Perched on the Ninglick River on the west coast of the state, the tiny town of Newtok may be the state’s most vulnerable village. About 350 people live there, nearly all of them Yu’pik Eskimos. But the Ninglick River is rapidly rising due to ice melt, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the highest point in the town — a school — could be underwater by 2017.

Suzanne Goldenberg, a U.S. environmental correspondent for The Guardian spent time in Newtok and published a series this week on the plight of its residents, whom she calls America’s first climate refugees. She told weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden that the rising river poses the greatest risk.

“The river is basically stealing the land out from underneath the village,” Goldenberg says. “Every year during the storm season, that river can take away 20, 30, [even] up to 300 feet a year … It just rips it off the land, away from the village in these terrifying storms.”

The town, like many others in coastal Alaska, is situated on a broad plain that becomes a mud flat every summer when the snow melts.

“There’s no high point there,” Goldenberg says. “Because so much land is being lost every year — every year the storms get worse, every year the flood gets more intense.”

The Yu’pik Eskimos who live there are intimately connected to the land, Goldenberg says, where they’ve fished and hunted for centuries. All that time they have built a culture and tradition that comes from depending on each other in a harsh environment.

But changes in the climate have meant changes also to those centuries-old routines, according to some of the village’s residents, who spoke with Goldenberg and her videographer Richard Sprenger.

“The snow comes in a different time now. The snow disappears way late,” says Newtok villager Nathan Tom. “That’s making the geese come at the wrong time. now they’re starting to lay eggs when there’s still snow and ice. We can’t even travel and go pick them. It’s getting harder. It’s changing a lot.”

Some of the townspeople are eager to relocate, and others would rather not. A new site — about 9 miles away — has already been selected, but residents are dubious about when a move could happen.

“I’d rather stay here, where I grew up,” resident Tom John says. “I love Newtok, you know. I don’t want to move to somewhere else.”

There are also the financial considerations. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has estimated that the cost of moving Newtok — with 63 homes — might reach $130 million. The people of Newtok do not have that kind of money, Goldenberg says.

“These people are living well below the average income of other Americans. They’re able to live that way because they hunt and fish for what they eat,” she says. “So they can’t all of a sudden go and build and pay for new houses on the other side.”

And the money has not been forthcoming from the government either, Goldenberg says. Neither the state nor federal government recognizes climate change as a disaster for the appropriation of relief funds.

“It’s not as if you suffer a drought, suffer a hurricane, suffer a tornado, and you can apply for disaster relief,” she explains, “because climate change moves too slowly to be recognized as a disaster, and because you need to move people now, before the disaster occurs.”

That leaves the Yu’pik people of Newtok in limbo, Goldenberg says. Some villagers are hoping the move to the new site can begin this summer. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says there is no possible way to protect the village of Newtok where it now stands. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The review comes with word this week of the death of a man who’d been named, by a newspaper investigation, as a possible suspect in one notorious case.

The Case

The investigation was of the death of Frank Morris, in Ferriday, La., in 1964. Morris was a successful African-American businessman, the owner of a small shoe shop. His business success — and the respect for him from some white residents — made other white residents resentful.

On a December night in 1964, a group of men set his shop on fire. Morris was inside and burned in the fire.

In 2011, Stanley Nelson, the editor of the Concordia Sentinel, the weekly newspaper in Ferriday, revealed that a suspect in the case was still alive. The man had been implicated by members of his own family, and they spoke to Nelson.

That case was featured on NPR in two stories in January and February 2011. The man denied he’d been involved.

This week, the man died.

Was It Enough?

An FBI official on Friday told NPR in a statement that the agency had “diligently pursued the information” but “turned up no credible evidence” to link the man to the killing.

But Paula Johnson, law professor and co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University, called on Congress to hold hearings to see whether the FBI has done enough to investigate Morris’ and other cases.

“We would want a much more accelerated pace to these cases,” she says, “and that’s the thing that we’re calling for.”

The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act, passed by Congress in 2008, provided $10 million annually for the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate unsolved, racially motivated killings from before 1970. One of the lead proponents of that law says he’s “disappointed overall” in its implementation.

“[There] never was a very aggressive outreach effort to find evidence and witnesses,” says Alvin Sykes, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign.

‘Between A Rock And A Hard Place’

But other civil rights activists, including Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center, say the FBI has done a lot with some very difficult cases.

“At the time they announced the initiative in 2007, what I said was that justice in a few cases was going to have to serve as a proxy for justice in many,” Cohen says. “Because the reality is, after all of that time, there were very few cases that were probably going to be [prosecutorial].”

The FBI’s Cold Case Initiative has had two notable successes in recent years: The prosecution of a former Klansman in the death of two young black men in Mississippi, a case from 1964; and the prosecution of a former Alabama state trooper in the death of an unarmed civil rights marcher in 1965.

Cohen says the FBI took on a difficult — and rather thankless — task.

“What concerned me at the time was raising false hopes in so many family members for whom justice had long been denied,” says Cohen, whose group was among the most vocal in calling for the FBI to review these old cases. “So I think the FBI has had a long public relations issue in dealing with expectations … The FBI was between a rock and a hard place.”

Still Cold

After nearly 50 years or more, evidence had been lost. Suspects and witnesses had died. Or memories had faded. Federal authorities had limited legal jurisdiction in these old cases.

Now the FBI is winding down the Cold Case Initiative. The vast majority of cases have been closed, with no action taken. And of the just 20 cases still open, there’s been no breakthrough to suggest any more of them can be solved. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The legislation has been the target of more than 300 amendments during days of debate and votes by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But while the bill has largely held its own so far, its prospects for getting through Congress remain uncertain.

In Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy’s view, the immigration overhaul is “moving very well.”

“It’s moving a lot faster than people said it would,” says Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of two Republican members of the Gang of Eight who sit on the Judiciary Committee, says he thinks with the adoption of 15 GOP amendments so far, the bill has become more appealing to conservatives.

“It’s a better bill for, I think, those of us who care about border security and interior enforcement — it’s a stronger bill,” he says.

But that’s not how fellow Republican and committee member Jeff Sessions of Alabama sees it.

“None of the significant amendments have been accepted,” he says. “It’s pretty clear that the Gang of Eight’s original statement that they would resist any significant changes to the bill is coming true.”

Earlier this week, Sessions brought up an amendment putting the bill’s promised path to citizenship for 11 million unauthorized immigrants on hold until biometric data, such as fingerprints or iris scans, are used to screen the entry and exit of every international traveler.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Gang of Eight, helped defeat it.

“I want biometrics as far as the eye can see, in as many ways as possible, post-9/11, to protect this nation,” he says. “But to make it a trigger in light of how much it costs and how long it takes, I just think goes too far.”

But the issue has exposed a crack in the Gang of Eight’s unity. One of its members who is not on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he supports a biometric entry-exit system.

“The fundamental question is: Can it be done in a cost-effective manner? And I think that’s what we’re going to hopefully explore here over the next few days leading into the floor debate,” he says. “I hope that we can. I think it makes the system more effective.”

And even though Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., voted against the biometric amendment, she says she would like to see it considered when the bill goes before the full Senate, probably next month.

“I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker,” she says. “But I think we need to do our work, and I’m one Democrat that would like to see it eventually used … if it is cost-effective — cost-efficient, I should say.”

Meanwhile, opponents of that path to citizenship are warning it could doom the entire bill.

“The way to avoid the bill being voted down in the House of Representatives is to reach a reasonable common-sense compromise,” says Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “and, in particular, to take off the table a path to citizenship. So I hope that’s what they choose to do.”

That would be the wrong choice, says Rubio, the Florida Republican.

“If … we can put in measures that ensure that we’re … not going to have another wave of illegal immigration, people are willing to support a bill that deals with the 11 million that are here now,” Rubio says. “And if we don’t, I don’t think we’ll have immigration reform.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, could end up voting next week to send the immigration bill to the full Senate, a move that could persuade other key Republicans to get behind it. But Hatch first wants the committee to vote on changes he has offered boosting the number of visas for highly skilled workers.

“If they want to pass this bill through both houses, they’ve got to give on those,” he says. “I’ve got to have them.”

But Hatch will have to get past the opposition of Gang of Eight member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

“Some of his amendments are acceptable, with some changes, and some are unacceptable,” Durbin says. “And, you know, when a senator basically says it’s take it or leave it, [he] puts himself in a very weak bargaining position.”

Adding to the bill’s uncertainty is an amendment that Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, has yet to bring up that would allow gay U.S. citizens to sponsor foreign spouses for green cards. Republicans in the Gang of Eight warn such a measure, if adopted, would be a deal-breaker. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

[Update at 8:55 p.m. ET: The Associated Press quotes Connecticut officials as saying about 50 people have been hurt, four of them seriously.]

According to The Hartford Courant:

“A Metro-North commuter train derailed Friday night and hit a train heading in the opposite direction near the Fairfield-Bridgeport border, and there are preliminary reports of injuries, an MTA official said.

“At about 6:10 p.m. an eastbound train, the 4:41 p.m. train out of New Haven, derailed just east of the Fairfield metro station, said Marjorie Anders, an MTA spokeswoman. It then hit the side of a westbound train on the adjacent track.

“Emergency personnel are on scene and there are preliminary reports of injuries, she said.”

Connecticut Post reporter Denis O’Malley spoke to NPR from the scene. He said injuries included one person with serious back injury and another with a neck injury.

Update at 8:20 p.m. ET: No Known Life-Threatening Injuries:

Reuters quotes Fairfield police spokesman Matt Panilaitis as saying none of those involved in the accident were believed to be suffering from life-threatening injuries.

The news agency also quotes Dianne Auger, a spokeswoman for St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, as saying nine people were taken to the hospital as a result of the accident and one was listed in serious condition with head injuries.

The cause of the derailment was not immediately known, Reuters says.

According to The Associated Press:

“The railroad says the accident involved a New York-bound train leaving New Haven. It derailed and hit a westbound train near Fairfield, Conn. Some cars on the second train also derailed.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

While the Benghazi affair has long been in the news, it’s never really taken off as an issue beyond the Republican base.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s position that national security considerations justified the Justice Department’s gathering of journalists’ phone records in a leak investigation may be enough to remove fuel from the outrage. Voters typically give presidents a wide berth when commanders in chief invoke national security, especially since Sept. 11.

But the IRS has a relationship with Americans that’s far from warm and fuzzy. Indeed, as the agency that enforces the nation’s tax laws, it’s the part of government Americans most love to hate.

So the revelation that some of its workers were doing something as objectionable as singling out applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups is just one more log tossed on a raging anti-IRS bonfire.

And that’s even before you get to the IRS’s role as the agency vested with enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

That feature of Obamacare is perhaps the one most detested by conservatives. The scandal provides them with a new and possibly potent anti-Obamacare talking point.

Add to that how readily the scandal feeds the American appetite for conspiracy theories and it’s easy to see how the administration may be dealing with this crisis far longer than its other current controversies.

“Talking to my clients on the Hill, one of things you’re hearing is that [of all the scandals] the IRS might be the most permanent and may be the most egregious,” said Jim Innocenzi, a long-time Republican communications strategist. “From a partisan perspective, it’s the gift that keeps on giving …”

Innocenzi, whose firm makes ads for Republican political candidates, said it’s still too early to know how the IRS scandal will play out. But he’s fairly sure it it’s not going anywhere soon unless the president goes much further than he already has. For instance, replacing one bureaucrat most of the public has never heard of, fired acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, with another bureaucrat the public has never heard of, new acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel, is not nearly enough.

But though Innocenzi thinks the IRS scandal has legs, even he isn’t willing to go so far as to say that President Obama will be plagued by it until the end of his term.

If a special prosecutor were appointed, for instance, and exonerated the White House, that could go a long way to clearing the air. “If he did nothing, if it had nothing to with him, then appoint a special prosecutor and find out who did. Because they [the IRS] trampled on a lot of Americans’ civil liberties.” (Obama has dismissed such calls. Congress has the power to appoint special prosecutors.)

While it’s surely in Republican interests to keep the IRS story going and to say it’s far from running its course, Democrats obviously hope that isn’t true.

“There’s absolutely no evidence that anybody at the White House was pushing any buttons or pulling any levers on that stuff,” said Peter Fenn, a veteran Democratic communications strategist. “There’s no there there. I just don’t think this is going anywhere.

“The American people want to get something done. They want to see the Congress do something. Why is it in the latest poll today today [when] they ask if you’re going for a Democrat for Congress, a Republican or independent, third party is ahead? They’re so mad at Congress they can’t see straight. They want to pass immigration reform. They want to see real movement on the economy and jobs. This stuff [like the IRS scandal] is just another … sideshow.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

“It’s all about your wrists and your imagination,” says 21-year-old dancer Donnie Dawson. “You just have to make sure your hands are coordinated with your imagination.”

Donnie, a regular at the Ruth Ellis Center, advises that you pretend you’re holding a basketball, then mime with your hands the circular shape of the ball. Vogue dancing is sort of like break dancing meets ballet. But if you need a quick reference, think of Madonna’s 1990 hit “Vogue” in which she sings about a dance form created by poor and working-class blacks and Latinos in New York City’s gay community in the ’60s and ’70s. Today, vogue is still all about flipping, dipping and catwalking; it’s acrobatic, sexual and at times very feminine in its movements.

In a big upstairs room at the Ruth Ellis Center, the floor is vibrating — that’s how loud the house music is. Matthew Dawson, 22, is wearing sunglasses inside and dancing by himself in a corner.

“One of the emotions that I say I put into my vogue would maybe be anger,” he says. “I feel like I put it into vogue so I won’t have to put it into other things that are not very constructive.”

Matthew says that it wouldn’t be safe for him to dance like this in the outside world. And the same goes for the mostly black and LGBT kids dancing in this room with him.

LGBT Youth Fall Through The Cracks

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, about half a million youth and young adults under 24 have at one point been homeless for more than one week; and multiple sources, including The Williams Institute, report that between 40 and 60 percent of them are LGBT. Once a homeless kid hits the streets, he is at risk of getting involved with all kinds of bad things, regardless of whether he is gay or straight. That includes violence, sexual assault and being propositioned for prostitution, says Jessie Fullenkamp, director of drop-in services at the Ruth Ellis Center.

According to Fullenkamp, homeless LGBT kids have often been kicked out by their birth families and they sometimes face discrimination and hostility when they try to get help from formal organizations. That’s why a group of professionals created the Ruth Ellis Center.

“Attorneys, teachers, social workers … saw LGBTQ youth falling through cracks in all these systems — in our families, in our schools and job opportunities — and realized that we really needed to pay special attention to this community,” Fullenkamp says.

So the drop-in center always makes a space available for dancing.

“And then that’s kind of the hook that gets a lot of the youth in the door initially,” Fullenkamp says.

After that, the center can connect them with counseling, health services, tutoring and clean clothes. And these kids need the help: According to Fullenkamp, 65 percent of them have traded sex for money or drugs or food.

The Vogue Family Extends ‘Beyond Any Ballroom’

Vogue dancing isn’t just something that gets kids into the Ruth Ellis Center; it’s also its own complex world. In it, people form teams known as “houses.”

“And when that relationship is really close and really tight, it turns into a family … [that] extends far beyond any ballroom,” says Donnie Dawson. “If I’m stranded somewhere and I need some help, I can call you and you’ll be there.”

Donnie considers Lakyra Dawson, a 24-year-old transgender woman, his adopted gay mom. (Similarly, Lakyra and Matthew Dawson consider themselves adopted siblings.) Both Lakyra and Donnie are regulars at the center and he has taken her last name as his own. She has pushed Donnie and his adopted siblings to pursue their educations, in part because Lakyra dropped out of high school, ran away from home at 13 and spent 10 years on the streets.

“That’s a lot of things to know and see and do and experience,” Lakyra says. “So my mistakes, I use that as, you know, the rule book. Like don’t do this, stay away from that.”

Donnie says Lakyra has given him a lot of guidance about his education and life choices. “I call her Mama,” he says, “because the knowledge that I get from her is way far beyond gay life.”

The relationship is incredibly meaningful to Donnie because last year, his birth mother died.

About 4,600 young people came to the Ruth Ellis Center during its drop-in hours last year. Its staff says that providing a safe place to dance is a very intentional part of their strategy: The idea is that through dance, they can meet kids where they are, which is on the dance floor. [Copyright 2013 Michigan Radio]

The murders took place in Waltham, Mass. On Sept. 12, 2011, police responded to a house in the leafy suburb a few miles west of Boston.

“They went to the second floor and saw a very graphic crime scene — three dead bodies in the apartment,” said Gerry Leone, who was then district attorney for Middlesex County. He spoke to reporters outside the house later that night.

Leone: “It does look like the assailants and the decedents did know each other. We have no evidence of a break in the apartment.”

Reporter: “You’re saying assailants plural — more than one person responsible?”

Leone: “We’re not sure at this time. We know there were at least two people who are not in that apartment now, who were there earlier.”

There were no witnesses to the murders. Neighbors reported no loud noises, nothing unusual — until the bodies were discovered by a woman who ran screaming out of the apartment and called the police. Authorities identified the victims as Brendan Mess, 25; Erik Weissman, 31; and Raphael Teken, 37. All three were discovered with their throats slit and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana. The brutality of the crime shocked Waltham residents.

“It doesn’t happen in Waltham. A triple murder is rare. I can’t recall there being a triple murder in Waltham prior to this one,” says Gary Marchese, a lawyer and the Waltham city councilman for the neighborhood where the killings occurred. “Three young men, in very good shape, to have been killed quietly, without a sound — it said to me that whoever did the killings, there were either several that overpowered them, or one or two that were extremely strong and obviously prone to violence.”

The crime was never solved. Most people assumed it was connected to drugs, since police discovered marijuana and $5,000 in cash in the apartment. Weissman, one of the victims, had been charged with intent to distribute before, and another victim, Mess, was apparently an avid marijuana smoker. A posthumous video tribute posted on YouTube shows what appears to be Mess smoking a blunt.

But the case has gotten a fresh look since the marathon bombings because Mess was reportedly a friend of one of the bombing suspects. Tamerlan Tsarnaev would sometimes spar at the same mixed martial arts gym in Boston where Mess worked as an instructor. Two of the victims were Jewish. And while their bodies were discovered on Sept. 12, at least one family member reportedly believes they were killed on Sept. 11, suggesting a very different motive.

The district attorney’s office says the investigation into the Waltham murders remains open and that it’s “eager” to pursue new leads. But a spokesperson for the D.A. was careful not to make any connection between the marathon bombing suspects and the 2011 killings. City councilman Marchese says the case may hinge on whether forensic evidence was discovered at the scene.

“If there are any forensics that tie suspect No. 1 or No. 2 to the crime scene, I’m going to be a happy man. I do hope that we get some finality,” Marchese says.

But if authorities do have evidence linking Tamerlan or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the killings, they are not sharing it with the public — which means Marchese, and the rest of Waltham, are still waiting to find out how this story ends. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Or you might think everything would have changed on Dec. 3, 1984. That was the day that the U.S.-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant on the edge of Bhopal, India, suddenly began to leak — spewing a cloud of deadly gas over the city. By all accounts, thousands of people died; the Indian government never made an accurate count. Union Carbide paid $470 million damages.

Or you might think the chemical industry would have been forced to reform after March 23, 2005, when an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City killed 15 workers and injured 180 others, according to a federal report. A BP spokesman says the company paid $1.6 billion to compensate victims and their families.

Or change could have taken place after any of the hundreds of fatal accidents at chemical facilities in the past dozen years, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency, based on media reports.

For years, a loose network of environmental groups, public health organizations and members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, has fought to require companies to try to redesign their chemical facilities, to make them safer. Engineers often call the approach “inherently safer” technology or design. But industry executives and their allies in Congress have blocked the proposals.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, says she was angry when she heard about the West fertilizer plant explosion in April. “It just made me so mad, you wanted to take Congress and shake it, and say, ‘Listen, what more does it take for you to understand that we need some action here?’ “

Whitman led the EPA for President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003. “I’m a Republican; I’m leery of too much regulation,” she says, “but there are times when you need it. There’s a reason for some of this stuff.”

Over the past few decades, government and industry have taken some steps to make chemical plants in the U.S. safer. For instance, Congress passed two landmark laws in the years after the Bhopal disaster. Together, they require plant owners to disclose exactly which dangerous chemicals they use at specific plants; estimate how many people would be at risk of getting killed or injured if there were an accident at the plant; and spell out what steps they are taking to prevent it.

But after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, security specialists began to worry that those laws weren’t strong enough.

Solutions Vs. Band-Aids

“Chemical plants are really pre-positioned weapons of mass destruction,” says Charles Sam Faddis, a former CIA officer who ran the CIA team that searched for WMDs in Iraq after the U.S. invaded. They didn’t find weapons of mass destruction there, but Faddis says he realized that if terrorists had attacked a U.S. chemical plant instead of the twin office towers, they might have caused a bigger disaster.

The chemical industry’s own reports back then, filed under federal law, show there were hundreds of plants across the country where a single incident could potentially kill thousands of people. For instance, D.C. Water — Washington’s water and sewer utility — reported that if tanks of chlorine gas ruptured at its Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant, a deadly cloud could reach the U.S. Capitol.

So, some Bush administration officials decided that there was a fundamental problem with the way the government regulates chemical plants. The laws tell chemical plant owners, in effect, that it’s fine to use large amounts of deadly chemicals, even if the plant is next to a city — as long as the company protects them with measures such as strong tanks and fences. And in case there is an accident or a terrorist attack, the company needs to have an emergency action plan to protect the community.

Officials at the time, like Bob Bostock, EPA’s homeland security adviser, said those aren’t solutions but Band-Aids.

“It was the only thing that kept me up at night,” Bostock says — the fear that terrorists would blow up a tank of chlorine or other toxic chemical and trigger a disaster in a major city.

Executives at some companies used the inherently safer design approach after Sept. 11 and reduced their use of dangerous chemicals. D.C. Water, for example, got rid of deadly chlorine gas only a few months after the attacks and started treating wastewater with safer methods.

Bostock and Whitman drafted a law in 2002 that would have required chemical facilities across the country to see if they, too, could use inherently safer design.

Bostock says they knew that every plant might not be able to eliminate or cut back on its use of the deadliest chemicals. At some facilities, it might be technically impossible or too expensive. But the draft legislation would have required executives to at least examine whether it could be done.

“If there was ever a successful attack on one of these facilities or even an accidental release,” Bostock says, “the first question you would get asked as a policymaker is, ‘You knew this was a problem. Why haven’t you done anything about it?’ “

Meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, a separate bill calling for inherently safer technology sailed unanimously through a key Senate committee. Then everything screeched to a halt. Whitman and Bostock say top aides to President Bush told them the push for inherently safer design “was not going anywhere,” as Bostock remembers. “It was dead.” White House officials never publicly explained why.

Since then, a coalition of more than 100 public health, environmental and labor groups and security specialists has tried repeatedly to get Congress to reconsider. It tried in 2003, 2006, 2009 and again in 2010. But in each case, opponents managed to block the proposals.

Whitman attributes the defeats, in part, to pressure from the chemical industry. “There are very powerful influences, and in politics you always sort of trace that back to the money,” Whitman says.

Campaign finance reports, collated by the Center for Responsive Politics on OpenSecrets.org, show that the petrochemicals industry has been one of the main funders for key members of Congress who have opposed inherently safer design. And lobbying reports, collated by the Sunlight Foundation, suggest that chemical industry trade groups have made the fight against bills requiring inherently safer technology one of their priorities.

The Industry Response

Industry spokesmen say petrochemicals are already one of the safest and most regulated industries. “We stand second to none as the chemical industry in trying to implement an appropriate focus on process safety and security,” says Michael Walls, vice president of the American Chemistry Council, which represents most of the leading corporations from Dow and DuPont to Exxon Mobil and Chevron. The council has lobbied Congress for years to kill bills concerned with inherently safer technology. In fact, together with other industry groups, they have told Congress that companies should not even be required to consider whether it should be implemented.

On the face of it, the call for companies to switch to safer chemicals “does sound attractive,” says Walls. “But the basic choice comes down to, do you mandate something like a review of inherently safer technology, or do you want to require its consideration at the right time for each particular facility? One of the questions here is, who decides? Who decides what is inherently safer in any particular case?”

Walls and other industry spokesmen, such as Kathy Mathers, vice president of The Fertilizer Institute, worry that federal regulators might tell chemical companies how to run their business.

“Agriculture knows agriculture,” says Mathers. The institute represents companies that make and sell ammonium nitrate, among other chemicals, which may have caused the explosion last month in Texas and has caused some of the worst industrial accidents in history. “And certainly the regulators have their role in society. At this point we have not seen a version of an inherently safer technology bill that we would support.”

That perspective puzzles Rafael Moure-Eraso, chairman of the main federal agency that investigates accidents at chemical facilities. “I was quite surprised that anyone would resist this concept, this concept of prevention,” he says, sitting in his corner office at the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, not far from the White House. The CSB, whose members are appointed by the President, is currently investigating what caused last month’s fatal explosion at the West Fertilizer facility in Texas.

Some of the CSB’s official reports on chemical plant explosions recommend that the industry use inherently safer technology as one of the main strategies for preventing accidents in the first place — and limiting the damage when they do occur.

In fact, Moure-Eraso says he supports the idea of a law requiring plant owners to see if their plants can eliminate or reduce the need for dangerous chemicals. “You have to make a cost-benefit about what is more costly: to engage in a process to try to mitigate or avoid hazards; or deal with the families of the people who get killed, the destruction of an industry, the destruction of a community,” Moure-Eraso says. “And I claim that it’s a lot more expensive to deal with these catastrophic losses than what it will take to invest to prevent this to happen in the first place.”

Advocates of inherently safer design wonder now where President Obama stands on this issue. Back when he was in the Senate, Obama co-sponsored a bill that would have required plants to consider inherently safer technology. And his administration supported the concept after he became president. But Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace, says members of the coalition that has been campaigning for the approach are frustrated that Obama hasn’t spoken out about it recently.

“We’re very concerned,” says Hind, “because we’ve been asking [the Obama administration] to look into this and to do something since 2011. And they said, ‘Well, after the election maybe we’ll do something.’ And now, we’re still waiting.”

NPR asked White House officials where President Obama stands now on the issue of inherently safer technology. A spokesman sent this brief reply:

“Chemical plant safety is a high priority, and federal departments and agencies will continue to work within their authorities and with state officials to support the ongoing investigation and assess appropriate information that can help inform ongoing efforts to ensure chemical plant safety.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Every year, a few schools get the president of the United States as their commencement speaker. And this Sunday, at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Obama will get an opportunity to take a step back and describe the big picture.

The graduation speeches that the president gives almost seem to be his real State of the Union addresses. An official State of the Union speech reads like an annual to-do list. But in commencement speeches, Obama talks about where the country stands and where it’s going.

And his assessment has changed over the past four years.

Here’s what he said at Arizona State in 2009:

“We gather here tonight in times of extraordinary difficulty, for the nation and for the world. The economy remains in the midst of a historic recession, the worst we’ve seen since the Great Depression.”

Compare that with Ohio State earlier this month:

“Where we’re going should give you hope. Because while things are still hard for a lot of people, you have every reason to believe that your future is bright. You’re graduating into an economy and a job market that is steadily healing.”

Here’s what he said at the Naval Academy in 2009:

“In an era when too few citizens answer the call to service, to community or to country, these Americans choose to serve. They did so in a time of war, knowing they might be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice.”

And, in contrast, at the Air Force Academy in 2012:

“Today, you step forward into a different world. You are the first class in nine years that will graduate into a world where there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.”

Since Obama took office, he has delivered 14 commencement addresses. Among them: four at military schools. Two at high schools. One community college. One historically black college. And one women’s college.

Sometimes the president road-tests lines in these speeches that come up later in more high-profile venues. Remember this, from Obama’s second inaugural?

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

That line echoed for days, tying together historic fights for women’s suffrage, civil rights and gay equality.

Turns out, he used the same line eight months earlier in a commencement speech at Barnard College:

“What young generations have done before should give you hope. Young folks who marched and mobilized and stood up and sat in, from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, didn’t just do it for themselves; they did it for other people.”

That speech at a women’s school focused on gender equality. And when Obama visited a historically black school, Hampton University, in 2010, the commencement speech focused on African-American struggles:

“I want you to think about Ms. Dorothy Height, a black woman, in 1929, refusing to be denied her dream of a college education. Refusing to be denied her rights.”

Many of these speeches are tailored for the specific group of graduates in the crowd. At Miami Dade College, where 90 percent of the students are minorities, in 2011 Obama talked about immigration :

“Whether your ancestors came here on the Mayflower or a slave ship, whether they signed in at Ellis Island or they crossed the Rio Grande — we are one people. We need one another.”

While these speeches each have a unique message, there are also universal themes. The idea of unity and community runs through every one of Obama’s 14 commencement addresses, including this one at Notre Dame in 2009.

“Unfortunately, finding that common ground — recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a ‘single garment of destiny’ — is not easy.”

This is the brand of politics that Obama has always aspired to, but that he so rarely attains in Washington. A few times every spring, he gets to leave the capital and tell Americans: We’re all in this together.

Obama pushes these values of community on a large scale, and a small one.

“You may look in the mirror tonight and you may see somebody who’s not really sure what to do with their lives. That’s what you may see, but a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor. A homebound senior citizen might see a lifeline.”

Sometimes in these speeches when Obama talks about society and citizenship, he argues that government is the vehicle to implement those values. That’s a core democratic idea that Obama has always promoted, including at the University of Michigan in 2010.

“When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.”

In a way, this paean to citizenship, shared responsibility and government has become the central idea of the Obama presidency. It was a major part of his campaign as well.

These ideas are rooted in Obama’s work as a community organizer. And today he hopes these ideas will energize people to move lawmakers.

“If they don’t represent you the way you want or conduct themselves the way you expect, if they put special interests above your own, you’ve got to let them know that’s not OK. And if they let you down often enough, there’s a built-in day in November where you can really let them know it’s not OK.”

This is a project that Obama has been pushing since long before he reached the White House.

But today, with controversies shining a harsh light on federal bureaucrats from the Internal Revenue Service to the Justice Department, convincing these young Americans they should trust their government may be a harder sell than at any time in the past four years. [Copyright 2013 NPR]