The NSW Supreme Court has issued orders prohibiting a major climate protest that would blockade ships entering the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle for 30 hours. Despite the court ruling, Wendy Bacon reports that the protest will still go ahead next week.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Wendy Bacon
In a decision delivered last Thursday, Justice Desmond Fagan in the NSW Supreme Court ruled in favour of state police who applied to have the Rising Tide ‘Protestival’ planned from November 22 to 24 declared an “unauthorised assembly”.
Rising Tide has vowed to continue its protest. The grassroots movement is calling for an end to new coal and gas approvals and imposing a 78 percent tax on coal and gas export profits to fund and support Australian workers during the energy transition.
The group had submitted what is known as a “Form 1” to the police for approval for a 30-hour blockade of the port and a four-day camp on the foreshore.
If approved, the protest could go ahead without police being able to use powers of arrest for offences such as “failure to move on” during the protest.
Rising Tide organisers expect thousands to attend of whom hundreds would enter the water in kayaks and other vessels to block the harbour.
Last year, a similar 24-hour blockade protest was conducted safely and in cooperation with police, after which 109 people refused to leave the water in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. They were then arrested without incident. Most were later given good behaviour bonds with no conviction recorded.
Following the judgment, Rising Tide organiser Zack Schofield said that although the group was disappointed, “the protestival will go ahead within our rights to peaceful assembly on land and water, which is legal in NSW with or without a Form 1.”
Main issue ‘climate pollution’
“The main public safety issue here is the climate pollution caused by the continued expansion of the coal and gas industries. That’s why we are protesting in our own backyard — the Newcastle coal port, scene of Australia’s single biggest contribution to climate change.”
In his judgment, Justice Desmond Fagan affirmed that protesting without a permit is lawful.
In refusing the application, he described the planned action as “excessive”.
“A 30-hour interruption to the operations of a busy port is an imposition on the lawful activities of others that goes far beyond what the people affected should be expected to tolerate in order to facilitate public expression of protest and opinion on the important issues with which the organisers are concerned,” he said.
During the case, Rising Tide’s barrister Neal Funnell argued that in weighing the impacts, the court should take into account “a vast body of evidence as to the cost of the economic impact of global warming and particularly the role the fossil fuel industry plays in that.“
But while agreeing that coal is “extremely detrimental to the atmosphere and biosphere and our future, Justice Fagan indicated that his decision would only take into account the immediate impacts of the protest, not “the economic effect of the activity of burning coal in power plants in whatever countries this coal is freighted to from the port of Newcastle”.
Protest organisers outside NSW Court last week. Image: Michael West Media
NSW Police argued that the risks to safety outweighed the right to protest.
Rising Tide barrister Neal Funnell told the court that the group did not deny that there were inherent risks in protests on water but pointed to evidence that showed police logs revealed no safety concerns or incidents during the 2023 protest.
Although he accepted the police argument about safety risks, Justice Fagan acknowledged that the “organisers of Rising Tide have taken a responsible approach to on-water safety by preparing very thorough plans and protocols, by engaging members of supportive organisations to attend with outboard motor driven rescue craft and by enlisting the assistance of trained lifeguards”.
The Court’s reasons are not to be understood as a direction to terminate the protest.
NSW government opposition
Overshadowing the case were statements by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who recently threatened to make costs of policing a reason why permits to protest could be refused.
Last week, Minns said the protest was opposed because it was dangerous and would impact the economy, suggesting further government action could follow to protect coal infrastructure.
“I think the government’s going to have to make some decisions in the next few weeks about protecting that coal line and ensuring the economy doesn’t close down as a result of this protest activity,” he said.
Greens MP and spokesperson for climate change and justice Sue Higginson, who attended last year’s Rising Tide protest, said, “ It’s the second time in the past few weeks that police have sought to use the court to prohibit a public protest event with the full support of the Premier of this State . . . ”
Higginson hit back at Premier Chris Minns: “Under the laws of NSW, it’s not the job of the Premier or the Police to say where, when and how people can protest. It is the job of the Police and the Premier to serve the people and work with organisers to facilitate a safe and effective event.
“Today, the Premier and the Police have thrown this obligation back in our faces. What we have seen are the tactics of authoritarian politics attempting to silence the people.
“It is telling that the NSW Government would rather seek to silence the community and protect their profits from exporting the climate crisis straight through the Port of Newcastle rather than support our grassroots communities, embrace the right to protest, take firm action to end coal exports and transition our economy.”
Limits of police authorised protests Hundreds of protests take place in NSW each year using Form 1s. Many other assemblies happen without a Form 1 application. But the process places the power over protests in the hands of police and the courts.
In a situation in which NSW has no charter of human rights that protects the right to protest, Justice Fagan’s decision exposes the limits of the Form 1 approach to protests.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties is one of more than 20 organisations that supported the Rising Tide case.
In response to the prohibition order, its Vice-President Lidia Shelly said, “Rising Tide submitted a Form 1 application so that NSW Police could work with the organisers to ensure the safety of the public.
“The organisers did everything right in accordance with the law. It’s responsible and peaceful protesting. Instead, the police dragged the organisers to Court and furthered the public’s perception that they’re acting under political pressure to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry.”
Shelly said, “In denying the Form 1, NSW Police have created a perfect environment for mass arrests of peaceful protestors to occur . . .
“The right to peaceful assembly is a core human right protected under international law. NSW desperately needs a state-based charter of human rights that protects the right to protest.
“The current Form 1 regime in New South Wales is designed to repress the public from exercising their democratic rights to protest. We reiterate our call to the NSW Government to repeal the draconian anti-protest laws, abolish the Form 1 regime, protect independent legal observers, and introduce a Human Rights Act that enshrines the right to protest.”
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS movement and the Greens. Republished with the permission of the author.
Climate change did not take center stage during this week’s presidential election; it did not even seem to be in the wings or in the theater. Instead, the U.S. elected a candidate who has a history of rolling back environmental protections and has spoken openly about his desire to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels. But a handful of ballot initiatives showed that voters are…
“We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”
These were the words of Samoa’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, speaking in his capacity as chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at the UNFCCC COP28 in Dubai last year.
Outside, Pacific climate activists and allies, led by the Pacific Climate Warriors, were calling for a robust and comprehensive financial package that would see the full, fast, and fair transition away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy in the Global South.
This is our Pacific Way in action: state parties and civil society working together to remind the world as we approach a “finance COP” with the upcoming COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11-22 that we cannot be conveniently pigeonholed.
We are people who represent not only communities but landscapes and seascapes that are both vulnerable, and resilient, and should not be forced by polluting countries and the much subsidised and profit-focused fossil fuel industries that lobby them to choose between mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.
Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) are the uncomfortable reminder for those who want smooth sailing of their agenda at COP29, that while we are able to hold the tension of our vulnerability and resilience in the Pacific, this may make for choppy seas.
I recently had the privilege of joining the SPREP facilitated pre-COP29 gathering for PSIDS and the Climate Change Ministerial meeting in Nadi, Fiji, to provide spiritual guidance and pastoral support.
This gathering took place in a spiritually significant moment, the final week of the Season of Creation, ending, profoundly, on the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment. The theme for this year’s Season of Creation was, “to hope and act with Creation (the environment).
Encouraged to act in hope
I looked across the room at climate ministers, lead negotiators from the region and the regional organisations that support them and encouraged them to begin the preparatory meeting and to also enter COP29 with hope, to act in hope, because to hope is an act of faith, of vision, of determination and trust that our current situation will not remain the status quo.
Pacific church leaders have rejected this status quo by saying that finance for adaptation and loss and damage, without a significant commitment to a fossil fuel phase-out that is full, fast and fair, is the biblical equivalent to 30 pieces of silver — the bribe Judas was given to betray Jesus.
Pacific Council of Churches general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan . . . “We are people who represent not only communities but landscapes and seascapes that are both vulnerable, and resilient, and should not be forced by polluting countries.” Image: RNZ/Jamie Tahana
In endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and leading the World Council of Churches to do the same, Pacific faith communities are joining their governments and civil societies to ensure the entire blue Pacific voice reverberates clearly into the spaces where the focus on finance is dominant.
As people with a deep connection to land and sea, whose identity does not separate itself from biodiversity, the understanding of the “groaning of Creation” (Romans 8:19-25) resonates with Pacific islanders.
We were reminded of the words of St. Saint Augustine that says: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
As we witness the cries and sufferings of Earth and all creatures, let righteous anger move us toward the courage to be hopeful and active for justice.
Hope is not merely optimism. It is not a utopian illusion. It is not waiting for a magical miracle.
Hope is trust that our action makes sense, even if the results of this action are not immediately seen. This is the type of hope that our Pasifika households carry to COP29.
Reverend James Bhagwan is general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches. He holds a Bachelor of Divinity from the Pacific Theological College in Fiji and a Masters in Theology from the Methodist Theological University in Korea. He also serves as co-chair of the Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty Campaign Global Steering Committee. This article was first published by RNZ Pacific.
It has been suggested that to reduce landfill greenhouse gas emissions, food wastes should be ground up and sent to the sewer. This is the worst possible attempt to reduce greenhouse gases, and will, in fact, increase the amount of greenhouse gases released to process those food wastes.
I have worked at a wastewater treatment plant for the last five years. These facilities are located in every small, medium and large city, with public sewer systems, across the world. They are designed to process human fecal waste, capture organic matter and metals, and release treated water back into the environment. They primarily process those wastes using a biological system of bacteria and microorganisms.
Heavy particles or debris that come in with the wastewater will be filtered or collected at the front of the plant and taken to a landfill. That filtration or collection requires energy. That energy is provided with electricity, often created by burning fossil fuels.
Any lighter particles that stay suspended in water or float on the surface will also be collected. Any carbon will be converted into methane by bacteria in an anaerobic digester or processed by bacteria into carbon dioxide in an aeration basin. Either solution also requires additional energy, either to heat the anaerobic digesters or to pump air into the water to add oxygen to it.
The amount of carbon coming into the treatment plant will exactly equal the amount going out as carbon dioxide, methane or as sewage sludge. Sewage sludge is the leftover solids, bacteria and organic matter that will need to be removed from the treatment plant. The sludge will either be land applied on farms as fertilizer, or sent to a landfill. As regulations tighten on land application across the world, landfills will be the ultimate destination of all sewage sludge in the near future.
The food waste you send down the drain, instead of throwing it into the garbage, will ultimately still end up at the landfill. The carbon in that food will still be released as methane or carbon dioxide. Except, instead of the two steps of collection and delivery to the landfill, it will compound the effects of that food waste by sending it through a wastewater treatment plant, increasing the energy costs of the treatment plant and increasing the amount of greenhouse gases released to process that food waste.
If you want to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases from your food waste, compost it or turn it into biochar by burning it in a low heat environment with a lack of oxygen. That is the only way to lock in the carbon for long term storage. Don’t send excess food wastes to a treatment plant, we have enough carbon to deal with, just with the feces.
Billions of dollars will buy almost anything anybody wants, and on November 5 billions of dollars bought the world’s leading climate-skeptical political administration, aka: the Trump Administration, which is anti-almost-everything, except for a free reign to the almighty market. Price determines policy, and it buys political office.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, 150 billionaire families broke all campaign-spending records by a country mile, spending $2 billion in total to get a Republican majority with $1.36 billion going to Republicans versus $413 million to Democrats and the balance to specific causes, proof positive that billions of dollars can buy anything.
The System Regulating Campaign Financing Has Collapsed
“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.” (Source: “Billionaire Clans Spend Nearly $2 Billion On 2024 Elections,” Americans for Fair Taxes, October 29, 2024)
America’s Climate Policy Cascading, into the dust bin.
It’s interesting that the Forbes’ article came out just before the most important election of all time for the future, or lack of future, for the planet’s habitability. The initial paragraph of the Forbes’ article contains a stark warning that is shared by many top-level scientists around the world: “A distinguished international team of scientists on Tuesday issued the starkest warning yet that human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis that could threaten the lives of up to 6 billion people this century, stating candidly: ‘We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.”
Now the Trump Climate-skeptical administration is about to take control over the world’s leading democracy (maybe, but not). One can only wonder what impact this may have on scientists that claim we’re: “pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability” with consequences this century of 6 billion threatened because of massive uninhabitable regions of the planet. Extreme heat and dwindling food supplies will prevail. The American electorate made this possible, winning the award for the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet, maybe of all time. As for demonstrated ignorance, all that’s required is to look at what’s happening to the climate system, weird, unprecedented stuff that doesn’t happen, ever, until now. And it’s broadcast on nightly news (1) atmospheric rivers flooding communities within minutes (2) Category Five hurricanes laying waste outside of normal hurricane season (3) tornadoes further North than ever before (4) hailstorms like golf balls destroying siding and roofs of buildings (5) home insurers dropping coverage in Florida and California (6) insurance premiums nearly doubling for homeowners. The list could go on and on, but the point is climate change is driving ordinary people out of homes and broke. The disasters are the result of human-generated fossil fuel CO2 bringing on an overheated haywire climate system that has exceeded the Paris ’15 climate conference agreement among all nations warning don’t go over +1.5°C pre-industrial by limiting CO2 emissions that blanket the planet and hold heat because it turns the climate system into an ogre of destruction, now in its early stages, worldwide. The proof is palpable on every continent, “2024 Will be World’s Hottest Year on Record, EU Scientists Say,” Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024.
And this is only the start, with the climate-skeptical new administration in place, “it’ll get much worse.” But “getting much worse” on top of a climate system that is already exploding in our faces is destined to create havoc, destruction, and darkness like nobody can imagine possible. Trump will rescind climate-related commitments by the US such as the Paris 2015 climate agreement. The US is out, count on it as the country dusts-off its hands and walks away from tackling the most rambunctious dangerous climate system in human history just as it’s starting to brutalize major life-sourcing ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, drying up because of severe drought as the Mississippi River’s low depth severely diminishes barge traffic transport of crucial agricultural product: “For the third year in a row, extreme drought conditions in the Midwest are drawing down water levels on the Mississippi River, raising prices for companies that transport goods downstream and forcing governments and business owners to seek alternative solutions,” Governing, Oct. 18, 2024.
Bloomberg Green/Green Daily published an article entitled: “US Election 2024,” presented by IBM, What a Trump Victory Means for Energy: “The win empowers him to deliver on his campaign pledges to go after climate policies he’s dubbed the ‘green new scam’ while reorienting the federal government toward pumping more crude and building more power plants.”
He’ll end federal policies that encourage EV sales. The EPA regulation on tailpipe pollution, which penalizes gas-guzzlers, thereby favoring EVs will be a top target. An executive order to accomplish this has already been drafted. Additionally, going after California’s strict car pollution standards via changes to the Clean Air Act. Trump favors dirty air to stimulate more gas-powered vehicle sales.
From A-to-Z Trump will unleash the fossil fuel industry to full blast operations, including lower tax rates, literally taking off the gloves of any federal regulation. This will be comparable to the Wild West at the turn of the 19th century, no holds barred with plans to open America’s public lands for oil development. Go for it!
Offshore wind is another target for closure, impacting developmental work already underway of multi-billion-dollar wind farms up and down the US East Coast. Trump intends to target offshore wind on “day one” probably via a moratorium imposed administratively.
The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars of loan-backed authority readily avaiblable for clean-tech thanks to Biden’s IRA, is at risk. “Trump will be under dueling pressure to either kill off the program, ending a major source of support for green-technology commercialization, or to keep it running, just with a decidedly pro-fossil-fuel bent. Advocates of the latter approach say the office has made billions of dollars in interest for the federal government and that its support can be used to back natural gas, carbon capture and nuclear energy ventures.” (Bloomberg Green)
Additionally, Trump will terminate a suite of EPA rules that inhibit power-plant pollution, for example coal burning plants. Trump believes AI needs twice the amount of electricity currently supplied to the US. A 2024 rule limiting emissions from existing coal plants and new gas-fired units will be a top focus for removal.
Millions of members (over 70 million voters in the 2024 election) of the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet have sealed the fate of an abrupt enormously destructive climate system that’s already started misbehaving in earnest because of excessive levels of greenhouse gases like CO<sub>2</sub> emitted by burning fossil fuels, thus slamming the climate system down onto the mat, defeated, for the worse. How will it get better?
An international legal judgment on governments’ obligations to prevent human-driven climate change has become more crucial after Donald Trump’s election victory raised the prospect of the U.S. again withdrawing from the landmark Paris agreement, a lawyer in the case said.
The U.N.’s International Court of Justice, or ICJ, is set to begin hearings on Dec. 2 that will culminate in it issuing an opinion on states’ responsibilities and the legal consequences for countries that fail to act. More than 130 nations – but not top polluters China and the U.S. – supported a push by Pacific island nation Vanuatu at the U.N. General Assembly in 2023 for the ICJ opinion.
“All the core norms at stake in the proceedings are norms of customary international law. So, that means that these obligations apply to all states. That is particularly relevant in a volatile political climate,” said Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, legal counsel for Vanuatu at the ICJ hearings.
Climate protesters interrupt former US president and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump as he speaks at a “commit to caucus rally” in Indianola, Iowa, on Jan. 14, 2024.
During Trump’s first presidency, the U.S. in late 2019 announced its withdrawal from the Paris agreement that obligates countries to make far-reaching changes to limit the increase in average global temperature to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius.
At the time, the State Department cited the “unfair economic burden” imposed on American workers and businesses by U.S. pledges to reduce reliance on fossil fuels under the 2015 agreement. The withdrawal, only briefly in effect because it required a year’s notice, was reversed under President Joe Biden, whose administration began in early 2021.
“There are real threats of, for example, a new U.S. administration again pulling out of the Paris agreement and potentially even pulling out of the climate change convention,” Wewerinke-Singh told a briefing on Thursday. The convention is the foundational 1992 international agreement for preventing climate change.
“So that makes it even more relevant to have a good understanding of what these obligations are, that are universally applicable,” she said.
Vanuatu’s spearheading of the ICJ case has amplified the voices of small island nations whose national interests and even existence are often overlooked as more powerful nations jostle on the international stage.
Collectively, Pacific island nations have made a minute contribution to greenhouse gas emissions but warn they could suffer the brunt of consequences from higher global temperatures.
Tropical cyclones, for example, could become more intense and destructive. Sea-level rise could outpace the natural growth of low-lying coral atoll nations, making them prone to inundation by even normal tides.
Pacific island leaders have said the ICJ case is necessary because of lack of action to implement the Paris agreement. The 29th U.N. climate summit, known as COP, takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan next week.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu climate change minister, speaks during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Vanuatu’s special envoy Ralph Regenvanu said the new U.K. government’s decision to implement an ICJ opinion from 2019 that it should return the Chagos Archipelago to former British colony Mauritius shows the role of political will in international law.
“We hope for the right timing as well. We hope for political situations to get to the stage where countries may actually [act],” he told the briefing.
“I’m sure many countries will abide by the advisory opinion, but there will be changes in circumstances also where we get new governments who are more willing to abide than previous governments,” he said.
The U.N. court based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, has received 91 written statements from governments and international organizations on the climate change case – the highest number of written statements ever filed in an advisory proceeding before the court.
The court also received dozens of written responses to the initial submissions. It extended the deadline for written submissions several times.
China and the U.S. both made written submissions, as have organizations such as OPEC and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Regenvanu said in a statement Hurricane Milton last month showed the U.S., like Pacific island nations, increasingly faces extreme weather.
“This is a shared problem that will not solve itself without international cooperation, and we will continue to make that case to the incoming president of one of the world’s largest polluters,” he said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA.
Billions of dollars will buy almost anything anybody wants, and on November 5th billions of dollars bought the world’s leading anti-climate-change political administration, aka: the Trump Administration, which is anti-almost-everything, except for a free reign to the almighty market. Price determines policy, and it buys political office.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, 150 billionaire families broke all campaign-spending records by a country mile, spending $2 billion in total to get a Republican majority with $1.36 billion going to Republicans versus $413 million to Democrats and the balance to specific causes, proof positive that billions of dollars can buy anything.
The System Regulating Campaign Financing Has Collapsed
“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.” (Source: Billionaire Clans Spend Nearly $2 Billion On 2024 Elections, Americans for Fair Taxes, October 29, 2024)
America’s Climate Policy Cascading, into the dust bin.
It’s interesting that the Forbes’ We Are Afraid article came out just before the most important election of all time for the future, or lack of future, for the planet’s habitability. The initial paragraph of the Forbes’ article contains a stark warning that is shared by many top-level scientists around the world: “A distinguished international team of scientists on Tuesday issued the starkest warning yet that human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis that could threaten the lives of up to 6 billion people this century, stating candidly: ‘We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.”
Now the Trump Anti-Climate-Change administration is about to take control over the world’s leading democracy (maybe, but not). One can only wonder what impact this may have on scientists that claim we’re: “pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability” with consequences this century of 6 billion threatened because of massive uninhabitable regions of the planet. Extreme heat and dwindling food supplies will prevail. The American electorate made this possible, winning the award for the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet, maybe of all time. As for demonstrated ignorance, all that’s required is to look at what’s happening to the climate system, weird, unprecedented stuff that doesn’t happen, ever, until now. And it’s broadcast on nightly news (1) atmospheric rivers flooding communities within minutes (2) Category Five hurricanes laying waste outside of normal hurricane season (3) tornadoes further North than ever before (4) hailstorms like golf balls destroying siding and roofs of buildings (5) home insurers dropping coverage in Florida and California (6) insurance premiums nearly doubling for homeowners. The list could go on and on, but the point is climate change is driving ordinary people out of homes and broke. The disasters are the result of human-generated fossil fuel CO2 bringing on an overheated haywire climate system that has exceeded the Paris ’15 climate conference agreement among all nations warning don’t go over +1.5°C pre-industrial by limiting CO2 emissions that blanket the planet and hold heat because it turns the climate system into an ogre of destruction, now in its early stages, worldwide. The proof is palpable on every continent, 2024 Will be World’s Hottest Year on Record, EU Scientists Say, Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024.
And this is only the start, with the anti-climate-change new administration in place, “it’ll get much worse.” But “getting much worse” on top of a climate system that is already exploding in our faces is destined to create havoc, destruction, and darkness like nobody can imagine possible. Trump will rescind climate-related commitments by the US such as the Paris 2015 climate agreement. The US is out, count on it as the country dusts-off its hands and walks away from tackling the most rambunctious dangerous climate system in human history just as it’s starting to brutalize major life-sourcing ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, drying up because of severe drought as the Mississippi River’s low depth severely diminishes barge traffic transport of crucial agricultural product: “For the third year in a row, extreme drought conditions in the Midwest are drawing down water levels on the Mississippi River, raising prices for companies that transport goods downstream and forcing governments and business owners to seek alternative solutions,” Governing, Oct. 18, 2024.
Bloomberg Green/Green Daily published an article entitled: US Election 2024, presented by IBM, What a Trump Victory Means for Energy: “The win empowers him to deliver on his campaign pledges to go after climate policies he’s dubbed the ‘green new scam’ while reorienting the federal government toward pumping more crude and building more power plants.”
He’ll end federal policies that encourage EV sales. The EPA regulation on tailpipe pollution, which penalizes gas-guzzlers, thereby favoring EVs will be a top target. An executive order to accomplish this has already been drafted. Additionally, going after California’s strict car pollution standards via changes to the Clean Air Act. Trump favors dirty air to stimulate more gas-powered vehicle sales.
From A-to-Z Trump will unleash the fossil fuel industry to full blast operations, including lower tax rates, literally taking off the gloves of any federal regulation. This will be comparable to the Wild West at the turn of the 19th century, no holds barred with plans to open America’s public lands for oil development. Go for it!
Offshore wind is another target for closure, impacting developmental work already underway of multi-billion-dollar wind farms up and down the US East Coast. Trump intends to target offshore wind on “day one” probably via a moratorium imposed administratively.
The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars of loan-backed authority readily avaiblable for clean-tech thanks to Biden’s IRA, is at risk. “Trump will be under dueling pressure to either kill off the program, ending a major source of support for green-technology commercialization, or to keep it running, just with a decidedly pro-fossil-fuel bent. Advocates of the latter approach say the office has made billions of dollars in interest for the federal government and that its support can be used to back natural gas, carbon capture and nuclear energy ventures.” (Bloomberg Green)
Additionally, Trump will terminate a suite of EPA rules that inhibit power-plant pollution, for example coal burning plants. Trump believes AI needs twice the amount of electricity currently supplied to the US. A 2024 rule limiting emissions from existing coal plants and new gas-fired units will be a top focus for removal.
Millions of members (over 70 million voters in the 2024 election) of the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet have sealed the fate of an abrupt enormously destructive climate system that’s already started misbehaving in earnest because of excessive levels of greenhouse gases like CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, thus slamming the climate system down onto the mat, defeated, for the worse. How will it get better?
Donald J. Trump will once again be president of the United States. The Associated Press called the race for Trump early Wednesday morning, ending one of the costliest and most turbulent campaign cycles in the nation’s history. The results promise to upend U.S. climate policy: In addition to returning a climate denier to the White House, voters also gave Republicans control of the Senate…
‘Indigenous communities must have better political representations to ensure our rights are protected both constitutionally and in practice,‘ says Victoria Maladaeva, and Indigenous peoples’ rights defender from Russia. Victoria was also a participant in ISHR’s Women Rights Advocacy Week this year. She spoke to ISHR about her work and goals.
Hello Victoria, thanks for accepting to tell us your story. Can you briefly introduce yourself and your work?
Sure! I’m a Buryat anti-war decolonial activist, co-founder of the Indigenous of Russia Foundation.
What inspired you to become involved in the defence of human rights?
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Indigenous peoples, particularly Buryat, have been hit the hardest. I wanted to help my people, fight the Russian propaganda and raise awareness about systemic colonial oppression and discrimination faced by Indigenous people and ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation.
What would Russia and your community look like in the future if you achieved your goals, if the future you are fighting for became a reality?
The country needs a large-scale transformation— political, economic, and cultural. Indigenous communities must have better political representations to ensure our rights are protected both constitutionally and in practice. Genuine democratic reforms involve fundamental rights for self-determination and autonomy where Indigenous peoples gain control of their land and resources. Putin’s constitution’s amendments to national Republics must be reversed, our languages must be mandatory in all schools, universities, and institutions where Indigenous communities live.
How do you think your work is helping make that future come true?
I’m advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples with international stakeholders and institutions to raise awareness about issues faced by our communities and spreading awareness, producing documentaries, and mobilising diasporas.
Have you been the target of threats or attempts at reprisals because of your work?
Unfortunately, yes. There have been threats because of my anti-war activism and for shedding light on the disproportionate mobilisation in the Republic of Buryatia. For some reason, my colleagues and I were denied participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. I would like to believe this was a mistake and that there was no influence from the Russian delegation at the UN.
Do you have a message for the UN and the international community?
Russia needs decolonisation and de-imperialisation. Without revising the past and acknowledging colonial wars (not only in Ukraine) and discrimination, there can be no bright future for Russia—free and democratic. The international and anti-imperialist community should acknowledge that the Russian government is not for any anti-colonial movement. Stand in solidarity with independent Indigenous activists!
With another annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change starting again next week, it is worth accessing the ongoing transition from burnt fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) to manufactured renewables (wind, sun, and storage) as global warming continues to rise beyond known comfort levels. Since last year’s COP, the number-one greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 422.0 ppm up from 418.5 ppm, while the number-two GHG methane (CH4) rose from 1915.7 to 1921.8 ppb. That’s another 50 billion tons added to an already edgy atmosphere, resulting in more heat, more moisture, and more damage. As for the transition, are we doing better, worse, or just the same-old business as usual? That depends on who you ask and the time frame.
Like it or not, we are all children of the Oleaginous Age. Petroleum is everywhere, like a stain that won’t go away. From Edwin Drake’s initial Titusville, Pennsylvania, find in 1859 to today’s 100 million barrels of oil consumed daily across the globe, we can’t get enough of the black stuff – to run our cars, heat our homes, and make our plastics. The list of petroleum-derived products is the story of modernity, including kerosene, gasoline, and heating oil, as well as numerous hydrocarbon-based products such as propane cooking stoves, butane lighters, pen ink, vinyl records, shingles, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and even chemotherapy medications. At the same time, the global population continues to rise with increased energy use, passing 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 4 billion in 1974, and 8 billion two years ago, all because of an ever-increasing combustion of fossil fuels.
This year’s COP, number 29, is in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the western edge of the Caspian Sea, called the “new oil El Dorado” since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Together, the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea hold two-thirds of known oil reserves (with Iran in the middle). One might think a UN conference on climate change might be better set elsewhere than a major petroleum-producing country. Indeed, reporting on the progress between nationally stated 2015Paris Agreement commitments and actual emissions, Climate Action Tracker (CAT) rated Azerbaijan’s climate action “Critically insufficient,” citing a 20% increase in GHG emissions by 2030, contrary to its declared Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to keep warming to at least 1.5 ºC. Rather than providing leadership, “Azerbaijan appears to have abandoned its 2030 emissions target, moving backward instead of forward on climate action.”
Azerbaijan has always been at the forefront of a global petroleum industry, thanks to its plentiful reserves and the invention of more mechanized extraction methods in a newly industrializing world, producing half of the world’s oil by the 1900s. Initially turned into kerosene for Russian lamps, the oil was soon refined as gasoline for a growing automobile industry, bunker fuel for ships, and diesel to turn the engines of industry. In time, the output from Bakucompeted for the lucrative Russian market with Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.
That venture was backed by Rothschild family money and the technical expertise of three brothers – Robert, Ludvig, and Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Brothers Petroleum Producing Company, a.k.a. Branobel, launched the first successful bulk tanker on the inland Caspian Sea, helping Branobel to capture half of the Russian kerosene market via the Volga River. More tankers were launched from the Black Sea as Baku oil was transported through the Caucasus Mountains by train to the Georgian port of Batumi via the Transcaucasus Railway and by pipeline, the route cleared with considerable quantities of a revolutionary new explosive developed by the youngest Nobel brother Alfred. Producing 30% of the world market, Branobel soon rivaled Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Today’s revamped oil El Dorado is well-placed to provide even more oil and gas in the coming years, helping to counter lost Russian supplies in an energy-thirsty Europe.
With COP29 in Azerbaijan and COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, a pattern is emerging – the UAE’s Paris 1.5 ºC agreement reduction plans were also rated by CAT as “Critically insufficient.” Why not just alternate Houston and Riyadh to shorten the boardroom directives? With roughly 16% of global reserves, Saudi Arabia (“Critically insufficient”) exports more than a tenth of global oil, while number-one producer, the United States (“insufficient”), consumes more than two-tenths. Costa Rica, Chile, or Norway (“Almost sufficient”) would seem to be better choices, that is, if we want to learn about how some countries are reducing emissions. But no one wants to rock that boat. Business as usual is the goal.
Change always comes at a cost. To change the world’s liquid fuel and electrical grid supply from brown to green, the costs are extraordinary, where profits are measured in trillions of dollars by today’s Seven Sisters and various national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco (2022profits: ExxonMobil – $59 billion, Shell – $40 billion, Chevron – $37 billion, TotalEnergies – $36 billion, BP – $28 billion, ConocoPhillips – $19 billion, ENI – $15 billion; Aramco $120 billion). We are all being restricted by their organized refusal to change.
As philosopher and science historian Thomas S. Kuhn noted in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.” This was the case when coal replaced wood as more energy density was needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution, while the internal combustion engine blew away its horse-powered competition to provide a reliable means of transportation, but is now “shifting” again because of another acute problem as global warming generates more extreme weather and combustion pollution continues to kill millions every year.
Unfortunately, we can’t expect much shifting if oil continues to run the COP climate change show. Indeed, Azerbaijan is already planning to expand its fossil fuel production over the next decade, primarily through natural gas exports to the European market to replace Russian supplies. As noted in an Urgewald report on Azerbaijan’s state oil company, entitled “SOCAR – Azerbaijan’s Fossil Fuel Proxy,” there is an “alarming conflict of interest” between such a “deeply political organization and the Azerbaijani President’s ties to the company.” As at COP29, expect updates about side deals to secure new distribution contracts (and pipeline transit fees) from Azerbaijan.
The transition is being slowed by unwilling participants, disregard of agreed policy, and standard structural inertia. Of 39 countries plus the EU that account for 85% of global emissions assessed by Climate Tracker Action, none are on track to meet their legally binding 2015 Paris Agreement goal. Not a single country is “1.5 C Paris agreement compatible.” The two most populous – China and India – are rated “Highly insufficient,” while the EU as a whole is “Insufficient.” Expecting GHGs to peak by 2025 and temperatures to stop rising is a fairytale.
And despite a record amount of renewable energy installed last year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts oil will become cheaper in the next decade and more abundant as renewables continue growing, increasing consumption and further stressing an already fragile global ecosystem. A transition is meant to replace the old, not augment the new.
With global warming threatening long-standing ways of life, including changed agriculture, eroded shorelines, and increasingly unstable weather events, we should be doing everything we can to avoid higher costs. Instead we get more bad weather, such as horrendous flash flooding in parts of eastern Spain last week that left more than 200 people dead after a year’s rain fell in just 8 hours. Warmer sea temperatures create more moisture, while a hotter atmosphere holds more moisture (7% more water for every degree C increase). Humans can no longer contain the growing threat.
There are successes to applaud, driven mostly by industry innovation. Solar cell and wind turbine costs continue to drop. In the last decade, solar photovoltaic (PV) costs dropped by 90%, onshore wind by 70%, and chemical storage batteries by over 90%. Much less polysilicon is now required to make a PV cell (87% reduction in volume/watt in two decades). The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory publishes its light-to-power conversion chart, showing how innovation increases cell efficiency year on year – 85 groups are represented, including perennial stalwarts ARCO, FirstSolar, and UNSW.
New ways of employing solar are appearing, including canal canopies that lower evaporation, floating solar, and “agrovoltaics” that make use of neglected space and can help farmers to “double crop.” China continues to install more PV solar and produces almost 80% of all solar panels, while its Wind Base program is on track to reach 400 GW by 2030 and 1,000 GW by 2050 for a total national penetration covering two-thirds of its existing electrical grid from wind power alone.
The UK quit coal after 142 years, closing its last coal-fired power plant in September. The 60-year-old thermal coal plant near Nottingham ended Britain’s historic coal past, although a new record was set in 2023 for global coal consumption led by China. Not exactly the agreed-upon “phase down” of coal reached at COP26 in Glasgow. The achievement is also dubious given that biomass is now being burnt as a replacement fuel in converted coal plants, which is worse for the environment than coal. Cutting down trees, shipping them across the Atlantic (much of UK biomass comes from the eastern United States), and burning them as pellets is not a success. If one wants to reduce global warming, the easiest solution is to plant more trees, not cut more down. The UK National Grid, however, is now increasingly powered by plentiful offshore wind farms.
“Drill baby drill” is still the mantra of most politicians in the United States regardless of party stripe, whether explicitly by Donald Trump or in reality by Joe Biden as the US continues to increase oil production and export more fracked natural gas. Despite signing the Inflation Reduction Act that included $369 billion in green investments over a decade, the Biden Administration also increased drilling permits and exports. Maximizing oil output and selling abroad is not a strategy for reduction. Change is never easy – no one gives up their billions for nothing.
Just as worrisome is the push for increased nuclear power, especially in China and India, as the World Nuclear Association reported four new plants built in 2024 while construction began on eight more (six in China). Ambitious tech companies are also calling for nuclear plants to run their expanding data centers, claiming a supposed green cred. Elsewhere, the world is cautious as in the UK, now on the hook for £136 billion and counting in cleanup costs at Sellafield, site of the world’s first commercial grid-tied nuclear power plant in 1956.
Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, comes with unsafe carbon-intensive mining practices (thus not clean or green), endless waste problems (a.k.a. “nuclear eternity”), can be re-engineered for weapons, and is expensive (never mind the subsidies). According to Lazard, a US-based investment group that calculates the real costs of energy via its Levelized Cost of Energy metric, nuclear is more than three times as expensive as renewables ($226/MWh versus $74/MWh PV and $59/MWh onshore wind), while costs continue rising each year – a reverse learning curve where prices go up with experience rather than down. The blatantly false “too cheap to meter” PR is finally being called out.
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is increasing and is essential to reduce petroleum dependence, albeit unevenly – Norway boasts almost 100% sales with an average of 20% worldwide. China leads the way with half of all new EVs sold (a.k.a. new-energy vehicles), while developing countries are starting to pick up the slack on percentage installed renewables to provide the clean fuel. Critical resources required for EV batteries are still controlled by foreign companies in China and the US, such as lithium from South America and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, extracted with little concern for local needs and rerouted to richer manufacturing countries. New supply lines are being created to maximize output without guaranteeing safety along the way.
EVs are particularly important to clean our polluted cities and waterways, but adoption is being stalled by short-sighted government policy. EVs are in fact much cleaner, safer and easier to drive, while reducing our reliance on petroleum. Price is the main reason holding back wider EV adoption. Chinese manufacturer BYD’s smallest compact, the Seagull, costs about $12,000, while a Nissan Leaf is about $28,000 and the cheapest Tesla $44,000. Although running costs are less for an EV, most consumers still can’t afford a low-end EV let alone a higher-priced Tesla. With 100% tariffs imposed in North America and the EU, prices will rise even more.
Tariffs are about jobs and containing Chinese dominance, yet come at huge retaliatory costs in our interconnected trading world. Asking China to cut down GHG emissions from fossil fuels while blocking its growing renewables industry is also counterproductive, what China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called “pan-securitism and protectionism.” Protectionist tit-for-tat policies are already impacting consumers as China threatens Canada with canola tariffs and Spain worries about pork products. Contrary to coordinating EU strategy, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez asked the European Commission to reconsider the tariffs. But Spain isn’t as dependent on car sales as Germany, the de facto EU engine.
Tariffs may protect local jobs and buy time, but the consumer is stuck paying for the short-sightedness of Western carmakers slow to adapt to new competition, just as German and Japanese undercut the Big Three on cost and style in the 1970s. A better approach is to increase subsidies to local manufacturers, lowering production costs and sticker prices. Imagine if long-established carmakers tried reverse engineering Chinese designs that are already more than a decade ahead, just as Chinese carmakers did to build their envious market share. Imagine if governments offered more investment and subsidies both to local and foreign carmakers, forcing a global rethink and ultimately leading to more local manufacturing.
BYD and others have started to build plants in local markets – BYD announced plans for an EV plant in Turkey, its second in Europe after Hungary – but until costs come down consumers and the transition suffer. GM, Ford, and Stellantis (Chrysler) in the US and Volkswagen, BMW, and Volvo in Europe lag behind Chinese sales, while even Tesla has to play catch up to stay in its high-end lane. BYD passed Tesla as the number-one EV seller for the first time this past quarter. In the US, concerns over job losses for the more easily assembled EVs fueled labor complaints amid last year’s UAW strikes, while VW is threatening to lay off thousands of workers and close plants because of a cut to government EV subsidies and the loss of cheap Russian gas.
Indeed, Western automakers are in trouble because of lack of investment and incentives, allowing China to dominate the evolving EV market. But the revolution revolution is here to stay despite the recent slowdown in sales and fears about cheaper Chinese imports. InsideEVs.com writer Kevin Williams noted, “For a long time, Chinese cars really weren’t great. That isn’t true anymore. Chinese EVs are competitive in ways that go beyond just price. They’re stylish, they’re well-made and they work really well.” While it’s true that labor practices and state-controlled government subsidies in China are not as free and fair as in the West, there is no doubt EVs can become more affordable given concerted global agreements and action.
Battery performance is also much improved, increasing overall efficiency, reducing charger anxiety, and speeding up refills. More chargers will help, though new infrastructure has been slow to roll out. One sees chargers scattered here and there, but more are needed, both privately and publicly – soon hotels, motels, and shopping malls will all have chargers, possibly free to use to entice more customers. The chicken-and-egg EV-charger analogy is moot since EVs and charging infrastructure can both evolve separately. Of course, greater EV adoption means less oil.
Is it all just greenwashing then as the oil execs fly in and out of Baku to compare notes and compliment the host county on its fossil fuel expansion plans with a few side deals thrown in? Landlocked Azerbaijan is planning to use Turkey as a natural gas hub at the crossroads of East and West, while Turkey is in talks with Russia to provide more gas to Europe via the Turkstream pipeline in defiance of Western sanctions and ongoing climate concerns. Where better to talk shop than at a talking shop with all the major players? It’s hard to act in the best interest of a warming planet when national goals are the priority.
The scale of what is needed is daunting, but what can any of us do? “Negawatts” is an area we can all make a difference, hopefully not just symbolic. Coined by Rocky Mountain Institute scientist Amory Lovins, any watt we don’t consume is just as valuable to reduce emissions. And despite the slow pace of change, there are simple fixes such as easy-to-install rooftop solar thermal heating, especially in warm-weather climates – no need to use the grid for readily available hot water. There is no need for noisy and polluting gas-powered lawnmowers, leaf blowers, motorcycles, or scooters. Induction stoves save lives as gas-stove pollutants continue to kill tens of thousands of people each year. Paper-packaged condiments, wooden cutlery, and paper bags are an obvious take-out alternative to plastic. We can all make a difference.
As for governments interested in real change, zero-emission thermal plants should be mandatory. Carbon capture is worth exploring, at least for industrial processes, but is expensive, unproven, and is more about keeping petroleum in business. More high-speed rail lines are needed, increased public transport, and people-sized not car-sized cities to reduce energy reliance. If the oil companies weren’t setting the agenda at COP and beyond, there would be a wish list of things to do for consumers and manufacturers – investments, incentives, and infrastructure to build a better tomorrow. Alas, co-opted by oil, the long fossil fuel goodbye continues.
Is there an acceptable meeting point between capitalism and the environment? With a more easily managed command economy, China has carved out an enviable lead in renewables manufacturing, but has much to do to lower GHG emissions. Hopefully by the next COP we will be further on than arguing about non-existent “phase outs” and “phase downs” and can act towards real change.
As noted by Herman Scheer, the German parliamentarian responsible for the 2000 German Renewable Energy Act that spurred on an avant-garde approach to energy technology via consumer subsidies and grid buybacks, “Making the groundbreaking transition to an economy based on solar energy and solar resources will do more to safeguard our common future than any other economic development since the Industrial Revolution.” What is COP waiting for? Gentle men and women, start your electric engines!
Broken Hill doesn’t often make the news, but when it does, it’s often for the wrong reasons. Over to Geoff Russell to explain why the recent power crisis was so shambolic that it made national headlines.
AUTHOR’S UPDATE: The article below was written before the failure of the backup diesel generator in Broken Hill. It turns out that while there are two, one was awaiting repair. Ouch. I wonder how long it had been waiting and why?
It also appears that the Transgrid report I mention which reckoned on 25MW being adequate to supply Broken Hill was wrong. I’ve had discussions over the years with engineers about how much power capacity you need for a given collection of houses and they always reckon it’s lower than my guess; meaning they are right and I am wrong.
I say this because their estimates are used in all our towns and cities and the grid works. I always overestimate the risk of everybody using everything simultaneously and overloading the available capacity. But it seems that there has been an increase in power usage in Broken Hill, or a change in patterns of usage, that have made 25MW too small for the job.
I base that on the reports of various constraints on power usage that have been reported in the media, including many reports of businesses and people using their own generators.
Keep both things in mind as you read on; namely that Plan C was awaiting repair and Plan B turned out to be under-resourced.
A timelapse of one of the numerous storms and blackouts experienced by residents in the Far West of NSW in October.
Storms (possibly including tornados) on Thursday, October 17th knocked out seven transmission towers on the single line carrying power to Broken Hill. On the other side of the border in South Australia they took BHP’s Olympic Dam mine off line.
The storms were part of a wider weather system that dropped an additional 29 transmission structures in South Australia; 23 towers and six big stobie poles. A “stobie” pole is super solid concrete and steel structure. Think of it as two vertical pieces of railway track with a 30-90 cm of concrete between them. They are common in SA, but rare elsewhere.
Happily, a couple of “small” diesel generators can (or maybe cannot – the system has failed several times since Thursday) keep the lights on in Broken Hill for the weeks it will take to replace the towers. Olympic Dam is another story. It has generators also, but they will only handle “care and maintenance” operations, the main mining operations will be quiet for weeks.
So too the three main mines in Broken Hill proper – they’ve all shut down, with workers forced to take annual leave, leave without pay, or long service.
I drove into Broken Hill a few weeks ago from Adelaide. There’s a 50-megawatt (MW) solar farm on the edge of town as you arrive. Residents might be wondering why they are running on diesel and not that solar farm. I’ll get to that soon enough.
The Broken Hill solar farm, on the outskirts of the far western NSW city. (IMAGE: Kai Davis Productions)
First let’s talk about power and energy. If you know the difference between kW and kWh and between MW and MWh, then you can skip this paragraph and the next. Otherwise, read this paragraph and the next two a few times, until it becomes really clear.
Your electric jug probably uses around 2,000 watts (W) of power. A watt is a unit that measures power, which is the rate at which energy is used. A kilowatt (kW) is 1,000 watts. Energy, measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh), tells you how much power you’ve used over time. For example, if your jug runs at 2,000 watts for half an hour, it uses 1 kWh of energy.
Your electric jug is probably about 2,000 watts; watts is a unit that measures power. A kilowatt (kW) is 1,000 watts of power. Energy, however, is a measure of how long you have been using that power. So, a kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy used when you use 1 kilowatt of power for 1 hour.
If you had a 4,000 watt jug it would boil water twice as fast as a 2,000 watt jug because it can apply twice the power; but it would use exactly the same amount of energy. A 500 watt jug would take 4 times as long to boil the same amount of water as a 2,000 watt jug. Use the same power for twice as long and you use double the energy. If you use 1 million watts for 1 hour, then you’ve used 1 megawatt-hour (1MWh) of energy. So 500 people turning on a 2,000 watt jug for an hour will use 1MWh of energy (because 500 x 2,000 = 1,000,000).
Now let’s restart being clear about the basics. Broken Hill has a population of about 17,000 people. The diesel generators are 25 MW; the MW is the power of the generators. Remember, MW is a million watts. Divide 25 MW among 17,000 people and you find out the amount of power they can use simultaneously from that generator; and the answer is 1,450 watts (easy: 25,000,000/17,000=1,450).
So if every individual (not just each household – there’s about 8,000 of those) in Broken Hill was running a 1,600 watt kettle at exactly same time, the generator wouldn’t cope. What would happen? Jugs are simple things, they’d just use the available power but boil water a little slower. On the other hand, electronics, air conditioners and fancy motors would behave quite differently and not as nicely, and the odds are pretty good that the generator would recognise it was in trouble and shut down to protect sensitive devices. After all, it can’t tell the difference between a jug and a computer.
On a larger grid, say, Adelaide, as more people draw more power, grid operators (aided by a considerable bank of hardware and software) add more generation to handle the increase. They also remove generation as people reduce the power they are using. This is called “load balancing”. Engineers refer to the power demand as the “load”. This is measured every five minutes of every day.
A generator comes with circuitry designed to do load balancing automatically. You just keep plugging stuff in and it copes; but cross its upper limit and it will fail.
Happily, people don’t all want electricity at the same time, so 25MW for Broken Hill should, theoretically, be fine. Backup generation diesels often come in pairs like this because you always need a Plan C when you move to Plan B after losing the grid. Transgrid reckon the average demand at Broken Hill is about 21MW. That doesn’t leave much spare capacity if usage peaks.
Then again, plenty of Broken Hill residents have photovoltaic (PV) panels these days. But….
Too much of a good thing
When “Broken Hill” is connected to the grid, any exported PV output just “disappears” into the grid and becomes part of the management responsibility of the grid operator. All the “Broken Hill” PV output wouldn’t have much impact on the thousands of megawatts of power sloshing around on the grid at any7 given time. It’s just a drop in the ocean.
But take “Broken Hill” off the grid and suddenly what was a tiny PV ripple in a national grid becomes a giant wave in Broken Hill’s local grid. The PV output suddenly becomes a big fish in a small pond. That’s why Broken Hill residents are being asked to NOT reduce their energy usage during the day when PV is producing… because if they do, the Broken Hill grid risks having too much power being fed into it, and not enough using it, and will overload and trip, just like it does when there’s not enough power available.
The long-term options
Broken Hill has a backup power source and a deal (described below) has recently been done to change this. But residents may be interested in why some seemingly obvious alternatives won’t fly. For example, why use filthy, dirty diesels which emit carbon dioxide and assorted toxic particulate matter, as back-up generators when there is a 50MW solar farm on the front doorstep of the town?
An aerial view of the residential area of north Broken Hill, in the Far West of Outback NSW. (IMAGE: New Matilda)
The first thing to note is that things like gas turbines (the main form of back-up power used by coal-fired power stations) are (relatively) cheap. A Siemens SGT-600 turbine, for example, is a 25MW device that will cost you something like $25 million for a pair. And it’ll run for decades. It’s worth noting, there are probably cheaper and dirtier options if you go looking.
They weigh about 200 tonnes a piece. It’s mostly steel, so the amount of carbon dioxide produced in manufacturing them is relatively small. We call these manufacturing emissions “embodied carbon”. The CO₂ produced during steel production is about 1.85 tonnes per tonne of steel. So we’d be looking at about 400 tonnes of CO₂ for each turbine. Remember that number, it’s important later!
If you never use those back-up generators, then they generate no other emissions.
Now lets look at some much dirtier and more costly alternatives.
Option A: solar farm + batteries
There’s the 50MW solar farm on the outskirts of Broken Hill. Transgrid’s report on maintaining reliable electricity in Broken Hill (which I’ll also discuss more fully later) makes it clear the solar farm isn’t configured to supply the town.
But let’s assume that this could be done. (I won’t address any commercial decisions in this article. Tilt Renewables, who owns this solar farm, may not be at all happy doing the modifications involved in supplying the town rather than supplying the grid. Of course, that could change if the town made a suitable offer!) Still, assuming all the technical and commercial problems were solved, you’d obviously need to add storage, because the solar farm doesn’t have batteries attached, and the sun doesn’t shine at night, not even in super sunny Broken Hill.
Firstly, how much carbon is already embodied in the existing panels? That’s a more complex question than you might think, but it could be anywhere between 16,000 and 140,000 tonnes. If the “Broken Hill” panels came with a certified embodied emissions label, it’s probably on the low end of that range, but if they were simply bought on the basis of price, then they probably sit at the higher end. The emissions are all about the origin of the energy used in manufacturing; cheap means coal.
On the other hand, diesel generators vary far less in either their embodied emissions or the emissions from burning diesel. Running a 20MW generator at full load will burn about 5,350 litres of diesel a day and generate about 325 tonnes of CO₂ per day. Run your diesel for 100 days and you’ve generated 32,500 tonnes of CO₂.
Given that 25MW is enough to power the town, 50MW should power the town with enough left over to get it through the night, assuming you had the batteries. So 25MW for say eight hours is 200MWh (obviously… 8 x 25). Elon Musk will sell you some Megapack batteries for just $394,000 per MWh. So all you need is $78 million dollars and the grid would then be your backup, rather than the other way around. The batteries “include up to a 20-year warranty”. That’s interesting wording. It looks like a variable warranty depending on something; price or environmental conditions. Don’t forget to allow extra for delivery and installation at Broken Hill.
You’d need about 2,000 tonnes of these batteries; which are not mostly steel. They have a range of exotic materials with high embodied carbon emissions. For electric vehicle (EV) batteries, the International Energy Agency(IEA) uses a figure of 90 tonnes of CO₂ per MWh as embodied carbon, so we are talking about roughly 18,000 tonnes of CO₂ embedded in the battery manufacture.
You’d need to run your back-up diesel generator for about 55 days to generate 18,000 tonnes of CO₂.
If Broken Hill only needs the diesel generators for a few days a year, then that’s a lower carbon burden than the 2,000 tonnes of battery sitting around as a backup.
There would also be some additional hardware needed to control this combo. What would it cost? I’ve no idea.
In short, you’d be crazy to pick Option A as a backup option. You’d be spending $78 million on the off-chance you need it for a week or three every five years or so?
Option A (as a permanent solution)
But what about Option A as a permanent solution, enabling you to ditch the grid?
Suppose the community pulled together and managed to borrow $78 million at 6% to finance the adventure. What would be the repayments? A loan calculator would give you an answer of $658,000 per month for 15 years. If 7,000 people used 10kwh every day from the batteries, the cost of servicing the loan would add about 31 cents per kWh… that’s about an extra $2,000 added on to the average household electricity bill each year.
A Tesla Powerwall, for managing rooftop solar. (IMAGE: Ben Paulos, Flickr)
There would be additional costs for insurance and maintenance. Insurance would be to cover things like battery fires.
Again, you’d need rocks in your head to go for such an option. Which is exactly why the Broken Hill Solar farm has no batteries. There may be some level of batteries that make commercial sense for the solar farm, just not as a fully fledged alternative to the grid.
Batteries on the grid don’t make money supplying energy at normal prices, they make it by supplying energy when prices are through the roof.
Option B: Everybody in “Broken Hill” goes off-grid
Alternatively, you could look at everybody in Broken Hill getting PV panels and home batteries. Again, this would enable you to ditch the national grid… or would it?
Let’s assume we have 7,000 households. The cost of 7,000 Tesla Powerwalls would be in the order of $70 million (they’re about $10,000 each). But this only gets you 94MWh of storage, and while most people would get through the night with the 13.5 kWh that a Powerwall supplies, households might fall short after a run of cloudy days.
Option A got us 200MWh for $78 million, and made no sense at all. Option B also makes no sense at all, even if it’s a little cheaper at $70 million.
But you can see that sharing battery capacity is far cheaper than everybody having their own system. Indeed, everybody having their own system is particularly nasty as a solution because a significant percentage of people simply couldn’t afford it without assistance.
Summarising these options
I’ve included these crude calculations just to demonstrate that compared to being serviced by the existing grid, neither option is actually very good. That’s because batteries are incredibly expensive and generate a considerable amount of carbon emissions during manufacture.
The existing grid was paid for long ago and ‘merely’ needs to be serviced, for now. Transmission lines last far longer than batteries, even if they are very costly to build. I haven’t looked at the embodied carbon in the current transmission grid into Broken Hill, but if there was a proposal to rebuild or augment it, then that would be a good time to do an accurate assessment.
Current plans for Broken Hill
At the end of 2023, Transgrid struck a deal with Canadian storage provider Hydrostor to change the power supply arrangements for Broken Hill. The idea is for a large compressed air storage system to provide 200MW of power with 1500MWh of energy. This isn’t a backup system, but a storage system which can trade on the grid. Part of the deal is for Hydrostor to always allow for 50MW/250MWh to be available for backing up Broken Hill.
The Silverton Wind Farm, pictured about 25kms north west of Broken Hill in the Far West of Outback NSW. (IMAGE: New Matilda)
But exactly how is this storage project at Broken Hill going to trade on the grid? The Silverton Wind farm is a 200MW farm to the north west of Broken Hill and it also sells its power to the grid. The problem is that the only transmission between Broken Hill and the grid is the line that is currently out of service. According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the capacity of that line is about 250MW. Which means they could have a combined output of 400MW but only be able to sell 250 MW.
The Broken Hill area is designated as a renewable energy zone (N4) in AEMO’s Integrated System Plan (ISP), but that report notes its limited transmission connectivity and the high cost of expanding that connectivity.
What will that deal cost? And to who? Why was it made? You can read the Transgrid document yourself. Let me know if you find a cost.
The current standard reporting methodology in Australia’s electricity supply system frequently talks about “benefits” relative to some baseline. In any event, the cost may only be known to Hydrostor and the details may well be hidden behind a commercial-in-confidence agreement.
Whatever the case, whether this deal makes sense for the people of Broken Hill depends on whether those diesels remain.
Personally, I wouldn’t trade them for a guaranteed 50MW/250MWh from a wind farm, because that’s just five hours of electricity.
Can you fix a transmission tower collapse in five hours? The line into Broken Hill was wiped out a week ago. It’s still a week or two away from coming back online.
The BHP Group, as with other mining giants, has much explaining to do in the way it has approached the environment. It has become a master of the greenwashing experiment, an adept promoter of sham environmental responsibility (take, for instance, its practice of merely selling its oil and gas business to Woodside Petroleum in 2021 rather than retiring them); and, it transpired recently, a ruthless negotiator and litigant over contentious claims.
After nine years of negotiations and attritive legal proceedings, BHP has reached a settlement with Brazilian authorities regarding its role in the Fundão tailings dam collapse in Mariana, Minas Gerais. Taking place on November 5, 2015, the results were catastrophic to human life and nature, leaving 19 people dead and spilling toxic sludge over some 700 kilometres of land. The Samarco-owned facility, which held something like 26,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of tailings (50 million cubic metres), was a joint venture between BHP and Vale. In addition to killing 14 company employees and five residents, the released tailings rapidly reached Bento Rodrigues, and part of the communities of Paracatu de Baixo and Gesteira and, for good measure, flooded the centre of the town of Barra Longa.
The catastrophe merely compounded, turning the Rio Doce Basin a filthy brown and affecting dozens of municipalities and hundreds of communities reliant on the Rio Doce for drinking water. The pollution also destroyed wildlife, fishing stocks, farmland and churches, and affected various Indigenous communities, including the Krenak, Tupiniquim, Guaranis and Quilombola.
In response to the collapse, BHP, Vale and Samarco established the Renova Foundation, intended to compensate individuals and small businesses for losses and ostensibly ameliorating environmental impacts. This was hardly a concession on BHP’s part of guilt. “Conveniently,” write the authors caustically in a Nature Conservation study on the disaster in August, “the company creates its foundation to repair its own damages. Through the dense patchwork of multiple lawsuits filed in Brazil, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, BHP has repeatedly denied any central culpability in the collapse.
Compensation payments to victims from the fund, to date, have also been scandalously tardy. The BHP 2024 annual report notes that R$17.5 billion (US$3.5 billion) had been paid to 430,000 people as of June 30 this year, with R$12.2 billion (US$2.5 billion) forked out to 110,000 people under the Novel system, or “court mandated simplified indemnity system”. The company praises this arrangement as one that enabled “informal workers” (cart drivers, sand miners, artisanal miners and street vendors) to receive compensation despite having “difficulty proving the damages they suffered”.
What BHP fails to underscore is that those under the Novel system had to wait for seven years after the dam collapse to receive any cash, with 40% of those only paid in the last two years. Of the 430,000, some 290,000 received a pitiful R$1050 each for a disruption to their water supply for seven to 10 days following the dam collapse. And just to add to the nastiness of it all, the replacement housing for victims has been of questionable quality. Little wonder that Thatiele Monic, president of the Vila Santa Efigênia and Adjacências Quilombola Association, is suspicious of the efforts of the Renova Foundation.
The UK leg of proceedings, commenced in November 2018, is positively Dickensian in legal gyrations. It began as a High Court lawsuit against BHP involving 240,000 plaintiffs, including Brazilian municipalities and Krenak indigenous communities. In November 2020, the court dismissed the lawsuit, with Justice Turner making a memorable remark: “The task facing the managing judge in England would, I predict, be akin to trying to build a house of cards in a wind tunnel.” Various impediments, not least the size and scale of the claims, including “jurisdictional cross-contamination” and an abuse of process, were cited.
In March 2021, the Court of Appeal affirmed the decision, arguing that the plaintiffs were already seeking legal redress in Brazil. In July, the London court of appeal reversed the decision, granting permission to appeal on grounds that the case had a “real prospect of success”. To not do so would risk real injustice. In July 2022, a Court of Appeal ruled that English courts could hear the case, noting that, “The vast majority of claimants who have recovered damages have only received very modest sums in respect of moral damages for interruption to their water supply”. An April 2024 date was set for the commencement of trial proceedings.
In March 2023, the scale of the class action burgeoned further, with the addition of 500,000 claimants. Attempts by BHP to delay the lawsuit till mid-2025 were rejected by a London court in May 2023. On October 21 this year, the trial finally commenced. It would last all but a few days.
The settlement agreement signed on October 25 includes BHP, Vale, Samarco and some half a dozen Brazilian authorities. Of the 42 civil claims against BHP, the October 25 agreement covers the most monumental and contentious. Its value – R$170 billion (US$31.5 billion) – is deceptive. Brazilian authorities can have reason to cheer the result, as it comes close to the R$175 billion sought in civil claims in 2016. BHP’s Chief Executive Officer, Mike Henry, also seemed suspiciously satisfied, claiming that the agreement would deliver a laundry list of benefits including “expanded and additional programs for the environment and for the people, including designated funding for the health system, economic recovery, improved infrastructure and extensive compensation and income support measures, including for farmers, fisher people and Indigenous and Traditional communities.”
A sharp analysis from Tony Boyd of the Australian Financial Review, hardly a forum known for its humanitarians and bleeding hearts, offers a rather different reading of Brazilian efforts and the tactics employed by the mining giants. It was evident to Boyd “that over the past decade, BHP and Vale have outplayed the Brazilian federal government, and statements of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo as well as the federal and state Public Prosecutors’ and Public Defenders’ Offices.”
Much of this has to do, as Boyd remarks, on the time value of money. Some 60% of the final R$100 billion settlement is payable over 20 years. Taking that time frame into account, the nominal amount comes to a net present value of R$48 billion. Using the net present value analysis also means that the R$32 billion commitment to cover the cost of removing tailings from the Rio Doce and R$30,000 compensation awards to individuals and small businesses who opt into the arrangement, is R$25 billion.
The financial burden arising from BHP’s compensatory undertakings has also been lessened by the near decade process of dispute resolution, allowing the reopening of the Samarco iron ore mine to take place in the meantime with healthy annual returns of US$750 million.
Even now, BHP’s mild description of the catastrophe is given a coolly confident assessment. The company’s website notes that since the dam breach, Samarco operates “with a strong focus on safety and sustainability.” Alleviating the use of dams has been possible because of the implementation of a “new filtration system”, while 80% of the tailings arising from the operations “are now dry stacked, with the rest deposited in a confined rocky pit.” Feeble assurance to those hundreds of thousands affected that fateful November in 2015.
Fossil fuel giant Shell was in for a fright on the morning of its third quarter profits announcements. Activists in full Halloween costume swarmed outside the oil and gas major’s London HQ to highlight how Shell’s vampiric profiteering is killing people and the planet.
Shell profits: another terrifying quarter
On Thursday 31 October, Shell announced another horrifying haul from its climate-wrecking oil and gas operations.
It made $6bn in profits for the third quarter of 2024, 12% higher than industry analyst forecasts had predicted. Shell’s shareholders were in for another treat. It forked out $5.7bn to them for this quarter. This included $3.5bn in share buybacks. This makes it the twelfth consecutive quarter it has given buybacks exceeding $3bn – so shareholders have continued to secure an ever greater stake in Shell’s gargantuan profits.
However, Shell’s shareholder dividends are driving the hellish impacts of the climate crisis. So, it was apt the ghoulish fossil fuel giant announced these killer profits on Halloween morning.
Activists from Fossil Free London turned up to highlight the grisly cost of its environmentally destructive business operations.
Shell’s blood-sucking fossil fuel business
Vampires, ghost, and ghouls gathered outside Shell’s headquarters in London on 31 October:
BREAKING: Shell just announced they made £4.6BN in just the last 3 months.
We’re outside Shell’s HQ, on their profits day, as part of #MakePollutersPay week of action, to demand Shell pay up for the devastation they’ve caused.
They brandished placards reading “Shell sucks” and “Make polluters pay for loss & damage”:
An activist in grim reaper garb held up a sign declaring: “Shell – a real life horror story”. Dracula made an appearance too, to call out how Shell’s “bloodsucking profits kill”:
One activist donned a Shell logo-shaped mask, with devil horns protruding from it, a hat-tip to an anti-fossil fuel favourite chant “go to hell, Shell”:
They underscored that if there’s one thing the fossil fuel major is good at, it’s sucking the life out of communities and the planet.
In particular, the group of spooky activists drew attention to the devastating floods in Spain that have killed over 200 people in the Valencia region. Driving the link between the horrifying environmental disaster and climate crisis home, one placard read:
Spain drowns, Shell ca$he$ in
The scariest part of Shell profits is the climate destruction
The protest over Shell profits was part of a week-long ‘Make Polluters Pay‘ week of action.
Throughout, activists have been calling on the UK government to make polluters like Shell pay up for the destruction they’ve caused.
Specifically, activists outside Shell HQ demanded that the company pay up for:
The devastation they’ve caused communities by their oil extraction and operations.
The climate crisis they’ve caused.
Funding a rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels.
Fossil Free London spokesperson Joanna Warrington said:
Despite our Halloween costumes we are gathering today to say we are seriously scared of the destruction Shell is causing.
From the communities in the Niger Delta whose water has been poisoned by Shell’s operations, to flash floods in Spain which are happening right now due to climate change, it’s time for Shell to pay up.
The Philippine Supreme Court has granted temporary protection to an environmental activist abducted in Pangasinan earlier this year.
In its resolution dated September 9 — but only made public this week — the court granted Francisco “Eco” Dangla III’s petition for temporary protection, and prohibited the respondents, including high-ranking soldiers and police officers, to be near the activist’s location.
“Furthermore, you, respondents, and all persons and entities acting and operating under your directions, instructions, and orders are PROHIBITED from entering within a radius of one kilometer of the person, places of residence, work, and present locations of petitioner and his immediate family,” the resolution read.
Philippine Army chief Lieutenant General Roy Galido
Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Police General Rommel Francisco Marbil
Brigadier General Gulliver Señires (in his capacity as 702nd Brigade commanding general Brigadier)
Ilocos Region police chief Police Brigadier General Lou Evangelista
Police Colonel Jeff Fanged (in his capacity as Pangasinan police chief)
Aside from giving Dangla temporary protection, the court also granted his petition for writs of amparo and habeas data. A writ of amparo is a legal remedy, which is usually a protection order in the form of a restraining order.
The writ of habeas data compels the government to destroy information that could cause harm.
These extraordinary writs are usually invoked by activists and progressives in the Philippines as they face intimidation from the government and its forces.
Dangla’s abduction Dangla and another activist, Joxelle Tiong, were abducted in Pangasinan last March 24.
According to witnesses, they saw two men who were forced to board a vehicle in Barangay Polo, San Carlos City.
The two activists, who who had been red-tagged for their advocacies, were serving as convenors of the Pangasinan People’s Strike for the Environment.
They “vocally defended the people and ecosystems of Pangasinan against the harms of coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants, incinerator plants, and offshore mining in Lingayen Gulf,” at the time of their abduction.
Three days later, several groups announced that Dangla and Tiong were found safe, but that the two had gone through a “harrowing ordeal.”
“Bruised but alive” . . . the environmental activists abducted in Pangasinan but found safe, Francisco ‘Eco’ Dangla III (left) and Joxelle ‘Jak’ Tiong. Image: Rappler
The reality The protection given to Dangla is only temporary as the Court of Appeals still needs to conduct hearings on the petition. In other words, the Supreme Court only granted the writ, but the power to whether grant or deny Dangla the privilege of the writs of amparo and habeas data lies with the Court of Appeals.
There have been instances where the appellate court granted activists the privilege of writ of amparo, like in the case of labour activists Loi Magbanua and Ador Juat, where the court issued permanent protection orders for them and their immediate families.
Unfortunately, this was not the case for other activists, such as young environmentalists Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro.
The two were first reported missing by activist groups. Security forces later said they were “safe and sound” and that they had allegedly “voluntarily surrendered” to the military.
However, Tamano and Castro went off-script during a press conference organised by the anti-insurgency task force and revealed that they were actually abducted.
In February, the High Court granted the two temporary protection and their writs of amparo and habeas data petitions. However, the appellate court in August denied the protection order for Tamano and Castro.
Associate Justice Emily San Gaspar-Gito fully dissented in the decision and said: “It would be uncharacteristic for the courts, especially this court, to simply fold their arms and ignore the palpable threats to petitioners’ life, liberty and security and just wait for the irreversible to happen to them.”
Dangerously poor air quality is likely to continue blighting the north of Thailand and neighboring countries during the dry season, experts said, despite the recent announcement of a “clear sky” plan including a hotline with Myanmar and Laos.
Burning of agricultural land, much of it converted from forest to maize for animal feed, caused severe pollution in northern Thailand in the first half of 2023, along with Laos and Myanmar’s Shan state.
As the dry season approaches again, the environment ministers of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar and Thailand’s foreign minister this week said they’re committed to tackling air pollution. The World Health Organization estimates poor air quality causes millions of deaths globally every year.
“I’m not so optimistic about what is going to happen in the next few years. But we are starting right now, I think we can build [on this clear sky strategy]. Everyone knows this is affecting the health of their children,” said Aekkapol Aekakkararungroj of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center.
“I think we are going to see better things after five years,” Aekakkararungroj, the center’s air pollution and geospatial imaging expert, told a haze seminar in Bangkok where the three countries’ ministers announced their plan for the hotline.
Southeast Asia is a global hotspot for haze and air pollution, particularly cross-border disasters that have their roots in land conversion for large scale agriculture.
Companies in Indonesia, for example, have drained extensive areas of peatland for pulpwood and palm oil plantations, making that land particularly combustible. Massive fires in Indonesia in 2015 sent haze into Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand and according to a joint Harvard and Columbia study hastened about 100,000 deaths across the region.
Caption: (L to R) Myanmar Environment Minister Khin Maung Yi, Thailand Deputy Foreign Secretary Paisan Rupanichkij, Thailand Environment Minister Chalermchai Sri-on and Lao Environment Minister Bounkham Vorlachit at the launch in Bangkok on Oct. 29, 2024 of a “Clear Sky” strategy to combat air pollution.
At Tuesday’s event, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos publicized a clear sky plan that for its first stage involves setting up a hotline, developing fire risk maps and “capacity building.”
Government ministers from the three countries put their hands onto a large glowing sphere at a launch ceremony in Bangkok. A giant screen behind them showed haze pulsating menacingly over a map of the region.
“This launching of the clear sky strategy is good for our countries because in the future we can work very closely. We can set up the hotline, sharing the challenges, difficulties and opportunities,” Khin Maung Yi, Myanmar’s environment minister, told Radio Free Asia.
“In Myanmar we are now reducing fire hot spots,” he said.
Maize for animal feed
Greenpeace Southeast Asia said the governmental efforts lack a crucial ingredient – accountability for “Big Meat” agricultural conglomerates such as Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand.
“We truly hope that the government is brave enough to make real change and protect people’s health before profit,” food and forest campaigner, Rattanasiri Kittikongnapang, told RFA.
“Without a traceability system and enforcing accountability of the meat and agribusiness, the government’s effort … will never be able to stop the haze at the source,” she said.
During the 2023 haze, thousands went to hospitals with respiratory problems and workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which was ranked at that time as among the world’s most polluted cities, were told to stay indoors and work from home.
The two main culprits behind the hazardous pollution, 16 times worse in some areas than healthy levels, were forest fires and the burning of ever-wider fields of corn stubble after the February harvest to clear land for the planting season in May.
More than 40% of transboundary haze in the lower Mekong region results from fires in industrial maize plantations for animal feed, according to research by Greenpeace, more than other types of agriculture and forest fires.
Expansion of maize growing for feed grains was behind about 1.9 million hectares of deforestation in the lower Mekong region from 2015-2023, much of it in Laos, according to Greenpeace’s analysis of satellite imagery.
Aekakkararungroj, of the disaster preparedness center, said satellite detection of fires could in future be combined with environmental data and hospital health records to predict not only the risk of haze but the likely impact on people’s health including the number of deaths.
“Government – what can get them on the edge? Money and the number of dead people,” he said. “That will really wake them up.”
Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA.
In the last couple of months, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, in that order, made announcements about using nuclear power for their energy needs. Describing nuclear energy using questionable adjectives like “reliable,” “safe,” “clean,” and “affordable,” all of which are belied by the technology’s seventy-year history, these tech behemoths were clearly interested in hyping up their environmental credentials and nuclear power, which is being kept alive mostly using public subsidies.
Both these business conglomerations—the nuclear industry and its friends and these ultra-wealthy corporations and their friends—have their own interests in such hype. In the aftermath of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, and in the face of its inability to demonstrate a safe solution to the radioactive wastes produced in all reactors, the nuclear industry has been using its political and economic clout to mount public relations campaigns to persuade the public that nuclear energy is an environmentally friendly source of power.
Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, too, have attempted to convince the public they genuinely cared for the environment and really wanted to do their bit to mitigate climate change. In 2020, for example, Amazon pledged to reach net zero by 2040. Google went one better when its CEO declared that “Google is aiming to run our business on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times” by 2030. Not that they are on any actual trajectory to meeting these targets.
Why are they making such announcements?
Greenwashing environmental impacts
The reasons underlying these companies investing in such PR campaigns is not hard to discern. There is growing awareness of the tremendous environmental impacts of the insatiable appetite for data from these companies, as well as the threat they pose to already inadequate efforts to mitigate climate change.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street company Morgan Stanley estimated that data centers will “produce about 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions through the end of the decade”. Climate scientists have warned that unless global emissions decline sharply by 2030, we are unlikely to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a widely shared target. Even without the additional carbon dioxide emitted into the air as a result of data centers and their energy demand, the gap between current emissions and what is required is yawning.
Then, there are the indirect impacts on the climate. Greenpeace documented, for example, that “Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all have connections to some of the world’s dirtiest oil companies for the explicit purpose of getting more oil and gas out of the ground and onto the market faster and cheaper.” In other words, the business models adopted by these tech behemoths depend on fossil fuels being used for longer and in greater quantities.
In addition to the increasing awareness about the impacts of data centers, one more possible reason for cloud companies to become interested in nuclear power might be what happened to cryptocurrency companies. Earlier this decade, these companies, too, found themselves getting a lot of bad publicity due to their energy demands and resulting emissions. Even Elon Musk, not exactly known as an environmentalist, talked about the “great cost to the environment” from cryptocurrency.
The environmental impacts of cryptocurrency played some part in efforts to regulate these. In September 2022, the White House put out a fact sheet on the climate and energy implications of Crypto-assets, highlighting President Biden’s executive order that called on these companies to reduce harmful climate impacts and environmental pollution. China even went as far as to banning cryptocurrency, and its aspirations to reducing its carbon emissions was one factor in this decision.
Crypto bros, for their part, did what cloud companies are doing now: make announcements about using nuclear power. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are now following that strategy to pretend to be good citizens. However, the nuclear industry has its reasons for welcoming these announcements and playing them up.
The state of nuclear power
Strange as it might seem to folks basing their perception of the health of the nuclear industry on mainstream media, that technology is actually in decline. The share of global electricity produced by nuclear reactors has decreased from 17.5% in 1996 to 9.15% in 2023, largely due to the high costs of and delays in building and operating nuclear reactors.
A good illustration is the Vogtle nuclear power plant in the state of Georgia. When the utility company building the reactor sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011, it projected a total cost of $14 billion, and “in-service dates of 2016 and 2017” for the two units. The plant became operational only this year, after the second unit came online in March 2024, at a total cost of at least $36.85 billion.
Given this record, it is not surprising that there are no orders for any more nuclear plants.
As it has been in the past, the nuclear industry’s answer to this predicament is to advance the argument that new nuclear reactor designs would address all these concerns. But that has, yet again, proved not to be the case. In November 2023, the flagship project of NuScale, the small modular reactor design promoted as the leading one of its kind, collapsed because of high costs.
Supporters of nuclear power are now using another time-tested tactic to promote the technology: projecting that energy demand will grow so much that no other source of power will be able to meet these needs. For example, UK energy secretary Ed Davey resorted to this gambit in 2013 when he said that the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant was essential to “keep the lights on” in the country.
Likewise, when South Carolina Electric & Gas Company made its case to the state’s Public Service Commission about the need to build two AP1000 reactors at its V.C. Summer site—this project was subsequently abandoned after over $9 billion was spent—it forecast in its “2006 Integrated Resource Plan” that the company’s energy sales would increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, and by nearly 30 percent by 2019.
This is the argument that the growth in data centres, propped up in part by the hype about generative artificial intelligence, has allowed proponents of nuclear energy to put forward. It remains to be seen whether this hype about generative AI actually materializes into a long-term sustainable business: see, for example, Ed Zitron’s meticulously documented argument for why OpenAI and Microsoft are simply burning billions of dollars and why their business model might “simply not be viable”.
In the case of the V.C. Summer project, South Carolina Electric & Gas found that its energy sales actually declined by 3 percent compared to 2006 by the time 2016 rolled around. Of course, that did not matter, because shareholders had already received over $2.5 billion in dividends and company executives had received millions of dollars in compensation, according to Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, a trade publication.
One wonders which executives and shareholders are going to receive a bounty from this round of nuclear hype.
What about emissions?
Will the investments in nuclear power by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon help reduce emissions anytime soon?
The project expected to have the shortest timeline is the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor, which Constellation Energy projects will be ready in 2028. But if the history of reactor commissioning is anything to go by, that deadline will come and go without any power flowing from it.
Restarting a nuclear plant that has been shutdown has never been done before. In the case of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California, which hasn’t been shut down but was slated for decommissioning in 2024-25 till Governor Gavin Newsom did a volte-face, the Chair of the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee explained why doing so was very difficult: “so many different programs and projects and so on have been put in place over the last half a dozen years predicated on that closure in 2024-25 and each one of those would have to be evaluated and some of them are okay, and some of them won’t be and some are going to be a real stretch and some are going to cost money and some of them aren’t going to be able to be done maybe”.
The cost of keeping Diablo Canyon open has been estimated by the plant’s owner at $8.3 billion and by independent environmental groups at nearly $12 billion. There are no reliable cost estimates for reopening Three Mile Island, but Constellation Energy, the plant’s owner, is already seeking a taxpayer-subsidized loan that would likely save the company $122 million in borrowing costs.
One must also remember that Microsoft already announced an agreement with Helion Energy, a company backed by billionaire Peter Thiele, to get nuclear fusion power by 2028. The chances of that happening are slim at best. In 2021, Helion announced that it had raised $500 million to build its fusion generation facility that would demonstrate “net electricity production” in three years, i.e., “in 2024”. That hasn’t happened so far. But going back further, one can see a similar and unfulfilled claim from 2014: then, the company’s chief executive had told the Wall Street Journal that the company hoped that its product would generate more energy than it would use “in the next three years” (i.e., in 2017). It is quite likely that Microsoft’s decision-makers knew of how unlikely it is that Helion will be able to supply nuclear fusion power by 2028. The publicity value is the most likely reason for announcing an agreement with Helion.
What about the small modular nuclear reactor designs—X-energy and Kairos—that Amazon and Google are betting on? Don’t hold your breath.
X-energy is an example of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design that dates back to the 1940s. There have been four reactors based on similar concepts that were operated commercially, two in Germany and two in the United States, respectively, and test reactors in the United Kingdom, Japan, and China. Each of these reactors proved problematic, suffering a variety of failures and unplanned shutdowns. The latest reactor with a similar design was built in China. Its performance leaves much to be desired: within about a year of being connected to the grid, its power output was reduced by 25 percent of the design power capacity, and even at this lowered capacity, it operated in 2023 with a load factor of just 8.5 percent.
Kairos, on the other hand, will be challenged by its choice of molten salts as coolant. These are chemically corrosive, and decades of search have identified no materials that can survive for long periods in such an environment without losing their integrity. The one empirical example of a reactor that used molten salts dates back to the 1960s, and this experience proved very problematic, both when the reactor operated and in the half-century thereafter, because managing the radioactive wastes produced before 1970 continued to be challenging.
Simply throwing money will not overcome these problems that have to do with fundamental physics and chemistry.
Just a dangerous distraction
Although Amazon, Google, and Microsoft claim to be investing in nuclear energy to meet the needs of AI, the evidence suggests that their real motive is to greenwash themselves.
Their investments are small and completely inadequate with relation to how much is needed to build a reactor. But their investments are also very small compared to the bloated revenues of these corporations. So, from the viewpoint of top executives, investing in nuclear power must seem a cheap way to reduce bad publicity about their environmental footprints. Unfortunately, “cheap” for them does not translate to cheap for the rest of us, not to mention the burden to future generations of human beings from worsening climate change and, possibly, increased production of radioactive waste that will stay hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.
Because nuclear power has been portrayed as clean and a solution to climate change, announcements about it serve as a flashy distraction to focus public attention on. Meanwhile, these companies continue to expand their use of water and draw on coal and especially natural gas plants for their electricity. This is the magician’s strategy: misdirecting the audience’s attention while the real trick happens elsewhere. Their talk about investing in nuclear power also distracts from the conversations we should be having about whether these data centers and generative AI are socially desirable in the first place.
There are many reasons to oppose and organize against the wealth and power exercised by these massive corporations, such as their appropriation of user data to engage in what has been described as surveillance capitalism, their contracts with the Pentagon, and their support for Israel’s genocide and apartheid. Their investment into nuclear technology, and more importantly, hyping it up, offers one more reason. It is also a chance to establish coalitions between groups involved in very different fights.
Kendrick Peak Pack wolf (“Hope” #2979). Photo courtesy of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project.
The Mexican gray wolf family living west of Flagstaff, Arizona near Kendrick Peak are blissfully unaware of the proximity of election day. They know nothing of the candidates’ positions, the ballot measures, nor the flood of robocalls asking for votes. They don’t know that they are in a battleground state, or even that they are north of the arbitrary boundary of the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area. They only know that it recently snowed where they live, and that there are fewer of the thick-bodied, mooing grass-eaters around at the water source now.
They don’t know that they’ve broken the rules about where they are allowed to be, or that they have run across the line that delineates the land they are allowed to live within. They just know when the moon is full, and their bellies are empty. They know how to hunt, to survive, to navigate this landscape and stay together. There are at least two wolves, maybe more, that have claimed this space (but have stayed largely out of human sight) since at least June.
The Kendrick Peak wolves don’t know that they have voted to expand the current range of their species into the Grand Canyon ecoregion, exactly where scientists have predicted wolves would thrive. They have voted for a chance to disperse to the shadows of the San Francisco Peaks by following the scent trails of wolves that dispersed before them. They have voted to be together in this new place, to forge bonds and create a family. They’ve elected themselves the leaders in this new place, and the deer and elk and coyotes and aspen and all the other beings in the forest recognize the wolves’ new role.
Can humans let them lead? Can the government agencies cede their sense of power and let the wolves decide where to live? Can we forget the map that puts a line around wolf territory and embrace the map that opens the line to wolves’ self-determination and survival? Can we try to live with the wolves rather than manage them into submission and/or south of Interstate 40?
Right now, there are at least three votes in favor, including mine.
Marmots were the perfect test species for a wildlife adversity index. Photo: Xochitl Ortiz Ross
Psychologists know that childhood trauma, or the experience of harmful or adverse events, can have lasting repercussions on the health and well-being of people well into adulthood. But while the consequences of early adversity have been well researched in humans, people aren’t the only ones who can experience adversity.
If you have a rescue dog, you probably have witnessed how the abuse or neglect it may have experienced earlier in life now influence its behavior – these pets tend to be more skittish or reactive. Wild animals also experience adversity. Although their negative experiences are easy to dismiss as part of life in the wild, they still have lifelong repercussions – just like traumatic events in people and pets.
As behavioral ecologists, we are interested in how adverse experiences early in life can affect animals’ behavior, including the kinds of decisions they make and the way they interact with the world around them. In other words, we want to see how these experience affect the way they behave and survive in the wild.
Many studies in humans and other animals have shown the importance of early life experiences in shaping how individuals develop. But researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and what their overall impact is on an animal’s well-being.
Wild populations face many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk getting eaten by a predator, suffer illness and must contend with extreme weather conditions. And as if life in the wild wasn’t hard enough, humans are now adding additional stressors such as chemical, light and sound pollution, as well as habitat destruction.
Given the widespread loss of biodiversity, understanding how animals react to and are harmed by these stressors can help conservation groups better protect them. But accounting for such a diversity of stressors is no easy feat. To address this need and demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop an index for wild animals based on psychological research on human childhood trauma.
A cumulative adversity index
Developmental psychologists began to develop what psychologists now call the adverse childhood experiences score, which describes the amount of adversity a person experienced as a child. Briefly, this index adds up all the adverse events – including forms of neglect, abuse or other household dysfunction – an individual experienced during childhood into a single cumulative score.
This score can then be used to predict later-life health risks such as chronic health conditions, mental illness or even economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying at-risk children and adults, which allows for more targeted interventions and preventive efforts.
So, what about wild animals? Can we use a similar type of score or index to predict negative survival outcomes and identify at-risk individuals and populations?
These are the questions we were interested in answering in our latest research paper. We developed a framework on how to create a cumulative adversity index – similar to the adverse childhood experiences score, but for populations of wild animals. We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we wanted to see whether we could use this index to estimate how long a marmot would live.
A marmot wearing an ear tag. Photo: Xochitl Ortiz Ross
Yellow-bellied marmots are an excellent study system because they are diurnal, or active during the day, and they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of individuals that reside within varies greatly from year to year, but they are normally composed of matrilines, which means related females tend to remain within the natal colony, while male relatives move away to find a new colony.
Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for most of the year, but they become active between April and September. During this active period, we observe each colony daily and regularly trap each individual in the population – that’s over 200 unique individuals just in 2023. We then mark their backs with a distinct symbol and give them uniquely numbered ear tags so they can be later identified.
Although they can live up to 15 years, we have detailed information about the life experiences of individual marmots spanning almost 30 generations. They were the perfect test population for our cumulative adversity index.
Among the sources of adversity, we included ecological measures such as a late spring, a summer drought and high predator presence. We also included parental measures such as having an underweight or stressed mother, being born or weaned late, and losing their mother. The model also included demographic measures such as being born in a large litter or having many male siblings.
Importantly, we looked only at females, since they are the ones who tend to stay home. Therefore, some of the adversities listed are only applicable to females. For example, females born in litters with many males become masculinized, likely from the high testosterone levels in the mother’s uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life span and reproductive output. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful to females, but maybe not to males.
A yellow-bellied marmot shown on a trail camera in Montana.
So, does our index, or the number of adverse events a marmot experienced early on, explain differences in marmot survival? We found that, yes, it does.
Experiencing even just one adversity event before age 2 nearly halved an adult marmot’s odds of survival, regardless of the type of adversity they experienced. This is the first record of lasting negative consequences from losing a mother in this species.
So what?
Our study isn’t the only one of its kind. A few other studies have used an index similar to the human adverse childhood experiences score with wild primatesand hyenas, with largely similar results. We are interested in broadening this framework so that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.
A better understanding of how animals can or cannot cope with multiple sources of adversity can inform wildlife conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help identify at-risk populations that require a more immediate conservation action.
Instead of tackling the one stressor that seems to have the greatest effect on a species, this approach could help managers consider how best to reduce the total number of stressors a species experiences.
For example, changing weather patterns driven by global heating trends may create new stressors that a wildlife manager can’t address. But it might be possible to reduce how many times these animals have to interact with people during key times of the year by closing trails, or providing extra food to replace the food they lose from harsh weather.
While this index is still in early development, it could one day help researchers ask new questions about how animals adapt to stress in the wild.
Papua New Guinea’s decision to withdraw from the upcoming United Nations climate change talks has caused concern among local environmental activists, who argue COP serves as a platform for regional solidarity.
PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko announced last week that PNG would not participate in the 29th United Nations Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP29) in protest and defence “of forest nations and small island states”.
“Papua New Guinea is making this stand for the benefit of all small island nations. We will no longer tolerate empty promises and inaction, while our people suffer the devastating consequences of climate change,” he said.
“Yet, despite contributing little to the global climate crisis, countries like PNG are left grappling with its severe impacts.”
Tkatchenko pointed to the difficulty in accessing climate finance over the years, which he said came despite making “high-level representation at the UNFCC COP”, and said the international community was failing its financial and moral commitments.
“The pledges made by major polluters amount to nothing more than empty talk,” he said.
“They impose impossible barriers for us to access the crucial funds we need to protect our people. Despite continuous attempts, we have not received a single toea in support, to date.
PNG ‘will no longer wait’
“If we must cut down our forests to sustain ourselves and develop our economy, so be it. Papua New Guinea will no longer wait for empty words while our people suffer. We are taking control of our destiny.”
Climate activist and former chair of the Commonwealth Youth Council Kim Allen said getting access to funds to deal with climate change was a big problem.
But he said the climate conference provided a platform to speak louder with other Pacific nations.
“We have to come together and say these are our challenges, this is the story of Pacific Island countries,” he said.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape at the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Tonga last August . . . the “non-attendance” at the annual climate talks “will signal our protest at the big nations — these industrialised nations who are big carbon footprint holders”. Image: Pacific Islands Forum
In August, Prime Minister James Marape said he had declared that PNG’s “non-attendance” at the annual climate talks “will signal our protest at the big nations — these industrialised nations who are big carbon footprint holders for their lack of quick support to those who are victims of climate change, and those of us who are forest and ocean nations”.
“We are protesting to those who are always coming in to these COP meetings, making pronouncements and pledges, yet the financing of these pledges seem distant from victims of climate change and those like PNG who hold substantial forests,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and also with the permission of ABC Pacific.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis . . . For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies.
“Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100.
“Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus . . . “
Just how out of whack things are is depicted in one of the article’s graphics, which shows key climate metrics hitting levels way out of the historic record:
Credit: Ripple et al, 2024The scientists cite specifics of our wrong way paths.
The scientists spell out the gory details, illustrating our global wrong way direction.
“Fossil fuel consumption rose by 1.5% in 2023 relative to 2022, mostly because of substantial increases in coal consumption (1.6%) and oil consumption (2.5%).”
“Global tree cover loss rose from 22.8 megahectares (Mha) per year in 2022 to 28.3 Mha per year in 2023, reaching its third-highest level; this was at least partly because of wildfires, which caused tree cover loss to reach a record high of 11.9 Mha.”
“Annual energy-related emissions increased 2.1% in 2023, and are now above 40 gigatons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent for the first time . . . the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are at record highs. . . Carbon dioxide levels were recently observed to be surging . . . Furthermore, the growth rate of methane emissions has been accelerating, which is very troubling . . . Nitrous oxide is also at a record high; annual anthropogenic emissions of this potent long-lived greenhouse gas have increased by roughly 40% from 1980 to 2020.”
“Surface temperature is at a record high, and 2024 is expected to be one of the hottest years ever recorded. Each 0.1°C of global warming places an extra 100 million people (or more) into unprecedented hot average temperatures.”
To the credit of this group, led by William Ripple of Oregon State University, they place the situation in the overall context of ecological overshoot.
“Global heating, although it is catastrophic, is merely one aspect of a profound polycrisis that includes environmental degradation, rising economic inequality, and biodiversity loss. Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, where human consumption outpaces the Earth’s ability to regenerate. Overshoot is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As pressures increase and the risk of Earth’s climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises. more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse.”
“In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion. We need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice.”
Will the world listen? Has it listened to decades of such clarion calls? A new United Nations report assesses climate plans of the world’s nations. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell states, “The report’s findings are stark but not surprising – current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.”
Even if all plans are fully implemented, a highly uncertain proposition, climate pollution would only be reduced 2.6% from 2019 levels by 2030, compared to the 43% needed to hold global heating below 1.5°C, a limit beyond which climate disruption sharply accelerates.
Footage of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa swaying along to the siva dance as she sat beside Britain’s King Charles III encapsulated a palpable national pride, well deserved on delivering such a high-profile gathering.
Getting down to the business of dissecting the meeting outcomes — in the leaders’ statement and Samoa communiqué — there are several issues that are significant for the Pacific island members of this post-colonial club.
As expected, climate change features prominently in the text, with more than 30 mentions including three that refer to the “climate crisis”. This will resonate highly for Pacific members, as will the support for COP 31 in 2026 to be jointly hosted by Australia and the Pacific.
Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa opening CHOGM 2024. Video: Talamua Media
One of the glaring contradictions of this joint COP bid is illustrated by the lack of any call to end fossil fuel extraction in the final outcomes.
Tuvalu, Fiji and Vanuatu used the CHOGM to launch the latest Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report, with a focus on Australia’s coal and gas mining. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth membership, which includes some states whose economies remain reliant on fossil fuel extractive industries.
As highlighted ahead of CHOGM, this multilateral gave the 56 members a chance to consider positions to take to COP 29 next month in Baku, Azerbaijan. The communiqué from the leaders highlights the importance of increased ambition when it comes to climate finance at COP 29, and particularly to address the needs of developing countries.
Another drawcard
That speaks to all the Pacific island nations and gives the region’s negotiators another drawcard on the international stage.
Then came the unexpected, Papua New Guinea made a surprise announcement that it will not attend the global conference in Baku next month. Speaking at the Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on Small States, PNG’s Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko framed this decision as a stand on behalf of small island nations as a protest against “empty promises and inaction.”
As promised, a major output of this meeting was the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future. This is the first oceans-focused declaration by the Commonwealth of Nations, and is somewhat belated given 49 of its 56 member states have ocean borders.
The declaration has positions familiar to Pacific policymakers and activists, including the recognition of national maritime boundaries despite the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions from global shipping. A noticeable omission is any reference to deep-sea mining, which is also a faultline within the Pacific collective.
The text relating to reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery required extensive negotiation among the leaders, Australia’s ABC reported. While this issue has been driven by African and Caribbean states, it is one that touches the Pacific as well.
‘Blackbirding’ reparative justice
South Sea Islander “blackbirding” is one of the colonial practices that will be considered within the context of reparative justice. During the period many tens-of-thousands of Pacific Islanders were indentured to Australia’s cane fields, Fiji’s coconut plantations and elsewhere.
The trade to Queensland and New South Wales lasted from 1847 to 1904, while those destinations were British colonies until 1901. Indeed, the so-called “sugar slaves” were a way of getting cheap labour once Britain officially abolished slavery in 1834.
The next secretary-general of the Commonwealth will be Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey. Questions have been raised about the quality of her predecessor Patricia Scotland’s leadership for some time and the change will hopefully go some way in alleviating concerns.
Notably, the CHOGM has selected another woman to lead its secretariat. This is an important endorsement of female leadership among member countries where women are often dramatically underrepresented at national levels.
While it received little or no fanfare, the Commonwealth has also released its revised Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance. This is a welcome contribution, given the threats to media freedom in the Pacific and elsewhere. It reflects a longstanding commitment by the Commonwealth to supporting democratic resilience among its members.
These principles do not come with any enforcement mechanism behind them, and the most that can be done is to encourage or exhort adherence. However, they provide another potential buffer against attempts to curtail their remit for publishers, journalists, and bloggers in Commonwealth countries.
The outcomes reveal both progress and persistent challenges for Pacific island nations. While Apia’s Commonwealth Ocean Declaration emphasises oceanic issues, its lack of provisions on deep-sea mining exposes intra-Commonwealth tensions. The change in leadership offers a pivotal opportunity to prioritise equity and actionable commitments.
Ultimately, the success of this gathering will depend on translating discussions into concrete actions that address the urgent needs of Pacific communities facing an uncertain future.
But as the guests waved farewell, the question of what the Commonwealth really means for its Pacific members remains until leaders meet in two years time in Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state in the Caribbean.
Tess Newton Cain is a principal consultant at Sustineo P/L and adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has more than 25 years of experience working in the Pacific Islands region. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.
During the Vietnam War period, however, another diabolical concoction called Agent Blue was also used extensively in Vietnam. This arsenic-based herbicide was used to kill rice and the public knew little about its use. In fact, the first news reference to this chemical weapon was a simple letter to the editor sent by Arthur H. Westing in 1971 and published by the New York Times under the headline “‘Agent Blue’ in Vietnam.”
This blip of attention to tactical herbicide Agent Blue wasn’t followed up until 44 years later, when Loana Hoylman published an article, “Today’s Blue Arsenic in the Environment,” in a 2014 issue of Veteran magazine, published by Vietnam Veterans of America.
Finally, in 2020 Kenneth R. Olson (one of the authors of the article you are reading now) and Larry Cihacek published the first refereed journal article on the topic, “The Fate of Agent Blue, the Arsenic Based Herbicide, Used in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War,” in the Open Journal of Soil Science.
Using new primary source data, the 2020 article reconstructed the paper trail of those “Made in America” chemical weapons, and developed an updated chemical research framework.International news media started paying attention. Mike Tharp, a member of the Merry Band of Retirees, our group of military veterans working on this issue, wrote articles that Asia Times published. Mike died last year, probably from his exposure to dioxin TCDD and/or arsenic while stationed at Bien Hoa Air Force base in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
The question remains: How can this secret use of Agent Blue to destroy civilian food (rice) sources and agricultural production sites have gone uncovered by US news organizations for 50 years? It’s an important question. Let’s sketch this hidden chemical warfare and its current impact.
In the beginning, Agent Blue was sprayed by the Republic of Vietnam military for three years before the 1965 official start of the United States’ Vietnam War.
Vietnam War veterans, historians and scholars have collected information on the spraying of Agent Blue on rice paddies and mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands. by the RV military with the support of the US Army, US Navy and CIA.
The Institute of Medicine estimated that 3.2 million liters (containing 468,000 kilograms of arsenic) were sprayed during the Republic of Vietnam’s Khai Quang (food denial) program.
This was in addition to the US Air Force’s Operation Ranch Hand spraying of Agent Blue primarily from C-123 aircraft. The Operation Ranch Hand missions maintained records of the locations and quantities of herbicides sprayed (over 4,712,000 liters containing 664,392 kilograms of arsenic) from 1961-1971.
The Institute of Medicine estimated that, in total, 7.8 million liters (1,132,400 kilograms of arsenic) of Agent Blue were applied to southern Vietnam landscape from 1962 to 1971. This total includes both the 1962 to 1965 RV Khai Quang program, done by the RV military with the assistance of the CIA, US Army and US Navy, and the part of the total Agent Blue applied by US Air Force Operation Ranch Hand from 1962 to 1971.
This is a mind-boggling amount of highly toxic chemicals to be sprayed over the Mekong Delta’s rice fields, which were a prime rice growing region in Vietnam, for a decade. So, what has happened to all this chemical warfare agent during the last 60 years?
Since this chemical warfare began, the southern Vietnam environment and Vietnamese living in the Mekong Delta have bio-accumulated arsenic from both natural and anthropic sources via their drinking water (groundwater from tube wells) and food supply, which has increased their risk of chronic poisoning over time. Arsenic is water soluble, has no half-life, and is toxic. Put another way, its poison keeps on poisoning forever.
We’ll be publishing a follow-up research paper, “The Secret Toxic Legacies of Chemical Warfare: Agent Blue Use during the 2nd Indochina War and the Vietnam War (1961-1971),” in the November issue of the Open Journal of Soil Science, an open-access publication from Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP).
The paper’s synthesis and analysis of publications and records will document the contributions of the South Vietnamese government and the United States military to arsenic levels and it will describe arsenic’s present-day persistence in the Vietnam Mekong Delta groundwater.
Here’s a one-sentence preview of the findings: As both the Vietnamese rice farmers and US military personnel who were exposed to Agent Blue can attest, poisoning the water you drink or the local food you eat is not a good idea.
Lines of sargassum in the Sargasso Sea. Photo: NOAA.
When we step into the music… creation can sing free.
— Murray Kyle
Growing up in Athens, Greece I remember vividly the fascination my high school classmates and I shared about “the Bermuda Triangle.” In hushed tones, we spoke about this mysterious remote region where ships and airplanes—if they made the grave error of wandering into or over it—would disappear. Rumor had it that they would disappear without a traceas though swallowed whole in some preternatural dimension. While we empathized with the awful fate of the people involved, we were morbidly fascinated that there was a place on Earth so forbidding and foreboding to enter.
It was not until decades later, when I read Rachel Carson’s The Sea All Around Us, that I learned about the Sargasso Sea. It took a little more delving into to connect the dots—that the Sargasso Sea was essentially none other than “the Bermuda Triangle.” It also turns out that the Sargasso was shrouded in lore centuries before inspiring the legendary Bermuda Triangle. At least since the voyage of Christopher Columbus seafarers told hair-raising stories about crews stranded in the windless swamp of the Sargasso Sea, trapped in its Tolkienesque snaky twine.
Ironically, what sailors feared back then was a golden seaweed forest, brimming with life, on the surface waters of the North Atlantic. The Sargasso Sea is a floating ecosystem composed of two species of golden brown Sargassum seaweed, one with delicate fine leaves, another with broader lanceolate leaves. The beauty of this seaweed symbiosis, we might conjecture, is that two species co-create a more intricately woven terrain than one alone would have composed. The seaweed platform forms the base of the Sargasso ecosystem, the functional equivalent (on land) of a soil-plus-plant composite.
An expanse of seaweed-laced rafts covering some 2 million square miles, it floats part over part sunken into the Atlantic, resembling a “drowned meadow” in the words of 19th-century ocean geographer Matthew Maury. A rich ensemble of lifeforms swirl around it—above it, on it, in it, below it, and underneath it in seamount and seabed depths. The Sargasso is permanent home for many species and critical crossroads for countless others to feed, breed, spawn, and find respite and protection.
Unlike all other seas, the Sargasso is not bound by land but by open seawater, and more specifically by four clockwise moving ocean currents that encircle it along the cardinal directions. It is named after its most pervasive lifeform, the free-floating Sargassum seaweeds. Its seaweed species are the only ones that are “holopelagic,” meaning they reproduce vegetatively on the high seas. (Seaweeds generally reproduce on the sea floor.) This peculiarity of the Sargassum is a first hint that the Sargasso Sea has been around for a long time—long enough for a new seaweed reproductive strategy to appear, be favored (by natural selection), and become established.
The Sargasso is a spectacular habitat with ten known endemic (found nowhere else) species—including crab, anemone, fish, slug, snail, and shrimp—plus many others that visit. It is nursing ground for fish, refuge of sea turtles, stopover for pelagic species like sharks, rays, tuna, swordfish, and marlin, destination of whales and dolphins, open water terrain for seabirds, and the main breeding ground of the endangered eels of North America, Europe, and Africa.
It is not only the eels who are endangered and mostly gone. It is also the sea turtles, seabirds, cetaceans, and fish of the global ocean. All marine biodiversity and habitats are depleted and degraded. The Sargasso eels, sea turtles, sharks and others are endangered by industrial fishing, plastic and PCB pollution, shipping, and now Sargassum “harvesting” (for fertilizer and cattle feed).
A hallmark of mass extinction events is multiple threats to species. The multiple threats impacting lifeforms in our time is both cause and indicator that a human-driven mass extinction is underway. The vast majority of endangered species today are subject to more than one threat. Conservation scientists call this the one-two (three-four) punch. The toughest fighters are brought down with that kind of beating. The healthiest and hardiest species in existence cannot withstand compounded hits.
“The Sargasso Sea,” wrote Carson, “is so different from any other place on Earth that it may be considered a definite geographical region.” The Sargasso is so stunning that it should be treasured, protected, and taught about as an Earth Heritage. Instead, we inhabit a so-called civilization that knows nothing about it and has turned it into a plastic-filled garbage patch. “Remote regions of the ocean,” writes marine biologist Callum Roberts, “like the Sargasso Sea and Northeast Pacific, have become slowly rotating graveyards of plastic junk, some of it decades old.” Adding insult to injury (another habit of modern civilization), the Sargasso is now being ogled for its “resources,” the seaweed it is made of and minable materials that lie in depths beneath.
The seaweed brocaded Sargasso Sea is a quintessential ecotone, meaning a liminal ecosystem composed by colliding, meshing ecologies. It comprises a unique autopoietic (self-making) ensemble of lifeforms while also maintaining a singular physical environment of temperature and salinity ranges. The Sargasso is a bricolage of earthy and watery elements, a bridge between terrestrial and marine lifeforms as well as between surface and deep-sea life. It is a gigantic self-creating dynamic weave of species, elements, and processes. Both horizontal and vertical ecotone, it offers permanent residence for some lifeforms and migratory corridor for others. The Sargasso bridges livelihoods of land and marine organisms while shedding nutrients for critters of the depths and hosting deep-sea species that ascend and descend in diurnal-nocturnal rhythms.
The Sargasso seaweed offers habitat for countless animals and the animals provide essential nutrients to the seaweed. Flying fish build their bubble nests among the Sargasso’s fronds in lovely mimicry of the seaweed “berries.” Juvenile sea turtles live out many years on this protective zone until they are old enough to venture into the open sea and back to shores they came from. Marlin spawn on the Sargasso. Pregnant sharks apparently frequent the Sargasso enough that scientists suspect it may be nursery for many shark species. Swordfish migrate vertically from ocean depths up into its free-floating “roots.” Thirty species of whales and dolphins have been spotted at the Sargasso Sea including the migratory Humpback Whale and the majestic Sperm Whale. Twenty-six species of seabirds have been identified foraging there.
Such rich biodiversity is still extant on this now polluted ecosystem. The still-living Sargasso Sea also floats upon a severely life-depleted ocean and is in imminent danger of being harvested, of the seamounts below it being trawled to smithereens, of the seabed under it being scoured by deep-sea mining. Yet still so much life is there, still there is time to honor it! We can only imagine what exuberance of life the Sargasso once was when sailors trembled at the thought of it, and even into the 1970s when in my teenage brain it loomed large as a paranormal swamp swallowing into nothingness those reckless enough to broach it.
Wherever we turn our eyes on this planet, perhaps most vividly in quixotic places like the Sargasso, we are haunted by the question: What will it take for humanity to awaken to the grandeur of our home in the universe? Do we imagine that a place such as “the Bermuda Triangle” is stranger, or a greater mystery, than the one-without-a-second—in the universe—Sargasso Sea?
The Sargasso is ancient enough that its Sargassum seaweeds evolved to reproduce upon the sea itself. It has been around long enough that numerous new species have evolved to inhabit its briny and warmish plateau. According to Carson, again, “Curious things happened to the animals,” who hailing from some distant shore “have ridden on the Sargassum weed to a new home.” Now, in the middle of the ocean stranded on a squishy raft, they face unprecedented challenges and an unknown world. Some of these originally earthbound species developed organs of attachment to the Sargasso, whether for their own bodies or for their eggs. Marine creatures also took advantage of this ecotone by evolving adaptations to it, like the aforementioned flying fish making nests for their eggs camouflaged in the seaweed.
What scientists call mimicry is a regular feature of the Sargasso. For example, its endemic sea slug, “a snail without a shell” writes Carson, is outfitted with a body shape and color that is virtually indistinguishable from the vegetation. The Sargassum Angler Fish, a carnivorous species, evolved an appearance well matched to seaweed fronds, berries, and color, and sports modified fins fit for steering amongst the leaves. With its stealth gear, the Angler Fish makes a fine meal of all but the most attentive.
It seems unquestionably true, as a blockbuster one-liner famously put it, that life finds a way. But when it comes to participating in the evolutionary game, life finds a way if it has grace of time.
Carson was enthralled by the forms of mimicry on the Sargasso, of camouflage and appendages that tipped the scales in favor of survival. “All these elaborate bits of mimicry,” she wrote, “are indications of the fierce internecine wars of the Sargasso jungles, which go on without quarter and without mercy for the weak and the unwary.”
The three-dimensional Sargasso ecotone is home, destination, and nutrient provider for life from land, air, ocean, and seabed. Plants and animals shorn off shorelines, who somehow survive (or survived) the ocean ride literally encounter an oasis if they reach the Sargasso Sea. “In the calm of the Sargasso,” Carson noted, “there is virtual immortality.” Plants, she specified, may live there “some for decades, others for centuries.” Writing in the mid-twentieth century Carson observed that seafarers coming upon the Sargasso might encounter the same plants that Columbus encountered when he stumbled on it centuries before.
Here, a question may have arisen in the reader’s mind as it did in mine: What best describes the Sargasso Sea—internecine wars or virtual immortality? Neither/nor? Both/and? The best description is what reads true for all life: It is an exquisite weave of co-arising interdependent coexistence. Inside that coexistence, “wars,” “immortality,” and uncountable other phenomena, encounters, and events transpire.
Indeed Sargasso’s biodiversity crossroads—including plants, mammals, seabirds, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates (not to say single-celled life)—belies the fatuous notion of nature red-in-tooth-and-claw. If a slogan for nature might suffice, it is nature rich-in-diversity-and-abundance. There is no war of all against all out there, nor (for crying aloud) does carnivory signal nature’s inherent “injustice.” It may or may not come as a surprise to you, reader, that certain transhumanists regard predation with horror, and they aspire to replace nature with a made-by-science-and-technology machinic world in which nature’s blatant “wrong-doings” will be superseded.
“Life is vicious,” transhumanist Zoltan Istvan tells us. “I don’t believe in evil, per se,” he continues, “but if there was such a thing, it would be nature—a monster of arbitrary living entities consuming and devouring each other simply to survive.” Then the digital cherry on the silicon cake: “It’s time to use science and technology to create something better than an environment of biological nature.” Transhumanists are apex human supremacists who believe that the pinnacle of existence (Mangod) is so supreme by comparison to all nature as to have minted the ideal of justice—an ideal now to be enforced by replacing predators and biological nature with lab engineered, “far more moral and humanitarian” simulacra. In their much anticipated (forever “on the verge” of emerging) technological utopia, transhumanists will also achieve, they keep telling themselves, their main objective: Immortality, in cyborgian bodies and in the Cloud. “Transhumanists,” says Istvan, “are outraged at the fact that their bodies age and are destined to die.” Biology is to blame—technology will show it.
It never seems to have occurred to the techno-evangelists of the immortal realm of the Human Reich that death is not so terrifying a thing when you turn to face the fear of it—instead of confabulating nonsense to defy it and hiding from the fear. As for the vilification of predation as unjust, this is unconscionable messaging in our time abounding with predator haters (on the one hand) and Woke liberators (on the other). Being reviled as a threat to livestock and also labelled unjust—that’s a one-two punch predators do not deserve. Let us be crystal clear: Predators are glorious, beautiful, and innocent, every single one. Predation has made world-Earth green and blue, it has perfected life by sharpening senses, tuning minds, and honing awareness, by building stealth, strength, and fleetingness of foot, fin, and wing, by dyeing the world in camouflage and warning colors (more colors than the human eye can see), by creating a planet brimming with beauty.
If existence were all about war and injustice, life (what was left of it) would display a centrifugal impulse, as cosmic dread and terror propelled lifeforms apart from one another. The opposite is the case: Life is centripetal in nature, critters are inveterately drawn to each other like proverbial bees to honey. On the Serengeti and other plains on Earth, carnivores and herbivores hang out well within range of each other’s senses and awareness. On topic, I remember footage in an animal documentary showing a bunch of seals swimming slowly (very cautiously) just behind their primary predator, a languidly moving Great White Shark. What a splendid image of the nature of life—brave but alert, wary yet audacious, always inquisitive.
Like everywhere on this planet, on the Sargasso life is attracted to life, electrified by curiosity, loving to feed life’s mirror neurons, ever in search of eating, mating, communicating, puttering around, resting, and playing. Among the sharks that visit the Sargasso are the porbeagle sharks. Porbeagles are distinguished among their kind for liking to play. Perhaps porbeagle sharks frequent the Sargasso because it’s the best playground in the Atlantic.
Even in Carson’s day it was known that the amount of Sargassum seaweed of the eponymous sea was so huge it must have taken “eons of time to accumulate.” Eons of time it must have been, because eons of time is what evolution needs, and evolution has been at work on this ecotone. The lesson of time—of luxury of time to grow ancient—is another Earth tale from the Sargasso. Left free to be what they are and become as they may, ecosystems such as forests, lakes, seamounts, and grasslands, such as the Sargasso Sea, can endure and evolve over long spans of time. Freedom to grow old has oft been a prerogative of beings and places on this planet. But human supremacy has cut nonhuman lifespans short, adding to its cumulative evil one more freedom it’s stolen from the world.
Sources
Barnosky, Anthony et al. (2011). Has the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived? Nature 471: 51-57.
Carson, Rachel (1951). The Sea All Around Us. Oxford University Press.
Ceballos, Gerardo, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich (2015). The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
The link between palm oil and deforestation has been well-documented in recent years. The oil—which is used in everything from food to beauty products—has been linked with the destruction of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, which are also home to many endangered species. But it’s not the only product that comes from palm trees.
Hearts of palm has been eaten for centuries across South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia, but lately the ingredient—which, as the name suggests, is sourced from the middle of palm trees—has started to rise in popularity across the West. This is, in part, because it’s a very convincing seafood alternative, thanks to its mild taste and slightly firm, flaky texture.
But considering the issues associated with palm tree cultivation, is it ethical to eat hearts of palm? It turns out, it depends on a few factors, including how it’s sourced. Here’s what you need to know.
Ilene Godofsky Moreno
What are hearts of palm?
Hearts of palm are taken from the tender, inner core of several palm tree species. After they have been harvested, they are usually cut into small chunks and packed into cans and jars, often with brine. While they can be used to make vegan seafood, like lobster, scampi, and crab, they are also frequently added to stews, salads, pastas, and tacos, too.
In Mexico, they’re often marinated and eaten with lime juice and powdered pepper as an appetizer, according to the recipe blog Mexico In My Kitchen. And in Colombia, they’re a key ingredient in palmitos gratinados, which is basically hearts of palm loaded with heavy cream and cheese.
The market for hearts of palm is steadily growing. According to market research firm The Insight Partners, this is due to the changing lifestyles of many consumers, who are looking for healthy and nutritious plant-based foods.
“[Hearts of palm] is highly nutritious, as well as an important source of dietary fiber. It is also a rich source of zinc, which helps in the quick recovery of wounds,” the research firm states. “The vegetable also consists of vitamins A and K, which are required for a healthy scalp and hair. Thus, all these health benefits have increased the demand for [the] packaged hearts of palm market.”
How are hearts of palm harvested?
While plant-based foods are, on the whole, more sustainable than animal products, they are not always perfect. Hearts of palm has been linked with environmental damage, but it’s important not to conflate the ingredient with palm oil. It is possible to harvest hearts of palm in a sustainable way, but producers must pay attention to several factors, one of the most important elements being the species of palm tree they are using.
According to the research-based sustainability platform Citizen Sustainable, hearts of palm can be sourced from peach palms or açaí palms—both of which have several stalks—or jucara palms, coconut palms, and sabal palms, all of which just have one single stalk. If hearts of palm is taken from a tree with several stalks using responsible harvesting practices, they can be sourced without killing the tree and the tree can be left to regenerate. If the ingredient is sourced from a palm tree with just one stalk, this will kill the tree.
“Although there are regulations in place in many regions to protect the palm populations, some countries, like Brazil, have a history of illegal palm harvesting,” Citizen Sustainable reports.
But, according to the chef, food stylist, and author Mariana Velasquez, who grew up eating hearts of palm in Putumayo, Colombia, the government has actually used hearts of palm cultivation to incentivize people to move away from illegal activities associated with coca crops (coca leaves are the raw material for making cocaine). “[It’s] part of a government strategy to give communities a safe, sustainable, and profitable livelihood,” she writes for Saveur.
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Is it ethical to eat hearts of palm?
Whether it’s ethical or not to eat hearts of palm depends largely on where it comes from. For example, Velasquez notes that there are farms that have openly committed to sustainable harvesting techniques, like Puna Gardens in Hawaii.
And Edward & Sons Trading Co, an organic, vegetarian food supplier based in California, which produces Native Forest Organic Hearts of Palm, relies on mission-driven projects to source its main ingredient and, at the same time, “support social welfare while conserving pristine rainforest ecology.” The brand’s lead partner, Edgar Montenegro, even received the 2018 Oslo Business for Peace Award for his work in using food production to help build sustainable communities in several locations across Colombia, including Putumayo.
“Montenegro works closely with local Afro-Colombian communities and indigenous people, providing jobs for over 240 households, impacting over 1,300 families, and helping marginalized groups become more resilient,” notes Edward & Sons. “We are proud that the Native Forest Organic Hearts of Palm project contributes to the success of his mission.”
The brand isn’t alone. In Belgium, Oxfam Fair Trade sources its hearts of palm from San Martín, Peru, through a cooperative that empowers farmers to move away from coca, and instead cultivate palm sustainably. According to Oxfam, the cooperative, called Apropal, currently benefits 350 farming families and is one of Peru’s biggest hearts of palm exporters.
The bottom line is, when it comes to ethical hearts of palm consumption, it’s important to pay attention to where your food is coming from. Before you buy, first, do your research into where it came from, and which trees were used to produce it. If it’s sustainable, the truth is, you shouldn’t have to look too hard—most brands and producers that are doing the right thing will make sure this information is easily accessible to you. It takes a little bit of extra time and effort, but this way, you know your next delicious vegan dish isn’t damaging the environment.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Tuvalu’s Transport, Energy, and Communications Minister Simon Kofe has expressed doubt about Australia’s reliability in addressing the climate crisis.
Kofe was reacting to the latest report by report by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which found that Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are responsible for more than 60 percent of emissions generated from extraction of fossil fuels across Commonwealth countries since 1990.
Kofe told RNZ Pacific that the report proves that Australia has essentially undermined its own climate credibility.
He said that there is a sense of responsibility on Tuvalu, being at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, to continue to advocate for stronger climate action and to talk to its partners.
“When the climate crisis really hits these countries, I think that might really get their attention. But that might actually be too late when countries actually begin to take this issue seriously,” he said.
He noted that Australia approved the extension of three more coal mines last month, which demonstrates that “there’s a lot of work to be done”.
‘Shoots their credibility’
“I think [that] kind of shoots their own credibility in the in the climate space.”
While Pacific leaders have endorsed Australia’s bid to host the United Nations climate change conference, or COP31, in 2026, Kofe said that if Australia really wanted to take leadership on the climate front, then they needed to show it in their actions.
“They are in control of their own policies and decisions. All we can do is continue to talk to them and put pressure on them,” he said.
“We just have to keep pressuring our partner, Australia, to do the right thing.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Grassroots environmental defenders are building a variety of strategic, community-based approaches to environmental justice. Global actors can do more to support their work write Rebecca Iwerks & Ye Yinth & Otto Saki on 14 October 2024 in Open Global Rights.
The last few years have seen encouraging steps to respond through global and regional policy. National governments have started to make specific commitments to protect environmental rights defenders, deeming it necessary to address the climate crisis. The Escazu agreement in Latin America has explicit requirements for the state protection of environmental rights defenders. [NOTE: On 16 October 2024 civil society in the Americas has issued an urgent call to accelerate the implementation of the Plan of Action on Human Rights Defenders, of the Escazú Agreement, adopted five months ago].Just this month, the UNFCCC Supervisory Body for Article 6.4 and the UN Secretary General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals showed how global bodies can incorporate the protection of environmental rights defenders directly into climate policy. More broadly, hundreds of organizations have pooled their efforts to end retaliation against environmental defenders through the ALLIED network.
Last year, we examined the experiences of environmental defenders who were able to continue their work in repressed environments, using tenets of legal empowerment to find pathways to justice in ways that reduce their risk. Here’s what we saw:
Building community power.…
Changing paths to remedy. …
Building relationships with allies. …..
Knowing, using, and shaping the law to respond to security concerns. …
How do we super-charge support for this subtle, effective protection alternative?
While grassroots justice advocates are continuing to seek remedies in tricky places, global actors can do more to support them. The primary shift that can support this type of innovative risk response is to provide flexible, unrestricted funding directly to grassroots justice advocates, whether through philanthropy or from pooled private sector funds that facilitate independent legal and technical support. Flexible funding allows the practitioners to shift their plans as pathways become riskier; it also allows them to invest in security equipment that may not clearly fit into a project-driven budget. Openness to different types of reporting can allow grassroots justice advocates to make decisions about what information is safest for them to reveal without concerns about financial security.
Secondly, those who influence global frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), can do more to incorporate the security of environmental rights defenders into these frameworks. For example, the security of environmental rights defenders is integral to the access to justice encompassed by Sustainable Development Goal 16, and progress on that issue should be included in all SDG 16 reporting. Within the UNFCCC, the language protecting defenders from Article 6.4 Supervisory Body and the Secretary General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals should be mirrored throughout climate policy frameworks and resourced during their implementation.
While the actions against environmental defenders are shocking, there are significant steps the rights community can take now to support grassroots actors moving forward.
Universities could save hundreds of thousands of dollars if they switch to a sustainable plant-based catering model. These are the findings of a new report from Bryant Research, which examined the cost and environmental impact of 140 different ingredients commonly served in university canteens.
Researchers Chris Bryant, PhD, and Billy Nicholles discovered that a medium-sized university catering to around 10,000 students could save around $650,000 a year if they switched to plant-based catering. This is because plant-based meals, on average, cost around 30 percent less than meat-based meals, according to the report.
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Bryant Research gives the example of a beef lasagna compared with a plant-based jackfruit burger. It notes that the lasagna, when served with cheesy garlic bread, fries, and salad, comes to around $6.11 per meal, while the burger, served with pickled cabbage and potato wedges, totals around $1.88 per meal.
Overall, the researchers compared 45 different meals to come up with their findings. They found that vegetarian meals were around 11.5 percent cheaper than meat-based meals on average.
But the gains from eliminating meat and dairy from the menu are more than financial. According to Bryant and Nicholles, plant-based meals result in 84 percent fewer emissions than meat-based meals. They also use one-tenth of the land.
The urgent need to serve more plant-based foods for the planet
The United Nations (UN) has repeatedly warned that the world needs to reduce carbon emissions in order to limit dangerous rises in temperature. Its most recent report stated that we are on track to reach a “catastrophic” rise of 3.1 degrees Celsius if nothing changes. This would lead to a significant increase in devastating extreme weather events, including hurricanes, floods, and heat waves.
“The emissions gap is not an abstract notion. There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters. Around the world, people are paying a terrible price,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres in a recent statement. He added: “We’re playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time.”
As well as reducing the use of fossil fuels, Guterres also highlighted how important it is to reduce deforestation. After all, trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, but when they’re cleared for land, they release all of this back into the atmosphere. According to Our World in Data, deforestation for agriculture is responsible for around 6.5 percent of global emissions.
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The leading driver of deforestation is the beef industry. In fact, according to Global Forest Watch, it is responsible for five times more deforestation than any other industry. The land is cleared to raise cows for meat, and while they’re being reared, these cows also produce emissions. In fact, over one year, one cow will release around 220 pounds of methane into the atmosphere.
This is why experts are calling for a major shift in the way we produce food. Bryant and Nicholles believe that academic institutions like universities can lead the way toward a sustainable food system and save money at the same time.
“In line with a wealth of academic literature, the data in this model is clear: a plant-based transition is an environmental imperative,” they said in a joint statement. “Our model found that plant-based meals are consistently the most sustainable across various environmental measures, compared to vegetarian and meat-based meals.”
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“Crucially, we also found that a plant-based transition provides an opportunity for caterers to reduce their food procurement costs,” they added. “This report gives them the reassurance and guidance they need to kickstart their transition to sustainable menus.”
Several universities have already pledged to reduce the amount of meat they serve on campus. In fact, just recently New York University (NYU) joined Columbia University, The Rockefeller University, and Fordham University in signing on for the NYC Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge. Each signatory of the City Hall initiative must pledge to reduce food emissions by 25 percent by 2030.
“NYU aims to be a leader in the higher education sector when it comes to addressing climate change directly through our food choices,” Linda G. Mills, the president of NYU, said in a statement earlier this year. “Delicious, healthy food helps our community flourish, and reducing the associated carbon footprint helps our planet flourish.”
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Willamette River at flood stage, Oregon City, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Roswell, New Mexico isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find underwater, but that’s exactly what happened this October.
Record-breaking rains overwhelmed the desert town, turning streets into rivers and leaving at least two residents dead, with hundreds more stranded on rooftops. For a town known for its arid climate and occasional spacecraft sightings, the deluge came as a shock.
Unfortunately, it’s a sign of a troubling new reality.
Asheville, North Carolina, known for its picturesque mountain landscape, was battered by Hurricane Helene — despite being some 300 miles from the coast. The storm brought over 30 inches of rain, sparking flash floods and mudslides that swept away entire homes.
Montpelier, Vermont, typically associated with serene, verdant hills, experienced its worst flooding in close to a century this summer. Juneau, Alaska faced an unprecedented disaster when a glacial dam burst, causing a torrent of icy water to inundate neighborhoods.
Even places accustomed to extreme weather are facing storms of greater intensity and duration. In communities across central Florida, floodwaters have lingered for weeks after Hurricane Milton made landfall.
This recent surge in severe flooding can be traced back to the effects of climate change. Warming temperatures mean more moisture in the air, leading to heavier rainfall, while rising sea levels cause higher storm surges. Shifting weather patterns are also bringing storms to places that rarely saw them before.
These events make one thing clear: the climate crisis is escalating, creeping into every corner of the map and shattering the myth of “climate havens.” As these events intensify, it’s clear that the stakes for climate action have never been higher — especially with an election around the corner that could determine our path forward.
Now, with Project 2025, conservative strategists have outlined a plan to dismantle climate protections even further, proposing to expand fossil fuel extraction while weakening clean air and water standards.
These measures prioritize short-term profits for energy executives while leaving communities more exposed to climate disasters for years to come. It’s hard to imagine this is the same party once led by Theodore Roosevelt, a champion of environmental conservation.
Communities across the country are grappling with flooded streets, lost homes, and shattered lives. Their voices must not be drowned out by business-as-usual politics.
Climate policy isn’t just another campaign issue — it’s a matter of survival. This election is a critical moment for voters to reclaim their power in the face of a warming world. It’s up to voters to turn up the pressure and demand comprehensive climate action — from all candidates — that matches the scale of the crisis.
The royal office said as well as attending CHOGM, the King’s programme in Samoa would be supportive of one of the meeting’s key themes, “a resilient environment”, and the meeting’s focus on oceans.
The King and Queen were to be formally welcomed by an ‘Ava Fa’atupu ceremony before meeting people at an engagement to highlight aspects of Samoan traditions and culture.
As we head towards Apia, we can’t wait to visit Samoa for the first time together and to experience the warmth of ancient traditions with your remarkable people. Feiloa’i ma le manuia!
Charles will also attend the CHOGM Business Forum to hear about progress on sustainable urbanisation and investment in solutions to tackle climate change.
He will visit a mangrove forest, a National Park, and Samoa’s Botanical Garden, where he will plant a tree marking the opening of a new area within the site, which will be called ‘The King’s Garden’.
Queen Camilla’s engagements include visiting an aoga faifeau to see first-hand how pupils are taught to read and write, and will visiting the Samoa Victim Support Group, an organisation which assists survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.
Page one: Thursday, 24th October 2024.
Photo: Junior S Ami / Samoa Observer
Design: Terry Tovio / Samoa Observer
Since 1969, King Charles III has visited 44 of 53 Commonwealth countries, many of them on several occasions.
His visits to the Pacific — before he was King — included representing his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at Fiji’s independence celebrations in 1970; and visiting Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012.
Queen Elizabeth II visited the Pacific multiple times during her reign.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Exclusive: Those with ‘interest in keeping world hooked on fossil fuels’ should not oversee climate talks, say report authors
Azerbaijan, the host of the Cop29 global climate summit, will see a large expansion of fossil gas production in the next decade, a new report has revealed. The authors said that the crucial negotiations should not be overseen by “those with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels”.
Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production from 37bn cubic metres (bcm) today to 49bcm by 2033. Socar also recently agreed to increase gas exports to the European Union by 17% by 2026.
Ilene Godofsky Moreno
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