radiofree.asia

Category: environment

  • Slow the growth, save the world? Why declining birth rates need not mean an end to prosperity

    Political leaders fret about the ‘fertility crisis’. That’s nonsense, experts say. There’s a desperate need for population shrinkage

    “We’re taking things from the people of the future now,” Mary Heath says from the kitchen where she’s drying seeds to plant. The climate activist is talking about Earth Overshoot Day, the ominous annual milestone that marks when humanity has consumed more from the Earth than the Earth can replenish in a year.

    Globally, the deficit started on 1 August, meaning we are “using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Power to the Patients: the Navajo Nation vs. the Uranium Industry

    The Canyon Mine has  been renamed Pinyon Plain Mine. 

    In a move triggering a new phase in the conflict between the Navajo Nation, a uranium mining company, and state and the  federal government, on July 30 a mining corporation began trucking radioactive ore 350 miles through the Navajo Nation. This violated an agreement the Navajos thought they had with Energy Fuels, Inc. (EFI), federal and state agencies that required a two-week advance notice before hauling uranium ore through the Nation. It also violated a Navajo law that denied any hauling of radioactive material through the Nation, but Arizona and the feds declared their control over the route.  On August 3, Navajo President Buu Nygren ordered tribal police to stop the trucks which had transported “dozens of tons” of radioactive ore according to reports from the Pinyon Plain Mine on the Kaibab National Forest immediately southwest of the Navajo Nation, to EFI’s White Mesa Mill, in Blanding, Utah,  just beyond the northern, San Juan River border of the Nation. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs said she’d try to start “good faith negotiations” between the tribe and miners. Nygren produced an executive order stating that the Navajos and the mining company must reach an agreement on transporting radioactive material through the reservation, which may stop transportation for the next six months.  

    Former Navajo President, Jonathan Nez put the case simply: “Prior to the arrival of uranium mining, Navajos had the lowest rate of cancer of all the tribes.” 

    To take a statistical slice: in 2020 there were more than 40,000 cancer cases in Arizona and New Mexico, with a combined population of 9.5 million, while more than 20,000 occurred among 400,000 Navajos, less than half living on the Navajo Nation. That is why Navajos call cancer Yeetso, the Big Monster. Twenty thousand cases have a much greater effect on 400,000 people than 40,000 cases have on 9.5 million people.  

    Protests broke out along the route: on Friday about 50 people in Cameron including President Nygren and his wife Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren; on Saturday, protesters gathered at the Flagstaff City Hall, including members of the Haul No! group; and on Sunday, more than 100 people, including Havasupai tribal members who live in Grand Canyon directly beneath the Pinyon Plain Mine, demonstrated at Grand Canyon Junction near the mine. Organizers are planning another demonstration on August 24 at Grand Canyon Junction.  

    The tribes, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust and hundreds of other residents of the region fought the opening of this mine for years but were defeated by federal and state governments to which they had appealed.  

    Recently, Congress has made three decisions that bear directly on uranium mining on the Navajo Nation: it banned the purchase of Russian uranium processed for nuclear power-plant use, except when no other suitable uranium is available; it discontinued the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which had provided funds to about 4,600 Navajos, nearly 90-percent of the “downwind” victims who produced 30 million tons of uranium from 1944-1986; and it approved $2.7 billion for development of the domestic uranium industry, most of which may well go into the pockets of EFI, a Canadian company that owns Pinyon Plain Mine and the White Mesa Mill, the only uranium mill operating at the moment in the US. In Wyoming, EFI has two other mines and one Republican senator, John Barrasso, who authored the bill to ban the purchase of Russian uranium.  

    There is no mention in the bill that companies mining in the US, like the only uranium producer in the country, Canadian-owned EFI, will be required to sell only to US buyers. An oversight?  

    The discontinuation of RECA is not so much a matter of saving public funds as it is a way to forget about miners, their families, and other residents mainly on the Navajo Nation who have suffered and continue to suffer from the health effects, mainly cancer, from prolonged exposure to uranium in mines and in mine tailings, and through lack of education about the danger of radiation. The Diné College began its Uranium Education Program by producing a glossary of explanations in Navajo for  uranium-radiation terms in English. Neither the federal government nor mine owners had explained the dangers of working in their unventilated mines to Navajo workers; or the dangers of Navajos using material from mine tailings to build structures; or for their children to play in the tailings.  

    The Union of Concerned Scientists reported on June 7: “’Speaker (Mike) Johnson not only has betrayed the veterans and the blue-collar uranium miners and their families but has really also profoundly impacted and wronged the Navajo people,’ said Navajo Nation spokesperson Justin Ahasteen, from his Washington, D.C. office. 

    “Ahasteen said the tribe played a crucial role in World War II, from the Code Talkers to supplying the uranium used for the country’s nuclear arsenal.” 

    Energy Fuels, Inc. CEO Mark Chalmers holds the opposite view. There is no history, no cancer epidemic, and the health damage from 1,500 uranium mines – 500 still not reclaimed – cannot be obliterated by his spell-binding narrative of wealth, health, and triumph of the American Way. Just buy EFI “clean energy” and you’ll be all right.  

    “The U,S. should not rely on bad international actors to supply the fuel that powers our homes and workplaces with carbon-free nuclear energy,” Chalmers said in a company press release. “We applaud senators Barrasso and Manchin, Representatives McMorris Rodgers, Latta, and congressional leaders and the president for coming together in a bipartisan effort to resist foreign interests that are funding the war in Ukraine.”  

    Chalmers began his career in Australia and is a dual citizen of Australia and the US. Just a few years ago, Energy Fuels, Inc. described itself as “a Toronto-based uranium and vanadium mineral exploration and development company with more than 30,000 acres of highly prospective uranium and vanadium property located in the States of Colorado, Utah and Arizona.” These days, the EFI pitch is that it is All American All the Time, with an American office in Lakewood CO, where Lockheed Martin dwells.  

    The Guardian reported last week that, “At Cop28, the US endorsed an agreement to triple nuclear energy production to combat climate change, boosting the demand for uranium.” 

    Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is not going to bar any doors to mining interests that might do harm to Native Americans’ environments or health. Her Department of Environmental Quality has consistently approved the water pumped out of the Pinyon Plain Mine, despite its high content of uranium and other heavy metals, due to how it flows into its ponds.  

    Amber Reimondo, Grand Canyon Trust energy director, reported in July: 

    “All told, more than 66 million gallons of precious Grand Canyon region groundwater have been pumped out of the mine shaft as of December 31, 2023. And water loss isn’t the only concern. 

    “Water pumped out of the mine shaft has shown high levels of heavy metals that could spell disaster if they ever leached into surrounding groundwater aquifers, including uranium, lead, and arsenic. In the last quarter of 2023 (remember, the mine began extracting ore in December 2023), levels increased dramatically. Uranium levels reached six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contaminant level for safe drinking water, lead reached 243 times the maximum contaminant level, and arsenic reached a whopping 812 times the maximum contaminant level. 

    “At times, the mine’s owner has struggled to get rid of all this water. It pumps the floodwater into a large open-air pond inside the mine fence, where birds often alight to drink and bathe. Visitors to the mine site have spotted burrows and tufts of fur caught in the chain-link where thirsty animals appear to have tunneled under the fence to reach the pond. On windy days, the misted water blows through the chain-link into the surrounding national monument lands.” 

    The White Mesa Mill recently received a large quantity of nuclear waste. Grand Canyon Trust staff described the event: 

    “Bills of lading recently uncovered in a shipping database reveal that Energy Fuels Resources imported more than 275,000 pounds of radioactive materials from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. The materials appear to have been trucked to the company’s controversial White Mesa uranium mill, a mile from Bears Ears National Monument and just up the road from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s White Mesa community.  

    “The materials arrived in the port of Everett, Washington on January 16, 2024. Aerial photos taken of the mill on May 16, 2024 reveal numerous shipping containers believed to hold materials from Japan’s nuclear energy program, including uranium ores used in testing, uranium-loaded resins, filter-bed sands, and uranium-loaded carbon, which Japanese regulators view as waste.  

    “’While the mill may extract a small amount of uranium from these materials, more than 99% of them will likely end up buried in the waste pits at the White Mesa Mill along with the more than 700 million pounds of radioactive waste already there,’ said Tim Peterson, cultural landscapes director for the Grand Canyon Trust. ‘This latest shipment from Japan shifts the burden of Japan’s radioactive legacy from Japanese citizens to the people of White Mesa.’ 

    “Information about how much the Utah mill might have been paid to process and dispose of the materials has not been made public. Normally, a uranium mill would pay for uranium ore, but for decades the White Mesa Mill has instead earned millions in fees to process and discard radioactive materials from across North America and the world. 

    “’If the mill’s operators are getting paid to receive this shipment from Japan, it’s not for processing uranium, but for disposing of waste the Japanese people don’t want near their communities,’ said Peterson. 

    “This is the second time in 19 years that the Japan Atomic Energy Agency has shipped radioactive materials to White Mesa. In 2005, the agency paid the White Mesa Mill $5.8 million to unload 1 million pounds of radioactive soils.  

    ‘There’s no easy way for the public to track how much radioactive waste is being sent to the mill, where it’s coming from, and when. This should be a concern for anybody who drives along Utah’s highways,’ said Chaitna Sinha, staff attorney for the Grand Canyon Trust. ‘If the mill is going to function like a radioactive waste disposal business, it should be regulated like one, including obtaining the licenses and permits a commercial waste-disposal facility would have to secure to operate.’ 

    “The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and community members in White Mesa are concerned that the mill’s radioactive waste processing and disposal business has created a de facto radioactive waste dump in their backyard, threatening public health, water, and air quality in White Mesa. The tribe and the grassroots group, White Mesa Concerned Community, will host a spiritual walk to protest the mill on October 12, 2024.” 

    These are the kinds of prices Navajos, Havasupai, Utes, Hopis, Paiutes, and others who live on the Colorado Plateau are paying and will pay for the new campaign for domestic uranium mining to produce “clean energy.”  

    Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch’s response to EFI’s unnotified transportation of radioactive ore through the reservation (called “smuggling” by President Nygren) was to insist that Navajo law be obeyed in the Nation. 

    “’Particularly with something as sensitive as uranium, where there is a long legacy of contamination and disproportionate impact to the Navajo people,’ she said. “’Anyone bringing those substances onto the Nation should undertake that activity with respect and sensitivity to the psychological impact to our people, as well as the trauma of uranium development that our community continues to live with every day.” 

    EFI can get away with this lawless behavior and will get away with more of it because the federal and state governments are themselves out of control. Wild tales are spinning through the minds of leaders of the Indispensable Nation – the narratives of limitless Hegemony, National Security, Monopoly Capitalism, Clean Energy, Racism, Sunbelt Growth, and Christian Fundamentalism. 

    At the end of this survey, I turned to a quote of anthropologist Gladys Reichard, which appears at the conclusion of Navajo Symbols of Healing, by Donald Sandner, M.D.: “Navajo dogma connects all things, natural and experienced, from man’s skeleton to universal destiny, which encompasses even inconceivable space, in a closely interlocked unity which omits nothing,  no matter how small or how stupendous, and in which each individual has a significant function until, at his final dissolution, he not only becomes one with the ultimate harmony, but he is that harmony.” 

    The Navajos’ struggle against Yeetso, the Big Monster, is also our struggle, because in defending themselves they are also defending all of us facing the growing risk of exposure to radioactivity  as “perfectly safe” nuclear power plants proliferate throughout the nation.  

    In connection with EFI’s declaration that mines are safer these days due to new federal laws, residents near Gallup NM remember the Church Rock Spill, the worst radiation accident that ever occurred in the US, worse than Three Mile Island. It happened seven years after passage of the federal Clean Water Act but not many of us outside of the Southwest have ever heard about it. In 1979, the United Nuclear Corporation‘s tailings disposal pond at its uranium mill in Church Rock breached, releasing more than 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 84-million gallons of acidic, radioactive water into the Puerco River, the residues of which traveled 80 miles onto the Navajo Nation. The river was used widely for drinking water and for watering stock. People were not notified of the spill for several days and the New Mexico governor refused to request by the Navajo government to the declare a disaster. Five years later the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Department declared the river was still unsafe for human or stock consumption. 

    The people of the Colorado Plateau have suffered enough from government dominated by a narrow clique of billionaires invested in national security anxiety, salvation through technology, and real estate growth in the Southwest, land of senior residential facilities and air-conditioning, where each summer sets a new heat record. Air-conditioning already takes 19 percent of our electricity. This can only increase with the growth of the Sunbelt and global warming.  

    The post Power to the Patients: the Navajo Nation vs. the Uranium Industry appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • How to Decolonize Our Battle Against Climate Change

    Georgia-Pacific Mill, Toledo, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    Almost everything we buy exploits the environment and the people who depend on it to a greater or lesser extent. Almost everything we buy contributes to climate breakdown through emissions, local environmental degradation, or, most commonly, both. Yet, in a world where greenwashing is so commonplace that almost every product proclaims ecological benefits, it tends not to be seen that way. In fact, it tends not to be seen at all.

    Carbon emissions and pollution are a phase that we all pass through, meaning that the ability—and crucially the money—to avoid the ratcheting risks of climate change is something we have earned, and others too will earn as each nation continues inexorably along its separate curve. Wealthy countries accept this narrative because it is comfortable and provides a logical and moral explanation of the relative safety and health of the rich world.

    But what if it wasn’t true? What if one place was devastated because the other was clean? Just as carbon emissions are not acts of God, neither is exposure to the results of those emissions. In other words, you can’t remove money from the geography of disaster risk.

    This is carbon colonialism: the latest incarnation of an age-old system in which natural resources continue to be extracted, exported, and profited from far from the people they used to belong to. It is, in many ways, an old story, but what is new is the hidden cost of that extraction: the carbon bill footed in inverse relation to the resource feast.

    Most colonial economies were organized around extraction, providing the raw materials that drove imperial growth. As a result, even when the imperial administration is taken out, the underlying economic structures put in place by colonizers are very difficult to get away from and continue to hold newly independent countries back.

    On a basic level, exporting raw materials adds less economic value to the country that does it than processing, manufacturing, and reselling those materials, so for every watt of energy, every hectare of land, and every hour of work used to make goods exported from the global North to the South, the South has to generate, use, and work many more units to pay for it.

    Decolonizing Climate Change

    We already have the ways and means to decolonize how we measure, mitigate, and adapt to climate change.

    This task is as sizable as it is vital, but at its core are three priorities. First, carbon emissions targets based on national production must be abandoned in favor of consumption-based measures, which, though readily available, tend to be marginalized for rich nations’ political convenience. Secondly, with half of emissions in some wealthy economies now occurring overseas, environmental and emissions regulation must be applied as rigorously to supply chains as they are to domestic production.

    By adopting these new viewpoints, we can aim towards a final priority: recognizing how the global factory manufactures the landscape of disaster. Our globalized economy is built on foundations designed to siphon materials and wealth to the rich world while leaving waste in its place.

    Yet there is, as ever, another way. It is possible to reject the globalization of environmental value by giving voice to the people it belongs to. Environments do not have to be merely abstract commodities.

    Giving greater value to how people think about their local environments is seen as a way to decolonize our environmental thinking, move away from extractivism, and perhaps forestall the slow death of nature that began in the 1700s.

    Environmental Myths and How to Think Differently

    One of the most widely shared myths in climate change discourse is that climate change increases the likelihood of natural disasters. This burden is ‘disproportionately’ falling upon poorer countries. Yet, it is fundamentally flawed. Climate change is not causing more natural disasters because disasters are not natural in the first place. They do not result from storms, floods, or droughts alone, but when those dangerous hazards meet vulnerability and economic inequality.

    A hurricane, after all, means something completely different to the populations of Singapore and East Timor. This difference is no accident of geography but of a global economy that ensures that some parts of the world remain more vulnerable to climate change than others. Natural disasters are, therefore, economic disasters: the result of centuries of unequal trade and the specific, everyday impacts of contemporary commerce.

    With rich countries doing an ever-diminishing share of their manufacturing, the responsibility to report real-world emissions is left to international corporations, which have little incentive to report accurate information on their supply chains.

    The environments of the rich world are becoming cleaner and safer, even in an increasingly uncertain environment. The resources needed to tackle the challenges of climate change are accruing and being spent to protect their privileged populations.

    Yet, for most of the world, the opposite is true. Natural resources continue to flow ever outward, with only meager capital returning in compensation. Forests are being degraded by big and small actors as climate and market combine to undermine traditional livelihoods. Factory workers are toiling in sweltering conditions. Fishers are facing ever-declining livelihoods.

    In other words, we have all the tools we need to solve climate breakdown but lack control or visibility over the production processes that shape it. From legal challenges to climate strikes and new constitutions, people are waking up to the myths that shape our thinking on the environment. They are waking up to the fact that climate change has never been about undeveloped technologies but always about unequal power.

    As the impacts of climate breakdown become ever more apparent, this can be a moment of political and social rupture, of the wheels finally beginning to come off the status quo.

    Demand an end to the delays. Demand an end to tolerance for the brazenly unknown in our economy. Demand an end to carbon colonialism.

    This is an adapted excerpt from Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown, © 2023 Manchester University Press. It is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by permission of Manchester University Press. Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, adapted and produced this excerpt for the web.

    The post How to Decolonize Our Battle Against Climate Change appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Brown’s ‘backflip’ over Japanese nuclear wastewater dump poses challenge for Forum

    COMMENTARY: By Brittany Nawaqatabu in Suva

    Regional leaders will gather later this month in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Tonga and high on the agenda will be Japan’s dumping of
    treated nuclear wastewater in the Pacific Ocean.

    A week ago on the 6 August 2024, the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
    Hiroshima in 1945 and the 39th anniversary of the Treaty of Rarotonga opening for signatures in 1985 were marked.

    As the world and region remembered the horrors of nuclear weapons and stand in solidarity, there is still work to be done.

    • READ MORE: Other nuclear wastewater in Pacific reports

    Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has stated that Japan’s discharge of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean does not breach the Rarotonga Treaty which established a Nuclear-Free Zone in the South Pacific.

    Civil society groups have been calling for Japan to stop the dumping in the Pacific Ocean, but Brown, who is also the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum and represents a country
    associated by name with the Rarotonga Treaty, has backtracked on both the efforts of PIFS and his own previous calls against it.

    Brown stated during the recent 10th Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM10) meeting in
    Tokyo that Pacific Island Leaders stressed the importance of transparency and scientific evidence to ensure that Japan’s actions did not harm the environment or public health.

    But he also defended Japan, saying that the wastewater, treated using the Advanced Liquid
    Processing System (ALPS) to remove most radioactive materials except tritium, met the
    standard set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    Harmful isotopes removed
    “No, the water has been treated to remove harmful isotopes, so it’s well within the standard guidelines as outlined by the global authority on nuclear matters, the IAEA,” Brown said in an Islands Business article.

    “Japan is complying with these guidelines in its discharge of wastewater into the ocean.”

    The Cook Islands has consistently benefited from Japanese development grants. In 2021, Japan funded through the Asian Development Bank $2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, financed by the Government of Japan.

    Together with $500,000 of in-kind contribution from the government of the Cook Islands, the grant funded the Supporting Safe Recovery of Travel and Tourism Project.

    Just this year Japan provided grants for the Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade Association totaling US$132,680 and a further US$53,925 for Aitutaki’s Vaitau School.

    Long-term consequences
    In 2023, Prime Minister Brown said it placed a special obligation on Pacific Island States because of ’the long-term consequences for Pacific peoples’ health, environment and human rights.

    Pacific states, he said, had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “to not . . .  assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.

    “Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for
    generations to come.”

    The Pacific Islands Forum went on further to state then that the issue was an “issue of significant transboundary and intergenerational harm”.

    The Rarotonga Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement, prohibits nuclear weapons testing and
    deployment in the region, but it does not specifically address the discharge of the treated
    nuclear wastewater.

    Pacific civil society organisations continue to condemn Japan’s dumping of nuclear-treated
    wastewater. Of its planned 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear-treated wastewater, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has conducted seven sets of dumping into the Pacific Ocean and was due to commence the eighth between August 7-25.

    Regardless of the recommendations provided by the Pacific Island Forum’s special panel of
    experts and civil society calls to stop Japan and for PIF Leaders to suspend Japan’s dialogue
    partner status, the PIF Chair Mark Brown has ignored concerns by stating his support for
    Japan’s nuclear wastewater dumping plans.

    Contradiction of treaty
    This decision is being viewed by the international community as a contradiction of the Treaty of Rarotonga that symbolises a genuine collaborative endeavour from the Pacific region, born out of 10 years of dedication from Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, and various other nations, all working together to establish a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Treaty Ratification

    Bedi Racule, a nuclear justice advocate said the Treaty of Rarotonga preamble had one of the most powerful statements in any treaty ever. It is the member states’ promise for a nuclear free Pacific.

    “The spirit of the Treaty is to protect the abundance and the beauty of the islands for future
    generations,” Racule said.

    She continued to state that it was vital to ensure that the technical aspects of the Treaty and the text from the preamble is visualised.

    “We need to consistently look at this Treaty because of the ongoing nuclear threats that are
    happening”.

    Racule said the Treaty did not address the modern issues being faced like nuclear waste dumping, and stressed that there was a dire need to increase the solidarity and the
    universalisation of the Treaty.

    “There is quite a large portion of the Pacific that is not signed onto the Treaty. There’s still work within the Treaty that needs to be ratified.

    “It’s almost like a check mark that’s there but it’s not being attended to.”

    The Pacific islands Forum meets on August 26-30.

    Brittany Nawaqatabu is assistant media and communications officer of the Suva-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG). 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • As Millions of Acres Burn, Firefighters Say the U.S. Forest Service Has Left Them With Critical Shortages

    by Abe Streep for ProPublica

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

    On July 18, federal wildfire managers placed the nation under a designation known as Preparedness Level 5 — bureaucratic code for all hands on deck or, as one veteran wildland firefighter called it, “fire DEFCON.” In layman’s terms, Preparedness Level 5 means that the country’s wildland firefighting resources are spread thin, more blazes are imminent, and supervisors of local crews are reluctant to allow them to travel far from home to help elsewhere. This marks only the fourth time in the past two decades that the country has reached such a state so early in the calendar year. So far, more than 5 million acres have burned nationwide, tripling last year’s total, and there are still months to go in fire season.

    Nine days after the country entered Preparedness Level 5, the U.S. Forest Service — the largest of the five federal agencies responsible for fighting wildfires, with more than 11,000 firefighters — said that it had reached 101% of its hiring goal for 2024. However, firefighters on the ground say that the agency is understating how badly depleted their ranks are.

    Overall numbers are hard to obtain, but according to data provided by a dispatcher who works for the Bureau of Land Management, 2,417 nationwide requests for crucial fire resources — everything from radio operators to task force leaders — had gone unfilled through July 26. Those requests were delivered to all five federal agencies as well as to state and private organizations. What was especially alarming, the dispatcher said, was the lack of experienced firefighters: “It tells us we have critical shortages in certain particular middle- and upper-level operational qualifications.”

    Eric Franta, who works at a Forest Service helicopter air base in Oregon, told me his unit was staffed at only 75%. (In a profession where fears of workplace retaliation are widespread, the only wildland firefighters willing to share their names are those that have roles with the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union representing wildland firefighters. Franta is a union steward.) Another Forest Service wildland firefighter in Oregon said, “We’re not able to fill any crews.” Firefighters in California are reporting similar issues. According to interagency data obtained by ProPublica, 90 of the approximately 270 Forest Service fire engines in the state were unavailable for service on Aug. 12. Engines may be unavailable for a variety of reasons, such as mechanical maintenance or crews on mandatory leave, but firefighters say this number is unusually high. On the same day, according to the data, at least a third of the statewide Hotshot crews — elite teams that fight large wilderness fires — were not staffed sufficiently to operate as intended.

    Why the U.S. Is Losing Wildland Firefighters

    In March, ProPublica reported that the nation’s wildland firefighting force was experiencing an exodus, especially among its most highly qualified firefighters. In the past three years, the Forest Service lost 45% of its permanent employees, forcing it to fill its ranks with inexperienced firefighters. Those inside and outside the service cite numerous reasons for the departures. Wildland firefighters are compensated poorly; base pay is $15 an hour, roughly what a fast-food server makes. (In 2021, Congress passed a measure that added a temporary retention bonus for firefighters, which is still in effect but has not been made permanent.) The federal civil service structure makes it difficult for wildland firefighters to maintain a career. And the Forest Service especially has been slow to address the health risks involved with suppressing wildland fires. Although the Department of Labor now considers cancer a work-related illness for wildland firefighters, the multiagency preparedness guide for incoming recruits still doesn’t mention the word.

    When asked about the disparity between its 101% staffing figure and the dire assessments of firefighters on the ground, a Forest Service spokesperson wrote, “We have some gaps in critical leadership roles due to departure of experienced leaders and managers with years of knowledge and expertise.” The spokesperson added, “If those roles are not able to be filled by qualified and experienced individuals, it can result in operational inefficiencies.”

    During one day last week, the federal government reported 123 newly started fires. A number of them were in and around Idaho’s Boise National Forest, where Morgan Thomsen, a union steward and a Forest Service firefighter on a Wyoming helicopter crew, was working. There were not enough firefighters to fill the crews to catch them all, he told me. “The new fires are all big now too, but hardly anyone is on them,” he texted. “The system is being stressed and can’t deal with it. Now, it depends on the weather and site conditions whether these fires will be put out before they burn down houses and so on. We’ve effectively lost our asses and are triaging.”

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Gavin Newsom’s War on Rooftop Solar Is a Bad Omen for the Country

    Image by Unsplash+ and Getty Images.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he’s in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He’s been called a “climate-change crusader” and a leader of America’s clean energy revolution.

    “[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs,” Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. “We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us.”

    These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet’s becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil-fuel legislation. It’s also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Governor Newsom might say, he’s also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.

    Consider California’s residential solar program (its “net-metering“), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state’s utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They’ve called this alleged problem a “cost-shift” from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.

    It’s true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state’s electricity rates up just isn’t true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California’s utility companies to turn a profit.

    Here’s an example of how those rates work and why they’ve gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it’s those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.

    In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn’t rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.

    A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that’s the only way they turn a profit).

    “What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. “Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation.”

    However, such lower costs also mean less profits for utility companies, so they have found an ingenious workaround. They could appease climate concerns while making a bundle of money by building large solar farms in the desert. In the process, nothing about how they generated revenue would change, energy costs would continue to rise, and little would stand in their way, not even a vulnerable forest of Joshua trees.

    Solar Panels vs. the Joshua Tree

    “Why Razing Joshua Trees for Solar Farms Isn’t Always Crazy,” a troubling Los Angeles Times headline read. Sammy Roth, an intrepid environmental reporter who has written insightfully and cogently on the way humanity is altering the climate, was nonetheless all in on uprooting thousands of Joshua trees in California’s Kern County to make space for that giant solar farm. The “Aratina Solar Project,” a sprawling 2,300-acre installation in the heart of the Mojave Desert, would transfer electricity to wealthy coastal areas, powering more than 180,000 homes. As Roth reported, “There are places to build solar projects besides pristine ecosystems. But there’s no get-out-of-climate-change-free card… Hence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees. I feel kind of terrible saying that.”

    He should feel terrible. Roth believes that tearing up Joshua trees, already in great jeopardy due to our warming climate, is the price that must be paid to save ourselves from ourselves. But is sacrificing wild spaces — and, in this case, also threatening the habitat of the desert tortoise — truly worth it? Is this really the best solution we can come up with in our overheating world? There do appear to be better options, but they would also upend the status quo and put far less money in the pockets of utility shareholders.

    Here’s how Californians could think outside the box or, in this case, on top of it. A single Walmart roof averages 180,000 square feet. In California, there are 309 Walmarts. That’s 55,620,000 square feet or 1,276 acres of rooftop. Home Depots? There are 247 of them in California and each of their roofs averages 104,000 square feet, totaling 25,668,000 square feet, or around 589 acres. Throw in 318 Target stores, averaging 125,000 square feet, and you have over 39,750,000 square feet or another 912 acres. Add all of those up and you have 2,777 acres of rooftops that could be turned into mini-solar farms.

    In other words, just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County. And that doesn’t even include all the Costcos (129), Lowes (111), Amazon warehouses (100+), Ikeas (8), strip malls, schools, municipal buildings, parking lots, and so much more that would provide far better options.

    You get the picture. The potential for solar in our built environment is indeed enormous. Throw in the more than 5.6 million single-family homes in California with no solar panels, and there’s just so much rooftop real estate that could generate electricity without wrecking entire ecosystems already facing a frighteningly hot future.

    In 2014, it was estimated that solar power from California homes produced 2.2 gigawatts of energy. Ten years later, that potential is so much greater. As of summer 2024, the state has 1.9 million residential rooftop solar installations capable of churning out 16.7 gigawatts of power. It’s estimated that 1 gigawatt can conservatively power 750,000 homes. This means that the solar generation now installed on California’s roofs could theoretically, if stored, power 12,525,000 homes in a state with only 7.5 million of them. Already, in 2022, it’s believed that the state wasted nearly 2.3 million megawatt-hours worth of solar-produced electricity.

    And mind you, this isn’t just back-of-the-napkin math. A 2021 geospatial analysis of rooftop solar conducted by researchers at Ireland’s University of Cork and published in Nature confirmed what many experts have long believed: that the U.S. has enough usable rooftop space to supply the entire country’s energy demands and, with proper community-based storage, would be all we would need to fulfill our energy production demands — and then some! If properly deployed, the U.S. could produce 4.2 petawatt-hours per year of rooftop solar electricity, more than the country consumes today. (A petawatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one trillion kilowatt-hours.) The report also noted that there are enough rooftops worldwide to potentially fully feed the world’s energy appetite.

    If residential solar has succeeded exceptionally well and has so much possibility, why are we intent on destroying desert ecology with massive, industrial-scale solar farms? The answer in Gavin Newsom’s California has much more to do with politics and corporate avarice than with mitigating climate change.

    Profit-Driven Utilities

    Despite what Governor Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.

    “Rooftop solar has value in avoiding costs that utilities would have to pay to deliver that same kilowatt-hour of energy, such as investments in transmission lines and other grid infrastructure,” reports the solar-advocacy group, Solar Rights Alliance. “Rooftop solar also reduces the public health costs of fossil-fuel power plants and the costs to ratepayers of utility-caused wildfires and power shut-offs. Rooftop solar also provides quantifiable benefits through local economic development and jobs. It preserves land that would otherwise be used for large-scale solar development. When paired with batteries, rooftop solar helps build community resilience.”

    Nonetheless, blaming rooftop solar for California’s increased electricity rates has been a painfully effective argument. So, here’s a question to consider: Why does it seem like Newsom is working on behalf of the utilities to limit small-scale rooftop solar? Could it be related to the $10 million Pacific Gas & Electric donated to his campaigns since he first ran for office in San Francisco in the late 1990s? Or could it be because key members of his cabinet are tight with PG&E executives? (Dana Williamson, his current chief of staff, was a former director of public affairs at PG&E.)

    Then, consider the potential conflict of interest when the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which previously worked for PG&E, was tasked by Newsom with drafting wildfire legislation to save the company from bankruptcy. PG&E would, in fact, end up hammering out a deal with CPUC to pass on the costs of the bailout, a staggering $11 billion, to ratepayers over a 30-year period.

    It all worked out well for the company. In 2023, PG&E, which serves 16 million people, raked in $2.2 billion in profits, nearly a 25% jump from 2022.

    “The coziness between Gavin Newsom and [PG&E] is unlike anything we’ve seen in California politics… Their motive is profit, which is driven by Wall Street,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of California Solar & Storage Association, who has over a decade of experience monitoring the industry. “[The utility companies] have to keep posting record profits, quarter after quarter. It’s a perversity that nobody is really thinking about.”

    It’s pretty simple really. Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms. Ultimately, this means higher bills for consumers to cover the costs of a grid they are forced to rely on as home solar systems become increasingly expensive.

    (More) Bad News for the Climate

    Newsom’s war on rooftop solar has had another detrimental impact: it’s threatened the state’s clean energy goals. And the governor hasn’t said a word about that. The California Energy Commission estimates that, to meet its climate benchmarks, the state must add 20,000 megawatts of rooftop solar electricity by 2030. At this pace, they’ll be lucky to install 10,000 megawatts. With such a precipitous decline in home solar installations, the 20,000 megawatts goal will never be reached by that year, even when you include all large-scale solar developments now in the works.

    The Coalition for Community Solar Access estimates that 81% of solar companies in the state fear they’ll have to close up shop. Bad news for the solar industry also means bad news not just for California, the nation’s leader in solar energy production, but for the climate more generally.

    A rapid decline in new solar installations also means massive job losses, possibly 22% of the state’s solar gigs, or up to 17,000 workers. In addition to such bleak projections, disincentivizing rooftop solar will also hurt the Californians most impacted by warming temperatures and in need of relief — those who can’t afford to live along the state’s more temperate coast.

    “Rooftop solar is not just the wealthy homeowners anymore,” State Senator Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, recently told CalMatters. “Central Valley people are suffering from extreme heat. The industry has been making great strides in low-income communities. This [utilities commission decision] makes it harder.”

    The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. All of this may also be a sign that rooftop solar across the country is in peril. Utility companies and those hoping to gut residential solar programs in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are already humming Newsom’s “cost-shift” tune.

    “They [the big utilities] know it’s a pivotal time,” Bernadette Del Chiaro tells me, with a sense of urgency and deep concern for what lies ahead. “They are fighting really hard, and they are fighting hardest in California because where California goes, there goes the nation.”

    This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

    The post Gavin Newsom’s War on Rooftop Solar Is a Bad Omen for the Country appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • From Papua to Gaza, military occupation leads to ‘ecocide’ – climate catastrophe

    Environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect, but a primary objective in colonial wars of occupation.

    By David Whyte and Samira Homerang Saunders

    Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.

    Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.

    While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.

    A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.

    West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.

    All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.

    At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

    Shot and wounded
    Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.

    What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.

    In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.

    Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.

    But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.

    We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.

    Inseparable from impact on nature
    In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.

    In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.

    Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.

    In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.

    Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.

    In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.

    The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.

    50% of Gaza farms wiped out
    As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.

    Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.

    The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.

    Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.

    Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.

    Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.

    For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.

    Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.

    David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rat Poison is Threatening Carnivores Around the World

    This mountain lion, known as P-47, was found dead in Southern California on March 21, 2019, with rat poison in his system.
    National Park Service via AP

    Rats thrive around humans, for good reason: They feed off crops and garbage and readily adapt to many settings, from farms to the world’s largest cities. To control them, people often resort to poisons. But chemicals that kill rats can also harm other animals.

    The most commonly used poisons are called anticoagulant rodenticides. They work by interfering with blood clotting in animals that consume them. These enticingly flavored bait blocks are placed outside of buildings, in small black boxes that only rats and mice can enter. But the poison remains in the rodents’ bodies, threatening larger animals that prey on them.

    My colleagues and I recently reviewed studies from around the world that sought to document wild mammal carnivores’ exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides. Many animals tested in these studies were already dead; others were alive and a part of other studies.

    Researchers detected rodenticides in about one-third of the animals in these analyses, including bobcats, foxes and weasels. They directly linked the poisons to the deaths of one-third of the deceased animals – typically, by finding the chemicals in the animals’ liver tissues.

    Most poisons that these studies detected were so-called second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, developed since 1970. These products are used exclusively in residential and urban areas and can kill a rat or mouse after just one night’s feeding. First-generation rodenticides, which typically are used only on farms, require several doses to kill.

    These poisons are widely available, and their use is largely unregulated in most countries. Using rodenticides is projected to increase and may be contributing to declines in many carnivore species around the world.

    Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl, escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo in 2023 and lived in the park for more than a year. Rat poisons in his system may have contributed to Flaco’s death in 2024.

    Rising through food chains

    When wild animals consume rat poison – typically, by eating a poisoned rat – the effects may include internal bleeding and lesions, lethargy and a reduced immune response, which can make them more susceptible to other diseases. In many cases the animal will die. Sometimes these deaths occur at scales large enough to reduce local predator populations.

    We began our review by compiling a list of 34 species known to be exposed to rat poisons. They included members of the weasel and dog families, such as stoats, western polecats and red foxes, along with wild cats and other carnivores.

    Some of these predators, such as mountain lions and gray wolves, don’t usually hunt rodents. Rodenticides have even been detected in semiaquatic predators such as river otters, which normally eat crustaceans and fish.

    It’s likely that large carnivores such as wolves are consuming rat poison by eating other poisoned carnivores, such as raccoons and bobcats.

    Infographic showing how wild animals become exposed to rat poison.
    Among carnivores studied by the U.S. National Park Service post-mortem, the vast majority have tested positive for rat poison exposure.
    Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

    This movement of poisons up the food chain is called bioaccumulation. In the best-known example, bald eagles and other birds of prey were exposed to the pesticide DDT in fish they consumed before the U.S. banned DDT in 1972. Many affected species, including bald eagles, ospreys and peregrine falcons, were drastically reduced for years due to the effects of DDT on their populations.

    Carnivores at risk

    We found dozens of previous studies that attempted to quantify exposure risk, usually by examining animals’ habitats. Some studies found an elevated risk of consuming rat poison in urban and agricultural areas, but many also found a high correlation with natural spaces.

    For example, a 2012 study found rodenticides in fishers and martens that spent time near illegal cannabis growing sites in Humboldt County, California, where growers were protecting their fields with rat poisons.

    Other potential contributors to exposure included the animal’s sex and age. All in all, understanding which animals are at risk requires more study.

    Most research on this topic is being conducted in North America and Europe. Only a handful of studies to date have focused on South Africa, New Zealand or Australia, although over half of all carnivore species of global concern are found in Asia, Africa or South America.

    In Africa, for example, anticoagulant rat poisons could threaten species such as the black-footed cat, which is classified as vulnerable. These poisons are also widely used across Asia, particularly at palm oil plantations. Many wild species live in this type of forested agricultural area, including carnivores that hunt rodents, such as common palm civets and leopard cats.

    Our study found that 19% of carnivore species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species have ranges that overlap entirely or partially with countries where rat poison exposure has been documented in wildlife. However, only 2% of Red List species list rodenticides as a recognized threat, and none are included in the 19% that our review indicates may be threatened by rodenticide exposure. This suggests that wildlife researchers and conservationists are not fully aware of the reach of these poisons.

    Kiawah bobcats

    I am doing my dissertation research on South Carolina’s Kiawah Island, where biologists have detected anticoagulant rodenticides in bobcats. The island’s bobcats have been GPS-collared and monitored since the early 2000s in one of the longest multigenerational studies of a carnivore in the world.

    A bobcat lies on a blanket during a scientific workup
    Researchers studying Kiawah’s bobcats take measurements and blood samples, check the animals for parasites and fit them with microchips and GPS collars. All animals are handled with proper permitting.
    Meghan P. Keating/Clemson University, CC BY-ND

    In late 2019 and early 2020, three bobcats were found dead due to rodenticide poisoning, including two females that died while giving birth. The bobcat population dropped from an estimated 30 to as few as 10 individual cats. These deaths attracted media attention, spurred efforts to curtail use of poisons on the island and kick-started research to understand how rat poisons were affecting bobcats.

    Kiawah is a popular resort destination, but these bobcats have persisted through decades of housing development. Part of my work seeks to tease apart how rodenticides and urbanization are affecting the cats.

    In 2020, Kiawah residents volunteered to stop using rodenticides on the island, and the town government carried out public education campaigns explaining the threat to wildlife. Today there are about 20 bobcats on the island, and work continues to end use of rodenticides.

    These poisons have contributed to the deaths of other charismatic animals, including urban mountain lions in Southern California and Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo and lived for months in the park. In Europe, rodenticides have been found in the carcasses of Italian wolves.

    Rats damage property, contaminate food and spread diseases, so controlling them is a human health concern. However, my research adds to evidence that better control methods are needed to reduce the need for anticoagulant rodenticides.

    Community-level efforts like those on Kiawah Island can help. So can cleaning up trash in cities. But better regulation and tracking of rat poison use is likely to be needed in many places around the world.The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Mountain Bikers Push to Ride Through Wilderness

    Mountain biker carving a corner on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail north of Ogden on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah. Forest Service photo by Eric Greenwood.

    “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…”

    — Wallace Stegner

    The goal of the Wilderness Act, now celebrating its 60th birthday, was to set aside a small proportion of public land in America from human intrusion. Some places, the founders said, deserved to be free from motorized, mechanized and other intrusions to protect wildlife and wild lands.

    But now, a handful of mountain bikers have partnered with a senator from Utah to gut the Wilderness Act.

    This June, the Sustainable Trails Coalition, a mountain biking organization, cheered as Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee introduced a bill (S. 4561) to amend the Wilderness Act and allow mountain bikes, strollers, and game carts on every piece of land protected by the National Wilderness Preservation System. Stopping these intrusions would take each local wilderness manager undertaking a cumbersome process to say “no.”

    The U.S. Congress passed the Wilderness Act, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law on September 3, 1964, to “preserve the wilderness character” of 54 wilderness areas totaling 9.1 million acres. Today, this effort has become a true conservation success story.

    The National Wilderness Preservation System now protects over 800 wilderness areas totaling over 111 million acres in 44 states and Puerto Rico, making it America’s most critical law for preserving wild places and the genetic diversity of thousands of plant and animal species. Yet designated wilderness is only 2.7% of the Lower 48, and still just about 5% if Alaska is included.

    The protections of the Wilderness Act include a ban on logging, mining, roads, buildings, structures and installations, mechanized and motorized equipment and more. Its authors sought to secure for the American people “an enduring resource of wilderness” to protect places not manipulated by modern society, where the ecological and evolutionary forces of nature could continue to play out mostly unimpeded.

    Grandfathered in, however, were some grazing allotments, while mining claims were also allowed to be patented until 1983. Many private mining claims still exist inside designated wildernesses.

    Senator Lee’s bill is premised on the false claim that the Wilderness Act never banned bikes, and that supposedly, the U.S. Forest Service changed its regulations in 1984 to ban bikes. But bicycles, an obvious kind of mechanized equipment, have always been prohibited in wilderness by the plain language of the law.  (“There shall be…no other form of mechanical transport….”) The Forest Service merely clarified its regulations on this point in 1984 as mountain bikes gained popularity.

    Unfortunately, bikers in the Sustainable Trails Coalition are not the only recreational interest group that wants to weaken the Wilderness Act. Some rock climbers, for example, are pushing Congress to allow climbers to damage wilderness rock faces by pounding in permanent bolts and pitons rather than using only removable climbing aids. In addition, trail runners want exemptions from the ban in wilderness on commercial trail racing. Drone pilots and paragliders want their aircraft exempted from Wilderness Act protections, and recreational pilots want to “bag” challenging landing sites in wilderness.

    The list of those seeking to water down the Wilderness Act is growing.

    Most of these recreational groups say they support wilderness, understanding how important it is when most landscapes and wildlife habitats have been radically altered by people. At the same time, they want to slice out their own piece of the wilderness pie.

    Must we get everything we want in the outdoors? Rather than weakening the protections that the Wilderness Act provides, we could try to reinvigorate a spirit of humility toward wilderness. We could practice restraint, understanding that designated wildernesses have deep values beyond our human uses of them.

    Meanwhile, in response to growing demand for mountain biking trails, the Bureau of Land Management invites over a million mountain bikers each year to ride its thousands of miles of trails. And the U.S. Forest Service already has a staggering 130,000 miles of motorized and nonmotorized trails available to mountain bikers.

    Do mountain bikers and others pushing for access really need to domesticate wilderness, too?

    Let’s cherish our wilderness heritage, whole and intact. We owe it to the farseeing founders of the Wilderness Act, and we owe it to future generations.

    The post Mountain Bikers Push to Ride Through Wilderness appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Fox hunters think they are above the rest of us – and the law

    Over the weekend, a fox hunters campaign group claimed that it was seeking legal protection for people who had ‘pro-hunting views’. Somewhat hilariously, fox hunters believe they should have the same protection as the Roma community and LGBTQ+ people under the UK Equality Act 2010.

    Fox hunters: protected characteristics, apparently…

    Seeing as though hunting is almost exclusively reserved for rich, upper class folk who think they are above humane hobbies, it is hilarious that they think they deserve even more protection than their money already affords them:

    As reported in Mail Online, a senior barrister advised Hunting Kind – a hunting pressure group – that a legal challenge could get them the same status as an ethnic group. Supposedly, this is due to ‘a long shared history, distinct customs and common ancestors’.

    The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to protect groups with certain characteristics from discrimination. The act covers: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation:

    People on X were quick to point out that it was in fact the foxes that needed protecting:

    Classism – plain and simple

    People would raise their eyebrows if young people in hoodies were violently chasing after animals. So why do these ‘hunters’ get a free pass? Well, because normal rules don’t apply when it’s rich white men:

    Only yesterday, Sheffield hunt saboteurs were met with a heavy police presence after seeing off a large grouse hunt on the Wemmergill Estate in County Durham.

    Whilst Grouse hunting is not illegal (in season) it is not a practice that is compatible with conservation in the midst of a climate crisis:

    In an interview several years ago, Chris Packham explained that Grouse hunting increases wildlife crime.

    For example, hunters are illegally killing many birds of prey, including hen harriers, peregrines, buzzards, red kites, goshawk, and even a barn owl. Grouse hunting also persecutes weasels and stouts, crows, foxes, and red squirrels. Traps often kill these animals slowly and painfully, or hunters beat them to death. As Packham said:

    They allow levels of suffering that we would never tolerate if these were domestic animals.

    The epitome of privileged

    Back in 2023, the Canary reported that fox hunting injuries were through the roof. Rich, white people continue to break the law as they routinely track, hunt, and kill foxes for enjoyment.

    The Hunting Act 2004 outlawed the practice, and hunts consistently claim they don’t deliberately kill foxes anymore. However, illegal hunting is still ‘prolific’. Hunt saboteurs regularly report on illegal hunts taking place, along with hunts that are legal but controversial and barbaric – such as the grouse hunt this weekend.

    According to Protect the Wild, fox hunters:

    were people whose everyday experiences were of privilege, of never being told ‘no’, of untouchability. Britain is vastly different now of course, but to some extent the insulated lives of the fox hunting elite didn’t change all that much over the years. They still went to Eton or Gordonstoun, still had a powerful presence in the House of Lords, the judiciary, and industry, and still had enormous influence in rural areas (owning many of the major local businesses) seeing themselves as the only people who really understood how the countryside worked and how it should be controlled.

    Similar to today’s climate – whilst some people go hungry and can’t heat their homes, rich white people gather to show off their wealth while going unpunished for breaking the law:

    The system still allows rich white people to kill animals for fun. We guess it speaks to the much larger picture – colonialism, genocide, and white people believing they are above the law.

    Feature image via The Dodo/Youtube 

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • After Nike Leaders Promised Climate Action, Their Corporate Jets Kept Flying — and Polluting

    by Rob Davis, Agnel Philip and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica, and Matthew Kish, The Oregonian/OregonLive

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

    On dozens of occasions since 2020, a private Gulfstream jet belonging to Nike has touched down at Moffett Field, a federally owned airfield on the banks of San Francisco Bay.

    The Silicon Valley site’s most notable feature is a hulking building known as Hangar One, which in the 1930s housed a U.S. Navy airship and today is a conspicuous landmark along U.S. 101.

    It also happens to sit about a 30-minute drive from one of Nike CEO John Donahoe’s homes. He became the Oregon-based company’s top executive in January 2020, bought a condo in Portland and registered as an Oregon voter. But he also maintained a home in the Bay Area community of Portola Valley. His previous job was leading a tech company in Santa Clara, and his wife worked at Stanford University until September.

    Nike’s jets landed at Moffett more than 100 times in the first three and a half years of Donahoe’s tenure, flight-tracking records show. Landings at Moffett stopped in July 2023 but became more frequent at a nearby airport with a similar drive time to Portola Valley.

    Donahoe and Nike executive chairperson Mark Parker have made clear that climate change is a crisis demanding urgent action. “It’s about leading with actions, not words,” Parker said in Nike’s 2019 corporate responsibility report. “We are more committed than ever to help save the planet,” Donahoe said in a 2022 company video.

    Yet Nike has failed to shrink one aspect of its carbon footprint that the two men directly influence: travel on the private jets, which emit far more carbon per passenger than commercial airliners.

    One of Nike’s private jets takes off from the airport where the company has a hangar in Hillsboro, Oregon, in July. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian)

    Nike’s jet travel is up. Company disclosures show that its private planes last year emitted almost 20% more carbon dioxide than they did in 2015, which the company uses as a baseline for its climate goals. The flights are one small reason Nike and its supply chain produced roughly as much carbon dioxide in 2023 as in 2015, despite the company’s commitment to sharply reduce emissions.

    The company owns two Gulfstream G650ERs. Flight-tracking records show that their destinations include New York City, where the company has a corporate office, and Paris during the Olympics and in April, when Nike unveiled its Olympic uniforms.

    In July, a Nike jet flew down to San Jose, California, and back to its base in Hillsboro, Oregon; it then took off two days later for Idaho, where Donahoe and his wife were photographed at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, an annual gathering dubbed “summer camp for billionaires.”

    Vacation spots Nike jets have traveled to include Cape Cod, where Parker owns a home. Since 2020, the planes have landed there at least 15 times. They’ve touched down in the Cayman Islands at least six times since 2021.

    But the Bay Area has been a magnet. It was an out-of-the-way pit stop for an Oregon-bound flight after Donahoe delivered the spring commencement keynote at West Virginia’s Marshall University in 2023. It has been a weekend destination with Friday landings and Sunday returns to Oregon. (The jets averaged about 10 flights a year to Moffett Field in the two years before Donahoe’s hiring, when he was a Nike board member and lived in California, versus an average of about 30 a year from 2020 through mid-2023, while he was Nike’s CEO.)

    More than 30 times, one of the company’s private jets flew down to Moffett and back to Oregon in the same day, sometimes spending as little as 25 minutes on the ground.

    If those flights ferried a single person in one direction, turning what would be one commercial flight into two by private jet, it would release 160 times as much carbon per passenger as if the person flew commercial, said Phillip Ansell, director of the Center for Sustainable Aviation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He called this arrangement “completely inexcusable.”

    “In the current climate where aviation does not yet have a viable route to fully decarbonize, we need to see these types of flights come to a halt,” Ansell said.

    Nike did not make Donahoe and Parker available for interviews and declined to say why the jets frequented Moffett Field and, more recently, San Jose Mineta International Airport.

    The company said in a statement that its jet passengers comprise a variety of people who are essential to its business objectives, including executives, employees, athletes, entertainers and others. The jets improve productivity and address security concerns for executives, Nike said, calling private flights a standard practice among large global companies.

    As for curbing carbon pollution, the company said that “we focus on Nike’s areas of greatest impact,” noting that the bulk of its emissions come from the production of materials for its sneakers and apparel.

    Nike CEO John Donahoe in front of a Nike jet. In an Instagram post by the University of North Carolina’s head women’s basketball coach, Courtney Banghart, she thanks him for a “lift.” (Screenshot by ProPublica)

    Celebrities including Taylor Swift, Drake and Kylie Jenner have drawn scrutiny for their profligate jet-setting in the face of the planet’s record-breaking temperatures. And in the business world, CEOs are increasingly being allowed to use corporate jets for personal use, according to Equilar, a data firm that studies executive compensation. In 2018, 36% of S&P 500 companies included the perk in CEO pay packages. By last year, that had grown to 45%.

    But Nike, the world’s largest athletic apparel company, stands apart: It has staked a claim as a corporate leader on the environment, joining thousands of companies pledging to voluntarily slash carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

    Nike also stands out for disclosing more about its private jet travel than its peers. A review by ProPublica and The Oregonian/OregonLive of the disclosures of 30 companies, including 18 of Nike’s self-identified peers, found no others that publicly report emissions from corporate jets. Roughly half report emissions from business travel, which can include jet use.

    Get in Touch

    ProPublica and The Oregonian/OregonLive plan to continue reporting on Nike and its sustainability work, including its overseas operations. Do you have information that we should know? Rob Davis can be reached by email at rob.davis@propublica.org and by phone, Signal or WhatsApp at 503-770-0665. Matthew Kish can be reached by email at mkish@oregonian.com, by phone at 503-221-4386, and on Signal at 971-319-3830.

    In addition to reporting rising emissions from its jets, Nike’s disclosures show that it is behind on its ambitions for reducing its overall contribution to climate change. The company said in 2016 that it would halve its total emissions; instead they have grown slightly since 2015.

    Meanwhile, since December, Nike has laid off 20% of its dedicated sustainability staff, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica have reported, and lost another 10% through internal transfers or voluntary departures.

    Nike’s growing private jet use sets the wrong tone from the top, said Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

    “It’s, ‘Do what I say, not as I do,’” Elson said. “Flying private aircraft all over the place certainly isn’t a bold action in support of climate responsibility. That’s the problem. Your actions and your words seem to diverge in unflattering ways. It is not a good look.”

    Private jet use represents less than a tenth of a percent of all Nike’s emissions. The overwhelming majority come from production and shipping by the company’s overseas suppliers. But the jets generate 6% of the carbon coming from assets that Nike owns, a share that has grown as Nike has powered its buildings around the world with renewable energy.

    Donahoe, whose $29.2 million compensation last year made him one of America’s highest-paid executives, has an arrangement with Nike that allows him to use the jets for more than business. He can fly in them for personal travel at his own expense. He has reimbursed Nike more than $700,000 for such trips in the last two years, securities filings show.

    In addition, the company has given the chief executive $293,000 in free personal travel since 2020 as part of his compensation. Parker, the executive chairperson, has received $494,000 in free personal use of the jets in that time.

    The jets’ flight paths can be found on the website of ADS-B Exchange, which crowdsources location readings from airplane transponders. The flight records don’t show who is on board, but in some cases flights coincided with news coverage and social media posts indicating their purpose.

    Nike’s jets have landed at golf destinations around the country. They visited Augusta, Georgia, ahead of the Masters Tournament in 2022 and again in 2023. A Nike jet has joined the roughly 1,500 other private jets that crowd the small airport during the tournament, making it so busy that Golf Digest has described it as a “bonafide Heathrow.”

    In 2022, Donahoe golfed in a morning pro-am event before the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club, outside Columbus, Ohio. Social media photos show Donahoe playing with Rory McIlroy, a golf star Nike sponsors.

    One of Nike’s corporate jets landed in Columbus the day before the golf event; it returned to Oregon after the pro-am ended, flight records show.

    Photographs posted to Instagram from a Nike fan account show Donahoe golfing at an event outside Columbus, Ohio. At right in the second image is Rory McIlroy, a Nike-sponsored golf star. Flight records show one of Nike’s corporate jets landed in Columbus the day before the event and returned to Oregon after it ended. (Screenshot by ProPublica)

    Traveling by private jet is far more polluting than flying commercial.

    Ansell, the sustainable aviation expert, said a fully loaded Gulfstream G650ER flight releases about 4.5 times as much carbon dioxide per passenger as a Boeing 737, the workhorse commercial airplane. If the Gulfstream is carrying only a single passenger, it’s about 80 times as polluting, he said, because the private aircraft’s weight and fuel consumption stay roughly the same.

    Nike’s Gulfstream models can be configured to carry as many as 19 passengers. It’s unknown how many people typically travel on them.

    “It is patently irresponsible to be using luxury G650s for flights that carry only a few passengers,” Ansell said.

    The pollution from Nike’s jets adds up. Last year, they generated roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as a passenger car driving 10.9 million miles, company disclosures and an Environmental Protection Agency emissions calculator show. (Imagine driving a car around the equator 438 times.) It was roughly equal to the amount of carbon pollution that would be released by burning 4.7 million pounds of coal.

    While Nike’s corporate jets have been generating more carbon, the company last year recorded a 65% decline compared to 2015 in emissions from another source: commercial air travel by rank-and-file employees.

    Four former employees said the company has restricted worker travel in recent years. They said their managers didn’t cite the need to reduce emissions but instead the need to save money. Nike, in a statement, said its employees also had embraced remote meeting tools since the pandemic, allowing them to “operate effectively without extensive travel.”

    By contrast, the company’s jets are used for transportation to “specific high-level meetings and events that require executive presence,” Nike said, “and cannot be conducted remotely.”

    Ryanne Mena and Jeff Frankl of ProPublica contributed research.

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Washington State Solar Project Paused Amid Concern About Native Cultural Sites

    by B. “Toastie” Oaster, High Country News

    This article was produced in partnership with High Country News, which was a member of the Local Reporting Network in 2023-24. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

    A company developing an industrial-scale solar panel array on Badger Mountain in Eastern Washington has paused permitting activities on the project amid concerns about impacts to Indigenous cultural sites.

    The decision comes on the heels of an investigation by High Country News and ProPublica this year, which found that a land survey funded by the developer, Avangrid Renewables, had omitted more than a dozen sites of archaeological or cultural significance on the public parcel included in the project area. This survey is required by the state before it can permit the project so construction can begin.

    In a June 27 letter to the state agency responsible for approving the project, Avangrid wrote that it will be pausing project planning for two to three months “while we re-evaluate public comments, including from our project landowners and affected tribal nations.”

    The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation have objected to the Badger Mountain solar project for years, according to tribal business councilmember Karen Condon. They officially registered their opposition in May 2023, citing the foods, medicines, archaeological heritage sites and other cultural resources found on the mountain. They were joined shortly after by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Both tribal nations have the right to access and use public lands in their ancestral territory, which includes the state-owned parcel on Badger Mountain.

    Due to concerns from tribal nations and state agencies, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, whose members are appointed by the governor, had previously ordered a redo of the cultural resources survey.

    “While we are pausing permitting activities, Avangrid is continuing to evaluate other elements of the Badger Mountain project,” a company spokesperson said in an email to HCN and ProPublica.

    The future of the Badger Mountain solar project is unclear. Avangrid’s spokesperson wrote, “We have a strong relationship with [Washington’s Department of Natural Resources] on our operating projects and value their participation in advancing clean energy in the state and will continue to work with them to advance new clean energy projects.”

    The DNR, which acts as the landlord for the parcel and evaluates the environmental and cultural impacts of projects on it, said the pause is a chance to have more discussions with tribes and potential stakeholders. “Each time people [go] out to the area, more and more archaeological sites and plant resources are seen and more concerns arise,” Louis Fortin, scientific consultation manager at the department, wrote in an email to HCN and ProPublica.

    Fortin noted that some leases with private landowners expired in December 2023, and that some of the landowners are not renewing those leases. The majority of the project is on private lands, suggesting that a major portion of the project may no longer be viable for reasons unrelated to cultural resources. Avangrid declined to answer inquiries about private landowners’ concerns.

    In March, a group of Wenatchi-P’squosa people and their supporters gathered on Badger Mountain to demonstrate against the proposed solar development, which would impact critical foodways and sites of archaeological heritage.

    After hearing of Avangrid’s pause in operations, one of the Wenatchi-P’squosa organizers, Darnell Sam, told HCN and ProPublica he isn’t confident tribal concerns will meaningfully alter the course of development. “I still don’t trust the process,” he said, noting that the developer has already invested millions of dollars in the project. Sam is the traditional territories coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, where the Wenatchi-P’squosa people are enrolled, but said this view is his own and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of his office.

    His mistrust, he explained, is due in part to what he’s seen his neighbors at the Yakama Nation go through. For years, the nearby Yakama Nation has opposed a pumped hydro storage project, which has also been the subject of an HCN and ProPublica investigation into how a federal agency dodged its consultation obligations, about 200 miles south of Badger Mountain. Despite tribal objections, that development has continued to advance.

    “We’re not against green energy,” Sam said. “But where’s the responsible place for it to be?”

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Reject Fossil Colonialism on International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

    On August 9, 2001, in Colombia, riot police and private security forces from the Cerrejón coal mine — one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world — surrounded the remote community of Tabaco. They then dragged residents out of their homes and bulldozed what remained of that town’s structures. There was, after all, coal under the town and the mine’s owner, Exxon Mobil Corporation…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Drax pumps out more pollution than any other company, but climate protesters are the criminals?

    The day after cops pre-emptively nicked 22 peaceful protesters, a new report has revealed the staggering climate-wrecking impact of their target. In 2023, Drax biomass power station pumped out by far the most carbon dioxide pollution of any UK power plant, and then some.

    Drax: planet and public enemy number one

    Bioenergy giant Drax operates a gargantuan wood pellet-burning biomass station near Selby, Yorkshire. The corporation has repeatedly made the bold claim that its this produces renewable energy

    However, the company could practically write the ‘Greenwashing for Dummies’ handbook. As the Canary’s HG reported on its renewables claims, Drax is puffing out a lot of hot air on this:

    Both Drax and the government claim that the emissions ‘don’t count’ because the trees are grown in other countries, and because one day far in the future another tree will store that carbon. Obviously, that is absolutely insane.

    Notably, there’s nothing remotely ‘renewable’ about its wood pellet-burning operation. Instead, repeated nonprofit investigations have shown the devastating environmental impacts of Drax’s core business activities.

    Now, it’s once again evident it’s pouring out a lot worse as well. Specifically, 11.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 alone. This is according to a new analysis from climate think tank Ember published 9 August. It means Drax’s Selby power station put out the equivalent of nearly 3% of the UK’s territorial emissions.

    In fact, this barely scratched the surface. Ember found that Drax’s biomass power station emitted four times MORE carbon dioxide than the UK’s remaining coal plant. Yes, coal plant – often considered the dirtiest fossil fuel – and Drax is producing masses more.

    This is partly because, wood pellets actually pack more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of electricity.

    If that wasn’t bad enough though, it also generated more carbon dioxide than the next four power stations combined. Moreover, Ember noted that:

    Although it is the recipient of public funding earmarked for low-carbon projects, Drax remains the largest single source of CO2 in the country.

    Footing the bill for a forest-destroyer

    Despite this, the UK taxpayer is footing the bill for climate and forest-destroyer Drax:

    In short, the UK government gifts Drax huge subsidies at the planet, and the public’s expense. And that’s not all. As the Canary has previously highlighted, the company wants to squeeze more from the public purse to ramp up its greenwashing gambit. In particular, the Tory government greenlighted its plans for carbon capture and storage technology at its Yorkshire facility. However, Ember also previously noted that for this:

    it’s the public who will foot the bill for the corporation’s expensive climate vanity project. It identified that the project could add £1.7bn to UK energy bills each year. Of course, this comes at a time when UK energy bills are already astronomically high and unaffordable, with energy companies pushing millions into fuel poverty.

    In addition, the new analysis underscored that:

    Like the gas power plants which also make up a large proportion of the largest emitters, the UK large biomass power sector is highly dependent on imports. Drax power station consumed 5.8 million tonnes of wood biomass, none of which was sourced in the UK.

    Extinction Rebellion UK pointed out the astounding absurdity of calling this renewable energy:

    Climate protesters versus corporate criminal Drax

    Also in the headlines this fine Friday 9 August:

    ‘Twenty-two people police want to find over disorder’

    Funny that, were the cops too busy arresting 22 peaceful climate protesters who hadn’t even committed a crime, to find the perpetrators of racist riot violence? State priorities and all that.

    But then, it’s a case of follow the money. And it has been flowing into the coffers of the Labour Party of course:

    That is, while Drax was spewing out more carbon emissions than any other company in the UK, it was also ploughing thousands in donations to Labour and getting its lobbyists in the room where it happens with to-be government to boot.

    As ever then, the corporate climate criminals get off scott-free. Meanwhile cops serving the interests of the establishment, punish people fighting for the future of the planet.

    At the end of the day:

    It’s people and the planet who continue to lose out.

    Feature image via Youtube – the Science Channel/the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Midwinter Antarctica 50°F Above Average

    Image by Jay Ruzesky.

    Temperatures for the entire month of July in Antarctica were 50°F above average, but it also experienced days when temperatures spiked up to 82°F above average. Yes, Antarctica is the world’s deepfreeze, and it is the dead of winter. What does this portend?

    For starters, according to Michael Dukes, director of forecasting at MetDesk: “In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing into summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets.” (Source: Antarctica Temperatures Rise 10C Above Average in Near Record Heatwave, The Guardian, August 1, 2024)

    Already, the summers of 2022 and 2023 saw unprecedented loss of Antarctic sea ice, which fell below 2 million square kilometers for the first time in the satellite record going back to 1979. Moreover, the year 2023 marked the 8th year of steep decline in sea ice. (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)

    Antarctica is massive with total area as large as the US and Mexico combined and average ice thickness of 7,200 feet covering 98% of the continent which is 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of the fresh water of the world. There’s plenty for global warming to work with!

    A primary ongoing concern is sea level rise. According to NASA, the rate of sea level rise has tripled in the 21st century.

    What’s Next?

    As for future expectations, there is a paleoclimate record that spells out what to expect:

    “While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm, and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today,” Ibid.

    Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C but not above 2.0°C pre-industrial, at all costs, or big trouble ensues. FYI- The IPCC looks for sustained temps above 1.5°C for several years to declare it official. And the world has already blown thru the 1.5°C barrier. Hopefully, that barrier eases up or stabilizes, but it requires cutting emissions almost immediately. Good luck with that. 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

    CO2 affects temperature, which, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024. This is the level that 195 countries that signed onto the 2015 Paris Agreement agreed to stay below. Oops! It only took 9 years.

    For the record: “The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.” (Source: Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Climate.gov, April 9, 2024)

    That explains why it only took 9 years to hit 1.5C. Paleoclimate research of the above-mentioned Pliocene era shows a CO2 rate of increase of 0.02 ppm/annum in nature without humans around. But human influence has cranked it up to 2.80 ppm/annum (the 2023 full year rate) more than 100 times faster. Ipso facto, global warming is on a warpath.

    According to Climate Adaptation Center: “Research supports the conclusion that by 2°C, virtually all of Greenland, most of West Antarctica and part of East Antarctica will be locked into long-term, irrevocable sea level rise, even if we succeed in drawing down temperatures at a later date. This is primarily because the warmer ocean will hold heat much longer than the atmosphere, and because of a number of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms. As a result, it takes ice sheets much longer to grow back (tens of thousands of years) than to lose their ice,” Ibid.

    All of which leads to when or if Antarctic sea ice will reach a serious breaking point. This challenging supposition has possibly been answered: “What happened in the winter of 2023 shocked scientists. ‘It was completely off the rails,’ according to Ted Scambos, senior researcher at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). ‘Throughout the 2023 austral winter, sea ice was far below any previous winter extent in the 45-year satellite record.” (Source: Has Antarctic Sea Ice Hit a Breaking Point? Earth Data, National Snow and Ice Date Center, NSIDC, July 4, 2024)

    Regime Shift in Antarctica

    There’s clear evidence of what’s referred to as a “regime shift” in Antarctica, to wit: “Low sea ice extent once dominated certain areas, especially near the Antarctic Peninsula, but now all sectors surrounding Antarctica are responding together. Referred to as ‘spatial coherence,’ this is yet another sign that something is shifting for Antarctic sea ice, not just in some areas, not just in some years, but on larger scales and for longer periods. These Antarctic-wide sea ice changes, together with their greater variability and persistence, are three main factors that indicate a regime shift,” Ibid.

    Additionally, sea ice is taking longer to recover from low extents and the recovered ice is thinner than decades earlier. All of which is attributable to a warming planet, with Antarctica experiencing bouts of excessively high anomalous temperatures more frequently, even during winter, but winter-time temperatures do remain below freezing. Nevertheless, the major concern is the warming trend and “regime shift,” moreover, what’s not seen is most concerning, for example: A headline in Live Science d/d May 21, 2024: Warm Ocean Water is Rushing Beneath Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ Making Collapse More Likely.

    Indeed, it would be enormously comforting if scientists could say for sure that the prospect of collapsing ice sheets and rapidly flowing glaciers on a major scale, taking sea levels far too high, flooding coastal cities, are not a concern this century, so, no sweat, don’t worry. But they can’t say that because climate change is moving much faster than scientists’ models predict. For example, nobody in 200o or 2010 or even a few years ago foresaw a major “Antarctic regime shift” or a 12-month consecutive increase of +1.5°C above pre-industrial by 2024. In point of fact, climate change is so far ahead of schedule that it’s ridiculous.

    If climate models missed identifying the shockingly rapid onset of two extremely powerful climate-altering events, signaling deep trouble dead ahead, what are they missing now?

    According to Sharon Stammerjohn, senior researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder: “Conceptually, I just see this wall of heat knocking at the door in the Southern Ocean, and it’s starting to find ways to come in,” Ibid.

    Here’s what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at World Environment Day June 5, 2024, about heat finding its way: “The truth is the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030, a far higher temperature rise would be all but guaranteed… The truth is we already face incursions into the 1.5-degree territory… In 2015, they said the chance of such a breach was near zero.” He calls for nations of the world to come together to halt fossil fuel emissions.

    Similarly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) Declaration of 2021: “There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times.”

    However, the truth is revealed only three years later, Global Energy Monitor 2024 Report: “The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals.”

    That’ll crank up Mauna Loa’s CO2 readings to “spinning out of control” mode.

    And, just for good measure: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.” (Amin Nasser, Head of Aramco, speaking in Texas, March 2024).

    A wall of heat hitting Antarctica is bad news and “regime shift” tells a worrisome tale. And with CO2 already cranking 100+ times faster than all history, and with fossil fuel interests on a road to madness, where does this leave Antarctica? No comment.

    Still, where do things stand? There are scientists on both sides of the maxim “we are screwed,” some say, “we can still work out of this self-inflicted disaster,” but others say, “it’s already too late.” Usually, these situations end up somewhere in the middle. So, what will “we are partially screwed” look like?

    Not good.

    The post Midwinter Antarctica 50°F Above Average appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Alaska Tribes Appeal to International Body to Pause “Reckless” Canadian Mining

    Anchorage, Alaska — A group of Southeast Alaska tribes requested on Aug. 1 that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights order a temporary pause on Canadian mining activity. They say “reckless” mining activity violates their human rights. That came after Canada’s Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship ordered on June 27 that the tribes be denied “participating Nation status,”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Police arrest 22 peaceful climate protesters AT ONCE while racist riots spread across the UK

    Overnight on 7 August, cops arrested 22 activists mobilising for a climate camp at Drax Power Station in Yorkshire. That is, the very night far-right fascists planned attacks against asylum support centres across the UK, cops were pouring their energies into preventing a peaceful protest against a climate-wrecking corporation.

    Did someone mention something about two-tier policing?

    Protecting the powerful – like Drax

    Drax is an energy company which makes its money from a power station near Selby, in Yorkshire.

    The company has a habit of boasting its green credentials, claiming that its wood-burning ‘biomass’ power station produces renewable energy. This allows them to receive huge pubic subsidies. However, as the Canary has consistently highlighted, Drax is a serial green-washer.

    Drax burns more trees than any other power station in the world. It is also the UK’s largest single source of carbon emissions. Both Drax and the government claim that the emissions ‘don’t count’ because the trees are grown in other countries, and because one day far in the future another tree will store that carbon. Obviously, that is absolutely insane.

    Notably, there’s nothing remotely ‘renewable’ about its wood pellet-burning operation. Instead, repeated nonprofit investigations have shown the devastating environmental impacts of Drax’s core business activities. In March, Biofuelwatch and Portuguese nonprofit NGO ZERO exposed how:

    Drax is sourcing wood pellets for its Yorkshire power plant from a nature reserve in Portugal.

    More specifically, Drax is the biggest customer of Pinewells pellet plant in Portugal. Their investigation found that Pinewells has been sourcing trees from clearcuts in the mountainous Serra da Lousã nature reserve. The EU designated it a Natura 2000 site in 2008, under the EU Habitats Directive. Natura 2000 sites form an ecological network across Europe to protect wild animals, plants, and habitats of conservation importance.

    All this is to say that the company is chief among UK’s big polluters. It’s why climate activists have been gearing up to take on the greenwashing energy giant.

    Two-tier policing

    Reclaim the Power decided to target Drax with an action camp from the 8-13 August. Unfortunately, before the protest could even begin North Yorkshire police swooped in and arrested 22 activists.

    As with any decent protest – they were in the process of transporting disabled ramps and toilets to make sure the site was accessible. Maybe the idea of an accessible protest was too much for North Yorkshire police to comprehend?

    Reclaim the Power said:

    Police actions this morning send the clear message that protecting the peace and quiet of Drax — who take £1.7 million a day in subsidies and hand it to shareholders as ‘profit’ — is more important than protecting the lives and livelihoods of people whose taxes pay those very subsidies.

    Racist violence is happening Nationwide. Black and Brown communities are under attack with fire and bricks and the police have made the unfathomable decision to divert resources away from those communities to arrest 22 people taking equipment to make a peaceful climate protest safe and accessible.

    The police claim they are ‘not against protest but against crime’, but their actions show otherwise. In Yorkshire this morning, police prioritised locating and arresting people suspected of organising peaceful protest with tents, toilets and track for wheelchairs over locating and arresting people who are actually organising, far right riots with bricks, knives and other weapons.

    A protester who has been helping to coordinate the camp told the Canary that North Yorkshire Police are essentially acting as Drax’s own private security firm. Repeatedly they said they are not opposed to peaceful protests. However, they have still taken away the kit the protesters were using to ensure the camp was both peaceful and safe. Essentially, they are being silenced for speaking out against greenwashing.

    Reclaim the Power told the Canary that:

    After police seized key infrastructure the camp is now cancelled

    So Police forces up and down the country struggle to cope with huge levels of violence – while North Yorkshire Police are choosing to protect a powerful company who made over £1bn in profits in 2023 alone.

    What is Drax afraid of?

    Last month, Drax secured a high court injunction against potential future protesters at its site. Drax received a tip off from the police and then requested the courts protection – which the court granted.

    However, the injunction does not cover a ‘strip of land’ which they had marked out for the peaceful protest.

    Currently, taxpayers subsidise Drax by nearly £2m a day, even though it made over £1b in profits in 2023. Their profits come from our energy bills – which are sky-high at the moment. This means that British people are essentially paying twice. We have a new government, – which means Drax is currently trying to renew their subsidies, so the time is crucial in encouraging our government to put money into genuine green energy solutions like wind, solar and hydropower, not scams like Drax. However, and maybe unsurprisingly, the Labour Party have accepted donations from the company in the past.

    Profit before planet?

    Subsidising Drax means that vast sums of public money are funding a project that is actively fuelling the climate crisis, and causing huge harm to human life and the planet. There is a chance to stop this – but we cannot afford to wait.

    If the far-right rioters were really that bothered about wasting tax payers money – they would be campaigning for places like Drax to be saving the tax payers money.

    As ever, the cops are protecting the climate wrecking corporations, because in reality they protect the interests of the state – not the public. If they were truly there to serve the public, they wouldn’t be cracking down on peaceful protesters trying to save the planet from ecological breakdown.

    Feature image via Skill Builder/Youtube

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Beef Burgers are Destroying the Amazon. Here’s Why.

    Back in school, most of us learned about photosynthesis from an early age. Science lessons taught us that when trees grow, they use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into food. The process, which is the result of billions of years of evolution, is not only beneficial to the plants, but it’s vital for life on Earth, too. For one, as the climate crisis intensifies and emissions rise, we need to be able to remove more carbon dioxide from the air, before it heats the planet to an unlivable state. And as trees do just that without thinking about it, it makes sense to look after them.

    But, for decades now, some of the world’s biggest industries haven’t been looking after the trees. Around 10,000 years ago, more than half of the world’s habitable land, around 6 billion hectares, was covered by forest. Now, thanks to humanity, that has dropped down to 4 billion, and it’s still dropping. This isn’t good news for us or the animals that rely on these forests to survive.

    VegNews.meatdeforestation.1Pexels

    When it comes to deforestation, there are many culprits. Timber and palm oil, which is in around half of all packaged products, are two of them. But neither of these industries destroys the world’s forests to the same extent that meat does. Yep, it turns out, all of those beef burgers are seriously hurting the rainforest. And all of the soy grown to feed the world’s farm animals, well that’s destroying the rainforest, too.

    Here, we take a closer look at meat’s role in deforestation, and what is being done to stop it. But also, how can we, as consumers, avoid products that contribute to it? (Hint: it involves eating fewer beef burgers and more plants.)

    What is deforestation?

    To put it simply, deforestation means intentionally clearing forested land. In the case of the beef industry, the leading driver of deforestation, forests are cut or set on fire (known as slash-and-burn) to make room for cattle grazing.

    VegNew.Deforestation.MeatIndustry.UnsplashUnsplash

    Fires are a regular occurrence in the Amazon Rainforest where a significant percentage of cattle ranchers operate. Most of the wildfires in 2019, which burned an area the size of New Jersey, started out intentionally for the purpose of land clearing. “The important thing to know about the Amazon is that few fires occur there naturally. Pretty much everything is started by humans,” Mikaela Weisse of the World Resources Institute told Vice in 2019.

    Why is deforestation a problem?

    Every year, a mature tree absorbs around 48 pounds of carbon dioxide. However, when they are cut down or set on fire, they no longer have the ability to remove the greenhouse gas. But it gets worse, as, when trees decompose or burn, they release the carbon they have stored back into the atmosphere.

    According to the World Resources Institute, between 2015 and 2017, the loss of tropical forests around the world contributed roughly 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. And in 2021, one report discovered that due to deforestation and the climate crisis, huge parts of the Amazon rainforest are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they can absorb.

    “This is a huge impact […] directly because we are emitting CO2 to the atmosphere, which is accelerating climate change but also because it is promoting changes in the dry season conditions and stress to trees that will produce even more emissions,” the lead author of the report, Luciana Gatti, told The Guardian. “This is terrible negative feedback that increases the emissions much more than we knew.”

    But emissions aren’t the only issue linked to deforestation. When forests are cut down, the wildlife that relies on them for survival is impacted, too. The Amazon rainforest is home to several endangered animal species, including jaguars, Amazon river dolphins, uakari monkeys, and South American tapirs. But the more deforestation occurs, the more their survival is threatened. Last year, one report suggested that more than 10,000 species of plants and animals were at risk of extinction because of Amazon deforestation.

    What is meat’s role in deforestation?

    Right now, the global beef market is worth more than $500 billion, according to GlobeNewswire. And by 2032, it’s predicted to progress at a compound annual growth rate of 4.1 percent until 2032. But all of this demand has a consequence. To produce more beef, more cattle is required, which means more land. Research by Global Forest Watch suggests that beef production drives deforestation five times more than any other industry.

    VegNewsDeforestationGreenpeaceIndonesiaGreenpeace

    But meat’s relationship with deforestation doesn’t stop with beef. The same research found that soy is the second biggest driver of deforestation, and between 2001 and 2015, it destroyed more than eight million hectares of forest. Most of this was not grown for human consumption. In fact, only around six percent of the world’s soy is consumed in products like tofu and soy milk. Most of the world’s soy, nearly 80 percent, is grown for farm animal feed. This means that, alongside beef, products like eggs, milk, cheese, nuggets, sausages, bacon, and more, are also associated with deforestation.

    What’s being done to curb deforestation?

    In the past, Brazil-based JBS, which is the world’s biggest meat processing company, has committed to try and stop destroying the rainforest. But reports suggest that it is still actively engaged with deforestation. In November 2022, it admitted to buying nearly 9,000 cattle from one of Brazil’s biggest deforesters between 2018 and 2022.

    At the time, JBS claimed it had been a victim of fraud, and didn’t realize that the cattle were linked with deforestation. But many organizations, like the group Drop JBS—which is supported by several environmental nonprofits, including Greenpeace and Mighty Earth—claim that deforestation is intrinsic to JBS’ operations.

    “Don’t be fooled by the cover,” its website reads. “Deforestation is in JBS’ DNA.”

    But the company isn’t operating alone. Drop JBS claims that the supermarkets that sell JBS products, as well as the banks, investors, and lenders that finance it and the leather industry that relies on its byproducts, are all responsible for perpetuating deforestation.

    That said, some supermarkets have taken steps to stop rainforest destruction. Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain in the UK, claims it is “supporting initiatives that combat deforestation,” and is striving to make its soy supply chains deforestation-free by the end of 2025. And in 2018, it stopped sourcing beef from Brazil over deforestation concerns. But according to Greenpeace, it still sources meat from Moy Park which is a JBS subsidiary.

    To truly curb deforestation, laws need to change. And thankfully, progress is being made. In the EU, for example, a new law aiming to tackle deforestation was recently agreed upon. When it comes into force, all companies operating in the EU market will be bound legally to perform strict due diligence and ensure products like coffee, beef, and cocoa do not contribute to deforestation.

    How to avoid products linked to deforestation

    While some progress is happening to tackle deforestation, there is still a long way to go. But as consumers, we can avoid products linked to the global destruction of forests by choosing to purchase plant-based products instead of beef or other animal products.

    Nowadays, if you’re craving beef burgers there are plenty of alternatives on the market that taste the same but are made from plants. Both the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger, for example, are designed to mimic beef, and new products are emerging on the market all the time. In fact, by 2030, some reports indicate that the plant-based foods market could hit a value of $85 billion.

    VegNews.VeganStackBurgers.BeyondMeatBeyond Meat

    Research suggests that collectively moving to a plant-based diet would reduce land use significantly, which, in turn, would reduce the need for deforestation. In 2021, a study from Our World In Data noted that a global plant-based diet would reduce global agricultural land use by 75 percent.

    And in 2022, another study suggested that swapping 20 percent of the world’s beef consumption with products like Quorn, which are made with microbial protein and require very little land to produce, could cut deforestation in half.

    “The good news is that people do not need to be afraid [of eating] only greens in the future,” the study’s lead author, Florian Humpenöder, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told The Guardian. “They can continue eating burgers and the like, it’s just that those burger patties will be produced in a different way.”

    This post was originally published on VegNews.com.

  • This Startup’s Carbon Tracking Project Fell Short. Nevada Kept Giving It Government Contracts Anyway.

    by Anjeanette Damon

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

    The summer heat collected inside a fire station in Reno, the nation’s fastest-warming city, where Nevada’s governor and key local government leaders had gathered in July 2021. They were there to announce what they called a “groundbreaking” step to address climate change through a “landmark partnership” with a little-known green tech company.

    “We get to be the city, the county and the state that lead the way into a new day and a new era,” Bob Lucey, then-Washoe County Commission chairperson, told the small crowd of reporters, lobbyists and government officials.

    “This is how we fight climate change and protect our state,” proclaimed then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, who’d set a goal of nearly halving the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

    The governments they led had each given the company, then called Ledger8760 and now known as NZero, contracts on the promise it could provide real-time tracking of carbon emissions from scores of buildings, hundreds of vehicles and the travel of thousands of employees. Such information would allow hour-by-hour decision making to reduce their carbon footprints and move toward their climate goals, according to NZero’s pitch.

    It was a bold claim for a company with no track record working with governments and without a scientist or climate expert among its founders or lead employees.

    But what NZero’s executive team did have — and what gave it an edge in convincing a state, county and city to bet taxpayer dollars on the company — was a history of helping powerful people get what they want. As lobbyists, well-liked in political circles for their jovial personalities and straightforward deal-making, they had helped Uber battle an intractable taxi lobby and gain entrance to the Nevada market; Tesla win what was at the time the largest tax incentive package in state history; and the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders secure $750 million in public financing to build a stadium. They’ve represented clients before the Reno City Council and Washoe County Commission and lobbied the Legislature on behalf of the city.

    Now, Josh Griffin, NZero co-founder, decided to use those skills to grow his own business.

    Beginning in late 2020, Griffin leaned on relationships with government officials to pitch them his new company, according to emails obtained by ProPublica. Over the next three years, he won contracts worth $5.7 million — funds that critics say would have been better used to make actual efficiency upgrades or invest in green power generation. In fact, Griffin convinced government officials, including the administrations of two governors from different political parties, to pay his company more and more money despite NZero’s struggles to deliver on its promise to provide real-time emissions data to make real-time decisions.

    Washoe County went months without receiving data tracking electricity usage. A state of Nevada pilot project never delivered real-time data, and a larger project with the state encountered repeated delays. Only the city of Reno realized a working platform with uninterrupted and usable data.

    “Their software didn’t do what they said it was going to do,” said Robin Yochum, a former programs manager at the Governor’s Office of Energy, who questioned the contract from the beginning. The statistics that NZero provided to the state during the pilot project were months old because of issues getting data in regular intervals from utilities, she said. The historic data had to be input by hand and wasn’t much better than information the state already had.

    “They figured out how to get money from the government and put it into their company, and what did we get for it? Nothing,” Yochum said.

    They figured out how to get money from the government and put it into their company, and what did we get for it? Nothing.

    —Robin Yochum, a former programs manager at the Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy

    Documents obtained by ProPublica show the local and state governments rushed to hire NZero without fully vetting the company against other competitors. A Reno spokesperson said the city tried to find similar companies but couldn’t. A Washoe County spokesperson said officials believed they were “investing in an innovative approach.” The state considered no other companies before hiring NZero for the pilot project.

    Yochum, who had seen a past effort by the state to implement a similar platform fail, continued to voice her suspicions about NZero’s promises. She also didn’t think its technology would be the best way to meet the state’s ambitious climate objectives.

    “The bottom line is the state needs money to be able to implement retrofits and efficiency measures to make buildings compatible with climate goals,” she said. “You should put your money into upgrading them first.”

    NZero’s head of marketing, Kevin Nabipour, said in a written statement that ProPublica’s reporting “portrays a customer experience that is a stark contrast from the one we know and experience routinely with a satisfied group of engaged public sector professionals.”

    In an interview with ProPublica, Griffin acknowledged NZero didn’t deliver what it initially promised. Rather than real-time data, the governments got delayed data. But it still benefited his customers, he argued.

    “I know we delivered real value,” Griffin said, “even though it was incongruent with when we said we would deliver information and when they received it. It doesn’t mean at all it wasn’t valuable.”

    Governments should invest in understanding their emission patterns before putting money toward improvements, he argued. Although his company provided older data, it could still be useful in judging the effectiveness of proposed efficiency projects, he said. “How do you know which one reduces the emissions the most? We’re guiding those decisions,” he said.

    As of July, three years after contracting with NZero, the state of Nevada has not used the data to make efficiency upgrades, while Reno relied on the data to help implement a lighting project and Washoe County used the data to help prioritize its capital improvement projects.

    Why Track Carbon Emissions?

    ProPublica this year is investigating the effectiveness of government and industry efforts to combat the climate crisis and reduce their environmental impact.

    Measuring emissions is a key tenet in international treaties aimed at preventing catastrophic climate change by reducing global carbon output. Such tracking is generally done at the city, state or national level through estimates of how much carbon is emitted in a geographical area over a year.

    On the corporate side, publicly traded companies began looking for ways to measure their emissions to appeal to environmentally minded consumers and shareholders, and get a jump on expected federal regulations that could require it. This drove a surge in startup companies offering similar platforms.

    New ways of monitoring carbon output were being developed, including sensors, smart meters and complicated models to estimate emissions. And although several internationally respected climate agencies had developed standards, there wasn’t an agreed-upon best method.

    “It’s all unregulated,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist and senior fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “There are various private industry standards, but they’re voluntary.”

    Griffin and his lobbying partner Matt Griffin, who is not related to Josh, started NZero in 2017 with their friend Josh Weber, a lawyer specializing in electric utility regulations. They believed large-scale energy consumers — particularly the casinos and data centers they represented as lobbyists — should have better electricity consumption data, Josh Griffin said. They should know whether the electrons powering their slot machines, for example, had been generated by a solar or a coal-fired plant. (Around this time, Josh Griffin and Weber ran an ultimately unsuccessful ballot initiative to end the electric utility’s monopoly in Nevada and give consumers a choice of where to buy power. Griffin said the ballot initiative and the founding of NZero were unrelated.)

    Utilities had data on exactly where consumers’ electricity was coming from but didn’t readily share it, Griffin said. Nor did consumers know how many pounds of carbon were produced generating the power they used. Griffin said they developed their platform to provide that.

    For more than a decade, Nevada governments had conducted periodic greenhouse gas inventories for their jurisdictions, estimating annual emissions from all the sources within their geographic boundaries. NZero offered something different: tracking emissions generated from actual government operations — how much carbon was emitted when, for example, the city’s street lights were on or when the heater ran at city hall.

    Griffin argued his platform was perfect for governments because elected leaders had promised to reduce carbon emissions. The Sisolak administration, for example, set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. Officials could “lead by example,” proving to private industry that accountability was possible through accurate data, Griffin said.

    To calculate these emissions, however, NZero needed access to data on energy consumption from each government building, including natural gas, electricity and water. But the availability of the data was hit or miss for each address depending on the service provider, what kind of meters were in place and whether the utility was willing to share it.

    “There’s nothing you can do if they don’t want to give you the data,” said Connor Taylor, a senior analyst with Verdantix, which sells buyer’s guides on carbon tracking software. “It’s not like anyone’s legally obligated to do it. So it really hinges on the strength of that relationship.”

    There’s nothing you can do if they don’t want to give you the data.”

    —Connor Taylor, a senior analyst with Verdantix

    It turned out real-time data wasn’t available from Southwest Gas, southern Nevada’s largest natural gas provider, and NV Energy, the state’s primary electricity provider, didn’t want to share customer data with NZero.

    What Went Wrong

    Reno avoided significant problems with NZero’s platform because the city collected the data from NV Energy itself and passed it to NZero for analysis. The city said it didn’t have examples of efficiency projects undertaken because of the data but has used the information to measure how effective some of its projects have been. A spokesperson said it has been “critical for our sustainability goals.”

    Early on, NZero was able to tap into Washoe County’s electricity and natural gas usage data from NV Energy, which gave the county a working platform. But it showed information that was a month old, not real-time. Brian Beffort, Washoe County’s sustainability manager, said although NZero didn’t deliver data in real time as promised, the platform has proven essential for tracking progress toward the county’s emissions goals. “Without it I would be shadow boxing,” he said.

    When NV Energy cut off the feed, the county lost access to even its month-old data for nearly a year. But NZero continued to collect its $6,000 monthly fee for providing it. Beffort said he didn’t immediately notice the outage and didn’t think it would be fair to penalize NZero for the utility’s actions. The county is working on a fix, but as of July, that process wasn’t yet finalized.

    “To be clear, that’s on NV Energy, not NZero,” Beffort said.

    The state had a similar problem. Unlike the city or the county, Nevada signed a contract for what was supposed to be a small pilot program. NZero would track real-time emissions from just five state buildings, rather than government-wide operations.

    It was Yochum’s job to run the pilot project. Six months into the yearlong contract, NZero was still trying to wrangle data from Southwest Gas. And soon after it settled on a method for inputting historic data for both electricity and gas, NV Energy decided that sending data to third parties violated customer privacy and cut it off entirely.

    The real-time data to make on-the-spot decisions about energy usage never materialized, Yochum said.

    An NV Energy spokesperson said that in order to protect its “customers’ sensitive data,” the utility “no longer provides data directly to third-party vendors on behalf of customers.”

    Influence vs. Research

    Governments should carefully vet whether a company offering carbon tracking technology can access data from utilities before signing a contract, Taylor said.

    With NZero, the governments tailored their solicitation letters directly to what NZero said it was offering. Yochum said she was told to do so and to structure the contract to avoid a lengthy and competitive process. At the time, contracts valued at less than $25,000 could be approved without a public vote by elected officials.

    Although Yochum wouldn’t comment on who told her to do these things, her emails from the time shed light on where the pressure was coming from: “This is a priority for the Governor’s Office,” Yochum wrote in a June 2021 email urging the state’s budget office to expedite the contract.

    In a June 2021 email, Robin Yochum, a former programs manager at the Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy, informed the state’s budget office that the NZero contract was a priority for the governor’s office. (Obtained and redacted by ProPublica)

    In Yochum’s mind, the pilot project had failed and she expected to move on from NZero, which she described as a good company but not right for the state’s needs. But one month after Yochum wrote a memo detailing where the company’s pilot project had fallen short, NZero submitted a glossy 15-page proposal for nearly $13 million in American Rescue Plan funding for an “expanded partnership” with the state.

    Emails obtained by ProPublica show Josh Griffin stepped up his lobbying of the administration, working the governor’s new energy adviser and chief of staff, Yvanna Cancela, who explored how to get NZero a $5 million contract without a competitive process. One way would be for NZero to offer its services through an existing state contractor. NZero then signed a partnership agreement with Deloitte Consulting.

    When Yochum learned of the effort to avoid a competitive process, she objected.

    “I was told, ‘We have to do this. The governor’s office wants to do it, we are going to do it,’” Yochum said.

    I was told, ‘We have to do this. The governor’s office wants to do it, we are going to do it.’

    —Robin Yochum, a former programs manager at the Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy

    Yochum wasn’t the only skeptical state employee. A purchasing official pointed to significant delays in the pilot project and warned that Cancela’s close communication with NZero could “create an appearance of impropriety in a future solicitation,” wrote Gideon Davis, one purchasing officer.

    Another argued it might not be the best use of $5 million if the goal were to reduce carbon emissions. The director of the Nevada Department of Administration, Laura Freed, sent a lengthy email with a half-dozen alternative sustainability projects, including prioritizing the purchase of electric vehicles, upgrading state-owned building metering for gas and electricity, and requiring zero-energy use building plans for new buildings. The proposal appeared to go nowhere.

    The state has known for years where it needs to make energy improvements. In 2009, the public works department created a list of nearly 2,000 energy efficiency projects, some as simple as changing out fluorescent light bulbs. Fifteen years later, the state is still working to fund those projects. In 2021, public works was awarded $9.4 million for a handful of projects, including changing light bulbs listed as a priority in 2009. Last year, no money went toward the listed projects.

    “If I had $5 million to spend to pursue things that would meaningfully advance the state of Nevada’s climate leadership, there are other things I would spend it on, such as energy efficiency upgrades to state buildings,” said one former state employee involved in the project, who asked not to be named because they feared it could hurt their current employment. “That’s the bread and butter. We know the problem buildings. We know the aging infrastructure. We got the backlog of deferred maintenance. You can do some good with $5 million just improving infrastructure.”

    The governor’s office ignored the concerns about NZero. Yochum’s frustration over it, in part, led her to resign from the state in March 2023.

    Cancela acquiesced when the purchasing department said a competitive process would be required. She told ProPublica she was in charge of pursuing the governor’s priorities and, after consulting with state energy and finance experts, she had determined NZero’s concept “had merit,” but “the appropriate path forward was a competitive bidding process.” The emails also show she was unfamiliar with government purchasing rules and sought guidance.

    The request for proposals went out in October 2022. Three companies answered. And in December, NZero, the company that had convinced the state such a project was needed in the first place, was declared the bid winner.

    Josh Griffin said he didn’t do anything inappropriate by looking for a way to avoid competition. When he was told the contract had to go out to bid, he stopped lobbying, he said.

    “We weren’t trying to lobby our way through it,” he said.

    Matt Griffin, who worked as the company’s legal counsel for three years and was listed on early incorporation documents along with other members of the Griffins’ lobbying firm, said he didn’t want to comment. Josh Weber, who is now the company’s CEO, said he wasn’t involved with the company during the negotiations or implementation of the state contract.

    Deals Under a New Governor

    As the final details of the $5 million contract were being negotiated, Sisolak lost his bid for reelection. When Gov. Joe Lombardo took office in 2023, he abandoned Sisolak’s climate strategy, which NZero had used to justify its proposal. Lombardo’s energy plan focused more on electricity generation (prioritizing natural gas) and transmission than climate action. That signaled a move away from emission tracking.

    But the change from a Democratic to a Republican administration didn’t change NZero’s fortunes. As the contract was being negotiated, NZero was lobbying the new administration, in apparent violation of state laws governing the competitive bid process.

    “It has come to my attention that employees or representatives of the intended vendor, NZero, have communicated directly with you or others at the state regarding the final stages of this contract,” Davis, the state purchasing officer handling the contract, wrote to Lombardo’s new energy director, Dwayne McClinton. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said Davis wrote to McClinton, who had been on the job only three weeks, to “ensure compliance.” Josh Griffin said he didn’t know to which communication Davis was referring but didn’t believe the bidding restrictions on communication applied during the time the contract was being negotiated.

    Jeanne Stoneman, Lombardo’s deputy director of energy, said the administration moved forward with the contract because it saw the potential to help reduce the state’s energy consumption — and energy bills — as well as its carbon footprint. (Stoneman left her position with the state in June.)

    Griffin said by the time the contract was signed, NZero had a work-around for getting data from NV Energy. The fix, he said, was for the state to give NZero login information to all of its electricity accounts, which the company promised to keep confidential. (In one email obtained by ProPublica, an NZero staffer advised the Nevada National Guard to turn off two-factor authentication so the company could get into the account.)

    Still, the project was plagued by delays and skeptical state employees.

    “I did not recall the program providing us with any more detailed information above what we already generate ourselves,” the energy manager for state public works wrote to his supervisor when the energy office tried to schedule a “project kickoff meeting” with Team NZero, as the new partnership with Deloitte was called. Another brought up “serious security concerns” about sharing account login credentials with a third party.

    Last November, when the project was supposed to be wrapping up, it had barely begun.

    Although the Team NZero project was suffering from severe delays at the end of last year, documents show the team began to resolve the problems in January. In some cases, the resolution was simply to not include entire departments that had been difficult to communicate with. McClinton said in a June interview that energy use in 95% of state buildings is now being tracked in real time.

    NZero delivered its capital planning report to the state in April, about a month late and without the data from the departments that didn’t participate. Because of the delays, Team NZero did not close out the project until July, three months after the contract ended. McClinton said that “no decisions or improvements have been made based off the data yet.”

    Lombardo’s spokesperson blamed the project delays on difficulty finding a secure way for NZero to access the state’s utility accounts.

    “Ultimately, the state was able to provide nZero with limited access to accounts without control features, which ensured minimal external access,” she said.

    Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment.

    Despite Team NZero’s project delays, Josh Griffin didn’t stop pushing for even more money. During the legislative session in early 2023, Griffin lobbied the Lombardo administration for another $11 million to be included in the governor’s proposed budget. When the administration denied the request, the company turned to the Legislature. In the final hours of the session, lawmakers passed an emergency bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro that allocated $11 million to, among other things, track electrical energy consumption in “near real-time.”

    “The Governor’s office indicated at the time that they were fully supportive of allocating funding to allow them to keep the program going, and we were happy to find an area of bipartisan cooperation on promoting more climate-friendly government practices,” Cannizzaro’s spokesperson said in a written statement.

    To assuage the concerns of skeptical lawmakers, Cannizzaro had assured them that money from the bill would be subject to a competitive bid process. McClinton echoed that in an interview with ProPublica.

    But in March, McClinton’s office made another move that would have skirted the competitive process. At the direction of the governor’s office, it attempted to funnel an additional $8.87 million to NZero by amending the contract without putting it out to bid, according to emails obtained by ProPublica. Again, an administration employee flagged the “enormous amount” as inappropriate for a contract amendment, and purchasing officers halted it.

    A spokesperson for McClinton said despite the go-ahead on the amendment from his department’s lawyers, he continued to look for other possible vendors and discovered another company was already tracking vehicle emissions for the state. That company was provided more funding to expand its services, and the effort to amend NZero’s contract was dropped. McClinton said his office may still open a bidding process for remaining funds from Cannizzaro’s bill and NZero would be welcome to compete.

    Meanwhile, the NZero board has replaced the company’s CEO with Weber, one of the co-founders, and both Josh Griffin and Matt Griffin resigned earlier this year. The company has lost about a third of its employees, according to a LinkedIn estimate. The restructure was unrelated to the Nevada contract, Weber said. He added he’s excited about the company’s future as it refocuses on new tools to help its customers “optimize their efforts to reduce impact on the planet.”

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Tahitians angry over New York Times Olympic ‘Poisoned Paradise’ story

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French desk

    French Polynesia’s top leaders have voiced united angry protests against a New York Times story published this week headlined “Olympic Surfing Comes to a ‘Poisoned’ Paradise”.

    The story, published in Tuesday, was referring to the fallout in 1974 from one of the French nuclear tests — 193 were carried out between 1966 and 1996 on the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa — that would have contaminated the main island of Tahiti where the surfing events of the Olympics are currently being held in Teahupo’o.

    Reacting to the article, Tony Géros, President of Polynesia’s Territorial Assembly, told public broadcaster Polynésie La Première TV that “just because The New York Times brings up age-old subjects doesn’t mean that today we’re going to question the entire future of the country regarding this matter.

    PARIS OLYMPICS 2024
    PARIS OLYMPICS 2024

    “It just doesn’t hold water.

    “You know, they have the right to think what they want. They can come and lecture us.

    “I think the United States also conducted their own nuclear tests,” said French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson.

    “So there you go, it doesn’t bother me that much.

    “What would bother me was if this story became a big deal.”

    Immediately after the Second World War, the US established its nuclear test Pacific Proving Grounds in the UN mandated trust territory of Micronesia.

    Several sites in the Marshall Islands and a few other sites in the Pacific Ocean were where the US conducted 105 atmospheric and underwater — not underground — nuclear tests between 1946 and 1962.

    The US tested a nuclear weapon codenamed Able on Bikini Atoll on 1 July 1946. It was followed by Baker three weeks later on July 25.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ with additional reporting by Asia Pacific Report.

    French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson
    French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson . . . “What would bother me was if this story became a big deal.” Image: Polynésie la 1ère TV screenshot


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New head of UN deep-sea mining regulator vows to restore neutrality

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Stephen Wright of BenarNews

    Promises of “accountability and transparency” in deep-sea mining has seen a tsunami-size vote by nations on Friday for a Brazilian scientist to replace the incumbent British lawyer as head of an obscure UN organisation that regulates the world’s seabed.

    Mounting international opposition to prospects of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) approving exploitation of the deep ocean’s vast mineral bounty by corporations before its environmental regulations were finalised fuelled the mood for change.

    A rare vote by member nations saw Brazil’s candidate, former oceanographer Leticia Carvalho, defeat two-term head Michael Lodge, who has been criticised for being aligned to seabed mining companies.

    Lodge was not present when the result was announced.

    “The winning margin reflects the appetite for change,” Carvalho told BenarNews. “I see that transparency and accountability, broader participation, more focus on additional science, bridging knowledge gaps are the priority areas.”

    Lodge had support from only 34 nations compared with 79 for Carvahlo, who also campaigned on restoring neutrality to the secretary-general position. She is currently a senior official at the UN Environment Programme and a former oil industry regulator in Brazil.

    The change of leadership at the Kingston-based ISA is a possible setback to efforts to quickly finalise regulations for seabed mining, which would pave the way for exploitation to begin in the areas under its jurisdiction.

    Some countries, meanwhile, are exploring the possibility of nodule mining in their territorial waters, which are outside of ISA oversight.

    New head of UN deep-sea mining regulator vows to restore neutrality International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect, Leticia Carvalho [center] of Brazil, is congratulated by an ISA delegate following her election on Aug. 2, 2024 in Kingston, Jamaica.
    The new head of the UN deep-sea mining regulator vows to restore neutrality . . . International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect Leticia Carvalho (centre) of Brazil is congratulated by an ISA delegate following her election this week. Image: Stephen Wright/BenarNews

    Mining of the golf ball-sized metallic nodules that litter swathes of the sea bed is touted as a source of rare earths and minerals needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, as the world reduces reliance on fossil fuels.

    Sceptics say such minerals are already abundant on land and warn that mining the sea bed could cause irreparable damage to an environment that is still poorly understood by science.

    Lodge was nominated for a third term by Kiribati, which is one of three Pacific island nations working with Nasdaq-listed The Metals Company on plans to exploit seabed minerals. More than 30 nations were disqualified from voting in the secret ballot as their financial contributions to the ISA are in arrears.

    The hundreds of delegates and other attendees at the ISA assembly lined up to hug Carvalho following her election, including Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company.

    International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect, Leticia Carvalho [left] of Brazil, is pictured with The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron following her election on Aug. 2, 2024 in Kingston, Jamaica.
    International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect Leticia Carvalho of Brazil pictured with The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron following her election this week. Image: Stephen Wright/BenarNews

    After the vote the company tweeted, “we appreciate her proactive engagement with us and share her belief that adopting regulations, not a moratorium, is the best way to fulfil the ISA’s mandate,” adding they still hope to become “the first commercial operator in this promising industry.”

    Greenpeace International campaigner Louisa Casson said she hoped Carvalho would work with governments “to change the ISA’s course to serve the public interest, as it has been driven by the narrow corporate interests of the deep sea mining industry for far too long.”

    This week’s annual assembly of the ISA also witnessed more nations joining a call for a moratorium on mining until there was greater scientific and environmental understanding of its likely consequences.

    Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu speaks at the annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly in Kingston, Jamaica, pictured on July 29, 2024.
    Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu speaking at the annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly in Kingston, Jamaica, this week. Image: IISD-ENB

    Tuvalu is one of the latest to join those calling for a moratorium, taking to 10 the members of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum, now opposed to any imminent start to deep-sea mining.

    Nations such as Vanuatu and Chile also succeeded in forcing a general debate on establishing an environmental policy at the ISA.

    Pelenatita Petelo Kara, a Tongan activist who campaigns against deep-sea mining, said she was hopeful new leadership would mean “more time for science to confirm new developments” such as alternative minerals for green technologies as well as a more thorough dialogue on the proposed mining rules.

    Deep-sea mineral extraction has been particularly contentious in the Pacific, where some economically lagging island nations see it as a possible financial windfall, but many other island states are strongly opposed.

    Members of the International Seabed Authority assembly at their week-long annual meeting at the headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica pictured on July 31, 2024
    Members of the International Seabed Authority assembly at their week-long annual meeting at the headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, this week. Image: IISD-ENB

    The island nation of Nauru in June 2021 notified the seabed authority of its intention to begin mining, which triggered the clock for the first time on a two-year period for the authority’s member nations to finalise regulations.

    Its president David Adeang told the assembly earlier this week that its mining application currently being prepared in conjunction with The Metals Company would allow the ISA to make “an informed decision based on real scientific data and not emotion and conjecture.”

    Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Published with the permission of BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Living With Heat

    Mequite Flats Dunes, Death Valley National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    The earth gets hotter, as rich nations continue their coal, oil and gas burning spree, while those who urge a course correction get…thrown into prison. The latest casualty of a judiciary dedicated to preserving ecocidal plutocracy is Extinction Rebellion’s Roger Hallam, sentenced to five years in jail in the U.K. for his efforts to stop the corporate insanity defiling the planet. You may think “defiling” is a strong word. But with a heat index of 144 degrees Fahrenheit in Dubai July 16, multiple heat domes baking enormous swaths of the globe this month at record-smashing temperatures for record-smashing lengths of time, and the four hottest days IN A ROW ever recorded in July, you might want to thank Hallam for attempting to arrest this calamity. But if you do, be prepared for the violent, most rapacious aristo-oligarchs in human history – especially those peopling the top echelons of giant oil corporations – to try to shut you up.

    Those moneyed bigwigs have been fiendishly effective when it comes to tarring the climate movement and climate science as junk. It seems the hotter the planet becomes, the more undeniable the evidence of our senses and statistics, the more these fantastically wealthy polluters double down on their planetary pyromania. They do not care what happens to the next generation and suffer from the delusion that they will be immune to the climate fiasco unfolding now. So they go on pooh-poohing extreme weather and dangerous heat and leading the best congress their money can buy by the nose.

    Back to Hallam. His crime? In his own words: “Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.” Hallam recounts in his recent posts that when, during his trial, he described the climate apocalypse we face – “floods, wildfires, mass heat deaths” – the judge muzzled him. “He sent out the jury and threatened to arrest me if I didn’t stop.” Hallam kept talking. The jury was kept out of the courtroom.

    The accused cited the Dutch Supreme Court ruling “that all governments have a legal obligation to prevent the emissions of greenhouse gases.” When the jury returned, Hallam referred to case law, but the judge ordered the jurors to disregard him, even as he highlighted “the objective danger I’ve experienced as a farmer unable to grow food.” Indeed, some experts argue that by the end of the century, the much warmer earth will be unsuitable for growing wheat. So I guess those alive then will have to get their carbs from something other than bread.

     Things are bad for this planet, our only home. In the past two years, global temps have shot way up, past scientific predictions, while ocean heat has blasted through all recorded precedents. According to the New York Times April 10, “the ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year.” This kills marine life, causes coral bleaching and impacts weather, already severely eccentric and out of kilter from atmospheric warming. “Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid systems, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink and millions displaced,” wrote Robert Hunziker in CounterPunch June 21. “Welcome to the future of climate change…Pakistan.” To prevent that future from spreading to other parts of the globe, we must stop burning fossil fuels, pronto.

    This article cites an interview from Inside Climate News June 8, entitled “As Temperatures in Pakistan Top 120 Degrees, There’s Nowhere to Run.” This is something no nation, no leader wants to invite. Right, Donald “I Dig Coal” Trump? We can assume the Dems are somewhat on board (vide: Kamala “Prosecuted Polluters” Harris who has specifically addressed this matter of our collective fate), but the GOP is not. However, Trump’s surprisingly heartening plan to encourage Beijing to plant new industries here in the U.S. could easily include what China excels at, namely renewables.

    Producing renewables means big bucks and entails lots of new jobs, and for GOP skeptics who want to boost fossil fuels, well hello? Wasn’t the multi-week, crushing heat dome over North America in July enough for you? Or do you actually want this heat/hurricane/wildfire catastrophe to get worse? It’s not good for business when electrical grids crash, whole cities like Houston lose power and sweltering residents decide, in large numbers, to move elsewhere. Or is the GOP content to let the south and west become uninhabitable?

    Pakastani environmental lawyer Rafay Alam is quoted by Hunziker: “There is a significant denialism on climate change in places like the United States…It’s extremely infuriating to see people who’ve participated in this global warming deny it, deny any accountability, try and move on as if nothing’s happened and try to continue to make money and drive that bottom line.” Alam says multitudes in the Global South share this view. But the problem is that waking up your average American businessman is almost impossible, his uninformed mind is already made up, and climate doom, homo boobus thinks, is bad fer bizness. Well, it IS bad for business, at least for business as it’s conducted now, but it’s good for a whole slew of new, green businesses. However, no American entrepreneur wants to hear that what he does will ultimately end the world as we know it, why, that could scare off customers…almost as fast as a hurricane blows away their roofs.

    One can always hope, and maybe we’ll get lucky, that the latest shocking heat trends are a fluke and that climate scientists’ more conservative – though equally devastating in the long term – predictions prove correct. Activists, however, won’t sit on their hands and wait. Take Hallam again. Prison guards, he posted July 22, have one main maxim: “Break the rules and you will be punished.” That, Hallam writes, corresponds to “politics at the end of the world. You can vote for whoever you want to as long as they don’t stop the project to destroy the human race over the next two decades…Civilizations…commit suicide, to use historian Arnold Toynbee’s famous phrase. Actually, they all destroy themselves eventually…because they are so sure they will not destroy themselves.”

    Hallam argues that currently capital “has escaped control by the state…And soon capital will lose…” That’s because its externalities, i.e. carbon pollution, ruin the livable world. Historically, capital refused to pay for its externalities, for destroying and deforming the earth, and there’s no sign that’s about to change, even though, as of July 23 – just for instance – the whole ocean basin of the North Atlantic experiences a heatwave up 1.5 degrees Celsius above normal. This, while ocean temps have shot up 16 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The ocean is vast. It takes lots of carbon pollution to do this. But that’s what our vaunted, unchecked, rampaging, late capitalism has wrought, and that’s merely one example among hundreds.

    Another for instance: In May and June, a heat dome stalled over Mexico and temps shot up over 113 degrees Fahrenheit, killing dozens of people, while bats, birds and monkeys got so hot they fell dead from the trees. This is not normal. This is life-threatening. It did not happen in the 20th century; back then summers were hot, but not nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end on, say, the North American East Coast. If we want to arrest this disaster, business as usual must rapidly alter. Such a prescription may be anathema to plutocrats, but they, too, should consider what the world will be like in mere decades. Is it really worth gambling dying of heat prostration, or drowning in a flood, or being swept away by a hurricane? Because a broken climate will not spare the rich. It will kill them, too.

    The post Living With Heat appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • The Folly of Atomic Power

    Image by Nicolas Hippert.

    This past June, a couple of my sisters and I drove from California to Minnesota. One of the states we traveled through was Idaho. We gassed up in a town called Atomic City, which advertised itself as the first city in the United States to have nuclear-powered electricity. This town is inside what grounds of the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890 square mile research site run by the Department of Energy together with various commercial and military interests. Its website currently touts its scientific expertise and its mission devoted to carbon-free nuclear energy, alternative energy and military security. There are currently over 6000 employees working at the various sites of the laboratory, which includes over fifty nuclear reactors and has an annual budget of $1.6 billion dollars. The laboratory and its web page provide a perfect example of how the business of nuclear energy as described by author M. V. Ramana in his brilliant new book Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change actually works.

    Indeed, the laboratory’s work is a physical and very real representation of the triple threat Ramana describes in the text: the development of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and, almost as an afterthought, alternative energy sources like solar and wind. Ramana, who holds the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and is a Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is a longtime opponent of the nuclear power industry and the government that collaborate and support it. His scientific background provides a solid rebuke to those in the industry and those who shill for it who repeat the same half-truths and lies whenever nuclear energy is brought up. In addition, this book is a convincing response supported by solid science (and a bit of political economy) to those who want the public to believe that nuclear power is a reasonable and affordable alternative to fossil fuels and the global climate crisis.

    Chapter by chapter, Ramana addresses the health risks, the economics of, and the unbreakable link between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry. Instead of talking in terms of possibility, he focuses on the existing circumstances. To those who would try and sell the public a new nuclear plant by suggesting that the possibility of a nuclear accident at the plant is infinitesimal, Ramana writes:

    “Theoretical predictions of stupefyingly low accident probabilities do not square with the empirical evidence of severe accidents at nuclear reactors.”(26)

    In other words, believe what you see, not what the industry says. In another chapter, Ramana questions the method by which the private power utilities socialize the costs while privatizing the profits. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this phenomenon is the contracts and laws that force utility companies to pay for plants that never go online (and, in some cases, are never even built.) I recall this occurring when I lived in North Carolina. South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (SCE&G) lobbied for and received the go-ahead to build two nuclear reactors. As costs mounted, the company asked the Public Utilities Commission to allow the firm to charge customers for the costs associated with building the plants. To make a long story short, customers are still paying for the plants, and the plants were never built. Ramana provides a detailed account of this story in a chapter he titles “Private Profits, Social Costs: Industry Strategies” as a perfect example of how the industry works.

    In his chapter on the links between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry, the author is equally scathing. When discussing the claim made by some environmentalists who support nuclear power that the nuclear power industry and the nuclear war industry are two different things, Ramana is clear: any separation is simply an illusion. In fact, he argues that one reason governments are so willing to support the nuclear power industry is because it produces the essential element plutonium for nuclear weapons as a supposed by-product. In fact, it appears more likely that plutonium is not a mere by-product but one of the primary reasons for the ongoing governmental support for the industry.

    Nuclear is Not the Solution discusses the nuclear industry in a frank and honest manner. There are no questionable claims about nuclear energy or fantastic excuses made for the industry’s mistakes and its questionable premises. The text details the industry’s lies, mistakes and cover-ups, reminding the reader that they should focus on the historical and empirical facts, not fanciful advertising and promises. He describes an industry rife with corruption and hungry for profits. Although his primary focus is on the industry in the United States, Ramana does not spare other nuclear powers from his reasoned and well-informed exposé. Those who think nuclear energy should be the future would do well to read his book. It should convince one the opposite is more likely the truth.

    The post The Folly of Atomic Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • From East Palestine to Pike County: Ohio’s ‘sacrifice zone’ communities gather in Toledo

    From East Palestine, Ohio, to South Baltimore and beyond, we’ve been connecting you with residents living in the toxic wastelands left by private and government-run industry—ordinary working people who have been thrust into extraordinary fights for their lives. In the latest installment of our ongoing Sacrificed series, we go to Toledo, Ohio, a city that, in 2014, lost access to its water supply for three days straight due to a massive, toxic algal bloom caused by runoff from industrial animal farming.

    We speak with filmmaker Mike Balonek and welcome back Chris Albright, a resident of East Palestine, to discuss the connections between the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster and the Toledo Water Crisis. We also talk about an upcoming conference in Toledo on Saturday, August 3, hosted by the Justice for East Palestine Residents & Workers coalition: “Is your community a sacrifice zone? A conference on corporate-caused disasters.” The conference will focus on the Toledo Water Crisis, the derailment in East Palestine and the need for better railroad safety, and the radioactive poisoning of residents living near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, Ohio. The conference will also feature the world premiere of filmmaker Mike Balonek’s new documentary The Big Problem In The Great Lakes, a film about the Toledo Water Crisis of 2014.

    Additional links/info below…

    Permanent links below…

    Featured Music…

    • Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Data Centers Demand a Massive Amount of Energy. Here’s How Some States Are Tackling the Industry’s Impact.

    by Lulu Ramadan and Sydney Brownstone, The Seattle Times

    This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Seattle Times. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

    When lawmakers in Washington set out to expand a lucrative tax break for the state’s data center industry in 2022, they included what some considered an essential provision: a study of the energy-hungry industry’s impact on the state’s electrical grid.

    Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed that provision but let the tax break expansion go forward. As The Seattle Times and ProPublica recently reported, the industry has continued to grow and now threatens Washington’s effort to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity generation.

    Washington’s experience with addressing the power demand of data centers parallels the struggles playing out in other states around the country where the industry has rapidly grown and tax breaks are a factor.

    Virginia, home to the nation’s largest data center market, once debated running data centers on carbon-emitting diesel generators during power shortages to keep the lights on in the area. (That plan faced significant public pushback from environmental groups, and an area utility is exploring other options.)

    Dominion Energy, the utility that serves most of Virginia’s data centers, has said that it intends to meet state requirements to decarbonize the grid by 2045, but that the task would be more challenging with rising demands driven largely by data centers, Inside Climate News reported. The utility also has indicated that new natural gas plants will be needed.

    Some Virginia lawmakers and the state’s Republican governor have proposed reversing or dramatically altering the clean energy goals.

    A northern Virginia lawmaker instead proposed attaching strings to the state’s data center tax break. This year, he introduced legislation saying data centers would only qualify if they maximized energy efficiency and found renewable resources. The bill died in Virginia’s General Assembly. But the state authorized a study of the industry and how tax breaks impact the grid.

    “If we’re going to have data centers, which we all know to be huge consumers of electricity, let’s require them to be as efficient as possible,” said state Delegate Richard “Rip” Sullivan Jr., the Democrat who sponsored the original bill. “Let’s require them to use as little energy as possible to do their job.”

    Inslee’s 2022 veto of a study similar to Virginia’s cited the fact that Northwest power planners already include data centers in their estimates of regional demand. But supporters of the legislation said their goal was to obtain more precise answers about Washington-specific electricity needs.

    Georgia lawmakers this year passed a bill to halt the state’s data center tax break until data center power use could be analyzed. In the meantime, according to media reports, the state’s largest utility said it would use fossil fuels to make up an energy shortfall caused in part by data centers. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp then vetoed the tax break pause in May.

    Lawmakers in Connecticut and South Carolina have also debated policies to tackle data center power usage in the past year.

    “Maybe we want to entice more of them to come. I just want to make sure that we understand the pros and the cons of that before we do it,” South Carolina’s Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said in May, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette.

    Countries such as Ireland, Singapore and the Netherlands have at times forced data centers to halt construction to limit strains on the power grid, according to a report by the nonprofit Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The report’s recommendations for addressing data center power usage include encouraging the private sector to invest directly in renewables.

    Sajjad Moazeni, a University of Washington professor who studies artificial intelligence and data center power consumption, said states should consider electricity impacts when formulating data center legislation. Moazeni’s recent research found that in just one day, ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence tool, used roughly as much power as 33,000 U.S. households use in a year.

    “A policy can help both push companies to make these data centers more efficient and preserve a cleaner, better environment for us,” Moazeni said. “Policymakers need to consider a larger set of metrics on power usage and efficiency.”

    Eli Sanders contributed research while a student with the Technology, Law and Public Policy Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law.

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Tuvalu joins growing Pacific tide of opposition to deep sea mining

    Asia Pacific Report

    Tuvalu has added its voice to the growing tide in the Pacific against deep sea mining, highlighting the momentum against this destructive industry, says Greenpeace.

    The Tuvalu government’s call for a precautionary pause on deep sea mining took place at the 29th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Kingston, Jamaica.

    Greenpeace head of Pacific Shiva Gounden congratulated the government of Tuvalu over its “commitment to protecting our oceans”.

    “Tuvalu joins a growing chorus of Pacific nations calling for a ban on deep sea mining to safeguard our Moana, which gives and sustains life for millions of people across the Pacific and around the world,” he said in a statement.

    “This announcement is courageous and historic, as the proud island nation of Tuvalu again shows global leadership on ocean protection just like they have on climate protection, something we Pacific people see as deeply interconnected.

    “The momentum growing against the destructive deep sea mining industry is undeniable.

    “For too long, profit-hungry corporations have plundered and exploited the ocean and high seas at the expense of the communities who depend on them, and whose lives and cultures are intrinsically linked with our oceans.”

    Pacific says ‘no more’
    Gounden said the message was loud and clear — “Pacific Island nations say, no more”.

    Tuvalu’s announcement follows statements from the Pacific nations of Vanuatu and Palau at the ISA, with both governments supporting a pause on deep sea mining to protect the oceans for generations to come.

    A total of 31 countries, including the UK and Germany, have committed to a moratorium.

    Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Juressa Lee (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Rarotonga) welcomed the decisions by Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Palau.

    “Pacific peoples are standing up and saying no to deep sea mining. Deep sea mining will do nothing to benefit the people of the Moana but will instead exacerbate the climate and biodiversity crises,” she said.

    “Extractivism is just continued colonisation of our heritage lands and waters, livelihoods and ways we see the world, and deep sea mining is no different.

    “The intrinsic links to the Moana that Pacific Peoples speak about is valuable matauranga.

    “There is so much in Pacific knowledge and culture that can teach us how to live connected to the ocean while also taking care of it.

    “After hundreds of years of extraction causing climate disaster and biodiversity loss, governments are now resisting and turning toward Indigenous leadership and today we’ve seen some in the Pacific leading the way.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Is Vegan Regenerative Agriculture the Key to Building a Sustainable Future of Food?

    Most of us don’t spare a thought for soil that often. But, the truth is, without it, we’d struggle to survive. After all, it is responsible for growing most of our food. That’s one key reason why it’s incredibly important that we take care of our soil. But the Earth beneath our feet can also play another significant role: tackling the climate crisis.

    It turns out, healthy soil can actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere. But, right now, not all of our soil is in good condition. Around the world, soil is being degraded and depleted by agriculture, particularly animal agriculture. In fact, in the US, industrialized livestock is responsible for around 85 percent of all soil erosion.

    VegNews.Garden.SandieClarkeUnsplashUnsplash

    One solution to reduce the impact farming has on the land is to embrace a technique called regenerative agriculture. But what does this actually mean? And will it involve leaving animal farming behind for good? 

    What is meant by regenerative farming?

    Regenerative agriculture is essentially about creating a system of farming that helps to improve the land, and not deplete it.

    “In short, [it’s] a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to water management, fertilizer use, and more,” notes The Climate Reality Project, a climate change education nonprofit.

    VegNews.regenerativeagriculture.UnsplashUnsplash

    It involves moving away from intensive plowing and tilling, which erode soil, as well as increasing plant diversity, rotating crops to infuse the soil with more organic matter, and generally minimizing soil disturbance by reducing the use of chemicals, like fertilizers.

    There is also no place for the current method of industrialized livestock production in regenerative farming.

    “Grazing livestock is a fully automated system for ecological destruction,” explains environmentalist George Monbiot for The Guardian. “You need only release them onto the land and they do the rest, browsing out tree seedlings, simplifying complex ecosystems. Their keepers augment this assault by slaughtering large predators.”Unsplash

    Indigenous communities invented regenerative agriculture 

    Regenerative farming has been hailed by many as the future of food. But it’s also important to recognize that for many indigenous groups, it is also their past. Looking after the Earth in this way is not a new invention.

    “Did you know that there were no domesticated draft animals in the Western Hemisphere before European colonization of the Americas?” asks Climate Reality Project. Before this, indigenous communities were looking after the land using regenerative practices. There was no tilling or monocropping. For example, they would use a combination of maize, beans, and squash to provide the soil with all the nutrients it needed to thrive.

    VegNews.Maize.JenTheodore.UnsplashUnsplash

    “It’s important that credit be given where it’s due; the practices we now praise as being good for food security and the environment were not dreamed up in a laboratory in the last decade or two,” notes the Climate Reality Project.

    “They were born on the Plains, executed across Appalachia, and transformed desert spaces into oases long before colonizers stormed the shores of what is now the United States,” it continues. “They were developed by Indigenous people. And we are grateful.”

    Can regenerative agriculture be applied to animals?

    While regenerative agriculture practices are often applied to crops, some farmers are also applying them to animal agriculture.

    For example, in Georgia, one farm called White Oak Pastures has moved away from industrial cattle ranching and instead aims to improve the health of the land by rotating organic chickens, pigs, and cattle. As a result, it has claimed that its grass-fed beef is carbon neutral because its healthy soil is storing more carbon than its cows emit in their lifetime.

    VegNews.chickenfarm.pexelsPexels

    But that said, critics are keen to point out that any “low-carbon” steaks are still likely to have produced far more emissions than plant-based products. Beef is an industry notorious for potent methane emissions, and so it’s arguably never going to be better for the planet to pick up a hamburger over a block of tofu.

    In 2022, the Environmental Working Group called the idea of low-carbon beef as “nonsensical” as the idea of “low cancer” cigarettes. “No food produces more greenhouse gas emissions than beef,” it explained. “Even lamb results in half as many emissions, pound for pound, as beef, according to the most recent estimates.”

    Is vegan, regenerative agriculture the answer to a healthy food system?

    Many experts believe that a beef-free, plant-based food system is the answer to a healthy future of food. In 2018, for example, the largest-ever food production study, conducted at the University of Oxford, concluded that going vegan was the single-biggest action a person could take to reduce their impact on the planet. 

    And if this food is grown with regenerative practices, which nourish the soil, this is only going to benefit the planet even more.

    VegNews.regenerativefarming1.UnsplashUnsplash

    This idea is supported by Monbiot, who has extensively researched the idea of “holistic” or “regenerative” farm animal grazing, and even interviewed some of its biggest proponents. In his eyes, the only healthy future of farming is one that doesn’t include animals. 

    “That vast expanse of pastureland, from which we obtain so little at such great environmental cost, would be better used for rewilding: the mass restoration of nature,” he notes. 

    “Not only would this help to reverse the catastrophic decline in habitats and the diversity and abundance of wildlife, but the returning forests, wetlands, and savannahs are likely to absorb far more carbon than even the most sophisticated forms of grazing.”

    This post was originally published on VegNews.com.

  • In just a year, the EACOP fossil fuel project is already decimating wildlife

    The climate-wrecking East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is already wreaking havoc on wildlife in a biodiverse national park.

    A new report has exposed how key fossil fuel infrastructure associated with the project is impacting the park’s iconic species. To make matters worse, oil drilling activities are driving conflict between wildlife and communities residing in the park.

    EACOP: a biodiversity disaster waiting to happen

    The EACOP project involves a 930-mile long pipeline that will transport oil from Uganda to a port in Tanzania. French fossil fuel firm TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC), and Uganda’s state oil company are partnering on the pipeline.

    In August 2023, the company started operations in Murchison Falls National Park, in the Lake Albert region. There, the EACOP joint venture companies have discovered oil fields containing approximately 1.7bn barrels of recoverable oil. These are the Tilenga and Kingfisher oilfields on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – and the project involves drilling hundreds of wells across the area.

    This is where EACOP then comes in. The companies are developing the pipeline to deliver the extracted crude to Tanzania for international export.

    However, the national park is home to 76 mammal species and 451 different species of bird – all at risk from the oil drilling and construction activities.

    So as the Canary previously highlighted, the fossil fuel operations have enormous ramifications for biodiversity. In particular, a 2022 report expressed how EACOP would impact nearly 2,000 square kilometres of protected wildlife habitats. On top of this, it would damage a further 500 kilometres of wildlife corridors, used by

    Of course, this would include the wildlife living in Murchison Falls National Park. Now, nearly a year since companies began operations, the impacts are already plain to see.

    Displacing elephants and harming communities

    The Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) has released a new report investigating the impacts of the project on wildlife across the park.

    The study assessed the impact or risks presented by development of the key fossil fuel infrastructure to biodiversity conservation in the park.  These included: oil rigs, wellpads, oil roads, and the Victoria Nile Pipeline Crossing.

    The latter pipeline is supposed to be constructed under the Victoria Nile, and it will affect the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Ramsar site, a wetland site vital for bird life. This has been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage status.

    Satellite imagery of the projects in the report revealed how at least two of the ten wellpads are less than a kilometre from this protected wetland site.

    What’s more the fossil fuel infrastructure is showing signs of displacing the local elephant population. Notably the report emphasised the impact this was also having on local communities:

    Oil host communities that live around the park report that elephants are moving from MFNP and are invading communities. The elephants destroy croplands and as many as five people were killed by the elephants between 2023 and April 2024

    In effect, the oil drilling activities have distressed elephants and driven them into local villages.

    On top of this, light pollution from the project is also affection local communities and threatening nocturnal wildlife. Locals have reported that light from the Tilenga drilling rig can be seen as far as 13.9km away.

    Conservationists and other contributors to the report raised concerns of the impacts this could have on the feeding pattern and behaviour of leopards, lions, birds and other species, stating that:

    These could migrate from the park, or suffer worse impacts such as death.

    Murchison Falls National Park is ‘dying’

    Overall, the report concluded that the perfect storm of the climate crisis, poaching, and fossil fuel projects are destroying Murchison Falls National Park.

    Crucially, the report expressed how study participants observed that:

    while MFNP was famous for sighting of huge populations of wildlife such as hippos, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and others before the COVID-19 pandemic, intense flooding of River Nile in the park between 2020 and 2021 and before oil activities picked up in the park, much smaller populations can be sighted today.

    As a result, one respondent stated that:

    Murchison Falls National Park is dying

    Given the impacts EACOP and its associated oil projects have already unleashed, AFIEGO concluded:

    TotalEnergies and the Ugandan government should stop oil exploitation activities in MFNP to reduce the pressures faced by biodiversty in the park so as to promote conservation

    Alongside this, it called for TotalEnergies to compensate oil host communities whose livelihoods the project has decimated.

    The StopEACOP campaign has echoed these demands. Commenting on the report, it said that:

    There is little time left for Murchison Falls National Park. We should not sit still while this natural wonder is sacrificed for short-term gains and benefit a few people at the expense of the majority of Ugandans. We must all unite and secure this irreplaceable ecosystem for our descendants.

    Significantly, StopEACOP also railed against Standard Bank’s recent decision to finance the project. It stated that:

    This research by AFIEGO is quite timely because Standard Bank was recently reported as having agreed to fund this controversial project, which it had postponed for years in the name of doing due diligence. How did their due diligence miss these impacts? We urge them and other financial institutions to read this research, reconsider funding this project, and save the iconic Murchison Falls National Park. The fate of Uganda’s wildlife and the millions earning a livelihood from wildlife conservation efforts and fishing hangs in the balance.

    Of course, none of this is surprising. Local people, climate activists, scientists, and conservation organisations have been warning this would happen all along. So now, the EACOP fossil fuel project is destroying a fragile area of biodiversity, harming communities, and fueling the climate crisis. AFIEGO’s report bears witness to this – and only proves why communities and activists are right to keep up the fight.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Hit by tidal wave’ – remote FSM atoll calls for seawall

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific Journalist

    The Chief Administrator of the Federated States of Micronesia’s most remote island is calling on senators in the Congress to approve funds to build a major seawall.

    Solomon Lowson says Kapingamarangi Atoll, which has a population of about 500, has been battered by climate-related disasters for decades.

    “Without seawall, our crop will not grow well because this happens every year, especially in the months of November and December,” Lowson told RNZ Pacific.

    In January, homes were washed away and their taro patches damaged by salt water.

    He said his island is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis.

    “We’ve been having this problem for so many years; we’ve been hit by a tidal wave and it caused a lot of inundation of water into our taro patches,” he said.

    “So we’re trying to get some money to help build and make it safe for the future.”

    Pohnpei State Governor, Stevenson Joseph, is due to arrive in Kapingamarangi on Friday (local time) to discuss the issues.

    Lowson said the type of seawall needed would need to be built from rocks and concrete.

    Kapingamarangi resident Rubino and his old taro pit which was destroyed by seawater in January 2024. It was manually dug out.
    Kapingamarangi resident Rubino and his old taro pit which was destroyed by seawater in January 2024. It was manually dug out. Image: Scott Nguyen/RNZ

    ‘Our budget is very small’
    Kapingamarangi is an atoll and a municipality in the state of Pohnpei of the Federated States of Micronesia.

    The community is allocated around US$87,000 (NZ$147,000) each year for the municipal operation, but the seawall is expected to cost around US$80,000, Lowson said.

    “We have only small projects like renovating our office, because we don’t have enough money to to make a big project [like the seawall],” he said.

    Around 150 people currently reside on Kapingamarangi, and there is a diaspora of around 2000 living in Pohnpei, in mainland Hawaii, Guam and many other places, Lowson said.

    With sea surges wrecking their taro crops Lawson issued a declaration calling for food assistance.

    He said he does not want to keep relying on shipments of rice, ramen and flour because local produce is much healthier.

    Drought another threat
    While the small remote atoll gets battered by the ocean, there is another threat, drought.

    Thousands of people have been impacted by drought in the Federated States of Micronesia over the past year, including Kapingamarangi residents.

    Earlier this year, the Australian vessel Reliant dispatched 116,000 liters of fresh water for drought response in Pohnpei, while the US Coast Guard aided in transporting relief supplies and RO units to Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro, the Office of the President said via a statement.

    Lowson is hoping this week’s visit from Joseph will end in solutions and a plan to fund a seawall.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Hit by tidal wave’ – remote FSM atoll calls for seawall

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific Journalist

    The Chief Administrator of the Federated States of Micronesia’s most remote island is calling on senators in the Congress to approve funds to build a major seawall.

    Solomon Lowson says Kapingamarangi Atoll, which has a population of about 500, has been battered by climate-related disasters for decades.

    “Without seawall, our crop will not grow well because this happens every year, especially in the months of November and December,” Lowson told RNZ Pacific.

    In January, homes were washed away and their taro patches damaged by salt water.

    He said his island is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis.

    “We’ve been having this problem for so many years; we’ve been hit by a tidal wave and it caused a lot of inundation of water into our taro patches,” he said.

    “So we’re trying to get some money to help build and make it safe for the future.”

    Pohnpei State Governor, Stevenson Joseph, is due to arrive in Kapingamarangi on Friday (local time) to discuss the issues.

    Lowson said the type of seawall needed would need to be built from rocks and concrete.

    Kapingamarangi resident Rubino and his old taro pit which was destroyed by seawater in January 2024. It was manually dug out.
    Kapingamarangi resident Rubino and his old taro pit which was destroyed by seawater in January 2024. It was manually dug out. Image: Scott Nguyen/RNZ

    ‘Our budget is very small’
    Kapingamarangi is an atoll and a municipality in the state of Pohnpei of the Federated States of Micronesia.

    The community is allocated around US$87,000 (NZ$147,000) each year for the municipal operation, but the seawall is expected to cost around US$80,000, Lowson said.

    “We have only small projects like renovating our office, because we don’t have enough money to to make a big project [like the seawall],” he said.

    Around 150 people currently reside on Kapingamarangi, and there is a diaspora of around 2000 living in Pohnpei, in mainland Hawaii, Guam and many other places, Lowson said.

    With sea surges wrecking their taro crops Lawson issued a declaration calling for food assistance.

    He said he does not want to keep relying on shipments of rice, ramen and flour because local produce is much healthier.

    Drought another threat
    While the small remote atoll gets battered by the ocean, there is another threat, drought.

    Thousands of people have been impacted by drought in the Federated States of Micronesia over the past year, including Kapingamarangi residents.

    Earlier this year, the Australian vessel Reliant dispatched 116,000 liters of fresh water for drought response in Pohnpei, while the US Coast Guard aided in transporting relief supplies and RO units to Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro, the Office of the President said via a statement.

    Lowson is hoping this week’s visit from Joseph will end in solutions and a plan to fund a seawall.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.