March 16 - Is the U.S. About to Sell Out the Syrian Opposition?; As Crude Oil Drops, Why Not the Price at the Pump?; California Has One Year of Water Left

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks on Syria that “there is no military solution, there is only a political solution” and that we have to negotiate with Assad in the end, a statement that the State Department quickly denied marked a shift in U.S. policy, stressing that Washington was not open to direct talks with Assad. The founder and Director of FREE-Syria Foundation Rafif Jouejati, the English-language spokesperson for the non-violent umbrella group of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, joins us to assess Assad’s response to Kerry that he would welcome any “sincere” change in attitude within the international community that would be positive. We also discuss whether or not the U.S. is planning to sell out the Syrian opposition.

Part 2

Then with crude oil dropping to $42 a barrel on Monday and heading towards a low of $30 a barrel, we try to reconcile why the growing glut of oil on the international market is not translating into low gas prices at the pump at home. Tom Kloza, the Global Head of Energy Analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, joins us to discuss this disconnect and how falling crude oil prices will impact the shale oil boom and Canadian tar sands production.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the dire warning about the California drought from a NASA water scientist who points out that the state “has no contingency plan for a persistent drought” and that “California has about one year of water left”. The Executive Director of Water in the West, Leon Szeptycki , a professor at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, joins us to discuss how agriculture consumes 80% of the state’s water, with 20% going to urban use, 70% of which is consumed for landscape watering.