"We've always known the Boundary Waters makes a contribution we needed to have a scientifically valid way to show that," said Paul Danicic, executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. "It shows this is a national and international resource and destination."

Danicic hails the report as the first of its kind for the wilderness area, both in sample size and extent. His group and the Quetico Superior Foundation enlisted the nonprofit Conservation Economics Institute to complete the study.

More than 500 visitors were surveyed last summer, and the results were released last week.

"This is the first of concentric circles of studies to come," Danicic said. "This is in no way the total economic value of the Boundary Waters," since it leaves out local and winter spending.

The report calls the Boundary Waters an export for Northeastern Minnesota, since so much money is coming in from outside the immediate region. And of those outside visitors mostly from the Twin Cities, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan more than half reported household incomes of $100,000 or more.

"This outside money brought into the region represents a basic industry and spurs the need for community in-filling services such as medical, financial and entertainment services," the study reads.

About 1,000 jobs are supported by visitors to the wilderness area, which range from outfitters, lodging, food service and other retail and government positions.

"The duration and sustainability of these jobs is much greater than extractive industries based on nonrenewable resource extraction, and nature tourism is not as susceptible to market volatility," reads the study.

Extractive industries do tend to pay more, though Danicic pointed out the region's economy can't be all mining or all tourism.

"These jobs are only one slice of a resilient economy," he said.

The study comes amid an ongoing fight over the Twin Metals proposed copper mines in the Boundary Waters watershed.

"We should use that information in how we make decisions," Danicic said. "We can be proud of our mining past and considerate of our future."

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Report: Boundary Waters nets $77 million from summer visitors - Duluth News Tribune

Solar panels cover the roof of a Sam's Club storein Glendora, Calif. David McNew/Getty Images

For decades, California has been at the forefront of U.S. environmental policies. Now, with the Trump administration poised to attack environmental and climate regulations, California is ready to play a key role in resisting Washingtons hard right turn.

By JacquesLeslie February21,2017

As environmental standard-bearer and green technology pioneer, no other state rivals California.

More than two decades before the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Act, California became the first state to enact air pollution legislation, in 1947. The states Air Resources Board, widely considered the most powerful air pollution regulatory agency in the world, has used its authority to prod hybrid and electric cars into widespread commercial use. Spurred by the nations strongest and most innovative building code, new buildings in California now use about 75 percent less energy than pre-code buildings, and have saved enough energy to head off construction of the equivalent of seven 500-megawatt natural gas-fired power plants.

California is the only state with its own greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade program, which earned it about $2.5 billion in revenue from emissions permits last year. Spearheaded by its thriving Silicon Valley technology industry, the state has led the nation in generating inventions for electric and self-driving cars and a smart electricity grid, which are helping create a renewables-based economy.

California plays an incredibly important role as a pathfinder that plots out the course for the energy transition, climate change, and the environment in general, said Jules Kortenhorst, the CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based energy think tank.

All this puts the state on a collision course with President Donald J. Trump, who has made clear through his statements and appointments that he is ready to disregard the threat of climate change and stress fossil fuels as a path to robust economic growth. In response, Californias leaders, all Democrats, have expressed defiance.

Weve got the scientists, weve got the lawyers, and were ready to fight, Governor Jerry Brown proclaimed at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December. Then, referring to Trump administration threats to cut funding for climate change research, Brown said, If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite!

California GovernorJerry Brown speaks at the Governor's Conference on Extreme Climate Risks and California's Future in December2011. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Whats at stake in this face-off is Californias ability to maintain its own relatively rigorous environmental laws and regulations as the Trump administration loosens environmental provisions at the federal level. Implicit in the battle is a striking reversal of roles, in which environmentalists who once championed federal power over states now support states rights, while Trump appointees who once argued for states rights consider how to squelch Californias renegades. Neither side is likely to emerge with an all-out victory: While the Trump administration may use budget cuts, deregulation, and legislative pruning to box in the state, experts say, it has no way to prevent California from continuing on an independent path in key environmental domains.

As it happens, many California environmentalists regard the environmental record of their new de facto spokesman, Governor Brown, as mixed, largely because of his support for fracking the state is the nations fourth-largest oil producer and water projects that benefit agricultural interests at the expense of rivers and estuaries. Nevertheless, they welcome his emergence as the Democrats leading advocate for responsible climate change policies. I think Jerry Brown is genuinely interested in environmental protection, and I think he will be a leader in pushing back the assault on environmental policies, said Gary Bobker, director of the rivers and delta program at the San Francisco-basedBay Institute.

Last month, the state legislature hired Eric Holder, President Barack Obamas attorney general from 2009 to 2015, to represent it in expected legal battles against the Trump administration. California now seems poised to play the role that Texas performed during the Obama administration, when Texas sued the federal government at least 48 times. More than half of those suits dealt with climate change and air and water quality. I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home, then-Texas attorney general and now-governor Greg Abbott famously said in 2013. Californias attorney general, Xavier Becerra, who was appointed by Brown last month, sounded distinctly Abbott-like in a statement he directed at Trump in December: If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us.

The Trump administrations greatest point of leverage against Californias environmental policies is the air pollution waiver given to the state in the 1970 Clean Air Act. The waiver acknowledged the states severe smog problem and the precedent-setting car emissions regulations California devised to reduce air pollution by allowing the state to establish more stringent standards than the federal governments. Since then, a dozen other states have agreed to follow Californias emissions policies, which means that about 40 percent of American cars are covered by its rules. That number is so large that car manufacturers generally design all their vehicles to meet California standards instead of producing one model for California regulations and another for federal ones. The result is that Californias policies drive technological change in the transportation sector, not just nationally, but internationally.

Beginning with model year 1969, the federal government has granted California waivers for new vehicle emissions standards more than a hundred times, regardless of which party occupied the White House. But statements by Trumps new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, at his confirmation hearing last month suggest that Californias waiver is in jeopardy. Invited by California Sen. Kamala Harris to commit to upholding the waiver, Pruitt said instead that he would not want to presume the outcome of a review of the policy. His refusal to endorse the waiver is particularly striking given that as Oklahomas attorney general, beginning in 2010, he was an outspoken advocate for states rights and even established a federalism unit that opposed federal energy and environmental laws.

If Pruitt decides to revoke Californias existing waiver, which covers all vehicles manufactured through 2025, he would have to argue that California has no need to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which would almost certainly trigger a long legal battle. The only way Pruitt could avoid such a battle would be to persuade Congress to revoke the provision of the Clean Air Act that established the states waiver right in the first place. Given Republican domination of the current Congress, that change is certainly conceivable, though it would meet vociferous Democratic and perhaps even some Republican resistance.

The Trump administration could also seize on a California policy it opposes, such as the states opposition to immigrant deportation, to justify cutting federal funding to the state, creating a budget crisis that would hinder Californias ambitious energy programs. Trump threatened such cuts earlier this month in response to proposed state legislation prohibiting state and local law enforcement officials from upholding federal immigration laws. If we have to, well defund, Trump told Fox News interviewer Bill OReilly. We give tremendous amounts of money to California. California in many ways is out of control. But using such a blunt weapon to punish the state could threaten Californias economy, the sixthlargest in the world, and could impede the vast economic expansion that Trump has promised his policies will deliver.

The Trump administration could hamstring Californias energy programs by cutting funding for a broad range of federal energy programs that support national laboratories, universities, and private companies. If, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy decides to cut funding for energy efficiency, Californias Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which focuses on energy-efficient technology, might be vulnerable. Or the administration could cut the Energy Departments loan guarantee program, known for funding the failed solar company Solyndra, but also instrumental in the success of many other companies, including Tesla, the electric car and energy storage manufacturer based in Palo Alto.

Iowa's bipartisan push to become a leader in wind energy. Read more.

The administration could also reduce or eliminate the federal tax credit system for renewable energy, but that would risk opposition from a number of Republican-controlled states that benefit from it. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said last year that if Trump tries to cut the wind energy tax credit, Hell do it over my dead body. Iowa produces one-third of its electricity from wind power and is the nations third- leading generator of wind energy; California is second.

Iowas example indicates the obstacles the Trump administration could encounter if it tries to weaken support for renewable energy. Everyone talks about red states and blue states, said Hal Harvey, CEO of Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based policy research group. We really have to start talking about green states and brown states. There are about a dozen states many of them in Republican control with very strong renewable portfolio standards and very strong utility energy efficiency programs, and utilities are going to be the prime movers in building the electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Californias cap-and-trade program, presumably a lightning rod for the Trump administrations disapproval, faces no threat from the federal government, since it is not dependent on federal approval. On the other hand, a lawsuit brought in 2012 by the California Chamber of Commerce has put the program in some jeopardy. The suit argues that the programs fees amount to taxes, and according to state law, tax provisions must be passed by a two-thirds majority of the legislature, a threshold the cap-and-trade legislation did not meet. But Democrats currently enjoy two-thirds majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly, and so could likely meet the tax vote requirement with new legislation.

In most other respects, California and other states can carry out their environmental and energy policies regardless of the Trump administrations actions. In part thats because utilities, which are at the heart of the clean-energy transition, traditionally are under state, not federal, control. As Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the Natural Resource Defense Councils energy program, explained, Renewables, energy efficiency, and the most important climate policy solutions going forward in the United States today are under the authority of state officials. The capital investment for clean energy isnt coming from the federal government its coming from the budgets of publicly owned and investor-owned utilities.

Perhaps most notably, California will be able to continue on its ambitious path of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The states Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, signed into law by a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, set in place regulations and market mechanisms to lower Californias emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Not only is the state on schedule to meet that goal, but last year the legislature approved a new, far tougher target, requiring an additional 40 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2030.

On top of that, the state is carrying out a pioneering reorganization of its electricity grid, and in the process has become a test ground for developing renewable energy. The California Public Utilities Commission has directed the states utilities to develop demonstration projects with smaller companies that use local energy resources such as rooftop solar, batteries, and smart water heaters and thermostats, thereby avoiding the need for major infrastructure investments in things like new substations and transmission lines.

The state is also expanding its grid market to neighboring states to increase the grids flexibility during times of production overcapacity. For example, daily electricity demand increases in Arizona when people get home from work, a time when California may have an overabundance of renewable energy that it could sell to Arizona. Because the sun sets in the two states at different times, peak electricity demand in Arizona (near the end of the day) may overlap with peak solar production in California (near the middle of the day).

Even as California faces regulatory headwinds from the Trump administration, it is riding strong economic and technological tailwinds that favor its goals of weaning its economy off fossil fuels. The administration seems bent on one last lucrative gulp at the fossil fuel trough. But as climate change intensifies, the desirability of fossil fuel use probably will continue to decline, and in any case, the steadily dropping cost of renewable energy will make it increasingly likely that wind energy, solar power, and other renewables will gradually supplant fossil fuels. In that case, California will be in prime position to reap the benefits of its policies.

Jacques Leslieis a regular Los Angeles Times op-ed contributor. His book on dams,Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for its "elegant, beautiful prose.He recently published an ebook,A Deluge of Consequences, that portrays a project in Bhutan to counter flooding caused by climate change. More about Jacques Leslie

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In the Face of a Trump Environmental Rollback, California Stands in ... - Yale Environment 360

Malcolm Turnbull and Francois-Philippe Champagne at the opening of the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's address to the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum was typically enthusiastic about how much the two countries have in common and how well they can co-operate in promoting open economies and increased trade.

He can only wonder quietly at the difference in their governments' political fortunes. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has managed to extend his political honeymoon while Australian voters are already contemplating a quickie divorce from the Coalition.

Trudeau unexpectedly won government in November 2015, a couple of months after Turnbull surprised Tony Abbott with a successful challenge. Trudeau also leads the Liberal Party, although in Canada that translates into a centre-left rather than a centre-right coalition.

Yet despite Turnbull's reference to coming from different sides of the political spectrum, both men represented a return to the centre from what was regarded as the hard right under Tony Abbott and former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

Both men were seen as progressive, socially liberal leaders with pro-trade and pro-immigration credentials and softer edges, including on climate change. They attracted voters wanting change for the better and a more positive, optimistic agenda. Trudeau exudes rock star appeal in an environment made for celebrity style. Even in cynical Australia there was a brief sense of political euphoria that there would be a coming together of the country under the personable, popular Turnbull.

Yet that's where the similarities start to weaken. Despite the same loss of manufacturing jobs, sluggish growth, growing deficits and a resource-based economy, Trudeau remains popular if with a few more dints on his shiny image. He has managed to deliver agreement with the states on some contentious issues including energy policy. And Canada can't help but show a little smugness about its ability to espouse the virtues of immigration, trade and openness without attracting much domestic blowback. The upsurge in populism has a different hue in Canada.

In Australia, the Turnbull gloss tarnished more quickly, and well ahead of the resurgence of One Nation's Pauline Hanson.

In part that is because of the government's difficulties in the Senate due to the power of wayward crossbenchers combined with the opportunism of Labor. Still, Turnbull's problem goes deeper.

It is also because he has been mostly unable to articulate his own beliefs and clear policies in a way that sounds persuasive to voters. That compounds the image of drift, with disappointed Australian voters confused about what their Prime Minister stands for. He is left looking dangerously like a man without a mission.

And the weaker his position in the polls, the weaker his position in a party riven by the open antagonism between conservatives like Abbott and the more liberal positions traditionally taken by Turnbull.

Add in a Labor party that has moved further to the left on economic and social issues, including on free trade, and that votes against all significant government bills as a matter of course. While Labor and Bill Shorten may not be popular, they are able to keep the focus on the government's lack of momentum rather than their own.

The embers of protectionism, anti-immigration and anti-politics as usual are being stoked into a decent-sized fire as evidenced by the renewed popularity of One Nation, tapping into a vein of sentiment similar to that driving Donald Trump. Australia's system of proportional representation in the Senate means an ability to constant leverage a minority vote.

Trudeau has no such problem given Canada has an appointed upper house with no real power. The two opposition parties, left and right, are still voting for their new leaders, meaning there is no alternative leader criticising government.

Trudeau also has a much clearer policy definition, including his willingness to go into deficit spending and negotiating with the states for a national carbon tax. The question is whether Trudeau's ability to keep campaign promises will protect him or whether he too will eventually share in the fallout from the lack of faith in major parties.

The costs of Trudeau's energy policy have yet to bite politically, for example, although rising electricity bills have started to stir community resistance. The impact of a national carbon tax with sharply increasing rates over the next few years at the same time US energy policy is heading in the opposite direction under Trump risks turning that into a blunt political weapon for the conservative party. That would be especially potent if business investment flees south of the border attracted by lower US energy costs and business taxes.

The timing of that reality check in Canada may be delayed but the dilemma seems inevitable.

In the wake of the South Australian blackouts and growing business concern, Turnbull is now attacking the Labor party over its rush to renewable energy without paying enough attention to cost or security of supply. Yet this issue hardly rated a mention in the election campaign, with Turnbull deciding not to fight on it given the popular appeal of renewable energy and his own previous strong support for carbon pricing.

The implication of Trump's lower corporate tax policies will also reach deep into both countries' competitiveness given their relatively high tax rates. Turnbull's reluctance a year ago to take on comprehensive tax reform means he is left arguing for corporate tax cuts over a decade while voters complain about unfairness right now. So far, Trudeau's key measure has been to raise taxes on the highest income earners to symbolically help fund a tax cut for the middle class. That's unlikely to be sufficient ahead of the next election.

But right now, despite Canada and Australia having so much in common, it's the difference in the domestic political balance that is most striking. Trudeau should hope any greater convergence remains limited.

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The difference between Malcolm Turnbull and Justin Trudeau - The Australian Financial Review

Slashing corporate waste and upping investment in reuse is a big market opening and one that could unlock new supply chain value and job opportunities at companies that can get out ahead.

At furniture designer and manufacturer Steelcase, for example, designing for the circular economy is increasingly seen as an "entrepreneurial gig." All told, the company sees potential to double the value of the $3 billion business, said Director of Global Sustainability Angela Nahikian.

"This could double the size of our company," Nahikian said late last week at the GreenBiz 17 conference in Phoenix, Arizona. "Each of these opportunities has to be stitched together with competencies that we already have and investments that need to be made."

To date, she said Steelcase is focused on inventorying existing capabilities and pinpointing gaps. While sustainability is important, Nahikian said the company also recognized an opportunity to create products that can change, grow or shrink with evolving corporate needs.

For us, sustainability has been a really good trip, but its going to get more exciting from here. Circular economy is a manifestation of our purpose.

Circular goods can be re-purposed or taken apart at end of life, then used for materials to make new products a design challenge that involves a deep knowledge of chemistry and detailed life cycle assessments. Steelcase also already sells cradle-to-cradle certified products, which means these chairs and stools are assessed for the ability to be safely taken apart and recirculated into the economy.

"For us, sustainability has been a really good trip, but its going to get more exciting from here," she said. "Circular economy is a manifestation of our purpose."

Nailing new models on the first try also isn't easy when a company has a 100-year history and operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asian Pacific countries.

The journey has taken seven years so far for Steelcase. Dan Dicks, global director of end-of-use services, said that gradually building momentum towards circularity has been an advantage, as it didnt require immense up-front investment.

"Because of the research and development that we had to do, we couldnt have compressed it," Dicks said at the conference last week in Phoenix. "Its not a big financial investment were asking for, but proof points allow us to ask for resources incrementally. That allows us the right runway."

Steelcases journey towards the circular economy stimulates change without abruptly disrupting the business or taking large financial risks. It has also allowed Nahikian to build relationships within the company and plan for its growth.

Nahikian advises businesses interested in evolving circular products to cultivate patience, tenacity, resilience and agility.

"Its a migration strategy," she said. "The business [Dicks] is building has to involve each of the subsequent businesses we add, like subscriptions and manufacturing. That means something different for scaling."

Nahikian advises businesses interested in evolving circular products to cultivate patience, tenacity, resilience and agility.

"Know your treasury organization, know your strategy organization. Spend the time up front and really think it through," she said. "Now is the time we start quick-stepping."

Developing internal and external advocates is a must, too, Dicks said.

For General Motors, finding advocates for the circular economy means weaving a mutually beneficial "supply chain web" among organizations. For John Bradburn, GM's global manager of waste reduction, the pursuit amplifies value and creates opportunities to help society the very challenges that businesses exist to solve.

"A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link," Bradburn said at the GreenBiz 17 conference. "Waste is just a resource out of place."

He described the circular supply chain web that allows recycledplastic to circulate among Detroit-based businesses GM, William T. Burnett & Co. and Filtration Services Group. The companies are working together to turn plastic bottles sourced from Flint, Michigan into fleece, car parts, air filters for businesses and even insulated coats for the homeless.

Michigan businesses are working together to turn recycled plastic bottles sourced from Flint, Michigan into fleece, car parts, air filters for businesses and even insulated coats for the homeless.

The supply web organized by Bradburn who has been nicknamed the "MacGyver" of the circular economy sends the recycled bottles to Unifi in North Carolina, which produces dense plastic flake that can be used in textiles and yarns.

The flake is later sent to William T. Burnett & Co., a foam and non-woven materials manufacturer, where it is turned into fleece. A few steps along the web, the fleece is die-cut and sent to Filtration Services Group, where it is manufactured into HVAC filters that are sold to GMs manufacturing facilities.

"If a bottle made in Flint goes to a recycling plant and sent overseas, then goes back into our economy and sold to us we lose value and harm communities," said Bradburn, who was born in Flint. "This is about American jobs."

Filtration Services Groupcollaborates with St. Luke N.E.W. Life center, an organization that provides life skills and job training, to employ formerly homeless employees to sew the filters. In the process, insulation created by M.T. Burnett & Co. is sewn into jackets for the homeless. According to Dean Weston,Filtration Services Group's president, 20 women are at work making these coats while receiving job training.

For GM, the main obstacle in linking this chain was overcoming the low prices offered in Asian plastic recycling centers.

"Even in the U.S., coming from Detroit to North Carolina, flake is expensive," said Bradburn. "Going to Asia cuts our costs by half."

Sabrina Kilmer, global specialty account manager at William T. Burnett Co., said that there were hidden savings in the circular web that werent immediately obvious.

"Finding use for fiber scraps as insulation means that scraps dont have to go to the landfill, which saves money," she said. "Its a lighter part for GM, which means it is fuel efficient and creates better ratings. Its cost-effective in the end."

You have to take care of your suppliers when they go out on a limb for you, or when youre competing with other fabrics coming in overseas.

Building supplier relationships is a strategy aspect, borrowed from biomimicry, that is integral to the circular economy web.

"You have to take care of your suppliers when they go out on a limb for you, or when youre competing with other fabrics coming in overseas," said Bradburn. Learning how to use recycled fabrics in an environmentally conscious way and repurpose extra fabric is a skill that pays off; other companies "will now come to Sabrina [at W.T. Burnett & Co.] and want her to do it for them."

If supply webs are dynamic and interconnected, the circular economy can help solve many social and economic issues at once, including business resilience.

Continued here:

GM, Steelcase see a web of opportunity in the circular economy - GreenBiz

Not that long ago, energy was forecast as a cornerstone of Mississippis economy.

In his first state-of-the-state speech, newly elected Gov. Phil Bryant called the state a leader in the energy economy.

From nuclear plants to gas pipelines, our energy economy will drive Mississippis economic growth into the 21st century, he said in January 2012.

Gov. Bryant continued: To enhance and grow our energy economy, we should look no further than our own Gulf of Mexico. We are proceeding on a thoughtful, steady course for off-shore energy recovery in a limited area primarily southeast of Mississippis Barrier Islands. This recovery effort could produce 350 billion cubic feet of natural gas to help fuel America and Mississippis economy.

Five years later, those plans have lost considerable steam. After a boom in natural gas drilling, oil and gas prices plummeted, grinding fossil fuel production in Mississippi and nationwide to considerably lower rates. Even though the energy sector represents a relatively small portion of the states overall economy, in these anemic fiscal times, this reduction in revenue has had far-reaching effects.

I think the downturn in drilling and exploration has had more of an impact on our overall economy than some of us, particularly (the Revenue Estimating Group, the five top financial officials in the state who make budget recommendations to the Legislature), anticipated, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves Reeves told Mississippi Today in June.

There is some good news, though. Lisa Ivshin, executive director of the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board, in January said oil and gas prices could start improving by 2018.

State Economist Darrin Webb also foresees a slow uptick in oil prices. According to a recent economic briefing he gave the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, oil is not expected to reach $100 per barrel until 2024-2025, but the states rig count has surged 76 percent since May, suggesting a sharp rebound in energy sector investment.

As the governor and other state officials confront capital challenges during the 2017 legislative session, central questions arise: How did predictions of a robust energy economy go wrong, and are things finally looking up for the states energy plans?

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS

Before Mississippis energy economy went awry, the sector was valuable to the states overall well-being.

Oil and gas severance taxes, which produce revenues based on the value of oil, natural gas and other raw materials produced, normally make up a little more than one percent of general fund revenue the Mississippi Department of Revenue collects year after year. (A portion of oil and gas revenues also goes to Mississippi counties.)

In fiscal year 2016, oil and gas revenues from this tax totaled $26.5 million.

Energy production has additional benefits, such as revenue collected from employment-related taxes, income taxes, consumption taxes and sales taxes. (This excludes the wages of energy sector workers who live in Mississippi but work at plants and refineries in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma.)

In 2015, the energy sector accounted for $6.7 billion of the states $105.8 billion gross domestic product, according to a study by the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center, a research unit of Mississippi State University.

The energy sector in 2015 also provided a total of 59,734 jobs in Mississippi, the study states.

However, in the past several years state officials have had difficulty forecasting exactly how much money oil and gas revenues would bring in, often guessing too high.

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If officials estimate too high and oil and gas revenues dont match those estimates, this could negatively impact services paid for with the states general fund.

Back in fiscal year 2011, oil revenues were doing well coming in about 35 percent higher than expected at $67.4 million, even though gas revenues came up about 11 percent short at $13.3 million compared to the states $15 million estimate.

In fiscal year 2016, oil and gas revenues both produced significantly lower revenues than expected, resulting in a $45.3 million difference between estimated revenue and actual revenue. According to the Mississippi Department of Revenue, oil revenues were $23 million, more than 64 percent lower than the estimate. Gas revenues in fiscal year 2016 were $3.5 million, more than 50 percent lower than estimated.

Patrick Sullivan, president of the Mississippi Energy Institute, a nonprofit policy group focused on energy-related economic development in Mississippi, said the Legislature had to make mid-year budget cuts in fiscal year 2016 partly due to lagging estimates for the oil and gas severance taxes.

They had accounted for a decline, but apparently they didnt estimate one that was big enough, Sullivan said.

For the first six months of fiscal year 2017, oil and gas revenues again are below estimated amounts.

Part of a national trend

The states energy economy reflects a broader trend taking place from the shale plays of Pennsylvania to the oil fields of Texas.

Advances in oil and natural gas production technologies such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing led to the so-called shale revolution that has significantly increased production of oil and natural gas in the United States.

According to a report by the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, a research center at the University of Texas at Austin, this correlated with a rise in employment, with the oil and gas industry adding 169,000 jobs between 2010 and 2012.

In 2013, Gov. Bryant approved legislation that reduced the states tax rate for oil and natural gas companies that use horizontal drilling as part of his Energy Works: Mississippis Energy Roadmap plan aimed at strengthening the states pro-business environment.

While this method of drilling boosted jobs across the country, it was also steeped in controversy surrounding health and safety risks.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses huge amounts of water that must be transported to fracking sites. Environmentalists say potentially carcinogenic chemicals used in the process may escape and contaminate groundwater around the fracking site. The industry suggests pollution incidents are the results of bad practice, rather than an inherently risky technique. The Environmental Protection Agency released a report in December that suggests that hydraulic fracturing does have the potential to affect drinking water resources in the U.S.

Then, in 2014, crude oil prices fell sharply from around $112 per barrel to about $62 per barrel as global production exceeded demand , according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The downturn in the price of oil, and consequently oil production, hurt states that depend heavily on oil and gas revenues, such as Wyoming, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.

Although Mississippi isnt a major player in oil and gas, the budget felt the pinch of the price drop, nonetheless.

Mississippi is seeing a decline of revenues in this area, and it hurt when we saw they had to cut budgets last year, Sullivan said. But in comparison, its not as bad as states that are larger producing states far more dependent on those revenue sources.

State economist Darrin Webb

Webb said the state always strives to be as accurate as possible with its estimates, but large swings in energy prices over the past few years have contributed to the volatility in tax collections.

We have been very conservative in our sales tax estimate and yet revenues have been below our estimate, Webb said. I believe the layoffs and pay cuts in the oil industry have limited sales tax collections.

But Webb said he sees oil prices are gradually rising.

I think oil prices dropped below $30 per barrel sometime early last year, and they are now over $50, Webb said. The gains are coming from both reduced supply and increased demand.

This is partly due to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, in November announcing that the cartel would reduce oil production.

Webb said oil prices will rise as the world economy strengthens, but likely with a gradual increase rather than a sharp spike. The state can expect to dole out more accurate forecasts for oil and gas severance as prices stabilize, Webb said.

Then, as oil prices see more improvement, Webb said, surely some energy projects being developed for Mississippi should kick into gear again.

ENERGYS FUTURE FRONTIERS

Though oil and natural gas prices are gradually ticking upward, some experts are looking to new and emerging technologies to shore up the sagging energy economy.

The Kemper County Energy Facility is currently scheduled for completion by Feb. 28. Mississippi Power officials have said the facility, once it is operating on nearby lignite, would protect its customers from price spikes in fuel sources such as coal or natural gas.

Plus, electricity will pump from the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station for at least two more decades, since the plant in December had its operating license renewed through Nov. 1, 2044.

The future of renewables in the state is good, some industry experts say.

Mississippi is getting closer to producing hydropower for the first time. Four dams on Arkabutla, Sardis, Enid and Grenada Lakes will be retrofitted in the next two to three years to produce enough power for more than 15,000 homes annually. Project construction is expected to kick off between 2017 and 2018, while the hydropower portion of the dams is expected to come on line between 2018 and 2019.

Then theres the proposed electricity transmission line called the Southern Cross Transmission Project. If approved by Mississippi regulators, construction is expected to start in 2018, with plans of delivering power to the Deep South in 2021.

Louie Miller, state director of the Sierra Clubs Mississippi Chapter, said he expects to see more promotion of the Mississippi Public Service Commissions net metering rule, a system that allows ratepayers to offset the cost of power by using solar panels, then selling any surplus power generated back to the power grid.

This is groundbreaking-type stuff that weve been working on for a number of years, Miller said.

Chairman Brandon Presley said the Mississippi Public Service Commission is working on requiring annual resource-planning reports from utility companies that he hopes will kick off this year.

This annual requirement would encourage utilities to examine which resources would best fit their customers needs, rather than a piecemeal approach, Presley said.

Ive been arguing for this for years, so I hope by the spring of 2017 we can roll out true, annual resource planning by each electric company that has commission and staff input so that we can be doing appropriate planning to keep rates low and to take advantage of resources that are out there, Presley said.

Excerpt from:

The sputtering energy economy: Can it be revved up? - Meridian Star

The Kentucky Main Street Program (KYMS) announced this week that39 participating communities reported cumulative investment of $109,741,515 in their commercial downtown districts in 2016, a number that includes $75,070,029 of private investment matched by $30,920,494 in public improvements. This total was up significantly from the $76 million of cumulative investment reported by 44 communities in 2015.

Administered by the Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office (KHC), Kentucky Main Street is the oldest statewide downtown economic revitalization program in the nation, based on the National Main Street Center (NMSC) Four-Point Approach emphasizing organization, promotion, design and economic vitality. Since the programs inception in 1979, KYMS can document more than $3.9 billion of public-private investment throughout the Commonwealth.

The revitalization statistics were announced during the KYMS Winter Meeting in Frankfort, which began Wednesday with an advocacy day at the Capitol, where local directors displayed exhibits about their programs and met with legislators. The day concluded with both House and Senate floor resolutions, introduced by Rep. Chad McCoy of Bardstown and Sen. Robin Webb of Grayson, respectively, which were adopted in each chamber by voice vote.

According to the resolutions, Kentucky Main Street is at its core a self-help program, locally administered and funded through private investment partnered with public support, which achieves success by addressing a variety of issues that face traditional business districts and re-establishing downtown as the communitys focal point and center of activity.

In addition to statewide investment numbers, the resolutions also noted that in 2016, Kentucky Main Street communities reported:

1,452 new jobs created in Main Street districts 234 new businesses created 81 new housing units in downtowns 198 building rehabilitation projects completed $51,433,241 invested in historic building rehabilitation

Directors met at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet building to hear program updates and special guest speakers, including presentations on bicycle and pedestrian projects and Tax Increment Financing.

Also on Thursday, KYMS Administrator Kitty Dougoud announced that 29 communities have achieved accreditation for 2017 as certified by both Kentucky Main Street and the National Main Street Center. These areBardstown, Bellevue, Cadiz, Campbellsville, Carrollton, Covington, Cynthiana, Danville, Dawson Springs, Frankfort, Guthrie, Harrodsburg, Henderson, LaGrange, London, Maysville, Morehead, Murray, New Castle, Paducah, Perryville, Pikeville, Pineville, Princeton, Shelbyville, Springfield, Taylorsville, WilliamsburgandWinchester. Accredited programs have met all of the 10 performance standards set forth by NMSC.

Affiliate programs have met at least five of the 10 accreditation standards, and Network programs are those in the beginning phases of the program or in some form of transition. Those earning Affiliate status areMarion, Paintsville, Scottsville,and theTri-Citiesprogram includingBenham, CumberlandandLynch; and Network programs areDayton, Middlesboro, NicholasvilleandWayland.

Annual reinvestment statistics are collected from all participating Accredited, Affiliate and Network communities.

Kentucky Main Streets mission is to prioritize the preservation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings as the framework supporting downtown revitalization and economic development strategies. Participation requires local commitment and financial support, with a Main Street director to administer the program in partnership with a volunteer board. In turn, KHC provides technical and design assistance, training and educational opportunities, on-site visits, a resource center, national consultants and grant funding, when available.

The economic and community impact of the Kentucky Main Street Program has been particularly dramatic in rural and small towns across the Commonwealth, said Regina Stivers, Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet of Tourism, Arts and Heritage. By helping preserve historic resources unique to each community, focusing on small businesses, and creating a halo effect that encourages additional investment, the program supports the cabinets mission of improving quality of life and enhancing opportunities for heritage tourism.

For more about Kentucky Main Street, visitwww.heritage.ky.gov/mainstreetor contactKitty Dougoud, 502-564-7005, ext. 127.

Story provided by: Kentucky.org

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Kentucky Main Street Program Communities Contributed $110M to State Economy in 2016 - WMKY

President Mugabe

President Mugabe turns 93 tomorrow, another milestone for the icon who has delivered national socio-economic development and liberation in its multiple facets.

He led during the liberation struggle in the 1970s. It was a difficult struggle which needed nerves of steel and a clear focus for those leading it. Some unfortunately fell in that armed conflict, and others renounced it when it got tough. Yet the President persisted and persevered as one of the leaders of that phase of our struggle. On April 18, 1980, political liberation came.

Immediately after Independence, President Mugabe set out to improve access to education for the majority. He knew that the minds of our people needed a formal education for them to be liberated and be able to grasp issues at a superior level. To attain this, education had to be made free so that even the poorest of the poor could access it. Thanks to this policy, millions attained basic education in the 1980s while others proceeded to acquire higher and tertiary education. They got educated enough to think and act more clearly and from a Zimbabwean perspective. This was important to decolonise the mind, liberate the minds of our people. Now Zimbabwe has the highest literacy rate in Africa and our education system is respected worldwide.

Also, he has led the way in delivering the economy to the people of Zimbabwe, another very difficult phase towards the total liberation of the people and their natural resources. In this phase he didnt have to seek guns from China, Russia and other countries in the Eastern bloc as he did in the 1970s. It was a struggle of ideas, minus guns. It started with his strong support for affirmative action in the 1990s. He personally and through the successive Governments he led, supported economic indigenisation through pressure groups such as the Indigenous Business Development Centre, Affirmative Action Group, Indigenous Business Womens Organisation and Sangano Munhumutapa in the quest to open up economic opportunities for black people who were systematically excluded in 90 years of colonialism.

It was clear to him that on its own, political liberation is hollow if it did not come with indigenous control of the economy. As a result of that understanding, many indigenous people started making inroads into previously white-dominated sectors of the economy banking, manufacturing, tourism and hospitality and so on. This laid a solid foundation for the likes of Roger Boka, Philip Chiyangwa, Jane Mutasa, Nigel Chanakira, Mutumwa Mawere, Nicholas Vingirayi, Shingi Mutasa, Ben Mucheche, Chemist Siziba, Strive Masiyiwa, James Makamba and others to prosper later on.

In saying this, we are not suggesting that President Mugabe and his Government materially supported all these businesspeople. Yes it was possible in some cases. However, the Government created that environment that inspired indigenous entrepreneurship, giving the people that understanding that blacks can run successful companies. That helped immensely in delivering economic liberation to the formerly oppressed masses and now Zimbabwe has one of the most indigenised economies in Africa.

It didnt end there. In 2000, the President launched yet another phase of economic liberation with the fast-track land reform and redistribution programme. Prior to that exercise, the land was one of the most exclusive sectors of the economy. In large measure, that was a result of a clause in the Lancaster House agreement that bound the new post-independence government to pursue the willing buyer, willing seller principle in democratising ownership of agricultural land. The difficulty was that only a few whites were willing to sell their land. The few who did, demanded above market prices that the new Government could not afford, hence that principle was dropped in the national interest.

Through the 2000 approach, the President decided that we go the revolutionary way to liberate the land from settler occupation. Through the land reform and redistribution programme, as many as 11 million hectares of land has been acquired from some 4 500 whites, mainly of British stock and has been allocated to at least 380 000 blacks. That programme has gone a long way in economically liberating blacks and decongesting rural areas.

Through his able leadership, the President made sure that the economic liberation agenda was underpinned by the law. To this end the Government came up with the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act in 2008. The law stipulates that any resource-based businesses must be majority owned by locals at 51 percent with foreigners owning 49 percent. In addition to that, economic indigenisation is enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe promulgated in 2013. This will go a long way in establishing a constitutional framework for blacks to be economically liberated.

The man who made this, and more, possible is President Mugabe, a liberator par excellence, whose 93rd birthday we mark tomorrow. He is an accomplished leader with the courage to take on the strength of the West. Indeed his birthday is a momentous occasion which gives us all an opportunity to celebrate the sterling work he has done for his country and the work he will do for his country well into the future.

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EDITORIAL COMMENT: Let's celebrate President's birthday with ... - Chronicle

Time will tell if former prime minister John Howard's visit to Perth helps Colin Barnett to an extraordinary election victory or amounts to a farewell from one enduring political figure to another.

Australia's second-longest serving PM and the WA Premier, who will turn 78 and 67 respectively this year, strolled through central Perth's Murray St mall and greeted mostly friendly strangers on Friday morning.

Labor leader Mark McGowan had similarly used the political star power of former WA Premier Geoff Gallop on Thursday, with the pair catching a train to the city from the former's home in Rockingham.

Despite most polls pointing to a Labor win on March 11, Mr Howard disagrees.

"I believe the government will be returned because in the end West Australians will sensibly decide it is better to hang on to the government that's done stuff and protected Western Australia than take a risk on somebody who's inexperienced," he told reporters.

Sport including the prospect of this year's Ashes cricket being played at Perth's new stadium dominated the conversation as the pair went in search of a coffee and before journalists began asking Mr Howard about the election.

"The great thing about Colin is he's done things. The state premier is meant to look after schools and the education system of Western Australia has been more innovative with government schools than any other state with the introduction of what some people call charter schools," he said.

"Western Australia was carrying the country for a number of years and let's face it, if it hadn't been for the resources boom in Western Australia a few years ago the whole nation would have been in trouble.

"I know the West Australian economy is not quite as robust as it was but that's not the fault of the state government, it is the natural swings and roundabouts of a resource-based economy and there are signs to me that the WA economy is coming back."

The pair attracted one or two less-than-pleasant greetings with a passer-by shouting "shame" at Mr Howard and another telling Mr Barnett he was wasting money on projects like the new stadium while hospitals and schools were suffering.

Mr Barnett pointed out that a lot of people relatively new to Australia but who remembered Mr Howard as PM were among those to warmly greet him, including a Malaysian man and Ghanaian man.

When the rest of the country turned against him for Kevin Rudd in 2007, there was actually a swing towards the coalition in WA where it gained seats.

Speaking of Mr Rudd, the former PM criticised his predecessor on Friday for giving his blessing to the WA Liberals' preferences deal with Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

"Utter disgrace from John Howard. He defended Hanson in 1996. Now once again.Pushing the Liberals further to the right," he tweeted.

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Howard gives Barnett a hand on hustings - The West Australian

One person's trash is another person's - jelly jar?

Pull up your boots, don your rain gear, and prepare to take out the trash out of the estuary that is.

The 10th Biennial Nehalem Estuary Cleanup is fast approaching, so everyone is invited to help the cause on March 11, for the opportunity to spend a day making a lasting difference in the bay. A debris-free estuary is important for salmon, wildlife, and the health of our communities.

Orientation begins at 7:30 a.m. at the Wheeler Masonic Hall at Handy Creek Bakery, 63 North Highway 101, in downtown Wheeler. Parking is available on the south side of the building. Following the introduction, groups of volunteers will spread out around the bay to walk the high tide line collecting debris. Trucks and boats will collect the materials, returning it to Wheelers Waterfront Park for sorting, recycling and disposal.

Volunteers of all ages and abilities are welcome to join this exciting event. Opportunities range from collecting debris, sorting materials, helping with set-up and take down, and food service. Nehalem Bay State Park will have special activities for children that will help them understand why coastal cleanups are so important.

Also, science educator Peter Walczak will lead a youth crew cleaning up debris along the state park jetty. Youth and family volunteers can join the 7:30 a.m. orientation in Wheeler, or go directly to the boat ramp in Nehalem Bay State Park starting at 8:30 a.m., where there will be an orientation and ongoing educational activities!

Bring drinking water and your own snack or sack lunch. This is a rain or shine event. Wear waterproof boots, work gloves, and layers as needed.

After the cleanup, starting at 5 p.m., volunteers are invited to the White Clover Grange at 36585 Highway 53, Nehalem, OR 97131 for live music, a chili and cornbread feast, root beer floats, and socializing. You might want to bring a dry change of clothes for the party.

New this year, we are offering the opportunity to register online in advance of the event. Volunteers can sign-up by going to http://www.eventbrite.com and searching for 10th Biennial Nehalem Estuary Cleanup or by visiting http://www.nehalemtrust.org/events. This will allow for a smooth orientation in the morning and a quick start to the cleanup.

Back again by popular demand is the Nehalem Estuary Cleanup Photo Contest! Volunteers and attendees are invited to submit photos from the day of the event to photocontest@nehalemtrust.org by March 15. The winning photographer will receive a gift certificate to a local business and be featured in print and online press about the event.

In 2015 alone, over 150 volunteers dedicated their time, skills, and energy to make our bay clean and healthy. We pulled 2.37 tons of trash and 915 lbs. of recyclable and reusable material from the estuary. Recyclable materials were comprised of 110 lbs. of reusable items, 302 lbs. of metal, 240 lbs. of glass, 120 lbs. of plastic, and 34 lbs. of paper. A few of our more interesting finds included 1 jar of grape jelly, 1 mattress, 1 port-a-potty door, 14 railroad spikes, 21 shoes (including 1 pair), 26 hazardous items, 65 balls, 105 flip flops, 350 shotgun shells, and 1 genuine message in a bottle. What will you discover this year?

Community partners Lower Nehalem Community Trust, Lower Nehalem Watershed Council, CARTM, Nehalem Bay State Park, North Coast Land Conservancy, and Tillamook Estuaries Partnership are pleased to announce that this event is part of Explore Nature, a series of hikes, walks, paddles and outdoor adventures. Hosted throughout Tillamook County by a consortium of Conservation organizations, these meaningful, nature-based experiences highlight the unique beauty of Tillamook County and the work being done to preserve and conserve the areas natural resources and natural resource-based economy. This effort is partially funded by the Economic Development Council of Tillamook County and Visit Tillamook Coast.

We are grateful for the outpouring of support from so many businesses and individuals. We thank Handy Creek Bakery, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Monica Gianopulos, The Roost, Manzanita Fresh Foods, Mother Natures Natural Foods, Manzanita Market Grocery & Deli, Bread and Ocean, Manzanita News & Espresso, Kingfisher Farms, the City of Wheeler, the Wheeler Liquor Store, Bills Tavern, Mohler Co-op and many more yet to come.

If you can't join us for the day of the event, please consider making a donation by visiting http://www.nehalemtrust.org or by mail to Lower Nehalem Community Trust, PO Box 496, 532 Laneda Ave., Suite C, Manzanita, OR 97130. Include "Estuary Cleanup" in the message section or on the memo line.

For more information, contact Lower Nehalem Watershed Council Coordinator, Alix Lee at lnwc@nehalemtel.net

Read more:

10th Biennial Nehalem Bay Estuary Cleanup set - Tillamook Headlight-Herald

A fiber optic companys $10 million commitment to expanding its high-speed broadband capacity in Decatur could help diversify the citys economy while possibly adding Wi-Fi access to downtown, city officials said.

Southern Light, a Mobile-based company, announced Wednesday morning an agreement with the city of Decatur to expand high-speed broadband capacity.

The company committed to installing at least 50 miles of lines with a 1 terabyte-per-second core capacity in the city for commercial, government and nonprofits. Customers can access up to 100 gigabytes per second.

The company already has about 10 miles of underground fiber optic lines in downtown Decatur. These lines serve City Hall and its Cain Street annexes, the L&N Depot, the Old State Bank, Turner-Surles Community Resource Center, Ogle Stadium, Morgan County Jail and the Morgan County Courthouse.

Rick Paler, executive director of the Decatur Downtown Redevelopment Authority, said Southern Lights service also provides an opportunity to possibly provide open Wi-Fi access in downtown Decatur.

Were working with the city and Southern Light to make that happen, Paler said.

Andy Newton, president and chief executive officer of Southern Light, said the expansion will begin in downtown Decatur and expand outward as businesses sign on as customers. Cost for customers will depend on their service demands.

Newton said his company uses only fiber optic lines, while many of its competitors still use antiquated copper. Our lines are 100 percent fiber, so there arent any bottlenecks.

Mayor Tab Bowling said the franchise agreement with Southern Light does not include any incentives or tax abatements, but Newton said the citys cooperation and lack of fees helped the expansion plans move more quickly.

Were thrilled to now be a gigabyte city, Bowling said Wednesday.

Jeremy Nails, president and CEO of the Morgan County Economic Development Association, said high-speed internet access will help the city in the goal to diversify its economy.

Decatur has been an industrial city since the late 1940s, but city leaders have been vocal in recent years that they want to attract more high-tech companies that pay higher wages.

Its always good to have options for companies in fiber internet, Nails said. Companies like 3-GIS and Magnolia River depend on high speed, and they like being downtown.

3-GIS owner Tom Counts said his search for a dependable high-speed internet service began when his company, which provides Web-based fiber network design and management software, located on Market Street Northeast about 11 years ago.

3-GIS switched to Southern Light about six months ago, and the company is now getting the quality, consistent internet service it has to have, he said.

Were still in the honeymoon period, but its been a fabulous six months, Counts said.

Counts said he believes Decatur must have access to a high-speed internet of at least a gigabyte (per second) if it wants to continue being a successful bedroom community of Huntsville.

Bowling said Southern Lights announcementalsocould be key to helping existing industries such as United Launch Alliance.

ULA is the only company the (U.S.) Department of Defense is using to take payloads into space that impact national security, Bowling said.

Bowling said ULA is preparing to introduce new space vehicles for this service, so we want to find a way in Decatur to help them transition toward producing these vehicles here.

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Officials hope fiber optic expansion helps diversify Decatur's economy - The Decatur Daily

SHRM

Evaluate FLSA for its Ability to Keep Pace with Today's Workplace, SHRM Tells House Subcommittee SHRM WASHINGTON The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is out of step with today's technology-based economy and limits employers' ability to provide important flexible work arrangements, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) testified today. and more »

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Evaluate FLSA for its Ability to Keep Pace with Today's Workplace, SHRM Tells House Subcommittee - SHRM

To the editor:

Maynard Thomsons thoughts on the county farm continue to concern me. His letter to The Conway Daily Sun on Feb. 3 detailed, yet again, his thoughts on why the farm should be sold to the highest bidder, ideally for development.

Mr. Thomsons articulate letters to the editor indicate that he has spent a good amount of time pondering this subject but still, I feel the need to offer another viewpoint: conservation.

The county farm and lands represent 894 acres of farm and forest land owned by the great taxpayers of Carroll County. It is something that I, as one of those taxpayers, take great pride in. Not only do these lands hold great potential to be central to a burgeoning local foods movement, they offer much more to the area ecologically.

Well-managed farmland and forests are some of the best ways we can protect our watershed, sequester carbon, and maintain viable wildlife populations. These open spaces act as natures wastewater treatment plants, soaking up excess nutrients and sediment before they become an issue in our waterways. They offer prime habitat for grassland birds and other species that help pollinate our plants and control pests. There has been much research on how to quantify the value of such ecosystem services. The USDA Forest Services Payments for Watershed Services is a great example of how we can give monetary value to the services that forests and wetlands provide. Though I am not suggesting that implementation of such a program should be on the agenda for the Carroll County Commissioners, I do suggest that taking into account how the taxpayer benefits from undeveloped land is critical when trying to achieve the actual opportunity costs Mr. Thomson is concerned about.

From another angle, open spaces such as farms and forests here in Carroll County not only help maintain water and air quality, they are the backbone to our tourism-based economy. These spaces are so important that many of our regions economic development plans have specifically included the preservation of farm and forest lands within their strategies.

The North Country Councils Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy notes that the North Country is a working landscape of successful farms and actively managed and productive forestland in which soil, water, and related natural resources are conserved using sustainable practices and notes that a working landscape reflects the preservation of open space through support of natural resource industries and is one essence of rural character. In a natural resource dependent economy, it is especially important to manage resources for long-term gains.

While Ossipee is not identified as part of the North Country, I think its message is quite applicable to the county farm.

We would be wise to carefully consider the impacts of our land use decisions on the ecological health of our natural resources, and therefore, our economy.

Jessica Wright

Conway

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Jessica Wright: Well-managed farmland benefits community, watershed - Conway Daily Sun

In Aravind Adigas The White Tiger, the narrator makes an insightful comment about the role of geography in development: Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well-off. But the river brings darkness to India.

The Indian growth take-off since 1980 is associated with Peninsular India, the states that the narrator in astutely associated with better geographybeing close to the oceanwhich development experience has long confirmed as conferring special advantages. These statesGujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradeshhave indeed grown faster and advanced more rapidly economically vis--vis others.

As a result, they have also been a greater focus of research attention in comparison to other statesthe Other Indias, the India of forests, of natural resources, and of special category status. They are interesting in their own right because they have conformed to other models of development. One such is the model based on aid, most applicable to the special category states in the North-East, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

In the international context, foreign aid has been shown to create a number of adverse effects. Aid perpetuates resource dependency, in the sense that since revenues are being provided from outside, recipient countries may fail to or have little incentive to develop their own tax bases or their institutions. And it is institutions that have been found to be critical for growth, much more than overall resource availability.

Another potential downside of aid is that it could trigger the Dutch disease, named after the impact that discovery of natural gas in the North Sea had on the domestic economy in the Netherlands. This windfall caused the real exchange rate to appreciate as the extra income was spent domestically, pushing up the price of non-tradeables, such as services geared to the local economy. The higher prices for services then eroded profitability in export and import-competing industries, de-industrializing the economy, with the share of manufacturing in the economy falling. Do we see similar consequences within India?

To attempt an answer, the first task is to define a concept akin to aid in the Indian context. State governments have received funds from the Centregross devolution which is the sum of: (i) share of Central taxes, as stipulated by finance commissions; (ii) Plan and non-Plan grants; and (iii) Plan and non-Plan loans and advances (of course, the Plan/non-Plan distinction has now been abolished).

Devolution is not all aid but embodies a strong redistributive element. We isolate this elementRedistributive Resource Transfers, (RRT)as gross devolution adjusted for some benchmark for the normal resources a state can expect to receive, which we define as the states share in aggregate gross domestic product (or alternatively as a states share in own tax revenues). Thus, RRT are transfers over and above states contribution to GDP (or taxes) and serve as a useful, if imperfect, measure of aid.

There are two key differences between RRT and traditional foreign aid. RRT are intra-country transfers and do not augment overall national disposable income like foreign aid does; second, the donor-recipient relationship is also very different because states benefiting from transfers are part of the national governance structures that determine them.

Figure 1 shows the ranking of states, in 2015, in the descending order of RRT received in per capita terms. The top 10 recipients are: Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Assam.

The yellow and green dotted lines in Figure 1 show, respectively, the all-India urban and rural annualized per capita poverty lines for 2015. Annual per capita RRT flows for all the North-Eastern states (except Assam) and Jammu and Kashmir have exceeded the annual per capita consumption expenditure that defines the all-India poverty lines, especially the rural one. In other words, RRT are substantial in magnitude.

We then correlate a states RRT with a number of outcomes. The results are striking. Higher RRT seem to be associated with:

l Lower per capita consumption

l Lower gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth

l Lower fiscal effort (defined as the share of own tax revenue in GSDP)

l Smaller share of manufacturing in GSDP, and

l Weaker governance.

Figures 2-5 depict these findings. The results turn out to be quite robust (to alternative definitions of RRT) and there is suggestive evidence of causality (from RRT to economic outcomes and governance). There are a few states which are exceptions (for example, Tripura with respect to per capita GSDP growth or Mizoram with regard to governance). The details of the methodology (including the index used to proxy overall governance) are outlined in Chapter 13 of the Economic Survey 2016-17. These results indicate that all the pathologies associated with foreign aid appear to manifest in the context of intra-country transfers too.

If the evidence suggests an RRT curse, what are the policy implications?

Clearly, the solution cannot be to dispense with RRT altogether, since in a federal system the Centre must play a redistributive role because it will always have to redirect resources to under-developed states. Rather, the Centre will need to ensure that the resources it redistributes are used more productively.

Of course, it is possible that the RRT curse originates from poor connectivity and poor infrastructurephysical, financial and digitalthat most of these states, and certainly the North-Eastern states, suffer from. Enhancing connectivity on a war footing (as the government has attempted for financial inclusion with the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, or PMJDY, expediting the optical fibre network, etc.) will have a moderating effect. Beyond facilitating connectivity, there are a number of ways in which the architecture of redistributive resource flows could be modified.

One possibility will be to redirect a quantum of RRT directly to households as part of a universal basic income (UBI) scheme in relevant states. Targeting issues plague existing development interventions and transfers directly to households could eliminate a large majority of these problems.

Another possibility would be to find ways to offset the tendency of states receiving high RRT to relax their own tax effort. Perhaps future Finance Commissions could revert to the practice of the 13th finance commission of explicitly conditioning transfers on the tax effort of states, and perhaps to an even greater extent.

Given that some high RRT recipient states have performed better than others, the capacity of states to utilize funds efficiently plays an important role. To encourage better governance, the fund transfer mechanism could explicitly include a few monitorable institutional indicators as criteria for resource transfers.

In sum, large bountiesin the form of redistributed resourcescan create surprising pathologies, even in democratic India. Recognizing and responding to them creatively will be important to learn the lessons of development experience in India and around the world.

The article is an abridged version of chapter 13 of The Economic Survey, 2016-17.

Arvind Subramanian, Rangeet Ghosh, Syed Zubair Noqvi and Kapil Patidar worked on this years Economic Survey.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

First Published: Tue, Feb 14 2017. 11 20 PM IST

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The pathologies of redistributive resource transfers - Livemint

NEW DELHI: Reacting to a report citing India will need no coal-based power plant after 2025, the World Coal Association (WCA) said it is not credible to suggest that the country can achieve universal energy access and develop its economy without coal in the next 10 years, regardless of the country's investment in renewables.

WCA chief executive officer Benjamin Sporton said, "India's energy needs are too huge for any suggestion that it will not need coal in the future. In a country where 244 million have no electricity and 819 no access to clean cooking facilities, it is impossible to find a solution without coal being part of the energy mix- Coal is essential to global efforts to achieving universal energy access. "

The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) on Monday said that excess power generation capacity provides India an opportunity to shift completely to green energy. The study by TERI said if the country can halve storage technology prices by 2024 it can do without the need for new coal-based plants. TERI report is partially in line with a recent report by the Central Electricity Authority that said the country does not need new coal based power generation capacity till 2022.

WCA said for a country like India, it's not a choice between coal and renewables - both are needed and both will play a big role. Renewables have an important role to play but coal will remain the driving force behind electrification and industrialisation and according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal will continue to make the largest contribution to electricity generation in India through to 2040.

WCA said although the competitiveness of renewables and gas-fired technology in India is likely to improve over time, coal is expected to remain the most affordable option through to 2035.

Given India is exploring emerging technology such as battery storage we would encourage them to also support CCS. In India there is an unsubsidised, fully commercial CCUS facility which has been operating since 2015. This CCUS project from Carbon Clean Solutions in the port of Tuticorin has been able to significantly reduce the costs associated with capturing the CO2.

"There is an assumption that we can get rid of coal, and only by doing so can we meet climate objectives. This is false. Coal plays a critical role in the world's energy mix and is going to do so for a very long time to come, especially for a country like India where the need for stable, reliable and affordable energy has never been greater," Sporton said.

See the article here:

India can't write-off coal-based energy so soon: World Coal Association - Economic Times

As a former member of Maines Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission, I have learned to remain humbly silent about any prognostications I may have made. Nonetheless, I find it gratifying that just a week after saying that we would do well to pay more attention to principles than to partisanship, the headlines proclaim that we are at least so far still a nation with an independent judiciary based on the principle of a constitutional separation of powers. However the issues of executive power and immigration reform may ultimately be resolved in the case of temporary bans, it is clear that we all need to be involved in formulation of whatever new social contract emerges from the constitutional turmoil in which we are now embroiled.

To my mind, the most important element such a contract must include is an expanded version of economic adjustment assistance. It is often forgotten that many of the central elements of the implicit social contract that emerged nationally in the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s Social Security, unemployment insurance, wage, hour and worker organization regulations were not created by our federal government, but borrowed from the most successful experiments conducted in a variety of state governments. And these programs were, in turn, the product of collaborations among social activists, labor unions, academic researchers and philanthropists.

Ultimately, these elements of the New Deal social contract were based on an evolving understanding of certain of our foundational goals. Individual liberty and equality before the law could, in the industrialized world of the 1930s, have practical meaning only within a community that created programs that at least tried to ensure some degree of equality of opportunity to all citizens. Hence, a tax on wages that went into a fund to ensure that those who had worked for years could enjoy some level of financial support for their last, non-working, years. Hence, another tax on those working today to go into a fund to help those who may lose their jobs tomorrow.

The traditional New Deal economic adjustment assistance programs worked well into the 1980s, but they are clearly inadequate to the demands of the post-1980s globalized economy. And just as the programs of the 1930s emerged to address the socio-economic changes from the agriculture-based economy of the 19th century, so programs today must recognize and adapt to the globalized and digitized economy of the 21st.

Through the better part of the 20th century, unemployment insurance was relatively effective in buffering the worst of the business cycles. When business declined and workers were laid off, funds collected when they were working could be used to tide them over until business improved and they were called back. Since the 1980s, fewer and fewer workers were ever called back. Each recession served as motivation for businesses to become more productive to produce more with fewer workers.

What the unemployed need today in addition to pure wage replacement is the three Rs: re-engagement, retraining and relocation assistance. To anyone following the labor market closely, it is obvious that skilled and motivated human beings are increasingly the scarcest and most valuable resource on earth. Designing and implementing the programs to meet this need will be the battleground from which some political party will become the majority party for the next generation. Will it be the Democrats? The Republicans? The Greens? The nationalists? Who knows, but if someone doesnt, the United States experiment in democracy will certainly fail.

In the interests of focusing discussion, heres a proposal: Reduce the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. Create a federal-state worker learning assistance program modeled after the federal-state unemployment assistance program. Dedicate all federal and, where applicable, state corporate income tax revenue collected to this newly created worker learning assistance program. Include in this dedication all corporate income tax collected on repatriation of any of the estimated $2.4 trillion of corporate income held abroad by U.S. corporations on earnings they made outside the U.S. Include an additional 5 percent credit on earnings repatriated within six months of enactment of this program. Establish a board comparable to the National Science Foundation to solicit, evaluate and allocate money to proposals for use of these funds from schools (public and private), universities, labor unions and any other entity with ideas for helping workers displaced by business disruptions caused by international trade or abrupt technological change.

Such a program would, I believe, do more to make real for the 21st century the fundamental American principle of equality of opportunity than any other public program we could design. It would simultaneously productively disrupt our glacially slow educational institutions, more fully exploit the opportunities presented by the digital communications revolution and begin to stem the alienation and hopelessness that feed the anger and addictions that so threaten our social fabric.

Charles Lawton, Ph.D., is a consulting economist. He can be contacted at:

[emailprotected]

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Charles Lawton: Here's a proposal to create real equality of job opportunity - Press Herald

Do resource booms enhance growth in a country or lead to a crowding out of other tradable industries, such as manufacturing? Traditional theories suggest that crowding-out effects dominate. The idea is that gains from the boom largely accrue to the profitable sectors servicing the resource industry, while the rest of the country suffers adverse effects from increased wage costs, an appreciated exchange rate and a lack of competitiveness as a result of the boom.

In the research literature, such a phenomenon is commonly been referred to as Dutch disease, based on similar experiences in the Netherlands in the 1960s. But traditional studies of Dutch disease do not account for productivity spillovers between the booming resource sector and other non-resource sectors. We put forward a simple theory model that allows for such spillovers. We then quantify these spillovers empirically, allowing for measurement of both resource and spending effects through a large panel of variables.

Using mineral abundant Australia and petroleum rich Norway as representative cases studies, we find that a booming resource sector has positive effects on non-resource sectors, effects that have not been captured in previous analysis. The wider benefits for the economy are particularly evident when taking account of productivity spillovers and learning-by-doing between industries. The most positively affected sectors from a resource boom are construction and services. Yet, manufacturing also benefits, though less so than the other industries.

Augmenting traditional Dutch disease theories

Experience in resource-rich countries suggests that there may be important spillovers from the resource sectors to other industries. Norway is good example. As the development of offshore oil often demands complicated technical solutions, this could in itself generate positive knowledge externalities that benefit other sectors. And since these sectors trade with other industries in the economy, there may be learning by doing spillovers to the overall economy.

Traditional Dutch disease theories do not account for such spillovers. The model developed in this study does take account of them. We allow for direct productivity spillovers from the resource sector to both the traded and non-traded sector.

We further assume that there is learning-by-doing in the traded and non-traded sectors, as well as learning spillovers between these sectors. Hence, we extend the more traditional model of learning-by-doing with technology spillovers from the resource sector. To the extent that the natural resource sector crowds in productivity in the other sectors, the growth rate in the overall economy will also increase.

The positive effects of a resource boom

We test the predictions from our suggested theoretical model against data by estimating a dynamic factor model that includes separate activity factors for the resource and non-resource sectors in addition to global activity and the real commodity price.

This makes it possible to examine separately the windfall gains associated with resource booms (that is, volume changes) from commodity price changes, while also allowing global demand to affect commodity prices.

The main finding emphasises that there are large and positive spillovers from the exploration of natural resources to the non-resource industries in both Norway and Australia. In particular, in the wake of the resource boom, productivity, output and employment increase for a prolonged period of time in both countries, see Figure 1.

The expansion in Norway is substantial; after one to two years, 25-30per cent of the variation in non-resource GDP is explained by the resource boom, while the comparable numbers are 43-50 per cent for productivity. In Australia, the expansion is more modest: 10-15 per cent of value added in non-mining is explained by the resource boom, while 5-6 per cent of productivity is explained by the same shock.

Examining the different industries, we confirm that value added and employment increase in the non-traded sectors relative to the traded sectors, suggesting a two-speed transmission phase. This is in particular evident in Australia. The most positively affected sectors are construction and business services. Still, and in contrast to the predictions from the traditional Dutch disease theories, manufacturing also benefits from the resource boom, although less so than the other industries see Figure 2.

Notes:

Hilde C. Bjrnlandis Professor of Economics at BI Norwegian Business School and Director at the Center for Applied Macro-and Petroleum economics (CAMP). She is also scientific advisor atthe research department of Norges Bank and member of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council. Her main research interests are applied macroeconomics and time series. Special interests include the study of natural resources, business cycles, andmonetary and fiscal policy. Dr.Bjrnland has published extensively in top international journals. She is also the co-author of the book: Applied Time Series For Macroeconomics. Email:hilde.c.bjornland@bi.no

Leif Anders Thorsrudis a Senior Researcher in Monetary Policy Research at Norges Bank and Researcher II at the BI Norwegian Business School and Center for Applied Macro and Petroleum Economics.He obtained his Ph.D. at the BI Norwegian Business School in 2014. Dr. Thorsruds research on forecasting and energy economics has been published in top field international journals. Currently his research agenda centres on how unstructured data sources can be used to understand macroeconomic fluctuations. He co-authored the book: Applied Time Series For Macroeconomics. Email: leif.a.thorsrud@bi.no

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The 'Dutch disease' reexamined: Resource booms can benefit the wider economy - USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)

(MENAFN - The Peninsula)

Tech giant Siemens, after delivering for more than four decades as a local company in Qatar, has quantified its contribution to society through business in a report titled In Qatar, for Qatar Making real what matters'.

The findings illustrate the company's commitment to the country in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030, as it seeks to support its transition into a diversified and sustainable economy. Siemens outlined its impact by focusing on key pillars in Qatar's plan for the future, including developing local skills, improving quality of life, supporting the drive for innovation and preserving the environment.

As a local company with almost 500 employees, Siemens in Qatar redistributes 60 percent of its profit to local shareholders. From a technology aspect, for example, Siemens contributes to transmitting and distributing more than 60 percent of the power generated in Qatar. It also facilitates electricity and water generation through one of the largest projects in the region that will help boost the country's electricity output by more than 23 percent and water supply by over 25 percent come 2018.

Siemens seeks to further strengthen its position as a digital company and achieve double-digit growth in software, digital services and cloud platforms every year through 2020. Its new MindSphere cloud platform will also be a growth driver, enabling the company for the first time to offer customers in sectors ranging from industry to rail operation a cloud-based, open operating system for the Internet of ings. It will also make it possible to develop and operate apps and digital services.

As Qatar enjoys a period of prosperity and economic progress, the company is supporting its sustainable development with a portfolio of digital solutions. Siemens enables safety and comfort in buildings for working and living environments across Qatar through its building technologies. More than 55,000 sensors and 1 million data points work in unison to ensure fire safety, building automation and security in Qatar.

Throughout the country, 200 buildings are equipped with the company's innovative solutions and advanced technologies.

'As an international company with a strong local presence, we understand the importance of operating in-line with the country's goals and ambitions. " "We have realised that entrepreneurship, innovation and best practice in technology will facilitate Qatar's transition from a resource-based economy to one with knowledge as its foundation. Siemens looks forward to further supporting these aspirations for a sustainable future, as they turn into reality, said Adrian Wood, CEO of Siemens in Qatar. To strengthen its power of innovation, Siemens is planning to increase its investments in research and development (R & D) globally in fiscal 2017 by some 300m to around 5bn. Since fiscal 2014, the company's R & D investments have grown by about 25 percent. A major part of these additional funds are earmarked for automation, digitalisation, decentralised energy systems and the new venturing unit next47.

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Siemens backs Qatar''s economic ambitions with innovation - MENAFN.COM

(MENAFN - Asia Times) As the United States foreign policy under new President Donald Trump is still faltering and China refrains from becoming a full global playmaker, Russia and its post-Soviet helmsman Vladimir Putin are apparently calling the shots in the world stage.

From the Baltic in Europe to the South China Sea in East Asia, a Russian diplomatic cobweb has in fact been spun across the Eurasian continent and its appendices in North Africa. Now, the question is whether Moscow will be able to handle this strategic over-extension, which entails the use of considerable resources, while its economy is in bad shape.

Many believe that the Kremlin's current transcontinental projection will not be halted by the country's economic problems; and this because Russia included in its Soviet configuration has always been an imperial power capable of facing up to structural economic weaknesses.

According to this vision, economic liabilities historically have never prevented the Russian bear from expanding its territorial boundaries to prop up the nation's internal security. In this equation, the Russian rulers would have successfully leveraged on the deeply-rooted patriotic sentiment of their people, who have showed a strong resilience to material shortages through the centuries.

So, encouraged by the perceived vulnerability of the US, which is linked to many factors, among them former President Barack Obama's decision to shift focus from Europe and the Middle East to Asia-Pacific, Donald Trump's shocking electoral triumph, a confused presidential transition and a turbulent start of tenure for the new US commander-in-chief, it is reasonable to expect that Russia will continue to move on many fronts, regardless of its economic woes.

Moscow's hunt for geopolitical influence is indeed remarkable, starting from its squabbling with the European Union (EU) and Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Eastern Europe, where it has been supporting separatist rebel groups in eastern Ukraine after annexing Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin is also developing a robust military apparatus in the Baltic area and reactivating military capabilities in the Arctic region.

The post-Soviet space from the Caucasus to Central Asia obviously remains Russia's strategic backyard. Still, the Kremlin will insist on playing the kingmaker's role in the Syrian crisis while trying to extend its clout in the Middle East and North Africa. In this sense, Moscow is enhancing ties with Egypt, eying a possible part in the Libyan peace process and cautiously monitoring developments in the worn-torn Yemen.

Furthermore, the Russian diplomacy is reaching out to Afghanistan, where it is working to find a diplomatic solution to the current civil war, quite separately from Washington. To conclude, Russia has a visible presence in the Pacific region, where it still has to settle the age-old territorial row with Japan over the Kuril Islands; Moscow is also an important stakeholder in dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat, discreetly teams up with China on the South China Sea territorial disputes and has even promised naval help to the Philippines against piracy in the Sulu and Celebes seas.

Russia/Soviet Union found itself in a similar situation between 1974 and 1979, when it raised the stakes in the confrontation with the US. In the space of six years, in fact, the Kremlin displayed a wide-ranging foreign policy that led many to believe that it was going to win the Cold War. All of this as Washington was struggling with a deep political and identity crisis amid a climate of widespread cultural contestation, marked by President Richard Nixon's resignation due to the Watergate scandal and the country's defeat in the Vietnam War.

Moscow tried to profit from the American apparent disorientation during that period and launched its multi-pronged challenge. It backed communist guerrillas in Central America and sent military 'advisers' in Angola and Mozambique. In these two African countries, which had just gained independence from Portugal, the Russian troops supported along with Cuban soldiers the local Marxist armed formations in their efforts to seize power.

Then, Russian regular and irregular military personnel came to the rescue of Ethiopia as this was fighting the Ogaden War against Somalia. In addition, Moscow strengthened further its ties with the Baathist regime in Syria, buttressed the communist-leaning government in Southern Yemen, where it had naval facilities, and sustained Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia against the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge regime. Lastly, the Soviet Red Army placed the icing on the cake by invading Afghanistan.

This far-flung foreign commitment proved to be largely unsustainable in the short-run. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union was in a critical economic situation, largely dependent on grain and technology supplies from the US, with a centralized and inefficient political system and a natural resource-based economy resembling an underdeveloped country's. A picture that has several similarities with the current health of the Russian economy, hit hard by years of budget deficit. Though a timid recovery is forecast in 2017, at the recent Gaidar Economic Forum, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned the nation against the structural problems of Russia's economy, particularly its technological gap with developed countries, the dependence on commodity export at a time of low oil and gas prices and the excessive public role in the productive processes.

Thus, a hypertrophic foreign conduct, not backed up by a solid economy, contributed to the fall of the Soviet empire along with other geopolitical and cultural factors. If Russia wants to avoid this outcome and protract the 'Putinian Pax' for a while, it will have to eliminate this antinomy; or, at least, it will have to find creative alternatives. The idea of using money and propaganda to bolster the rise of anti-EU and anti-NATO populist movements in Europe could serve this purpose. Unless, like in the 1980s, the Western world comes out with new, effective antidotes to the Russian advance.

Share Tweet Linkedin Email Russia Donald Trump United States China Vladimir Putin NATO Emanuele Scimia Emanuele Scimia is a journalist and foreign policy analyst. He is a contributing writer to the South China Morning Post and the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor. In the past, his articles have also appeared in The National Interest, Deutsche Welle, World Politics Review, The Jerusalem Post and the EUobserver, among others. He has written for Asia Times since 2011.

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Can Russia project power while battered by economic woes ... - MENAFN.COM

by Sean Orr | So Christy Clark somehow thought it would be a good idea to go on Facebook Live. The results were as disastrous/totally benign as you might think.

Watch for yourself as a sea of angry emojis engulfs the premier while she doubles-down on her populist rhetoric in an exercise of pure agitprop. Watch as Vaughn Palmer lobs handpicked softballs from BC Liberal digital influencers.

Watch as she says I think we are implementing those recommendations regarding the recent report on the death of Alex Gervais while rejecting the idea of replacing herembattled B.C. childrens minister.

Watch as she says we are armed and ready to fight Trump on softwood while weve lost 30,000 forest jobs in this province since the B.C. Liberals took power due to a record number of raw log exports.

Watch as she says that Debt Free BC means we have the intention of getting there. Watch as she admits that job creation in Alberta had stalled because it hitched its entire economy to a single resource, and then just seconds later doubles down on LNG. Watch as she says LNG is clean. Again.

Watch as she actually thinks that British Columbians calmed down their fiery rhetoric to the Kinder Morgan pipeline just because it was Justin Trudeau who approved it. As though thousands of people didnt take to the streets.

Watch as she admits that there are two British Columbias, one that is falling behind because of their resource-based economies.

Watch her saywith a straight face that BC in fact does have a poverty reduction plan: Its called a jobs plan. Oh great, tell that to the disabled. Tell that to the mentally ill. Tell that to the addicted.

Take a drink every time she mentions jobs, as though shes never heard of precarious labour and ignoring the fact that were losing full-time jobs everywhereexcept in Vancouver and Victoria. People want to work! Yeah, just maybe not at the 24 Hour Tim Hortons on Abbott and Pender.

Watch as she intermingles the political and the personal with ease! (Dont talk about my son, Hamish. My Dad was an alcoholic). The problem with mental health issues is not just that people dont talk about them, its that governments do nothing about them until an election comes around.

Watch as she says that her stipend had suddenly become an issue and that she could do without the money as though it wasnt in The New York Times.

Watch as she says the NDP has said this is going to be the ugliest and dirtiest campaign weve ever seen when it was actually Liberal cabinet minister Bill Bennett who said that. Watch as she doubles down on the claim that her website was hacked despite the fact Mike Smyth found it in plain sight. As Palmer says (as he found his spine), perhaps it was Putin.

But what didnt Palmer ask about? He didnt ask about raising the rates. Didnt ask about the current lawsuit by First Nations against the government regarding Kinder Morgan. He didnt ask about the conflict of interest with the conflict of interest commissioner, probably because hes already defended him.

He didnt ask about the BCTF lawsuit. He didnt ask about the health care firings. He didnt ask about MSP premiums. He didnt ask about getting big money out of politics.

He didnt ask about the 25,502 unoccupied homes in Vancouver, more than double City Halls estimate.

Meanwhile, Patients in hallways as hospital space reserved for Kate Winslet movie. The movie is called The Mountain Between Us. Sort of like the mountain between us and the bureaucracy that thinks this was a good idea.

Some good news: Missing Canadian found undocumented in Brazil after years. When asked if he had found what he was looking for during his many years of wandering, Pilipa simply replied, Im still looking.

Introducing a new game called Vancouver snow bingo. Spaces include: someone saying the city just shuts down; someone with an umbrella; that one guy wearing shorts; someone from Alberta saying it isnt a big deal; someone from Ontariosaying they moved here to get away from this shit; a Dodge Caravan just spinning its wheels; someone complaining about bike lanes being ploughed;some one the Skytrain saying its not the snow that I hate, its the slush; someone calling it a snowpocalypse;and of course someone making an AirBnB out of a snow fort.

Other possibilities: Someone saying only in Canada: Only in Canada: Central Saanich man uses Zamboni to clear streets of snow, police say.

Exhibit B: Hapless Abbotsford burglars getaway van gets stuck in snow, asks for help from homeowner he ripped off.

Tweet of the day:

Bonus: VIDEO: Body Break TV stars are back, results are bloody brilliant.

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TEA & TWO SLICES | On Giant Snow Penises And Christy Clark's Shudder-Worthy Interview - Scout Magazine (blog)

Despite constant talk about plans to boost the nations economic growth, experts remain skeptical about any efforts to wean the Russian economy off its dependence on oil.

Risks differ because they are possible to measure, while unpredictability is impossible to assess. And this bring about a sort of torpor among investors. Photo: RIA Novosti

As Russias top economic leaders prepare for the upcoming Russian Investment Forum in Sochi, scheduled on Feb. 27-28, there has been increased discussion among experts about what steps need to be taken this year to propel the Russian economy forward. For now, the focus seems to be on new investment projects for economic growth.

Yet, as Russian and foreign experts discussed at a Feb. 8 event at the Carnegie Moscow Center, it will take more than just new investment to jump-start the economy. As long as the Russian economy depends on oil and the gray market remains commonplace in the country, it will be challenging to carry out effective structural reforms, attract investors and boost economic growth.

This is the key message of the discussion that brought together the director of Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics Torbjorn Becker, the head of the Moscow-based Economic Expert Group Evsei Gurvich and Carnegie Moscow Center expert Andrei Movchan.

Gurvich argues that Russias key problem is the resource curse, which results from the cyclical nature of oil prices (with alternating cycles every 15 years or so). When prices rise, oil revenues also increase, which increases the rivalry among political elites for the control of the oil rent. In this situation, the authorities think not about the efficiency of the economy, but about grabbing a bigger slice of the pie. This is how the state assumes a greater control over the economy, in general.

Russian economic dependence is very deep on the macroeconomic level, Becker continues, adding that volatile changes in oil prices could have either negative or positive effects on Russias gross domestic product (GDP) and other economic indicators.

According to him, about 80-90 percent of forecast mistakes come from the fact the pundits and politicians cannot predict oil prices properly. For Russias policymakers, it means that they cannot control the economic situation in the country and this a big challenge for the authorities, said Becker.

Even though Russias sovereign wealth funds the Reserve Fund and the National Welfare Fund are good tools for rainy days, they primarily deal with short-term management of oil volatility. Thus, they cannot resolve the problem of unpredictability.

As Andrei Yakovlev, the director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told Russia Direct in a 2016 interview, investing in an unpredictable environment is highly difficult, because business is used to assessing risks.

Risks differ because they are possible to measure, while unpredictability is impossible to assess, he clarified. And this bring about a sort of torpor among investors.

Moreover, the unpredictability that stems from the volatility of oil prices is narrowing the planning horizon among those at the helm, said Gurvich. Thus, the Kremlin relegates any strategic thinking to the secondary agenda and prefers to think even shorter term. This cannot help affecting the countrys economic growth; it does create favorable environment for the budget deficit.

Not only does the oil-dependent economy create a great deal of uncertainty and make the authorities helpless during abrupt changes in oil prices, but also it affects the structure of Russias trade with its European partners by making it one-sided.

To illustrate this trend, Becker gives an example of the trade between Russia and Sweden, with oil exports comprising about 80 percent of the products from Russia and Swedish exports being more diversified. Russia should be careful about the danger of one-sided oil dependence. After all, it could affect the countrys economic growth and efficiency, said Becker.

However, Movchan looks at the resource curse from a different angle. He prefers to focus on the advantages that the commodity-based economy creates for the authorities and the population. Even though he sees oil dependence as a challenge for Russias economic and political future, Movchan admits that those who work for the government about 38 percent get their salaries from the state budget that depends on oil revenues. In other words, the Russian population itself is the key consumer of the resource curse, because its income is determined to a larger extent by oil prices.

Second, significant oil resources yield another advantage: very cheap energy. Movchan gives an example from day-to-day life: the average temperature in Russian houses is 23 degrees Celsius (73.4 degrees Fahrenheit), while American houses are heated to just 16-17 degrees Celsius (62 degrees Fahrenheit). In fact, the energy consumption (and economy) in Russia is adjusted to lower prices on hydrocarbons and it defines the key habit of Russians, which they are reluctant to change.

Moreover, the Russian army depends on low energy prices in the country and nobody even cares about the amount of money to maintain the countrys military forces. Given the fact that Russians sees these forces as a guarantor of political stability, territorial integrity and geopolitical influence, oil in this regard mobilizes people around the leader and creates a sort of stability, even if illusionary and ephemeral.

However, it doesnt necessary mean that oil is good for the nation per se. According to Movchan, the oil dependence is a curse, an evil for the long-term development of the country, but it is necessary to understand the short-term oil benefits for the Kremlin and the population to avoid many pitfalls on the path to structural reforms. It is also essential not to turn into another oil-dependent Venezuela, which is now on the verge of political collapse because of ill-thought-out economic initiatives.

Today, the Russian authorities are looking for political and economic stability. And if one looks at the situation from their perspective, they naturally shy away from any reforms, which could endanger their positions and this is a normal behavior, says Movchan. In order to foster the sweeping changes, they should stop being policymakers and turn into reformers who are ready to destroy the old system and build the new one. Obviously, this is not what the current Russian political elites are looking for now.

Thats why any forecast about higher oil prices is music to the ears of those in the Kremlin. After all, high oil prices (which translate into economic prosperity) boosted the approval ratings of Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev during their tenures. Meanwhile low prices on hydrocarbons (which led to economic woes) ruined the reputations of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor Boris Yeltsin, in part, because their presidencies coincided with a period of low oil prices. Gurvich pointed out the correlation between their popularity and the oil cycles during his speech.

The expert believe that Russia will become a magnet for investors only when the oil dependence era will end, when oil revenues wont be relevant for the authorities anymore, when oil prices will drastically plummet. If it happens Russia will be forced to produce the goods that it imports now.

Thus, the Russian political elites will be ready to conduct the sweeping structural reforms, only if they will be faced with the existential threat for their stability and well being, Gurvich concluded.

The only problem is that when the Russian authorities have to deal with economic challenges, they arent ready to take the difficult next steps. Instead, they have a penchant for organizing lavishly funded economic forums that bring together top economists, politicians and diplomats from Russia and abroad.

There are at least five major economic forums that take place in Russia each year the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, the Gaidar Economic Forum, the Yalta International Economic Forum, and the Russian Investment Forum in Sochi. In a nutshell, their major goal is to create an intellectual and business platform for boosting the countrys economic growth and raising Russias global profile.

There is no unanimity about the efficiency and viability of such forums among experts and independent economists. While some see them as an opportunity to attract foreign investors and discuss the most urgent challenges while cutting important deals, others describe such forums as a convenient photo-op, a sort of party or talk show for pundits and politicians. Such platforms may be splashy, but are often inefficient. In short, they may promise more than they actually deliver.

For example, Oleg Buklemishev, an associate professor of Economics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, is skeptical about the impact of investment forums.

Do these many economic gatherings pay off? Im not sure, he told Russia Direct. But inertia and the benefits for organizers and the local communities in general outweigh the costs, which are usually spread between many and some of them cant vocally speak out (for example, the taxpayers).

At the same time, Buklemishev admits that these investment forums do perform some useful functions no matter how strange it may seem.

First, there are very few places where politicians have to address businesses and their everyday needs, explain their position, speculate about intentions and even logically justify them. Sometimes this is the easiest way to access the views of top government leaders and themselves personally, he clarified.

Second, these are platforms for communication between business leaders, to share news and challenges, forge practical contacts and relationships and get a feel for the atmosphere of the marketplace, he notes.

Third, this is a mechanism for the general audience to know something about the authorities views and economic perspective, Buklemishev concluded. Fourth, sometimes the discussions put forward some helpful ideas, which experts share with the bureaucrats and the business community. Fifth, this is a powerful way to support local hospitality industries hotels, restaurants, transportation and entertainment.

Pavel Koshkin is the Editor-in-Chief of Russia Direct. He has contributed to numerous publications, including Kommersant, the Moscow bureau of BBC and Russia Profile, specializing in politics, society, education and international affairs.

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When will Russia finally break its 'resource curse'? - Russia Direct