ModeShift - Part 10

Michigan’s Annual Groundwater Use For Agriculture is 187 Billion Gallons

by Keith SchneiderDecember 22, 2021January 31, 20220

NOTTAWA, MI â€“ In early July, a breeze slipped over a treeline of tall maples and stirred shoulder-high stalks of corn on Larry Waltonâ€™s 500-acre farm. It was an encouraging sound, like whispered words of stability, security, and profit. But how long can that last? At age 60, Walton was raised on his familyâ€™s farm here in St. Joseph County, along Michiganâ€™s border with Indiana. The agriculture that he and some 850 other county farmers …

Frontline Journalism Is A Foundation of Environmental Achievements and Institutional Strength

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 12, 2021February 9, 20220

â€œThe walls of the valley are made up of rocks, mountains in size, partly separated from each other by side caÃ±ons and gorges,â€ wrote John Muir of magnificent Yosemite Valley. â€œThey are so sheer in front, and so compactly and harmoniously built together on a level floor, that the place, comprehensively seen, looks like some immense hall or temple lighted from above.â€ With this frontline account, published in the August 1890 edition of Century Magazine, the …

Biden Working Hard To Sideline GOP Mash-Up Of Madness

by Keith SchneiderJune 27, 2021September 12, 20211

BENZONIA – I’ve waited for this one from the Department of Justice. It’s been coming for weeks. Attorney General Merrick Garland sued Georgia on June 25, 2021, asserting that its despicable voter suppression law passed in March is illegal. The law, like others by Republican Legislatures in 13 more states, is designed to make it much harder for people of color to vote. But under the U.S. Voting Rights Act, discriminating against groups of people …

Craft Distilleries Are More Numerous Than Ever. The Pandemic Looks To Have Helped.

by Keith SchneiderJune 22, 2021June 23, 20210

GETHSEMANE, KY. â€“ Conditions last year could hardly have looked worse for craft distilling in Kentucky or any other state. Built on the intimacy of locally-produced spirits, virtually all of the more than 2,000 craft distilleries that operated around the country were imperiled by state health directives that closed tasting rooms. Yet while the virus produced financial pain, it did not lead to many distillery deaths. Federal pandemic-related aid, consumer demand, important changes in state …

Report Cites Progress, Impediments to Universal Access to Clean Water, Safe Sanitation, and Hygiene

by Keith SchneiderJune 20, 2021June 20, 20210

My first months of 2021 were consumed with reporting and writing a three-part Circle of Blue project on global trends in water, sanitation, and hygiene. Our collaborator was the Wilson Center, the D.C. think tank that has been one of of our partners since 2010 in reporting the Global Choke Point chapters in China and India. As I noted in WASH Within Reach, as a Circle of Blue correspondent in Africa, Asia, and Latin America …

Kentucky Coal Fields Display How Hard It Is To Redevelop Rural America

by Keith SchneiderJune 19, 2021June 23, 20210

PAINTSVILLE, KY. â€“ On April 23, 12 weeks after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that promised to help rural regions of the East and Great Plains move past their dependence on fossil energy markets, the administration identified $37.9 billion in existing federal grant and loan accounts to meet the presidentâ€™s job creation and revitalization goals. One of those accounts, administered since 2016 by the Department of the Interior, helped start a high-tech manufacturing …

On The Side of Fact, Truth, and Decency

by Keith SchneiderMay 31, 2021May 31, 20211

BENZONIA, MI â€” Though I never attended a formal class in journalism my career, now over 40 years in the making, is firmly centered in sturdy principles of reasoned conduct and examined execution. Stripped of adornment those principles encompass seven rules of engagement: Follow stories that matter. Interview thoroughly. Research carefully. Gather views from disparate quarters. Make the complex simpler to understand. Write with energy and grace. Follow the facts wherever they lead. Given that …

Pandemic Breakout Tour

by Keith SchneiderMay 2, 2021May 2, 20210

NEW YORK — Thanks to the expertise and doggedness of contemporary science, which delivered a vaccine capable of warding off Covid-19, Gabrielle and I departed from our pandemic-safe home in Somerset, KY, and ventured out in April for a nine-day trip to Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. It was an adventure ripe with highlights: 1) reunions with my 91-year-old mother, my two brothers, my sister, their spouses, my nephew and niece, my sister-in-law and …

Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Is Grand Tribute To Earth Day 2021

by Keith SchneiderApril 21, 2021April 24, 20210

AUDUBON, N.J. — On March 31, you probably heard, President Joe Biden introduced a $2.2 trillion proposal to repair and modernize America’s transportation system, invest in research and technology, and expand the industrial sectors that are curbing climate change. By themselves, those provisions make Biden’s American Jobs Plan a great leap forward in how the White House regards its responsibilities to nature, and to the nation. Biden’s impressive plan, though, is considerably more expansive and …

Covid-19 Vaccination Day in Kentucky

by Keith SchneiderMarch 10, 2021June 23, 20211

CORBIN, Kentucky — As of today, March 10, 2021, Kentucky has administered almost 900,000 Covid-19 vaccinations. The United States has administered more than 62 million vaccinations. I was one of them. It was a historic day of sorts. Almost exactly to the day a year ago the full measure of the pandemic’s risk took hold in the country. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver shut down the league. Former President Trump — “The virus will not have …