Image by Bruce Warrington.

It was only 3 years ago when a group of distinguished climate scientists led by Erin C. Pettit (Oregon State University) said Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf of the Thwaites Glacier/Antarctica, aka: Doomsday Glacier, could collapse “within as little as 5 years.” (Source: C34A-07 Collapse of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf by intersecting fractures, American Geophysical Union, December 15, 2021)

Assuming they nail it, what happens around the year 2026? Sea levels start rising more than previously but nobody is sure by how much as millions of people could be impacted by flooding. According to the Pettit study: “TEIS (Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf) has the potential to increase the contribution of Thwaites Glacier to sea level rise by up to 25%.” TEIS buttresses one-third of the world’s widest glacier at 75 miles across. It is a big deal, a very big deal. All of which prompts the question whether it further destabilizes all of Thwaites? The answer seems to be “yes, it probably would.”

However, there are studies only two years later (2023) that claim the loss of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf will not impact sea level rise as much as suggested by the Pettit study. For example: Limited Impact of Thwaites Ice Shelf on Future Ice Loss From Antarctica., Geophysical Research Letters, 2023.

Today, there is plenty of research about Thwaites that runs the gamut from a UN climate change panel’s worst-case scenario that collapse would cause global sea levels to drastically rise by three feet by 2070, 10 feet by 2100 to a recent study by Dartmouth College researchers, which disputes the UN panel’s modeling, claiming Thwaites will not see that type of collapse this century. Yet, the Dartmouth report “says retreat is still dire.” (Source: Study Finds Highest Prediction of Sea-Level Rise Unlikely, Dartmouth.edu, August 21, 2024)

The Doomsday Glacier is located at the northern edge of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet. It drains into the Amundsen Sea. And it is big! It’s the world’s widest glacier at 75 miles across. And it is one of the most talked about glaciers in the world. It has its own study group: The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, which consist of UK and US scientists investigating one of the most unstable glaciers in the world. For perspective purposes, there are more than 500 named glaciers in Antarctica and many thousands more not named. But Thwaites stands out as the most notorious and most celebrated glaciology superstar.

Thwaites Glacier is like a sore that does not heal; it constantly throbs, drawing attention because it is a real threat to every coastal megacity on the planet. Alas the newest news is that ocean temperatures are skyrocketing, suddenly turning straight up like never before, starting within the past two years. In turn, that’s what works underwater at loosening up Thwaites for collapse. For example, a NYT headline d/d February 27, 2024, says it all: “Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures.” And, there’s this: Live Science d/d May 21, 2024: Warm Ocean Water is Rushing Beneath Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ Making Collapse More Likely.

With record-breaking ocean temperatures at rates nobody expected, how long will it take for the Doomsday Glacier to melt completely? According to Eric Rignot, Senior Research Scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, when interviewed by USA Today d/d May 20^th, 2024: “It will take many decades, not centuries… part of the answer also depends on whether our climate keeps getting warmer or not which depends completely on us and how we manage the planet.”

But low-lying metropolises like Miami Beach are not as concerned about melting taking “many decades, not centuries” as they are concerned about which decade starts the major melting process. This is where the rubber meets the road for low-lying megacities of the world, according to a UN report: New York City, Cairo, Mumbai, Jakarta, Shanghai, Copenhagen, London, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Lagos, and Los Angeles are all at risk.

So, which decade does it start with full force? Nobody knows but Thwaites is tipsy. That much is known, and that’s why Thwaites has its own study group. Conceivably, the initial decades of collapse could be disastrous.

The risks of collapse have never been higher. Here’s why: Climate change mitigation efforts across the globe have been feeble as CO2 and global warming in parallel have set new all-time higher records in both 2023 and 2024. These are the highest records in human history. People that truly understand the implications are extremely edgy about the prospects of unexpected climate-related shocks over the near-term, meaning not 2050 and not 2100 and not some distant fantasy, but within society’s current generations.

Forget Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (“NZE”), that’s a crapshoot that creates false hope.

“Despite many pledges and efforts by governments to tackle the causes of global warming, CO2 emissions from energy and industry have increased by 60% since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992… pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.” (Source: Net Zero by 2050, International Energy Agency, 2024) This report also claims: “As the major source of global emissions, the energy sector holds the key to responding to the world’s climate challenge.” The report offers solutions.

In that regard, of special note and concern, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from July 2023 to June 2024, when it averaged 1.64°C. According to the UN climate report, sustained temperatures above 1.5C pre-industrial triggers major tipping points like breakdown of ocean circulation systems and others, but that one alone is all it takes for all hell to break lose.

Human Rescue Plan

The gravity of the global situation is only too obvious when a group of glaciologists feels compelled to organize a plan to “Save the Doomsday Glacier” led by John Moore, Research Professor, Arctic Centre, Lapland University/Finland. Within the next two years the group intends to test a prototype fixit in a Norwegian fjord. ultimately installing a giant submarine curtain, up to 50 miles across, that seals off glaciers like Thwaites from Antarctic warm currents. The costs for erecting a curtain across the Amundsen Sea would be $80 billion to see if human intervention really works in the most challenging, treacherous region of the world.

“The proposal calls for a series of giant overlapping plastic or fiber curtains tethered to concrete foundations. To hold the warm current at bay, the curtain would stretch for 50 miles across the entrance to the Amundsen Sea and extend upwards for much of the 2,000 feet from the sea floor to the surface.” (Source: Fred Pearce, As ‘Doomsday’ Glacier Melts, Can an Artificial Barrier Save It? YaleEnvironment360, August 26, 2024)

Thus, human ingenuity is called into action for one of the biggest assignments of all time. Equally significant to the herculean human effort to put a big human thumb in the Antarctic dyke, is the significance of what this says about how far and how fast global warming has progressed. And, even more important, what’s to stop it? And how many doomsday scenarios can humanity handle?

Thwaites is not only a threat, but also an omen, a forewarning of what’s to come.

Every year 195 nations gather for their annual UN climate meeting to make declarations about what’s happened and what they plan on doing, but no tangible results since 1992 when they started. Instead, CO2 and global temps are setting new record highs by the year every year. This is directly opposite the stated objectives of UN climate conferences ongoing for over 30 years.

The next meeting this November is in Baku, Azerbaijan, an oil and gas country, similar to last year’s meeting in Dubai. And since oil and gas CO2 emissions are the principal cause of global warming, which, in turn, is the reason Thwaites threatens coastal megacities with flooding; why are oil and gas producing countries the focus for holding meetings about the problems of global warming?

Have Oil Producers hijacked UN climate conferences?

Answer: Yes, they have hijacked UN COPs (Conference of the Parties). Oh please! It’s blatantly obvious. COP28 was held in Dubai. The serving president of the climate conference COP28 was Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, who’s chair of Dhabi National Oil Company and who publicly stated there is “no science” behind calls for a phase out of fossil fuels. But he conveniently overlooks reams, and reams, of long-standing scientific evidence of CO2 emissions directly linked to global temperature levels. It’s established science, period.

As of today, there are plenty of public statements by the fossil fuel industry that it has decided to ignore the climate change issue and move ahead full blast with increased production. This is reality. For example, The Guardian d/d April 2024: World Set to Quadruple Oil and Gas Production by 2030, Led by New US Projects. Fasten seat belts it’s blast-off time, meaning hotter and hotter, faster and faster, as Thwiates totters.

One can only hope that (1) geoengineering massive glaciers (how many more are there and will it even work?) and (2) geoengineering to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (extremely questionable as to proficiency of scale?) can save the day because an overkill of CO2 emissions is coming like there’s no tomorrow. Oh, by the way, the fossil fuel industry is also banking on technology to save the day.

But there are as many question marks as there are hopeful proposals and too little certainty. Alas, the world is riddled with sharp divisions over: (1) reality of climate change (2) how to tackle the biggest threat in human history (3) and, then, there’s this: Bloomberg News headline: Right-Wing Populist Backlash Is Threatening Climate Fight d/d June 20, 2024: “The green revolution is in trouble. The rise of the nationalist right in much of the Western world has placed huge question marks over commitments to transition out of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Donald Trump in the US and other populist politicians have vowed to jettison low-carbon policies and downplayed the impact of global warming.”

Meanwhile, the global-warming-timebomb is ticking faster than ever, working overtime, not waiting for some kind of universal resolution for the only issue, other than nuclear, that threatens to bring our own self-destruction.

The Thwaites protective curtain will hopefully be in place sometime by 2040, hmm.

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Alpine meadows in Greater Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

There’s a boiling controversy right now over the future of hundreds of thousands of acres of Forest Service lands abutting Yellowstone National Park and comprising the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. These lands are primarily in the Gallatin and Madison Ranges which are facing increasing pressures from a variety of development and recreational pressures.

The vast majority of the area is protected by the Wilderness Study Areas in Senator Lee Metcalf’s Wilderness Study Act of 1977 which mandates that they be managed under the provisions of the Wilderness Act of 1964 until Congress decides to either designate them as “Big W” Wilderness Areas or release them for multiple abuse.

By law, that means no mechanized access or use is allowed there any more than it’s allowed in Montana’s other much-prized wilderness areas such as the Bob Marshall, Great Bear, Selway-Bitterroot, Absarokee-Beartooth and Lee Metcalf Wilderness.

Additionally, more than 20 years after Metcalf’s visionary law, President Clinton authorized the Roadless Rule which addresses the roadless lands outside the Wilderness Study Areas. The goal was to preserve those quickly vanishing areas of federal public lands that had not yet felt the degradation of the bulldozer’s blade.

Taken together, it comes to a very significant 240,000 acres of virtually pristine lands with incredible value as intact forest ecosystems for wildlife, protected headwaters for fish, our best and cheapest way to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and clean drinking water for Montanans. Those lands run from the Park all the way to Bozeman and Livingston and are the headwaters for the famed Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers.

The source of the controversy is the Gallatin Conservation and Recreation Act being promoted by three big money groups: The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and the Montana Wilderness Association (now doing business as Wild Montana). Ironically, they use the name, but they’ve changed their game, and under their proposal these lands would be chopped up and opened for motorized, mechanical, and industrial “wreckcreation” and even more logging by the rapacious timber industry.

They claim that commercial logging will be prohibited, but they neglect to tell the public that their loophole is big enough to drive a logging truck through and allows the Forest Service to bulldoze logging roads in watershed protection areas, if the Forest Service claims it has to log for “forest health.” The dirty little secret is that now almost every Forest Service logging proposal is for “forest health” or as retired Forest Service Gardiner District Ranger Hank Rate called it: “No tree left behind.”

The proposal is facing significant opposition not only from long-time wilderness advocates but the former Superintendent of Yellowstone Park and a number of former staffers and board members of the groups. Since the proposal has no sponsor and has not been introduced in Congress, “act” is perhaps the most pertinent word in the title since they act like they’re protecting wilderness, but are actually throwing wilderness quality lands open to degradation from any number of uses and abuses.

The simplest, most sensible, and least controversial way forward is to first designate the existing Wilderness Study Areas as full-on Wilderness since, by law, they’re already being managed as wilderness. If they really want to protect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they would likewise support wilderness designation  for all the remaining roadless lands as does the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531, which is a bill before Congress.  NREPA has 12 sponsors in the Senate and protects the vital biological corridors connecting the ecosystems in this region and ensures the continued existence of threatened animals such as wolverines, lynx, and grizzly bears for future generations.

Please ask your member of Congress to cosponsor the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531.

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South Sister Mountain, Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The 1964 Wilderness Act celebrates its 60^th anniversary on September 3^rd. Diamonds are a gift for a 60^th wedding anniversary and presumably represent strength, but from a humanitarian lens diamonds have evolved to represent consumption and exploitation.

This duality resonates with the 1964 Wilderness Act’s diamond anniversary and provides an opportunity to reflect on where we are now and what the National Wilderness Preservation System—Wilderness—faces moving forward.

The Wilderness Act is exceptional. Unlike the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to understand the possible environmental impacts of its proposed actions, unlike the Endangered Species Act, which protects only those species close to disappearing entirely, the Wilderness Act proactively protects ecosystems by minimizing human interference. Ecosystems and organisms within Wilderness simply exist on their own evolutionary terms, sculpted by climate, weather, and wildlife.

The Wilderness Act is our promise to restrain ourselves from consuming Wilderness in a way that degrades its future wildness. We experience Wilderness on its terms—hiking, camping, canoeing, horseback riding, hunting, and fishing. The Wilderness Act prohibits us from developing, mechanizing, degrading, or manipulating Wilderness, even with well-intentioned ideas.

Wilderness is rare. Although Wilderness encompasses 150 distinct ecosystem types nationwide, Wilderness comprises under three percent of the contiguous United States, or about five percent including Alaska. Yet Wilderness tempts special-interest groups. Surrendering to that temptation—creating exceptions for prohibited activities, the diamonds we exploit in Wilderness—will undo the Wilderness Act. The turning point is already here.

One group teeters on the precipice of attaining a nationwide exception. The EXPLORE Act would permit rock climbers to drill metal into Wilderness rock faces and leave these “fixed anchors” as permanent human footprints. One can hike without handrails, and one can climb without fixed anchors, but occasionally one must avoid a route that is otherwise too dangerous. But some climbers want their diamond! The House passed the EXPLORE Act and the Senate is considering it.

Groups are lining up behind the climbers. Utah’s Senator Lee has introduced a bill that would amend the Wilderness Act to allow bicycles—mechanized transport—in Wilderness. Exceptions are a cancer that will spread if ignored. Hand gliders are mechanized like bicycles, why not them? Electric bicycles are quiet bicycles. Electric bicycles have motors, so then why not motorized bikes, too?

Some argue that recreationists are the best wilderness advocates. But if a climber only cares about Wilderness so long as she can use fixed anchors, or a biker only cares about Wilderness insofar as he can bike there, do these folks really care about Wilderness? Or are they more enamored by the sparkly allure of a wild place to recreate with their toys?

Recreationists are hardly the only exception-seekers. Some scientists argue for installations—which the Wilderness Act prohibits—to mine data. Installations are stationary or include tracking collars that researchers and agencies shackle onto wild animals after chasing them down with helicopters. Tracking collars disorient, chafe, and sometimes even kill animals, as one researcher discovered when he found a black bear that suffocated himself trying to remove his collar. State fish and game agencies want to tinker with animal populations for hunting or fishing. These exceptions, sought in alleged pursuit of science or conservation, degrade the lives of individual animals, ignore the role of unmanipulated control groups in scientific experiments, and undermine the Wilderness Act’s mandate for untrammeled communities.

Without restraint, Wilderness dies. Half of the approximately 40 wilderness-related bills introduced to the current Congress create special-interest exceptions in proposed Wildernesses or amend the Wilderness Act. These exceptions allow motorized use, mechanized use, installations, and wildlife manipulation. Alternatively, these bills draw absurdly gerrymandered Wilderness boundaries so although a trail physically cuts through Wilderness, the trail itself is technically not Wilderness, and bikes can ride on through this loophole.

When asked why a Wilderness bill allows exceptions, which normalize Wilderness-degrading activities, Congressional offices point to stakeholders. Stakeholders want to exploit Wilderness for their diamonds, and some conservation organizations—including nationally recognizable names as well as local groups—want the nominal win of a “Wilderness” designation. Perhaps these organizations fail to consider the cost to creatures and their last truly wild sanctuaries. Worse yet, perhaps these organizations understand this market and intentionally traffic in diamonds.

We strengthen laws, follow them, or undo them. Currently, special-interest groups, abetted by Congress and some conservation organizations, are slowly undoing the Wilderness Act. This undoing leads to a future where “Wilderness” becomes an arbitrary title, bestowed without a critical look at ourselves and our ambitions.

Unlike those whose support is conditioned on exceptions, the best Wilderness advocates understand that Wilderness is where we exercise restraint—where nature evolves without intentional human interference, where humans visit without mechanization, and where we refrain from harassing wildlife and degrading their habitat. Wilderness without special-interest exceptions should be our promise to Wilderness for the next 60 years.

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Gallatin Range, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

In the 1930s, Bob Marshall (for whom the Montana wilderness is named) started the Wilderness Society.

Marshall declared at the organization’s founding: “We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.”

Marshall realized long ago that wilderness designation is the gold standard for conservation. If you want to protect an area’s ecological function, wildlife and wildness, there is no better way than formal wilderness designation.

Tragically, most of the so-conservation groups in Montana, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and Wild Montana (formerly Montana Wilderness Association), have forgotten Marshall’s admonishment.

Today, these organizations support the Gallatin Forest Partnership, a proposal to reduce wilderness protection acreage in the Gallatin Range south of Bozeman.

Congress gave the Gallatin Range interim wilderness status in 1977 as part of Senate Bill 393. The legislation designated the 155,000-acre Hyalite-Buffalohorn-Porcupine Wilderness Study Area.

The Act requires that “the wilderness study areas designated by this Act shall, until Congress determines otherwise, be administered by the Secretary of Agriculture so as to maintain their presently existing wilderness character and potential for inclusion in the National  Wilderness Preservation System.”

The word “shall” means the Forest Service has no choice but to protect the wilderness quality of the WSA. Unfortunately, the Forest Service has neglected its obligation to maintain wilderness character with the express support of the above organizations.

Approximately 155,000 acres of the Gallatin Range are within S. 393, while the Gallatin Partnership proposal only proposes 104,000 acres for wilderness designation.

Worst for wildlife and wildlands, the Partnership proposes changing WSA status for two of the Gallatin Range’s most important wildlife areas—the Buffalo Horn and Porcupine drainages to permit mechanical access by dirt bikes and mountain bikes permanently,

The Gallatin Range deserves full wilderness protection for the 155,000 acres of the S. 393 WSA and up to 100,000 acres of additional roadless lands for a 255,000-acre wilderness.

We cannot create wilderness. We can only lose it. We must acknowledge Marshall’s admonishment and keep the (fence) straddlers from compromising away one of the best wildlands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

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Dianna White Dove-Uqualla, Havasupai elder, activist, and ceremonialist. 

“I just want to remind people that this is about nuclear war, genocide and the ongoing colonialization of our land and the ongoing takeover of our resources and we are tired of being a resource colony. We are not a sacrifice zone.”

– Leona Morgan, Diné, co-founder of Haul No! 

 On Saturday, Aug. 24, members of neighboring tribes and environmental groups gathered near the Grand Canyon to demonstrate against the reopening of the nearby Pinyon Plain uranium mine. An estimated 250 protestors attended. The people driving up to the Canyon from Flagstaff or Williams through piñon pines and junipers in the wide solitude of the Plateau could not miss the colorful, incongruous mass of people, placards, banners, and a few horses, 10 miles north of Grand Canyon Junction. But judging by the honks of recognition, many travelers thought it was appropriate that people should be out on a Saturday morning protesting this dangerous and grotesque aberration threatening the magnificent tranquility of the place and the health and welfare of its residents.  

Probably, few of the travelers knew what Counterpunch readers have learned about disease and death caused by nuclear waste from power plants, weapons facilities, and uranium mines. Most Americans have cultivated or inherited a patriotic ignorance about all things nuclear. It’s called National Security: Shut up; Do what you’re told; Don’t think;  Leave it to elite scientists and technologists.  

But residents of the Colorado Plateau that stretches across northern Arizona, eastern New Mexico, and the Four Corners region, most of all the Diné (Navajo) people, have profound and intimate Insecurity about their health, amply justified by empirical proof of high rates of cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and mental retardation linked to radioactivity from mines, mine wastes, polluted aquifers and plants and animals. More than 500 of the 1,500 uranium mines on the Navajo Nation remain to be reclaimed and some residents dispute the quality of the reclamation that had been done.  

Mine reclamation and remediation generally mean closing abandoned mines and removing or otherwise mitigating radioactive tailings (debris from the mine lying outside it) dangerous to human, animal and plant health.  

The federal Department of Energy is responsible for mine reclamation and remediation on the Navajo Nation.  

The demonstration was organized by Grand Canyon Sierra Club; Haul No!, a group formed to oppose trucking uranium ore through 300 miles of the Navajo Nation; Center for Biological Diversity; the Havasupai tribe, who live in the Grand Canyon and had experienced a flash flood two days before the demonstration; and others.  

Above and behind us was Red Butte, sacred to all the tribes in the vicinity.  

Leona Morgan, Diné, co-founder of Haul No! and Nuclear Issues Study Group.

Halfway through the demonstration, speakers appeared and much of the group turned away from the road to listen. The mood was ironic, dignified exasperation in the face of a simple, drastic situation, and the event became a ritual of courage: brave people standing up against another assault by a federal/multinational corporate consortium for resource colonization.  

The tears of several speakers flowed with their words. 

Dianna White Dove-Uqualla, a Havasupai elder, said that many tribes gathered peacefully at Red Butte to gather medicinal plants, “not just the Havasupai. But now we are on the front lines.” 

Their reservation lies immediately below the Energy Fuels Inc. Pinyon Plain Mine, which has already pierced one aquifer. The Havasupai and others believe the mine will pollute the tribe’s water source, including five beautiful waterfalls, and famous tourist attractions.  

“When our people get sick with cancer, mental disease, or crippled, Energy Fuels, you will pay all that you owe us. You are ripping up Mother Earth. Why are you doing this? The pollution goes to Nevada and California or Colorado. They will turn this stuff into bombs.  

“But we still have a chance because we are here as one people with one heart. 

“The land will die. 

“The politicians are not listening. They are so mean and hurtful, not compassionate. We have lost loving kindness, but we can regain it,” White Dove-Uqualla concluded. 

People felt it was a great speech and there were many “a’ho’s” of agreement from the audience. 

Carletta Tilousi, a Havasupai and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said that “what we’re doing so far hasn’t stopped them. Neither the state, Forest Service, nor Park Service will stop it…wherever the groundwater is leaking, it is just leading to the death of our people.  

“Nothing is sacred to multi-national corporations,” she said. “The Grand Canyon is one of the seven wonders of the world. This land is sacred. Thirteen tribes hold Red Butte as a sacred site.” (The mine is close enough to the butte to pollute medicinal plants – bh) 

Manuel Pino from Grants, New Mexico, said the mines in his region have not been reclaimed.  

“Nowhere in the world is safe from (radioactive) waste, so how is this safe? Now there are more claims for uranium in the Black Hills than there are for gold.” 

He said the federal government wants to put the waste from the Church Rock spill (the worst uranium disaster in US history) on Navajo land. Church Rock is on Navajo land. Pino suggested the government send it elsewhere.  

“We never had an election to decide if we wanted uranium mining,” Pino said.  

Federal law considers Indian-reservation land public land, and the 1872 Mining Act permits miners to stake claims on public lands including reservations.  

“The feds have never accepted responsibility for the damage they’ve done here. Now, the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, blocked the extension to the Radioactive Exposure Compensation Act. Will Harris continue this policy?” 

Leona Morgan, Diné, co-founder of Haul No! and the Nuclear Issues Study Group, told the group that Energy Fuel’s White Mesa Mill in Utah, close to the Ute Mountain Utes, is being used as a waste dump for uranium and other heavy metals. Recently, it received waste from Japan and has also received waste from Estonia. The Utes also say that the mine uses too much of the region’s limited supply of water. The Utes will demonstrate at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake and at the White Mesa Community Center in early October, Morgan added.  

“I just want to remind people that this is about nuclear war, genocide and the ongoing colonialization of our land and the ongoing takeover of our resources,” she said, “and we are tired of being a resource colony. We are not a sacrifice zone.” 

Haul No! will continue to oppose the mine and hauling radioactive ore across the Navajo Nation, but they are also supporting the Utes’ attempt to close White Mesa Mill, Morgan continued.  Energy Fuels has two new mines in Utah, one in Colorado, and two in Wyoming. All those mines will feed the White Mesa Mill, she said. 

Because the federal government recently banned the purchase of Russian uranium, domestic uranium is now the main source, Morgan explained. 

 “They’re coming for us, so we have to keep working together and supporting our grassroots people, our front-line people, and our colonial government, all working together for the protection of our water, our people, our cultural resources, our non-human relatives, and our future generations,” Morgan said.  

The Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels Inc. have been in negotiations for a week on the transportation route for trucking uranium ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine to the White Mesa Mill. Meanwhile, a uranium mining boom is looming. 

Federal, state and local politicians and the mining companies – laws and investments in their pockets — are coming back to the Navajo Nation and the surrounding land inhabited by Havasupai, Utes, Paiutes, Hualapai, Hopis, and other Pueblo tribes. The resource colonizers plan to mine more uranium, pollute more land and water, animals, crops, and medicinal plants, and sicken more people – in the name of “clean” energy and “security” for the many, but insecurity for residents of the mining area.  

Support for the people who live on the uranium-rich Colorado Plateau may save your water supply, too, if you are one of the 40 million people in seven states and two Mexican states who drink Colorado River water. 

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Sunrise Dam Gold Mine open pit, Western Australia. Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Western governments have finally realized that the energy transition is happening—and that the resources needed are mostly in Chinese hands. Transition minerals, by some dubbed the “new oil,” are the key ingredients for renewables technologies like EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines that make the transition happen. A large share of those minerals are extracted in the Global South, but China controls their value chains to a large degree. China processes over 90 percent of rare earth elements, almost 100 percent of graphite, over 75 percent of cobalt and over 60 percent of lithium.  China also produces around 80 percent of the world’s solar panels and makes between 60-80 percent of the world’s electric vehicles, wind turbines, and lithium-ion batteries.

Hardly a week goes by these days without Western governments announcing a new partnership or strategy to gain the upper hand in the minerals scramble. It’s difficult to imagine that just a few years ago an American company sold off one of the world’s biggest cobalt mines to a Chinese company. Resource nationalism has replaced the Western vision of a globalized free market for raw materials.

From the Spanish Conquista’s gold and silver plundering to the more recent minerals booms, those unfortunate enough to live on land bearing valuable resources have often been driven away and/or seen their land polluted. In policies and press releases Western governments vow that this time it’s going to be different with declarations about projects with “respect for human rights” using “responsible practices” and declare they will follow “high” and “rigorous ESG standards.” Yet, a closer look at recent policy decisions leaves much doubt whether Western countries live up to their promises.

Weak Regulation

The hastily negotiated Critical Raw Materials Act from last year is the basis for the European Union’s approach to better access key raw materials. The EU vows that supported projects shall be “implemented sustainably,” particularly with regard to the “prevention and minimization of environmental…and socially adverse impacts through responsible practices” but allows at the same time the fast-tracking of permitting processes and authorities to “override” adverse impacts on the environment.

With almost 70 percent of the world’s transition minerals extraction projects located on or near indigenous people’s or farmer’s land, their meaningful consultation is key to avoiding the environmental and social problems mining has caused in the past. And yet many mining projects are launched without properly informing affected communities, let alone obtaining their consent.

The United States doesn’t have sufficient regulation in place to hold mining companies accountable for their overseas operations. Instead, it relies largely on the industry’s self-policing through voluntary schemes that have often failed in the past. A prominent example is the Brumadinho tailings dam that broke in 2019, killing 272 people in Brazil despite an inspection having certified the dam’s stability just four months before.

Turning a Blind Eye to Corruption

The extractive sector accounts for one in five cases of transnational bribery. Bribes do not only deprive the often poor population in resource-rich countries of revenues, but the massive unearned income from natural resources can also undermine countries’ democratic institutions and rule of law, a phenomenon called the “resource curse.” Past commodity booms have unleashed large waves of corruption, which is why governments’ strong stance against corruption is particularly important at this moment. But the United States and UK have sent out opposite signals.

In December 2017, the United States sanctioned the Israeli businessman Dan Gertler for his corrupt deals in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through which he is alleged to have siphoned off over $1.3 billion of public funds to his companies, which Gertler denies. In a sharp turnaround, the United States has now proposed to lift the sanctions if Gertler sells off his remaining stakes in giant copper and cobalt mining operations in the country, effectively allowing him to further profit an estimated $300 millionfrom ill-gotten assets. The United States hopes that the deal will incentivize Western-leaning companies to better access the DRC’s minerals. Seventy percent of the world’s cobalt—a key ingredient for EV batteries—comes from the DRC. U.S. government officials also mentioned to the Wall Street Journal that Saudi Arabian mining companies are interested in buying stakes in Congolese cobalt and copper mines through which American companies would get some of the metals.

In August 2023, the UK dropped a 10-year investigation into the Kazakh mining company ENRC centered on suspected bribes for cobalt and copper mining contracts in the DRC, saying it had “insufficient admissible evidence to prosecute” after facing a wave of legal proceedings from the company, which vehemently denies wrongdoing. By signaling to the mining sector that it is not under a close watch, such decisions risk spurring further corruption.

Risky Finance

In their quest to catch up with Chinese competitors in accessing critical minerals, Western governments are willing to prop up mining operations with big sums of money. Through export credit agencies providing government-backed loans and insurance, Western governments support projects that investors may otherwise deem too risky. The White House senior adviser for energy and investment recently admitted as much when he said, in May 2024, that “the government has a real role here of incentivizing private capital by taking more risk.”

In the past, mining projects backed by public funds have destroyed unique habitats, used forced labor, fueled violent conflict, and heavily polluted the environment. As part of the Minerals Security Partnership, a U.S.-led coalition of allied governments, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation offered a loan of up to $150 million in November 2023  for a graphite mine project in Mozambique. It is located in a region of the country where it may have serious human rights impacts given a conflict between the government and an Islamist insurgency that has led to almost 5,000 deaths during the last five years .

The EU’s strategic partnership approach, designed to secure a steady supply of critical raw materials, provides finance for producer countries through the Global Gateway, the EU’s version of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In February, the EU agreed on a partnership on “sustainable raw materials value chains” with Rwanda, which should raise major red flags. After having plundered 3T (tin, tantalum, tungsten) minerals directly in the DRC during the second Congo war, Rwanda has profited from taxing smuggled minerals, which have been connected to conflict ever since. The strategic partnership is being negotiated at a time when the Rwandan army has invaded the DRC and supports the armed group M23, which controls much of the smuggling from some of the largest coltan mines in the world. The European Commission proposes “traceability…at the core of the EU-Rwanda critical raw materials partnership,” supposedly to counter the risk of sourcing conflict minerals. Yet Global Witness has shown that the dominant traceability system for 3T minerals in Rwanda has laundered huge volumes of smuggled conflict minerals since it has been set up.

Investor Courts Undercutting Environmental and Social Regulation

Free trade agreements with producer countries are another common tool for Western governments to secure access to minerals from third countries. These often impose an untransparent investment protection system that allows investors to sue governments for billions of dollars for state action that may negatively affect their investments.

When the Guatemalan supreme court ordered a halt to a mining project for lack of consultation with affected indigenous peoples in 2016, the mining company Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) initiated a lawsuit against the government for over $400 million for not providing adequate protection to KCA’s investment against community protests, effectively claiming that the government did not do enough to suppress local opposition to the company’s mine.

Colombia faces 14 arbitration processes and eight more in pre-arbitration stage, many of which involve mining companies. Altogether, Colombia is being sued for an estimated $13.2 billion. By insisting on such investment settlement clauses in trade agreements, Western government are complicit in undermining protection for mining-affected people and land.

New Frontiers, New Destruction

While Western governments haven’t set targets to reduce materials use that could curb minerals demand, they support projects in new, high-risk territories that will likely have devastating environmental impact. The deep sea is one of the few areas that has so far been spared from destructive mining. Norway, however, is determined to change this, and among U.S. lawmakers support for deep sea mining is growing as well. As the seabed has scarcely been researched, it’s difficult to assess the precise effects that mining would have, but experts assert that it would lead to indefinite reductions in biodiversity and impacted areas wouldn’t recover for decades or even centuries.

As if these prospects weren’t dire enough, there are even greater risks looming on the horizon. With Western governments and allies forming clubs such as the Minerals Security Partnership against the Chinese market dominance, pressure on producer countries to align with one or the other side mount.

If the CEO of the world’s biggest EV manufacturer had his way, foreign interventions against governments who are unwilling to bow to Western conditions could soon be back. Reacting to a Twitter user’s allegation that the United States organized a coup against Bolivia’s president to access the country’s lithium, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk wrote “We will coup whoever we want—deal with it!”.

Some analysts fear that we may see military escalation of the scramble for the “new oil” in the near future. The Arctic region, home to a large rare earth mine, is one area that has recently come into the crosshairs of geopolitical interests with Europe, the United States, Russia, and China struggling for influence.

Global superpowers must keep the quest for minerals within the boundaries of economic competition and refrain from using force. Western governments need to live up to their promises of a just energy transition by putting in place and enforcing strong regulation that ensures responsible mining and holds accountable all companies involved in extracting and sourcing minerals.

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Image by Roxanne Desgagnés.

Major planetary boundaries that support life are at risk of collapse. This is happening at speeds that climate scientists never thought possible. What are the consequences and what, if anything, can be done?

Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Germany recently gave a 20-mimute TED speech: The Tipping Points of Climate Change. He is a world-class climate scientist specializing in planetary boundary frameworks. Of note, Dr. Rockström is one climate scientist that other scientists pay attention to when he talks.

A summation of what should be categorized as “one of the most important speeches of 2024” is included herein.

It’s fair to say that he views recent abrupt Earth system changes as profoundly disturbing and far beyond the boundaries of what climate science expected. In fact, climate scientists have never seen such rapid transition of what’s normally a slow-moving Earth system now in the wrong direction so rapidly that it’s threatening the existence of key ecosystems that make today’s life possible.

In his words: “The planet is now in a place where we’ve underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring way beyond realistic expectations in science.” It was fifteen years ago when he introduced a planetary boundary framework composed of nine earth system processes to determine the stability, resilience, and life support on planet Earth.

Then, ten years ago 195 countries signed the Paris ’15 climate agreement.

And in 2019, five years ago, the signatories to Paris ‘15 entered the most decisive decade of this generation where their choices this decade determine the future for all generations on Earth.

The scientific state of the planet as of August 2024:

!) We’ve reached 1.2°C mean surface temperature above pre-industrial. This is the warmest in 100,000 years.

2) We touched 1.5°C as an annual mean temperature in 2023.

3) The biggest worry is evidence of an “acceleration of warming.” Over the past 50 years, the rate of warming was 0.18C per decade from 1970 to 2010 but from 2014 onward it’s been 0.26C per decade, or +45%, and if this course continues, we’ll crash thru 2C within 20 years and hit 3C by 2100, a disastrous outcome, caused by humans.

4) But it’s much more than CO2 that’s at issue. Several things are undermining the stability of the planet. For example, over-consumption of fresh water, the 6^th mass extinction of species, abusing freshwater systems with nitrogen phosphorus, etc.

A combination of factors has disrupted the Earth system by spreading chaos across the planet, droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-caused massive storms, 40°C (104°F) life-threatening heat across all continents in the year 2023. In Mecca, 52°C (126°F) hit over 1,000 worshipers who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June 2024. At current rates, by 2050 expect an 18% economic loss of GDP or $38 trillion per year. The abrupt change in Earth systems is starting to hurt in human social costs and economic costs.

And it is happening at only 1.2°C mean surface global temperature. But we’re on a path to 2.7C this century. Will floods, droughts, and heat waves get worse? Without immediate mitigation efforts, yes.

As far back as 3,000,000 years the planet never exceeded 2C. We’ve been living in “The Corridor of Life.” It’s all we’ve got.

Alas, the risks are even more serious. There are two major risks to the planetary system: 1) buffering capacity 2) crossing tipping points. And both are moving in the wrong direction much faster than anybody thought possible.

Buffering capacity is Earth’s ability to dampen shocks and stress, e.g., soaking up greenhouse gases that impact nature on land and ocean. Mother Earth has been very, very forgiving, as 53% of CO2 from fossil fuels have been soaked up by intact nature on land and sea. However, there is increasing scientific evidence of “widening cracks in this system.”

For example, land absorbs 31% of CO2 of greenhouse emissions, but the boreal forests in Canada and temperate mixed forests in Germany and Russia are all starting to lose carbon uptake capacity. More alarming yet, the latest science shows part of Amazon rainforest, the richest biome on terrestrial land, has already tipped and in parts of the forest it is no longer a carbon sink. It’s becoming a carbon source. Yet, the Amazon is vital to the health of the planet, playing a critical role in the global carbon cycle and water cycle and responsible for absorbing billions of tons of emissions. This unique one-of-a-kind force of nature is at risk like never before.

But what’s most cause for concern is the ocean. It absorbs 90% of the heat caused by human-induced climate change. This is well understood. But what’s really worrying is the latest data on temperature all-across the ocean. It has been getting warmer and warmer since 1980. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, in 2023 temperatures went completely off the charts at 0.4C above the warmest temps of all previous years.

What’s happening?

Scientists do not know what’s happening, but it is off the charts and continuing in that same direction in 2024.

Searching for answers, the number one candidate is “energy imbalance caused by humans.” The imbalance is enormous, for example, in one year alone the heat equivalent of 300-times the entire global electricity system is absorbed by the Earth system.

Meanwhile, scientists question whether the ocean is losing its resilience, at risk of releasing heat back into the atmosphere, thus self-amplifying the warming process. Science does not have answers for this, but something totally unprecedented in this regard may be happening right before our eyes.

Here’s what is known for certain… The ocean is sounding the alarm.

The planetary system is now at a point where we’re forced to ask the following questions: Are we are risk of pushing the planet out of the basin of attraction or the stability of the planet where we’ve been since the last ice age? Are we headed to unstoppable Hot House Earth with self-amplified warming and losing life support?

The bigger question is: What could take us there?

The answer is “crossing over tipping points” takes us there.

Crossing tipping points references the big systems (a) Greenland (b) the ice sheets (c) overturning of heat in the North Atlantic (d) the Amazon rainforest, by pushing them too far, thus tipping over from a state that helps us to a state of self-amplifying in the wrong direction. This is taking the planet from a mode of cooling and dampening to self-amplifying and warming.

There are 16 tipping systems that regulate the climate system. Five of these tipping systems are what’s referred to as ground zero in the Arctic connection thru the ocean via the AMOC of the Atlantic overturning heat all the way down to Antarctica. We depend upon this big biophysical system for stability of the planet. At what temperatures is this at risk of tipping?

For the first time, we have an answer. The average temperature at which 5 of 16 are likely to cross the tipping point is at 1.5C, including (1) the Greenland ice sheet (2) West Antarctica ice sheet (3) abrupt thawing permafrost (4) losing all tropical coral reefs and (5) collapse of the Bering Sea ice. The two major ice sheets hold 10M (33-feet) of sea level rise.

(Editorial: According to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from July 2023 to June 2024, when it averaged 1.64°C)

In all, the more science learns about the climate system, the higher science discovers the risks. We’ve got a planet that’s smack dab in the midst of a high-level danger zone.

For example, the Amazon basin risks tipping into savannah, over time. Currently, the risk is loss of the forest system; tipping can occur at 1.5-2C, assuming loss of 20-25% of forest cover. It’s currently at 17% deforestation. This is very close to a tipping point when there is no turning back.

What must be done to avoid what increasingly looks inevitable?

According to the IPCC, to stay under 1.5C (sustained annually over a few years) we need to operate within the global carbon budget. But all that remains of that budget is 200B tons of CO2. Yet, 40B tons is emitted per year giving 5 years.at current emissions rates before we hit overbudget. Moreover, the IPCC says a pathway for a safe landing is to reduce emissions by 7% per year for a safe landing to net zero by 2050.

(Editorial- that’ll take some serious work: Global CO2 emissions are blasting off to the upside and not looking back)

Status of Atmospheric CO2 (Mauna Loa):

August 2, 2024 – 424.76 ppm

August 2, 2023 – 421.52 ppm

One-year change: 3.24 ppm

1960-year change: 0.71 ppm

Meanwhile, we’ve already overloaded the climate system with gases and other problems that inevitably lead to a period of overshoot. Therefore, society must be prepared for breaching 1.5C between 2030 and 2035 or within 5-to-10 years.

There are two main messages; 1) buckle up- we know 100% for sure it means more droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more human reinforced storms, more disease over one generation, plus, in time. 2023 which was the warmest year on record will be looked back on as a mild year, 2) why would the planet come back to 1.5 after an overshoot?

The health of the planet must be kept intact. We must have a planet that can continue to absorb 50% of CO2 without crossing tipping points. But, of special note and caution, there is no holding to 1.5C by only phasing out fossil fuels. More needs to be done like coming back to nature’s biodiversity and maintaining all the planetary boundaries of nature.

We are at a pivot point for either transforming the world for the better or going over the edge… which will it be.?

We must govern the entire planet…we have the solutions, i.e., (1) rapid transition away from fossil fuels (2) transitioning to a circular business model (3) transitioning to healthy diets (4) scaling regeneration and restoration of marine systems, forests, and wetlands.

Already of serious concern, starting from 2020, emissions had to be cut in half by 2030 to stay out of trouble but halfway into the decade and emissions are steeper than ever. This is what really concerns scientists.

In summation, scientists have issued warnings for years and years, but now even those warnings look too conservative. Problematically, it is obvious that none of the prior warnings were embraced by the 195 countries that committed to mitigate emissions at Paris ’15 UN climate agreement. Since 2015, atmospheric CO2 has steadily climbed, year-by-year, never down, to all-time highs as global mean temperatures sets new records by the month.

The evidence is clear: Paris ’15 has not made a dent in global warming, which is currently cruising up, up and away, all-time records and accelerating with nothing standing in its way. In fact, since 195 countries agreed to tackle the issue, emissions and temperatures have done the opposite of what they agreed to by increasing at the fastest rates in human history.

The Paris ‘15 plans to mitigate emissions are so far behind schedule that it’s questionable whether it’s achievable. What’s to stop emissions and temperatures from getting worse and sea level from flooding coastal megacities? Eight of the world’s top ten megacities are coastal.

Solution: Opportunity is a prerequisite for a solution and 195 nations opportunistically meet once per year at a UN climate conference. Maybe they’ll adopt an agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions that’s meaningfully enforceable. Voluntary doesn’t work.

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LACMA, Los Angeles. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair

The triumph of the concept of rationalism, which lay at the center of the processes that formed our Western civilization from the 16^th century on, was not as swift or easy as it would seem to the modern mind, because it had to disprove all the other ways of explaining the world that had gone on for centuries.  The task of rationalists was to  show that a logical, straight-line, objective, and non-emotive comprehension, a decidedly anomalous and unaccustomed way  of looking at the world,  could provide a picture of nature in its smallest detail that quite did away with any need to suppose a God, or gods, or miracles or magic or mysticism or metaphysics. Cast the old religions out; science would be the new faith.

And so it has been for five hundred years we have let science and its parent, rationalism, guide our lives.  Indeed Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, wrote a best-selling book pushing it in 2021 and there are organizations worldwide promoting its tenets, including a Realist Society of Australia that “exists to promote the role of reason and evidence in approaching and finding solutions to the wide range of problems that confront us in public.”

But it is exactly in that way of thinking—that rationality is the way to solving public problems—that has led to the disasters of the modern world, and indeed is now contributing to Western society’s collapse.  What we have learned after extolling rational thought for 500 years is that people are only partially rational and in fact respond and act from a variety of other impulses. Studies in neuroscience show that a human brain operates more at unconscious or emotional levels than at a rational one. The great 20^th-century attempt to apply science, including social science, to solve human problems, especially at the governmental level, had been a hubristic folly, indeed creating more disorder and dislocation than resolving problems.  The notion that society would always advance by applying rational ideas to everything, the horse that progressives since John Dewey have been riding blindly ahead, has proved to be folly, a delusional dream.

Take, as on example to begin with, liberal city planning.  It has argued, and put into many governmental schemes at all levels, that the rational solution to segregation and poverty was to have people move their homes so that housing would be integrated and have jobs guaranteed so that everyone would work.  And so for at least the better part of a century governments have made rules, given grants, passed laws, created bureaucracies, and built and unbuilt buildings and neighborhoods intended to achieve these ends.  The result has been a complete failure. People don’t necessarily want to move from their homes or welcome new neighbors or take on a new job just because it would be rational to do so.  There are many other considerations, emotional, delusional, or irrational, for their actions, and these usually outweigh the thought-out designs of the planners.

Or take, at a much larger and more important scale, the whole rigamarole that goes under the rubric of “climate change.”  As we have seen, for at least 30 years now scientists have been warning that what is in fact global overheating of our atmosphere will bring serious and sweeping, perhaps catastrophic, changes to the earth and its species, threatening the continued existence of humankind as we know it.  They have pointed to the cause, now generally agreed upon, as an excess production of “greenhouse gasses” that block the solar heat on earth from radiating back into space, driving up temperatures that effect agriculture, weather systems, ocean temperatures and heights, animal species, and the general functioning of earth systems stable for the last thousands of years.  And they have pointed to the necessary solutions to these problems: limiting and then ending the production and use of fossil fuels that cause these gasses.

Completely rational. Cut and dried. Irrefutable. And, it turns out, useless.  Because it is about something that, for the most part, will not effect us in major ways until a few decades on (we are led to hope), because there’s no apparent single act that an individual can do to alter it significantly, and because to give up carbon fuels would undermine the way of life of everyone who has always depended on them as the necessary substructure of the world’s economy—and as the source of all the comforts of modernity. That would seem to make the rational thing to do is going on as we in the West have always done, including economic growth, while encouraging the use of renewable fuels and electric cars and the like on the side.

Which is why the West is unable to avert the coming massive tragedy.  Tragedy, as Shakespeare has shown us, is the ultimate downfall of a character who knows that what he  is doing will lead to bad ends but is powerless to stop doing it.  Western civilization now knows that it is headed toward ecocide but is powerless to stop it. So much for rationalism.

Science has obviously been the triumphant offspring of rationalism, and it has totally changed the world in the last five centuries. It has brought forth new understandings in every scientific branch and produced results that have advanced practices in fields from medicine to atomic weaponry, oil production to computerization, architecture to zoology, improving health throughout the world and doubling life expectancy for most societies, as well as creating bombs capable of destroying much of life on earth.  And it has empowered an idea inherent in rationalism: progress.

Progress is the notion that things will always be better, and that comes about with widened scientific ideas and technologies as products of those ideas, and with some such machinery as the rational state to foster those technologies and deliver them to people.  It has so far in many ways proven itself, and it is now just assumed that whatever change comes about is always progress. It is the triumph of technophilia, knowing that whatever machines we create are for our increasing control of the natural world and thus for our betterment; and that there can be no danger in expanding the impact of machines on society at their own momentum even if humans may not be able to guide or control them completely.

Thus we now have machines called computers, ever-smarter each passing year, linked to a worldwide internet, and ever-smarter smart phones which have spawned global networks and “social” media penetrating societies everywhere, and now that has brought us machines that offer artificial intelligence that rivals and will soon surpass human intelligence.  And when that happens, no one knows the consequences.  But the logic of progress argues that it has been good to have machines running things in the past, so why not in the future?

The fact that it is our technologies that have permitted the worldwide destruction of so much of our ecosphere, and atmosphere, and hydrosphere, and so many of our fellow species, does not enter into our calculations about progress or technological dependence.  Thus, as we have seen, we are on the brink of ecocide.

Completely irrational, you might say.   Well, yes, but this is what rationalism has brought us to.

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