring climate science settled and the debate has ended. Unfortunately, science is never settled, and the remarks will go down in history as being among the most naïve ever expressed by the office of the President.Naïve and just plain stupid. Washington thinks it can declare a science as settled. Photo: US government, public domain=================================The Latest List of LiesBy Ed CarylOn Tuesday, June 25, in advance of President Obama’s Climate speech, David Simas, a White House presidential advisor, sent an email to the press corp outlining the government’s position on climate change. This missive was so unabashedly full of lies dressed as irrefutable statements that it would have made the most notorious dictator propagandist proud. The refutation is absurdly easy. Let’s break down each paragraph:“The carbon pollution that causes climate change isn’t a distant threat, the risk to public health isn’t a hypothetical, and it’s clear we have a moral obligation to act.”…Here’s what President Obama is announcing today. Check it out, then help to spread the word.”Help spread the lies. But don’t think for yourself or investigate.First, he’s laying out a plan to cut carbon pollution in America — by working to cut pollution from power plants, protect the health of our kids, boost clean energy, and revamp our transportation sector for the 21st century. Second, he’s preparing the United States for the impacts of these changes — by building stronger, safer communities and developing resources to make our country more resilient. And finally, he’s leading international efforts to combat global climate change.”Raise the cost of energy. Raise government spending on more losing Alternative Energy Schemes. Make a case for more gun control. Give DHS more power. Raise the cost of health care. Make big government even bigger, and charge at international windmills.We’ve put together a graphic that breaks this all down — from the effects we’re already seeing to the specific actions we’re going to take to lead this fight.”The effects: food prices taking off, energy prices skyrocketing, and now more efforts to enhance both of those effects.No single step can reverse the effects of climate change, but that’s no excuse for inaction. We have a moral obligation to leave our kids a planet that’s not broken and polluted.None of those steps will have any effect on something that happens naturally. They will, however, increase costs, put more downward pressure on jobs, and further depress an already depressed economy. In the end, it will leave our kids a planet with poor job prospects, food prices they can’t afford, and energy prices that will reduce their standard of living, restrict mobility, and make it harder to heat their hovels. And that will really be a broken planet.ByP Gosselinon 27. June 2013Comedy: Science By Decree, Washington Tries To Declare A Science Settled And A Debate OverCarbon dioxide has been wrongly maligned by the Alarmist climate movement. Take a few minutes with Dr. Patrick Moore former founder of Greenpeace to get the facts.Dr. Patrick Moore Co Founder of GreenpeaceThe Truth about Co2Patrick Moore the importance of more Co2.Why Are We Doing This? A Trove Of New Research Documents The Folly Of Renewable Energy PromotionWhy Are We Doing This? A Trove Of New Research Documents The Folly Of Renewable Energy PromotionBy Kenneth Richard on9. July 2018The advocacy for widespread growth in renewable energy (especially wind, solar, and biomass) usage has increasingly become the clarion call of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) movement. And yet more and more published research documents the adverse effects of relying on renewables.Image: Wasili Karbe, cropped from video here.Over the course of the last year, at least 30 papers have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature detailing the fatuity of promoting renewable energy as a long-term “fix” for climate change mitigation. A categorized list of these papers is provided below.1. “More Renewables Mean Less Stable Grids”Schäfer et al., 2018 “Multiple types of fluctuations impact the collective dynamics of power grids and thus challenge their robust operation.”(press release) “More renewables mean less stable grids, researchers find … [I]ntegrating growing numbers of renewable power installations and microgrids onto the grid can result in larger-than-expected fluctuations in grid frequency.”2. Increasing Fossil Fuel Use (Natural Gas) Reduces Emissions More Than Increasing Wind/Solar EnergyAnderson et al., 2018 “Before considering the future, it is worth examining just how far we’ve already come without any federal CO2 regulation (for existing power plants) in the U.S. Figure 1 illustrates historical CO2 emissions and natural gas prices from 2005 through 2017 (estimated). During that period, emissions have declined from nearly 2.7 billion tons to approximately 1.9 billion tons (∼30%), while revealing a strong link to natural gas prices. To be sure, while other factors (such as renewable energy incentives) also had an impact, the clearest means by which to reduce CO2 emissions has been to reduce the cost of generating electricity with less CO2-emitting fuels (i.e., substituting natural gas for coal). So successful have market forces been under the existing regulatory framework to date that estimated 2017 CO2 emission levels are already at the CPP’s 2025 target(albeit without accounting for electricity demand growth between 2017 and 2025), well exceeding the AEO’s own Reference Case projections for 2025.”Jewell et al., 2018 “Hopes are high that removing fossil fuel subsidies could help to mitigate climate change by discouraging inefficient energy consumption and leveling the playing field for renewable energy.Here we show that removing fossil fuel subsidies would have an unexpectedly small impact on global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions and would not increase renewable energy use by 2030. Removing [fossil fuel] subsidies in most regions would deliver smaller emission reductions than the Paris Agreement (2015) climate pledges and in some regions global [fossil fuel] subsidy removal may actually lead to an increase in emissions, owing to either coal replacing subsidized oil and natural gas or natural-gas use shifting from subsidizing, energy-exporting regions to non-subsidizing, importing regions.”3. Renewables Fail To Deliver: When Demand Is High, Generation Capacity Is LowCradden and McDermott, 2018 “Prolonged cold spells were experienced in Ireland in the winters of 2009–10 and 2010–11, and electricity demand was relatively high at these times, whilst wind generation capacity factors were low. Such situations can cause difficulties for an electricity system with a high dependence on wind energy.”4. Renewable Energy Becomes More Costly The More It Is Deployed … Renewable Energy Expansion Ensures More Fossil Fuel Installation Is Necessary As BackupBlazquez et al., 2018 “However, promoting renewables –in liberalized power markets– creates a paradox in that successful penetration of renewables could fall victim to its own success. With the current market architecture, future deployment of renewable energy will necessarily be more costly and less scalable. Moreover, transition towards a full 100% renewable electricity sector is unattainable. Paradoxically, in order for renewable technologies to continue growing their market share, they need to co-exist with fossil fuel technologies. … The paradox is that the same market design and renewables policies that led to current success become increasingly less successful in the future as the share of renewables in the energy mix grows. … Full decarbonization of a power sector that relies on renewable technologies alone, given the current design of these markets, is not possible as conventional technologies provide important price signals. Markets would collapse if the last unit of fossil fuel technologies was phased out. In the extreme (theoretical) case of 100 percent renewables, prices would be at the renewables marginal cost, equal to zero or even negative for long periods. These prices would not be capturing the system’s costs nor would they be useful to signal operation and investment decisions. The result would be a purely administered subsidy, i.e., a non-market outcome. This is already occurring in Germany as Praktiknjo and Erdmann [31] point out and is clearly an unstable outcome. Thus, non-dispatchable technologies need to coexist with fossil fuel technologies. This outcome makes it impossible for renewables policy to reach success, defined as achieving a specified level of deployment at the lowest possible cost. With volatile, low and even negative electricity prices, investors would be discouraged from entering the market and they would require more incentives to continue to operate.”Marques et al., 2018 “The installed capacity of wind power preserves fossil fuel dependency. … Electricity consumption intensity and its peaks have been satisfied by burning fossil fuels. … [A]s RES [renewable energy sources] increases, the expected decreasing tendency in the installed capacity of electricity generation from fossil fuels, has not been found. Despite the high share of RES in the electricity mix, RES, namely wind power and solar PV, are characterised by intermittent electricity generation. … The inability of RES-I [intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar] to satisfy high fluctuations in electricity consumption on its own constitutes one of the main obstacles to the deployment of renewables. This incapacity is due to both the intermittency of natural resource availability, and the difficulty or even impossibility of storing electricity on a large scale, to defer generation. As a consequence, RES [renewable energy sources] might not fully replace fossil sources … In fact, the characteristics of electricity consumption reinforce the need to burn fossil fuels to satisfy the demand for electricity. Specifically, the ECA results confirm the substitution effect between the installed capacity of solar PV and fossil fuels. In contrast, installed wind power capacity has required all fossil fuels and hydropower to back up its intermittency in the long-run equilibrium. The EGA outcomes show that hydropower has been substituting electricity generation through NRES [non-renewable energy sources], but that other RES have needed the flexibility of natural gas plants, to back them up. … [D]ue to the intermittency phenomenon, the growth of installed capacity of RES-I [intermittent renewable energy sources – wind power] could maintain or increase electricity generation from fossil fuels. … In short, the results indicate that the EU’s domestic electricity production systems have preserved fossil fuel generation, and include several economic inefficiencies and inefficiencies in resource allocation. … [A]n increase of 1% in the installed capacity of wind power provokes an increase of 0.26%, and 0.22% in electricity generation from oil and natural gas, respectively in the long-run.”5. Biofuels – Declared Carbon-Neutral Renewables By The EU – Increase Emissions More Than CoalSterman et al., 2018 “[G]overnments around the world are promoting biomass to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The European Union declared biofuels to be carbon-neutral to help meet its goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020, triggering a surge in use of wood for heat and electricity (European Commission 2003, Leturcq 2014, Stupak et al 2007). … But do biofuels actually reduce GHG emissions? … [A]lthough wood has approximately the same carbon intensity as coal (0.027 vs. 0.025 tC GJ−1 of primary energy […]), combustion efficiency of wood and wood pellets is lower (Netherlands Enterprise Agency; IEA 2016). Estimates also suggest higher processing losses in the wood supply chain (Roder et al 2015). Consequently, wood-fired power plants generate more CO2 per kWh than coal. Burning wood instead of coal therefore creates a carbon debt—an immediate increase in atmospheric CO2 compared to fossil energy—that can be repaid over time only as—and if— NPP [net primary production] rises above the flux of carbon from biomass and soils to the atmosphere on the harvested lands. … Growth in wood supply causes steady growth in atmospheric CO2 because more CO2 is added to the atmosphere every year in initial carbon debt than is paid back by regrowth, worsening global warming and climate change. The qualitative result that growth in bioenergy raises atmospheric CO2 does not depend on the parameters: as long as bioenergy generates an initial carbon debt, increasing harvests mean more is ‘borrowed’ every year than is paid back. More precisely, atmospheric CO2 rises as long as NPP [net primary production] remains below the initial carbon debt incurred each year plus the fluxes of carbon from biomass and soils to the atmosphere. … [C]ontrary to the policies of the EU and other nations, biomass used to displace fossil fuels injects CO2 into the atmosphere at the point of combustion and during harvest, processing and transport. Reductions in atmospheric CO2 come only later, and only if the harvested land is allowed to regrow.”Fanous and Moomaw, 2018 “These nations fail to recognize the intensity of CO2 emissions linked to the burning of biomass. The chemical energy stored in wood is converted into heat or electricity by way of combustion and is sometimes used for combined heat and power cogeneration. At the point of combustion, biomass emits more carbon per unit of heat than most fossil fuels. Due to the inefficiencies of biomass energy, bioenergy power plants emit approximately 65 percent more CO2, per MWH than modern coal plants, and approximately 285 percent more than natural gas combined cycle plants. Furthermore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that combustion of biomass generates gross greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions roughly equivalent to the combustion of fossil fuels. In the case of forest timber turned into wood pellets for bioenergy use, the IPCC further indicates that the process produces higher CO2 emissions than fossil fuels for decades to centuries.”6. Biofuels “Use More Energy At A Higher Cost” And Produce More Air Pollution Than Fossil FuelsRichardson and Kumar, 2017 “A growing human population creates a larger demand for food products and makes conservation of resources and increased efficiency of agricultural production more vital. … These results conclude that feed production systems are more energy efficient and less environmentally costly than corn-based ethanol. … [A]ccording to the findings of this study, biofuels, derived for the purpose of producing energy with little environmental impacts, actually use more energy at a higher environmental cost than the alternative crop use. As technology stands now, in terms of energy and environmental sustainability, the benefits of switching land uses to the production of corn-based transportation biofuels are not as favorable as continuing to produce corn for feed/food consumption.”Emery et al., 2017 “Although climate change mitigation and energy security policies are generally expected to be compatible with air pollution and health cost reductions (McCollum et al., 2013), there is evidence that first-generation alternative fuels such as corn ethanol lead to higher health costs due to air pollution than conventional fuels [gasoline] (Hill et al., 2009). … We find that life-cycle non-GHG air pollutant emissions, particularly NOX [nitrous oxides] and PM [particulates], are higher for corn ethanol and other biofuel blends than conventional petroleum fuels. Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide (CO) increase by 9–50% per 100 km traveled for high-ethanol blends from corn grain and combined grain and stover feedstocks. NOX, PM [particulates], and SOX [sulfur dioxides] increase by 71–124% from corn grain and 56–110% from combined grain and stover, relative to conventional gasoline. Biodiesel blends show an increase of 1–11% (B20) and 4–55% (B100) in air pollution, with the largest increases in VOC [volatile organic compounds] and SOX [sulfur dioxides] emissions. … The total social costs of ethanol blends are higher than that of gasoline, due in part to higher life-cycle emissions of non-GHG pollutants and higher health and mortality costs per unit.”7. Proximity To Wind Turbines Significantly Reduces Quality Of Life, Well-Being For Nearby ResidentsBarry et al., 2018 “The findings indicate that residential proximity to wind turbines is correlated with annoyance and health-related quality of life measures. These associations differ in some respects from associations with noise measurements. Results can be used to support discussions between communities and wind-turbine developers regarding potential health effects of wind turbines.”Krekel and Zerrahn, 2017 “We show that the construction of wind turbines close to households exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being … In fact, beyond unpleasant noise emissions (Bakker et al., 2012; McCunney et al., 2014) and impacts on wildlife (Pearce-Higgins et al., 2012; Schuster et al., 2015), most importantly, wind turbines have been found to have negative impacts on landscape aesthetics (Devine-Wright, 2005; Jobert et al., 2007; Wolsink, 2007). … We show that the construction of a wind turbine within a radius of 4,000 metres has a significant negative and sizeable effect on life satisfaction. For larger radii, no negative externalities can be detected.”Gortsas et al., 2017 “Infrasound, low frequency noise and soil vibrations produced by large wind turbines might disturb the comfort of nearby structures and residents. In addition repowering close to urban areas produces some fears to the nearby residents that the level of disturbance may increase. Due to wind loading, the foundation of a wind turbine interacts with the soil and creates micro-seismic surface waves that propagate for long distances and they are able to influence adversely sensitive measurements conducted by laboratories located far from the excitation point.”8. “Renewable Energy Consumption Has A Negative Effect On Economic Growth”Lee and Jung, 2018 “The results of the autoregressive distributed lag bounds test show that renewable energy consumption has a negative effect on economic growth, and the results of a vector error correction mechanism causality tests indicate a unidirectional relationship from economic growth to renewable energy consumption. The empirical results imply that economic growth is a direct driver expanding renewable energy use. In terms of policy implications, it is best for policy makers to focus on overall economic growth rather than expanding renewable energy to drive economic growth. … [O]ur result suggests that renewable energy policy should be implemented when the real GDP is enough large to overcome the negative impact from renewable energy, because the causality from economic growth to renewable energy consumption in the long run as one of our result is caused by both low productivity of renewable energy production and expansion of government-led renewable energy.”9. Research: 100% Renewable Energy Is “Unattainable” In Reality – Decarbonization Is “Arguably Reckless”Clack et al., 2017 “The scenarios of [Jacobson et al., 2015, “Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes”] can, at best, be described as a poorly executed exploration of an interesting hypothesis. The study’s numerous shortcomings and errors render it unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system. It is one thing to explore the potential use of technologies in a clearly caveated hypothetical analysis; it is quite another to claim that a model using these technologies at an unprecedented scale conclusively shows the feasibility and reliability of the modeled energy system implemented by midcentury. From the information given by [Jacobson et al., 2015], it is clear that both hydroelectric power and flexible load have been modeled in erroneous ways and that these errors alone invalidate the study and its results.”Heard et al., 2017 “While many modelled scenarios have been published claiming to show that a 100% renewable electricity system is achievable, there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible. Of the studies published to date, 24 have forecast regional, national or global energy requirements at sufficient detail to be considered potentially credible. We critically review these studies using four novel feasibility criteria for reliable electricity systems needed to meet electricity demand this century. [N]one of the 24 studies provides convincing evidence that these basic feasibility criteria can be met. Of a maximum possible unweighted feasibility score of seven, the highest score for any one study was four. … On the basis of this review, efforts to date seem to have substantially underestimated the challenge and delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways. … To date, efforts to assess the viability of 100% renewable systems, taking into account aspects such as financial cost, social acceptance, pace of roll-out, land use, and materials consumption, have substantially underestimated the challenge of excising fossil fuels from our energy supplies. This desire to push the 100%-renewable ideal without critical evaluation has ironically delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways. We argue that the early exclusion of other forms of technology from plans to decarbonize the global electricity supply is unsupportable, and arguably reckless. … The realization of 100% renewable electricity (and energy more broadly) appears diametrically opposed to other critical sustainability issues such as eradication of poverty, land conservation and reduced ecological footprints, reduction in air pollution, preservation of biodiversity, and social justice for indigenous people.”10. Wealthy Countries Foist Social-Environmental Disruption From Wind, Solar Onto Poorer CountriesShakespear, 2018 “A trend was found, whereby developing countries tend to suffer the most socio-environmental disruption from material extraction for solar-panels and wind-turbines while exhibiting lower implementation of these technologies, and developed countries show opposite effects. This indicates that EUE [ecologically unequal exchange] effects constitute global solar-panel and wind-turbine systems, and that developed countries displace socio-environmental disruption from energy innovation onto developing countries. … [I]mplementation of solarpanels and wind-turbines tended to be the most prevalent within countries that suffer the least environmental and socio-economic consequences from the extraction of materials for these technologies. This effectively means that efforts to increase sustainability in relatively powerful countries via renewable energy implementation exacerbates unsustainable practices in the relatively less powerful countries that extract the minerals for these technologies.”11. Wind Power Harming The Environment, Biosphere – Destroying Habitats, Endangering Rare SpeciesMillon et al., 2018 (full paper) “Wind turbines impact bat activity, leading to high losses of habitat use … Island bats represent 60% of bat species worldwide and the highest proportion of terrestrial mammals on isolated islands, including numerous endemic and threatened species (Fleming and Racey, 2009). … We present one of the first studies to quantify the indirect impact of wind farms on insectivorous bats in tropical hotspots of biodiversity. Bat activity [New Caledonia, Pacific Islands, which hosts nine species of bat] was compared between wind farm sites and control sites, via ultrasound recordings at stationary points [A bat pass is defined as a single or several echolocation calls during a five second interval.] The activity of bent winged bats (Miniopterus sp.) and wattled bats (Chalinolobus sp.) were both significantly lower at wind turbine sites. The result of the study demonstrates a large effect on bat habitat use at wind turbines sites compared to control sites. Bat activity was 20 times higher at control sites compared to wind turbine sites, which suggests that habitat loss is an important impact to consider in wind farm planning. … Here, we provide evidence showing that two genera of insectivorous bat species are also threatened by wind farms. … To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies quantifying the indirect negative impact of wind turbines on bat activity in the tropics. … The lower attractiveness of the foraging habitat under wind turbines, both in a tropical and in a temperate climate, indicates that the indirect impact of wind turbine is a worldwide phenomenon.”Lopucki et al., 2018 “Living in habitats affected by wind turbines may result in an increase in corticosterone levels in ground dwelling animals… Environmental changes and disturbance factors caused by wind turbines may act as potential stressors for natural populations of both flying and ground dwelling animal species. The physiological stress response results in release of glucocorticoid hormones. … The common vole showed a distinct physiological response − the individuals living near the wind turbines had a higher level of corticosterone [physiological stress affecting regulation of energy, immune reactions]. … This is the first study suggesting impact of wind farms on physiological stress reactions in wild rodent populations. Such knowledge may be helpful in making environmental decisions when planning the development of wind energy and may contribute to optimization of conservation actions for wildlife.”Ferrão da Costa et al., 2018 “According to a review by Lovich and Ennen (2013), the construction and operation of wind farms have both potential and known impacts on terrestrial vertebrates, such as: (i) increase in direct mortality due to traffic collisions; (ii) destruction and modification of the habitat, including road development, habitat fragmentation and barriers to gene flow; (iii) noise effects, visual impacts, vibration and shadow flicker effects from turbines; (iv) electromagnetic field generation; (v) macro and microclimate change; (vi) predator attraction; and (vii) increase in fire risks. … Helldin et al. (2012) also highlighted that the development of road networks associated with wind farms could promote increased access for traffic related to recreation, forestry, agriculture and hunting. The consequence, particularly on remote places, is the increase in human presence, affecting large mammals via significant disturbance, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. These negative effects are expected to be particularly relevant for species that are more sensitive to human presence and activities, such as large carnivores. Large carnivores, such as the wolf, bear, lynx or wolverine, tend to avoid areas that are regularly used by humans and—especially for breeding—show a preference for rugged and undisturbed areas (Theuerkauf et al. 2003; George and Crooks 2006; May et al. 2006; Elfstrom et al. 2008; Sazatornil et al. 2016), which are often chosen for wind power development (Passoni et al. 2017). … Results have shown that the main impact of wind farms on wolves is the induced reduction on breeding site fidelity and reproductive rates. These effects, particularly when breeding sites shift to more unsuitable areas, may imply decreasing survival and pack viability in the short term.”Watson et al., 2018 “The global potential for wind power generation is vast, and the number of installations is increasing rapidly. We review case studies from around the world of the effects on raptors of wind-energy development. Collision mortality, displacement, and habitat loss have the potential to cause population-level effects, especially for species that are rare or endangered.”Aschwanden et al., 2018 “The extrapolated number of collisions was 20.7 birds/wind turbine (CI-95%: 14.3–29.6) for 8.5 months. Nocturnally migrating passerines, especially kinglets (Regulus sp.), represented 55% of the fatalities. 2.1% of the birds theoretically exposed to a collision (measured by radar at the height of the wind turbines) were effectively colliding.”Naylor, 2018 “While wind energy provides a viable solution for emission reductions, it comes at an environmental cost, particularly for birds. As wind energy grows in popularity, its environmental impacts are becoming more apparent. Recent studies indicate that wind power has negative effects on proximate wildlife. These impacts can be direct—collision fatalities—and indirect—habitat loss (Fargione et al. 2012; Glen et al. 2013). Negative impacts associated with operational wind farms include collision mortalities from towers or transmission lines and barotrauma for bats. Habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as avoidance behavior, are also consequences resulting from wind farm construction and related infrastructure. The potential harm towards protected and migratory bird species are an urgent concern, especially for wind farms located along migratory flyways. In terms of mortality, wind turbines kill an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 birds, annually (Smallwood 2013). The high speed at which the fan wings move and the concentration of turbines create a gauntlet of hazards for birds to fly through. … [T]he height of most wind turbines aligns with the altitude many bird species fly at (Bowden 2015). Birds of prey— raptors—are of particular concern because of their slow reproductive cycles and long lifespans relative to other bird species (Kuvlesky 2007).”Lange et al., 2018 “Results from our surface water extractions and aerial surveys suggest that the wind farm has negatively affected redheads through altered hydrology and disturbance displacement. Our surface water extraction analysis provides compelling evidence that the local hydrology has been greatly affected by the construction of the wind farm. … Our results suggest the occurrence of direct habitat loss and disturbance displacement of redheads from the wind farm along the lower Texas coast. Although our study was directed solely toward redheads, it is likely that this wind farm has affected other species that use these wetlands or migrate along the lower Texas coast (Contreras et al. 2017). Studies in Europe investigating the effects on waterfowl by wind turbines have reported similar results, showing that turbines have likely compromised foraging opportunities for waterfowl through disturbance displacement (Larsen and Madsen 2000).”Chiebáo, 2018 “I studied the large-scale movements of white-tailed eagles during the dispersal period, assessing their space use in relation to the distribution of existing and proposed wind farms across Finland. I found that a breeding pair holding a territory closer to an installation has a lower probability to breed successfully when compared to a pair from a territory lying farther away. Such lower probability may in part reflect a harmful interaction between the eagles and wind turbines in the form of collision mortality, to which the adults appear to be particularly vulnerable during the breeding season. Regarding the post-fledging period, I found that the probability of a young eagle approaching a wind turbine decreases sharply as the turbine is installed at increasing distances from the nest.”Frick et al., 2017 “Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species. We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America. Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction. For example, the hoary bat population could decline by as much as 90% in the next 50 years if the initial population size is near 2.5 million bats and annual population growth rate is similar to rates estimated for other bat species (λ = 1.01). Our results suggest that wind energy development may pose a substantial threat to migratory bats in North America. If viable populations are to be sustained, conservation measures to reduce mortality from turbine collisions likely need to be initiated soon. Our findings inform policy decisions regarding preventing or mitigating impacts of energy infrastructure development on wildlife.”Hammerson et al, 2017 “Conservationists are increasingly concerned about North American bats due to the arrival and spread of the White-nose Syndrome (WNS) disease and mortality associated with wind turbine strikes. To place these novel threats in context for a group of mammals that provides important ecosystem services, we performed the first comprehensive conservation status assessment focusing exclusively on the 45 species occurring in North America north of Mexico. Although most North American bats have large range sizes and large populations, as of 2015, 18–31% of the species were at risk (categorized as having vulnerable, imperiled, or critically imperiled NatureServe conservation statuses) and therefore among the most imperiled terrestrial vertebrates on the continent.”Vasilakis et al., 2017 “Numerous wind farms are planned in a region hosting the only cinereous vulture population in south-eastern Europe. We combined range use modelling and a Collision Risk Model (CRM) to predict the cumulative collision mortality for cinereous vulture under all operating and proposed wind farms. Four different vulture avoidance rates were considered in the CRM. Cumulative collision mortality was expected to be eight to ten times greater in the future (proposed and operating wind farms) than currently (operating wind farms), equivalent to 44% of the current population (103 individuals) if all proposals are authorized (2744 MW). Even under the most optimistic scenario whereby authorized proposals will not collectively exceed the national target for wind harnessing in the study area (960 MW), cumulative collision mortality would still be high (17% of current population) and likely lead to population extinction.”12. Wind Turbine Blade Waste Disposal A Growing Ecological NightmareLiu and Barlow, 2017 “Wind energy has developed rapidly over the last two decades to become one of the most promising and economically viable sources of renewable energy. Although wind energy is claimed to provide clean renewable energy without any emissions during operation, but it is only one side of the coin. The blades, one of the most important components in the wind turbines, made with composite, are currently regarded as unrecyclable. With the first wave of early commercial wind turbine installations now approaching their end of life, the problem of blade disposal is just beginning to emerge as a significant factor for the future. … The research indicates that there will be 43 million tonnes of blade waste worldwide by 2050 with China possessing 40% of the waste, Europe 25%, the United States 16% and the rest of the world 19%.”Ramirez-Tejeda et al., 2017 “Globally, more than seventy thousand wind turbine blades were deployed in 2012 and there were 433 gigawatts (GW) of wind installed capacity worldwide at the end of 2015. Moreover, the United States’ installed wind power capacity will need to increase from 74 GW to 300 GW3 to achieve its 20% wind production goal by 2030. … The wind turbine blades are designed to have a lifespan of about twenty years, after which they would have to be dismantled due to physical degradation or damage beyond repair. … Estimations have suggested that between 330,000 tons/year by 2028 and 418,000 tons/year by 2040 of composite material from blades will need to be disposed worldwide. That would be equivalent to the amount of plastics waste generated by four million people in the United States in 2013. This anticipated increase in blade manufacturing and disposal will likely lead to adverse environmental consequences. … Despite its negative consequences, landfilling has so far been the most commonly utilized wind turbine blade disposal method. … Landfilling is especially problematic because its high resistance to heat, sunlight, and moisture means that it will take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill environment. The wood and other organic material present in the blades would also end up in landfills, potentially releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other volatile organic compounds to the environment.”https://notrickszone.com/2018/07/09/why-are-we-doing-this-a-trove-of-new-research-documents-the-folly-of-renewable-energy-promotion/

Support fearless journalism that makes a difference.Email AddressHealth CareU.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, left, and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the Department of Justice in April 2019. (Win McNamee/Getty)Walmart Was Almost Charged Criminally Over Opioids. Trump Appointees Killed the Indictment.Even as company pharmacists protested, Walmart kept filling suspicious prescriptions, stoking the country’s opioid epidemic. A Republican U.S. Attorney in Texas thought the evidence was damning. Trump’s political appointees? Not so much.by Jesse Eisinger and James BandlerMarch 25, 5 a.m. EDTTRUMP ADMINISTRATIONThe 45th President and His AdministrationProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.On a Tuesday just before Halloween in 2018, a group of federal prosecutors and agents from Texas arrived in Washington. For almost two years, they’d been investigating the opioid dispensing practices of Walmart, the largest company in the world. They had amassed what they viewed as highly damning evidence only to face a major obstacle: top Trump appointees at the Department of Justice.The prosecution team had come to Washington to try to save its case. Joe Brown, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, led the group, which included Heather Rattan, an over-20-year veteran of the office who had spent much of her career prosecuting members of drug cartels.They first went to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters to meet the acting administrator, Uttam Dhillon. There Rattan laid out the evidence. Opioids dispensed by Walmart pharmacies in Texas had killed customers who had overdosed. The pharmacists who dispensed those opioids had told the company they didn’t want to fill the prescriptions because they were coming from doctors who were running pill mills. They pleaded for help and guidance from Walmart’s corporate office.Investigators had obtained records of similar cries for help from Walmart pharmacists all over the country: from Maine, North Carolina, Kansas and Washington, and other states. They reported hundreds of thousands of suspicious or inappropriate opioid prescriptions. One Walmart employee warned about a Florida doctor who had a “list of patients from Kentucky that have been visiting pharmacies in all of central Wisconsin recently.” That doctor had sent patients to Walmarts in more than 30 other states.In response to these alarms, Walmart compliance officials did not take corporate-wide action to halt the flow of opioids. Instead, they repeatedly admonished pharmacists that they could not cut off any doctor entirely. They could only evaluate each prescription on an individual basis. And they went further. An opioid compliance manager told an executive in an email, gathered during the inquiry and viewed by ProPublica, that Walmart’s focus should be on “driving sales.”After they finished their presentation, Dhillon sat back in his chair and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ,” according to five people familiar with the investigation. “Why aren’t we talking about this as a criminal case?”That’s precisely what had occurred seven months earlier: Rattan had informed Walmart that she was preparing to indict the corporation for violating the Controlled Substances Act. Indictments of Fortune 500 companies are unheard of, let alone of one with $500 billion in annual revenue and over 2 million employees. But Rattan, with support from her boss Brown, believed the evidence justified such an unprecedented step.Before the Texas prosecutors could file their case, however, Walmart escalated concerns to high-ranking officials at the DOJ, who then intervened. Brown was ordered to stand down. On Aug. 31, 2018, Trump officials officially informed Walmart that the DOJ would decline to prosecute the company, according to a letter from Walmart’s lawyer that lays out the chronology of the case.Read MoreThe White House Asked Manufacturers for Help, Then Gave Them No Clear InstructionsVice President Mike Pence wants the private sector to donate critical medical supplies to help during the coronavirus pandemic. But the White House’s chaotic requests have not included consistent information on how exactly businesses can do that.But the Texas prosecutors hadn’t given up. Now, two months later, they still thought they had a chance to bring the then-deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and other top officials around. After the first presentation at the DEA offices that day, the Texas group — now accompanied by the DEA’s Dhillon — caravanned over to the DOJ.They filed into a big, bright conference room, where they were received by Rosenstein and a collection of political appointees and career staff. Rattan and her team were given a half-hour to make their presentation. She explained that dispensing opioids without a legitimate medical purpose is legally akin to dealing heroin. Criminal law says if a person or entity is willfully blind or deliberately ignorant, they are as liable as if they had acted intentionally. Once Walmart’s headquarters knew its pharmacists were raising alarms about suspicious prescriptions, but the compliance department continued to allow — even push — them to fill them, well, that made the company guilty, the Texas prosecutors contended.This was not a question of a few rogue employees, Rattan explained. Walmart had a national problem. Worse, the prosecutors contended, the company was a repeat offender. Walmart had agreed to a settlement with the DEA seven years earlier in which it had promised to improve its controls over the abuse of opioid prescriptions. Still the problems persisted. That’s why the prosecutors believed they needed to pursue the extraordinary path of a criminal prosecution. As they concluded, Brown was emphatic, telling Rosenstein: “We have to act.”A fine would not be a sufficient deterrent, the DEA’s Dhillon added, since Walmart “has more money than it knows what to do with.”“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Rosenstein responded, according to five people familiar with the investigation. “We are all capitalists here.”Rosenstein’s quip brought the prosecutorial team up short. They weren’t pursuing Walmart because it was profitable but because, in their view, the company had put its customers at deadly risk.Not long after, Rosenstein’s assistant entered the room to say he had a call. He left. The prosecutors’ push to persuade Rosenstein to revive the criminal case had failed.When Rosenstein was told that a fine would not be a sufficient deterrent for Walmart, he replied, “We are all capitalists here.” (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)Still, there were multiple avenues left to pursue: After the meeting, the Texas prosecutors focused on bringing criminal charges against individual employees, as Rosenstein and other Trump DOJ officials directed them to do. But later, when the prosecutors sought to indict a mid-level Walmart manager, the Trump officials blocked that, too.That left potential civil claims. After the meeting with Rosenstein, Brian Benczkowski, the head of the criminal division, had told Brown, “You have a whopper of a civil case,” according to four people familiar with the investigation.But the civil case, too, was stymied by Trump appointees in the DOJ who continued to side with Walmart.In its dealings with the DOJ, Walmart pursued a classic strategy. It relied on Jones Day, an influential law firm that has salted officials throughout the Trump administration. Walmart conceded mistakes and opened the door for a civil settlement. But the company consistently denied that any of its employees committed crimes.In the view of many prosecutors and agents, Walmart never fully cooperated. (From the beginning of the investigation, Walmart said it was cooperating and taking action to fix its opioid dispensing practices. Still, the company acknowledged that it halted its cooperation in mid-2018 after it became convinced prosecutors were not acting in good faith.)And Walmart and Jones Day added a Trumpian tactic: At a moment when the president had established a habit of attacking the investigators in his own government, the company followed a similarly aggressive approach. Walmart lawyers complained to Washington about the Texas prosecutors, accusing them of seeking to “embarrass” the company while using the threat of criminal charges to extort a larger civil fine. Criminal and civil investigations can run in parallel, but it’s an ethical violation for prosecutors to use the threat of criminal penalties to generate a higher civil settlement.In a statement to ProPublica, Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove reiterated the company’s complaints: “The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) engaged in misconduct multiple times as it investigated Walmart, including threatening to bring meritless criminal charges against Walmart in order to extort an unjustified civil settlement from the company. This behavior was clearly improper, violated the Department of Justice’s own internal policies and rules of legal ethics, and was entirely inconsistent with the Department’s long-standing policies.”Hargove added that having failed to bring “baseless” criminal charges against the company, “It appears that one or more individuals familiar with EDTX’s investigation have violated Department of Justice rules in an attempt to achieve through leaks what they could not accomplish in a court of law.”In response to the Walmart statement, the U.S. attorney, Brown, offered his own to ProPublica: “Drug Enforcement Agency investigations of multiple opioid overdose deaths in the Eastern District of Texas resulted in our office opening parallel civil and criminal investigations of Walmart’s pharmacy practices. These investigations have been handled appropriately, and according to Department of Justice policy. These investigations, which we would typically not confirm or deny, but do so now because of Walmart’s statement, continue. Accordingly, it would be inappropriate to comment further on the specific facts of the case.“Walmart chooses now to attack the investigators, a tried and true method to avoid oversight. We are confident that once all of the facts in this matter are public the hollowness of this criticism will be apparent. It is not the goal of our office to embarrass Walmart. Walmart’s behavior in dispensing opioid medication in the middle of a public health crisis should embarrass Walmart.”Walmart’s ability to go over the heads of the Texas office left the U.S. attorney’s team profoundly frustrated — so much so that the lead civil prosecutor on the case resigned in protest on Oct. 25, 2019. “I deeply regret that Department leadership prevented EDTX from filing its lawsuit in 2018,” Joshua Russ, then the head of the Eastern District’s civil division, wrote in his resignation letter, a copy of which (with Walmart’s name blacked out) ProPublica obtained. “Corporations cannot poison Americans with impunity. Good sense dictates stern and swift action when Americans die.”The investigations of Walmart have not been previously reported. This account is based on hundreds of pages of Walmart internal emails and investigative documents, correspondence between the company’s attorneys and the Justice Department, and interviews with nine people familiar with the investigation. All of the conversations described in this article were recounted either in those documents or by multiple people with knowledge of the conversations. The DOJ declined to make anyone available for interviews and did not answer an extensive list of questions.The news of the Walmart investigation comes at a time when the Trump administration is being assailed for legal favoritism and cronyism. Attorney General Bill Barr has inserted himself into multiple investigations of Trump friends and associates. In February, four prosecutors on the case of Roger Stone, a Trump friend and adviser, quit the case in protest after political appointees undercut their sentencing recommendation.Barr, center, accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, right, speaks at the Justice Department’s National Opioid Summit on March 6, 2020.(Andrew Harnik/AP)The Trump DOJ has also pulled back on white-collar and corporate investigations and prosecutions. White-collar prosecutions are at a record low. Walmart itself seems to have already benefited from the Trump administration’s approach to corporate misconduct. The company was the subject of a seven-year investigation into bribery allegations in Mexico and around the globe. The Obama administration sought $600 million in fines, according to The New York Times, which broke the story, but failed to reach a resolution with the company. The Trump DOJ settled the charges for $282 million in June 2019. (“Walmart took the investigation very seriously, cooperated with the DOJ and the SEC’s investigation, and took extensive steps that have established its comprehensive Global Anti-Corruption Program,” the company said.)President Donald Trump reaches to shake hands with Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden at the White House on March 13, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP)Even as Trump’s DOJ was preventing its own prosecutors from getting tough on Walmart, the Trump administration told the public it was confronting the nation’s opioid crisis. In March 2018, Trump said his administration would hold those responsible accountable, pledging that federal lawsuits against opioid drugmakers “will happen.” The same month that Rosenstein declined to revive the criminal case against Walmart, Trump signed legislation aimed at curbing the opioid crisis. A key element was a public-private partnership with several companies, including Walmart, to implement measures such as opioid addiction education initiatives. “Together we are going to end the scourge of drug addiction in America,” Trump said. (This month, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon appeared in the White House’s Rose Garden to pledge the company’s help in combating the coronavirus.)For those who spent years investigating Walmart, the chasm between the public posturing and the behavior behind closed doors has been deeply discouraging. By the end of the experience, one said: “I wanted to ask for a Walmart greeter badge. It’s got much more stroke than a DEA badge.”The case against Walmart originated in the summer of 2016, with an investigation of two Texas doctors, Howard Diamond and Randall Wade, who were prescribing opioids on a vast scale. Prosecutors would link each to multiple deaths. The lead prosecutor on the criminal case, Rattan, made it clear to the DEA agents on the case that this should be run like any drug investigation. They should focus on cutting off the dealers’ sources of drugs.One of those was Walmart. In August, DEA agents, surveilling Wade’s clinic, followed three women to a Walmart in McKinney, Texas. Shortly afterward, all three walked out with large quantities of painkillers.On Dec. 7, 2016, DEA agents raided that Walmart, seeking records about Diamond and Wade. The two doctors were eventually convicted of illegal distribution of opioids, with Wade sentenced to 10 years in prison and Diamond 20 years.Walmart has the fifth-highest pharmacy revenue in the country and was the fifth-largest opioid distributor in Texas from 2006-14, according to the DEA. But Walmart pharmacies had not been raided before; raids of Fortune 500 companies are exceedingly rare. Alarmed, Walmart’s lawyers quickly asked the government to conduct no more raids and pledged full cooperation.The Texas prosecutors broadened their investigation and began to amass evidence that extended far beyond Diamond and Wade. Between 2011 to 2017, they discovered, Walmart pharmacists repeatedly filled prescriptions that they worried were not for legitimate medical purposes, including large doses of opioids and mixtures of drugs the DEA considered red flags for abuse. Walmart pharmacists not just in Texas but in Maine, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Kansas and Washington state raised alarms to the company’s national compliance department about doctors.Sometimes, these pharmacists requested permission to stop filling opioid prescriptions for certain doctors. In February 2015, a pharmacist wrote to the national compliance department about Diamond:“We are all concerned about our jobs and about filling for a pill mill doctor. I’m in my 29th year with walmart and have never had a situation this bad with a doctor. Other chains are refusing to fill for him which makes our burden even greater. Please help us.”Another wrote that same month:“doctor Diamond is a problem and a liability on us...Filling for him is a risk that keeps me up at night. This is a serious situation.”But even after more than a decade of soaring addiction and deaths had transformed opioids into a national crisis, Walmart had a policy that pharmacists could conduct no “blanket refusals” that shut off prescriptions written by a particular doctor. Nor would Walmart put doctors on a prohibited list from headquarters, known as a “corporate block.”Some of Walmart’s competitors had stopped filling Diamond’s and Wade’s prescriptions, company pharmacists told headquarters. Why wasn’t Walmart doing the same? In February 2014, for example, Kroger sent a letter to Diamond saying it would no longer fill his controlled substances prescriptions. Walmart pharmacists were telling headquarters that CVS, Walgreens and Target were doing the same. (A CVS spokesman said the company implemented a policy of corporate blocks several years ago but, citing privacy, declined to comment on whether the policy was applied to Diamond and Wade. Spokespeople for Kroger, Walgreens and Target did not respond to requests for comment. Walmart insists there is no evidence that competitors issued corporate blocks against Diamond and Wade.)A Walmart pharmacist in September 2016 wrote an alarming note about a Pennsylvania doctor who was “under investigation by the DEA for what we believe is a pill mill operation.” He added:“Rite Aid has sent him a blanket denial letter. ...And since then we have seen our almost solely narcotic and controlled prescriptions from him double....We are putting pharmacists and Walmart in a bad situation legally....”Instead of blanket refusals or a corporate block, Walmart’s compliance department said each prescription had to be evaluated separately. To block a prescription and report the refusal, a pharmacist had to fill out a form that could take 20 minutes, a bureaucratic hurdle that pharmacists sought to avoid because they were under pressure to fill prescriptions quickly.From early 2014 to when Walmart finally blocked Diamond in March 2017 — after the federal investigation had started — the company’s pharmacists filled over 13,000 controlled substances prescriptions from Diamond, an average of 11 a day, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica. That amounted to over 1.3 million doses. Walmart only blocked Wade in November 2016, a month after he was indicted. Between the first Walmart employee’s alarm and then, Walmart pharmacies filled an average of nine controlled substance prescriptions a day written by Wade, amounting to 875,000 doses. Between 2011 and 2016, over 100 different Walmart pharmacies in 17 different states filled Wade’s opioid prescriptions.More troubling to the federal investigators, for much of this period, Walmart was operating under a secret settlement, known as a Memorandum of Agreement, with the DEA, reached in 2011 and running four years. (The existence of the MOA has not been previously reported.) According to that agreement, a Walmart pharmacy in California had been filling prescriptions “for other than a legitimate medical purpose and/or outside the usual course of professional practice in violation of federal and state law” and had “dispensed controlled substances to individuals that [the pharmacy] knew or should have known were diverting the controlled substances.”Read MoreWe Tracked the Last Time the Government Bailed Out the Economy. Here’s What to Know About the $1 Trillion Coronavirus Plan.A decade ago, the government spent more than $1 trillion to bail out companies and stimulate the economy. What have we learned since then?As part of the agreement, in which Walmart did not admit or deny wrongdoing, the company agreed to install national procedures to identify bad prescribers and prescriptions not written for legitimate medical purposes and report them quickly to the DEA.In addition, Walmart had repeatedly run afoul of the Controlled Substances Act. The company had received more than 50 “Letters of Admonition” from the DEA for its prescribing practices from 2000 to 2018, according to records obtained by ProPublica. And it had paid two small Controlled Substances Act settlements in 2007 and 2008, one for filling unlawful prescriptions and the other for recordkeeping violations.Prosecutors believed that Walmart was not fulfilling the terms of its agreement with the DEA. The company had an internal system for compiling pharmacists’ “refusals to fill” that it would send to the DEA. They found that Walmart didn’t always send the DEA its alerts. When the company did so, the notices were not complete. The form included a comments field, where pharmacists might write notes flagging concerns about doctors whom they believed were operating pill mills. Walmart sent the DEA the information that a prescription had been refused but excised the employee comments.On Feb. 13, 2015, when a regional manager received a list of “Refusal to Fill” prescriptions from headquarters, he asked, “Does your team pull out any insights from these we need to highlight?” according to an email reviewed by ProPublica.Brad Nelson, then a director of Health and Wellness Practice Compliance at Walmart, wrote back:“The MOA that requires the reporting of the Refusal to fills expires in 30 days. We have not invested a great amount of effort in doing analysis on the data since the agreement is virtually over. Driving sales and patient awareness is a far better use of our Market Directors and Market manager’s time.”Walmart maintains that Nelson was expressing relief that the onerous burden of alerting the DEA to its refusals to fill was coming to an end, and that in urging the manager to “drive sales,” he was referring to immunizations. Walmart depicted Nelson as a popular middle manager who was the first in the office every morning. He’d come in at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and spend the next three hours faxing refusals to fill to the DEA. Then he would make popcorn for his colleagues.On Jan. 8, 2015, Nelson emailed colleagues that a pharmacist had contacted him with concerns, indicating “that he is feeling pressured” by his supervisor to fill prescriptions for controlled substances. If the pharmacist doesn’t fill the prescriptions, Nelson added, “then that would be a significant issue.”Walmart says this email shows that Nelson was consistent: Pharmacists could not issue blanket refusals but could refuse prescriptions on a case-by-case basis. (Nelson referred questions to his lawyer, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)Read MoreThe Senator Who Dumped His Stocks Before the Coronavirus Crash Has Asked Ethics Officials for a “Complete Review”After ProPublica’s report that Richard Burr dumped stocks after reassuring the public about coronavirus readiness, he said he welcomed an ethics investigation.Walmart told the investigators that the evidence the Eastern District compiled was misleading. The company said the DEA never required “corporate blocks” or “blanket refusals-to-fill.” The DEA did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.Meanwhile, some state boards of pharmacy and medical boards protected doctors from being cut off by pharmacies on the grounds that companies should not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, Walmart says.For its part, Texas has no rules that would prohibit a pharmacy chain like Walmart from instituting a corporate block or blanket refusal policy, said Allison Benz, executive director of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.In Texas, pharmacy chains may, indeed, impose corporate-wide blocks on doctors whom they suspect are running pill mills, according to Sherif Zaafran, president of the Texas Medical Board. Zaafran said the board has told Walmart and other pharmacies that if they have concerns about a doctor, they have a legal obligation to file a complaint with the board while providing information supporting their concerns. “We never weigh in on a corporate block,” he said. “The corporation can instruct a licensed pharmacist to do so. It is the licensed pharmacist who has the legal ability to not dispense something.”For its part, Walmart says it was taking its responsibilities seriously. The company says it flagged over 60,000 concerning prescriptions its pharmacists refused to fill during the period the investigation covered. It maintains Nelson was vigilant in urging his pharmacists to refuse to fill if they saw prescriptions they did not like, and to fill out the forms so that the company could send the information to the DEA. In the case of Diamond, Walmart says one of its pharmacists alerted the Texas Medical Board of its concerns. The board allowed Diamond to continue practicing medicine, finding that his “prescribing was appropriate.” (It did place him on a “remedial plan” to fix his allegedly sloppy record-keeping.) The board did not revoke Diamond’s license until October 2017, after his arrest.A Walmart distribution center in Washington, Utah, in 2016. (George Frey/Bloomberg/Getty)The company argues that, as the regulatory entity that licensed doctors to dispense opioids, the DEA, not Walmart, was responsible for the failure to shut down pill pushers like Diamond sooner. After the investigation started, Walmart reversed itself and began instituting corporate blocks, which suggested to prosecutors that the company could have been doing so all along. Since Walmart began the policy, multiple states have assailed and even investigated Walmart for improperly interfering with doctors’ decisions.The prosecutors did not find Walmart’s many explanations convincing. The fact that the company had sent so many refusals to the DEA for a given doctor and yet would turn around and keep filling prescriptions for the very same sketchy physician suggested the problem was widespread. As far as federal prosecutors and the DEA were concerned, the MOA had placed Walmart on parole — and the company had violated its terms.In the spring of 2018, the Eastern District of Texas informed Walmart that it was preparing criminal charges against the company. In traditional criminal investigations against individuals, indictments often come as a surprise. The government accumulates evidence and makes its arrest. The defense eventually sees the evidence and can respond then, sometimes only at trial.Criminal investigations of big corporations don’t typically work that way in the United States. They have developed into a ritualized series of give-and-takes between prosecutors and the company. Prosecutors lay out their evidence and theories and the company gets the opportunity to respond in great detail — all out of public view. The Eastern District of Texas skipped this dance.Stunned and worried, Walmart requested a meeting with the prosecutors. In April 2018, the two sides sat down.Walmart had a powerful team. Karen Hewitt, the partner-in-charge of Jones Day’s California region, was the company’s lead outside lawyer. She had been the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, appointed by George W. Bush and then serving under President Barack Obama, accumulating a record for prosecuting corrupt politicians and drug and border crimes. Walmart’s inside lawyer was Bob Balfe. Walmart’s chief counsel for global investigations, Balfe also had been a U.S. attorney, serving as the head of the Western District of Arkansas, which includes Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville. In the biggest case of his career, he’d successfully prosecuted a Walmart legend, then-vice chairman Tom Coughlin, for a bizarre embezzlement scheme. Since he’d come to Walmart, Balfe had helped steer the company through the seven-year bribery investigation.Most of the interactions between the government and the Jones Day lawyers were politely choreographed. Hewitt and Balfe were the picture of affability. “When you meet with them, it’s like those two chipmunks,” said one person familiar with the investigation, referring to the Looney Tunes characters Mac and Tosh, gophers that speak with posh British accents. “‘After you.’ ‘No, after you.’ They are so polite.”The two sides largely agreed on the facts, but differed completely on whether they justified a criminal charge. And a dispute over the use of a single word would poison relations between the two sides, with Walmart using the word as a cudgel to attack the prosecutors.The word in question was “embarrass.” According to two people familiar with the prosecution, Rattan told the Walmart side that the company should feel embarrassed by its conduct. Walmart would portray it differently, claiming that Rattan said her goal was “to embarrass Walmart” with a criminal indictment. (Walmart’s account is captured in a letter of complaint Hewitt sent the next month to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.)For the moment, though, the two sides maintained decorum. Walmart asked for 30 days to respond. Prosecutors agreed. On May 3 and 4, the two sides met again, this time in Plano, Texas, where the U.S. attorney’s offices are located.By this time, Josh Russ had ramped up his office’s civil investigation. He did not plan to attend the May meeting, because it was a meeting led by the criminal side.Walmart’s lawyers said they hoped to resolve any criminal or civil investigations in one shot and insisted on Russ’ presence. The prosecutors, leery of being accused of improperly coordinating the criminal and civil cases, demanded that Walmart make the request in writing. Walmart did, and Russ agreed to attend. Soon, however, Walmart would accuse the prosecutors of precisely the behavior they were attempting to avoid.During the first six hours of the meeting, Hewitt and the Walmart lawyers described the results of their own internal investigation, saying the company’s outside lawyers had found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the company or its employees. They’d found no evidence of collusion or any improper financial relationships between doctors or customers and Walmart pharmacists. They also admitted that “Walmart could have and should have done more to voluntarily combat the opioid crisis,” according to the letter Hewitt sent to Rosenstein.The Walmart lawyers outlined the risks to shareholders, employees and the public that could result from a criminal prosecution. But the prosecutors were unmoved. Rattan said that Walmart was no different from an individual criminal defendant who pleaded with the government for leniency by stating that her children would be harmed by her incarceration. Civil Chief Randi Russell took her remarks a step further, saying that Walmart’s size didn’t make it above prosecution. Balfe, becoming animated, touted Walmart’s opioid reforms and the company’s extensive cooperation with law enforcement.“All of our defendants find Jesus in jail,” one person present recalled thinking. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t go to prison.”The country was in a crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people dead and major companies poisoning people like drug dealers, as the prosecution team saw it. To the prosecutors, Walmart’s attitude was not only that it hadn’t done anything wrong, but that Walmart didn’t even need to take the prosecutors seriously. That point was reinforced the next day when Walmart made its first settlement offer: $34 million. Calling the offer “insulting,” Russ said Walmart could do better. The parties, he said, were “in different solar systems.”The discussions reached a crescendo after one of Walmart’s outside lawyers accused the prosecutors of unethically trying to use the threat of a criminal prosecution to leverage higher civil penalties. Russell, angry, demanded that the Walmart lawyer retract his statement. Russ left the room, saying he would not tolerate an attack on his ethics.The Eastern District thought Walmart should pay an amount that was several times larger than the then-record $150 million civil penalty that McKesson, the giant pharmaceutical distribution company, had paid for its alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act. Russell suggested a payment of $1.2 billion.Read MoreDoctors Are Hoarding Unproven Coronavirus Medicine by Writing Prescriptions for Themselves and Their FamiliesPharmacists told ProPublica that they are seeing unusual and fraudulent prescribing activity as doctors stockpile unproven coronavirus drugs endorsed by President Donald Trump.Later, Rattan pulled out her phone, announcing she’d received a “confidential text message” from her boss, U.S. Attorney Joe Brown, who was attending an NRA rally that day with President Donald Trump. According to Hewitt’s written account, Rattan read the text aloud to the slack-jawed Walmart lawyers: “Walk away, indict them, and then be willing to settle with them after the indictment.”After another counteroffer, Rattan read Brown’s reply aloud: “That doesn’t hurt Walmart in the least.” Walmart, which had earlier boasted to the group of giving $1 billion a year away to charities, could do much better, the government prosecutors said. Civil Chief Russell quoted the New Testament: “To whom much is given, much is required.”Some of the prosecutors were willing to trade off a large fine, however, if they could add greater detail to the statement of facts that would eventually go public. Russell said Walmart had to admit it had “killed people.” Jones Day appeared to be eager to avoid such an admission, which would have brought bad publicity and made the company vulnerable in private and state lawsuits. (Walmart is a defendant in the massive opioid lawsuitbrought by the states.)On the way home, Walmart’s lawyers processed what had just happened. Balfe told his colleagues it felt like a hostage situation. A week later, Hewitt wrote to Rosenstein, reiterating the complaint about the office’s purported ethical violations. In a subsequent letter to the DOJ, she appeared ready to make a civil deal: “Walmart is a responsible corporate citizen and stands ready to engage in a principled and reasoned dialogue concerning any potential conduct of its employees that merits a civil penalty under the CSA.”Rattan and her fellow criminal prosecutors insisted they were sincere. “The threat of indictment is real,” she said, as she concluded the May meeting. “I am not bluffing.” Rattan had amassed a highly successful record in her dozens of trials. “I’m telling you right now,” she would say around the office of the case against Walmart. “Swear in 12 people and present the evidence and they are in trouble.”Josh Russ began preparing to file the Eastern District’s civil complaint. He sent it to the DEA, which signed off on it. In August 2018, the U.S. attorney’s office commenced planning to bring its civil charges; it began preparations for a press conference to make the announcement.Meanwhile, Walmart continued appealing up the chain to top officials in Washington. On Aug. 10, Jones Day’s Hewitt sent a letter to Benczkowski, assistant attorney general and head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, complaining about the investigation. The letter argued that a conviction could harm “millions of low-income and elderly citizens” who rely on federal programs for food and medicine. A convicted corporation might not be permitted to participate in those programs any longer. She outlined what she said were Walmart’s “remedial” measures to become “an industry leader in the Nation’s fight against the opioid crisis.”Read MoreA Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube.”Soon after, an official in the deputy attorney general’s office called Brown and told him to halt the Texas office’s criminal investigation, according to five people familiar with the investigation.Officials at DOJ in Washington then turned their attention to the civil probe. In a video conference call in late August, Stephen Cox, the deputy associate attorney general and a top official in the civil division, and Mary Daly, a daughter of Bill Barr and then the director of opioid enforcement, asked Russ’ team about its tactics and evidence. Cox, who had never been a federal prosecutor and joined the agency from Texas energy company Apache, appeared upset that the Texas prosecutors had sought emails between compliance officials and their bosses, senior executives at Walmart. He seemed to view that tactic as overly aggressive, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The Texas prosecutors said they did so to find out what top Walmart executives knew.Russ and others contended the civil suit was ready to be filed. Cox said it wasn’t. To spur Cox and his colleagues to action, Russ began to send daily examples of what the prosecutorial team viewed as particularly egregious prescriptions Walmart pharmacists had filled. His message: People had died because of opioids Walmart had dispensed, and every day that passed meant another lost opportunity because of the ticking clock on the statute of limitations.Meanwhile, Walmart exercised its PR and political muscle. Just days after the contentious May meeting with Eastern District officials, Walmart launched what it billed as a sweeping effort “aimed at curbing opioid misuse and abuse.” The cornerstone was that it would restrict initial opioid prescriptions to no more than a seven-day supply. In September 2018, Ivanka Trump visited a Walmart in Mesquite, Texas, very close to the Eastern District’s offices. She was there, the White House said, to learn how Walmart trains and retains workers. The trip seemed to indicate just how close the company was to the White House.Ivanka Trump attends a White House signing ceremony in January 2018 to provide Customs and Border Protection agents with screening technology to fight the opioid crisis. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)Then came the meeting with Rosenstein in October 2018. Asked about his comments that day, Rosenstein responded by email that he did not recall his comment about everyone being “capitalists” but said: “If you lack the courage to decline a proposed criminal prosecution when you conclude that it is a mistake, you do not belong in a leadership job. We reached every decision after considering the non-partisan factors set forth in the Justice Department’s principles of federal prosecution.”Trump officials ordered a six-month cooling off period, directing the U.S. attorney’s office to try to reach a settlement with Walmart.Meanwhile the DOJ formed a national Walmart Working Group, with four other U.S. attorney’s offices in New York, North Carolina, Florida and Colorado. State attorneys general were brought in. On the one hand, the creation of the group underscored the national character of Walmart’s opioid problems. On the other, it dispersed responsibility among different offices and Russ, who was appointed co-head of the group, told colleagues he thought his investigation was being taken away from him.In January 2019, the DEA presented Walmart with a new, broad subpoena. Walmart had been furnishing what it contended were huge volumes of materials. But it had not handed over everything the government requested. Walmart complained to the prosecutors that the requests were too onerous and overreaching, and that the company needed more time.Prosecutors felt Walmart wasn’t sufficiently cooperative. Walmart never furnished a full list of doctors its pharmacists were concerned about. Walmart did not give the government full information on its internal databases to analyze prescribing information and patterns. Perhaps most crucially, Walmart had not turned over the emails the Eastern District had subpoenaed between compliance officials and their bosses (the ones Cox had been so shocked about).Russ begged Washington officials to take it to a judge to enforce the government’s subpoena. The Trump appointees refused, telling the Working Group to keep negotiating.The Texas prosecutors worried Walmart had an even better inside track than it had already displayed. In June 2019, they learned that Hewitt and Balfe had met with Barr.The company says the three met as part of a national conference of U.S. attorneys and that it amounted to a grip-and-grin photo op in the presence of several other U.S. attorneys. No one raised the investigation, according to Walmart: “Bob Balfe and Karen Hewitt did not have any discussions with Attorney General Barr or his staff about Walmart.”In response to an extensive list of questions for this story, DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec responded with a statement that read in whole: “While the Department does not generally confirm, deny, or acknowledge the existence of investigations, it is worth noting that Pro Publica’s reporting in this piece is misleading and contains numerous inaccuracies and erroneous conclusions. As just one example, the meeting with Attorney General Barr that is cited was with eight former US Attorneys from the National Association of Former US Attorneys (NAFUSA) all acting in their capacities as NAFUSA officers, where no particular matters were discussed.”Still, the prosecutors felt like the Walmart side attempted multiple end runs. For example, Cox’s predecessor, Rachel Brand, had left the DOJ in February 2018 to take a top job in Walmart’s legal department. About a year later, Brand’s attorney inquired as to whether she could appear before the DOJ. The Eastern District team got wind of the request and raised concerns. Walmart says Brand had no interactions with top DOJ or White House officials about the investigation.Rosenstein and Rachel Brand are sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 7, 2017. Both have since left the DOJ. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)On the criminal side, now that the corporate indictment was dead, the Texas prosecutors pursued the directive to focus on individuals. Rattan prepared an indictment of Brad Nelson, the former compliance manager who had told an executive that the company should focus on “driving sales.”Walmart lawyers objected. Nelson was no criminal, they contended. Jones Day kept up its pressure. In another letter to Trump officials on Sept. 27, 2019, this time addressed to Gus Eyler, who was now the co-head of the national Walmart Working Group with Russ, Hewitt objected to the threat of a Nelson indictment and once again accused the prosecutors of trying to embarrass the company. Hewitt wrote: “We are concerned that either of the following may be true: the threat of an indictment of Mr. Nelson is being made to pressure Walmart in a civil proceeding in violation of DOJ procedures and the rules of legal ethics, or, just as concerning, EDTX actually intends to prosecute an individual not because the facts support it but in an effort to embarrass Walmart in retaliation for the previous declination of a criminal case against the Company.”She added, “We also intend to suspend further production of documents under the Omnibus Subpoena until these issues relating to the status of this investigation are resolved.”The government had issued a lawful subpoena. Walmart was treating it as optional.Under other circumstances, the DOJ might have raced into a court to force a defiant company to comply with the subpoena. Instead, soon after receiving Hewitt’s letter, Washington informed the Texas prosecutors that they could not indict Nelson.The civil investigation was still muddling on, however. In midsummer, as the six-month deadline approached, Russ told DOJ officials that Walmart was still not cooperating fully. Trump officials decided to give Walmart three more months. When the next deadline came up on Oct. 25, Washington wanted to extend the negotiations again.Russ resigned that day. Walmart, he said in his resignation letter, “abused the Department’s fairness, largely ignored our subpoena, and scoffed at our larger work on behalf of all Americans.”He added, “When I took my oath of office, I invoked God’s judgment and swore that I would support and defend the Constitution.”The news reverberated throughout the office. “Josh was Captain America, well-respected, well thought of. It came as a big blow,” said a person familiar with the investigation, adding, “It seemed that maybe the country’s best interests were not at heart.”On Nov. 7, the new deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, summoned the Texas prosecutorial team again to Washington for another meeting, gauging the progress of the Working Group’s negotiations with Walmart. The team reprised its presentation of the evidence that it had delivered to Rosenstein about a year earlier. Joe Brown, the U.S. attorney, asked Rosen: “Can you point out what’s wrong with our evidence?” Rosen did not respond.In recent weeks, the DOJ’s inaction has begun to raise concerns on Capitol Hill. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Dhillon and Barrexpressing “concern regarding the Department’s inability to hold prescription opioid distributors and chain pharmacies accountable.” A hearing may follow.Meanwhile, four years after the investigation first began, negotiations on a civil settlement between the government and Walmart continue.Do you have information about the Trump Department of Justice or corporate malfeasance? Jesse Eisinger can be reached [email protected] or on Signal: 718-496-5233.Doris Burke contributed reporting.