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Category: environment

  • Biden Makes His Own Attack on Nonprofit Over Palestine

    The Biden administration is withholding federal funding from a climate justice group that supports a ceasefire in Gaza. 

    The Climate Justice Alliance, a national coalition of more than 100 community environmental groups, was one of 11 grant-making organizations designated for Environmental Protection Agency funding under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

    The Climate Justice Alliance is the only group of the 11 grantees that has engaged publicly on issues related to Palestine — and the only one that hasn’t received its funding.

    “If we are not funded, it could set a larger civil society precedent for any future federal funding.”

    Climate Justice Alliance Executive Director KD Chavez said the organization, which was recently attacked by right-wing politicians and media, has been targeted because of its anti-war stance.

    Palestine is hardly a focus of the Climate Justice Alliance’s work, but past statements calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and denouncing apartheid in Palestine have come under a microscope amid a political climate that is increasingly hostile to any form of support for Palestinians.

    “Since our founding, CJA has been really clear in our position opposing war, racism, and colonialism,” said Chavez. “For us, there is a direct tie to carbon emissions and militarism, and we stand behind our environmental and climate justice work, which is going to mean that we are anti-war at heart.” 

    Delaying the grant payment, which was first reported by E&E News, could set a broader precedent to withhold funding from organizations working on social justice issues, Chavez said. House Republicans recently passed a bill known as H.R. 9495 that critics say would green-light devastating political attacks on nonprofits. 

    “If we are not funded, it could set a larger civil society precedent for any future federal funding for any ambiguously progressive organization in the future,” Chavez said. “When we’re connecting the dots, seeing H.R. 9495 gain traction plus the potential of us not being obligated these funds could lead to dangerous precedent setting for civil society more broadly.” 

    A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency was still evaluating the Climate Justice Alliance grant. “EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate the funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program,” EPA Communications Director Nick Conger said in a statement to The Intercept. “EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance.” 

    Looming GOP Attack

    The Biden administration announced the recipients of $600 million in grants under the program in December. The Climate Justice Alliance was one of three national grantees. Nine regional organizations were also selected. 

    The Climate Justice Alliance said it met all administrative deadlines and expected to get notice of funds by September, the end of the standard 90-day waiting period for grant applicants. Grantees under the program have to have their funds obligated by December 6 in order to get the funds disbursed before the start of the Trump administration. 

    The grant would support communities experiencing disproportionately heavy impacts of climate change by funding air- and water-quality sampling, cleanup projects, air quality monitoring, and building green infrastructure. 

    If the EPA decided not to issue the grant, the effects would fall disproportionately on working people, Chavez said.

    “This would be a political divestment from working class and marginalized communities,” Chavez said. “In its place, we would see the polluting of our public lands and neighborhoods by the fossil fuel industry.”

    In a statement last year following the October 7 attacks, the Climate Justice Alliance called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and condemned “genocidal attacks by Israel on the civilian Palestinian population.” The alliance has also called on Congress to stop funding Israel’s military and denounced apartheid in Palestine as a climate justice issue resulting from the effects of war contaminating Palestine’s air, water, and soil. 

    “This is about the GOP’s obsession with shutting down the EPA.”

    “This is about the GOP’s obsession with shutting down the EPA,” Chavez said. “The attacks that we’re seeing on us are collateral damage in a war against regulations that protect everybody.” 

    Republican lawmakers and right-wing media have targeted the Climate Justice Alliance in recent attacks. On Saturday, the Daily Caller published a story on the pending EPA grant that claimed that the Climate Justice Alliance shared protest material celebrating Hamas. 

    The Daily Caller also said the Biden administration was weighing “awarding taxpayer dollars to [a] nonprofit that wants to defund the police.” Earlier this month, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a report criticizing the EPA program and claiming that the Climate Justice Alliance had exhibited “anti-Republican sentiment.” 

    President-elect Donald Trump and his administration are preparing to gut groups working on environmental and economic issues affecting working-class people, Chavez said. 

    “We’re going to be facing a lot of rollbacks in these next two to four years,” they said. “And we want to make sure that our communities are at least resourced in being able to mitigate the harm.”

    The post Biden Makes His Own Attack on Nonprofit Over Palestine appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Emergency Summit Regarding Antarctic Meltdown

    Image by Annie Spratt.

    “Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetimes.” (Source: Our Science, Your Future: Next Generation of Antarctic Scientists Call for Collaborative Action, Australian Antarctic Research Conference, November 22, 2024)

    Hundreds of scientists gathered in Australia for an “emergency summit” within the auspices of the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference d/d November 2024. This gathering of 450 mostly “early-career” polar scientists flexed scientific muscles to alert the world to the what’s happening to our planet, taking off the gloves and coming out swinging. They claim we’re got a bigger problem than generally realized: “Efforts to slow down climate change through coordinated global action are paramount to protect the future of Australia, Antarctica, and our planet,” Ibid.

    “The experts’ conclusion, published as a press statement, is a somber one: if we don’t act, and quickly, the melting of Antarctica ice could cause catastrophic sea levels rise around the globe.” (Source: Emergency Meeting Reveals the Alarming Extent of Antarctica’s Ice Loss, Earth.com, Nov. 24, 2024)

    According to the polar scientists: “The services of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica — oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner — have been taken for granted. Global warming-induced shifts observed in the region are immense. Recent research has shown record-low sea ice, extreme heatwaves exceeding 40°C (72°F) above average temperatures, and increased instability around key ice shelves. Shifting ecosystems on land and at sea underscore this sensitive region’s rapid and unprecedented transformations. Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Whether such irreversible tipping points have already passed is unknown.” (Our Science, Your Future)

    The scientists are calling for society to set immediate targets to “bend the carbon curve.” Failure to do so will commit generations to unpredictable, unstoppable sea level rise, likely beyond current expectations. Drastic action is necessary before it’s too late, calling for immediate reduction of emissions, CO2.

    Coastline Megacities at Risk

    However, reducing emissions is likely impossible unless and until major governmental authorities force the issue. Voluntary commitments to cut GHG (greenhouse gases) have not worked for over 30 years. Pledges by more than 150 nations to voluntarily cut emissions at the celebrated Paris 2015 UN climate meeting have flopped like a house of cards.

    Meanwhile, residents of vulnerable coastal cities may need to consider forcing the issue by forming Citizen Action Flood Prevention Committees to pressure local, state, and federal officials to take immediate measures to protect valuable real estate that’s subject to turning worthless. These committees could be supported by petitions signed by residents, demanding political action to take mitigation measures to protect their coastlines. For example, would nearly 100% of the residents of Miami Beach sign, maybe. And, how about residents of Jersey City? Maybe yes. And onward….

    According to Earth.org, coastal megacities are at serious risk, e.g., Bangkok, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Cardiff (UK), New Orleans, Manila, London, Shenzhen, Hamburg, and Dubai as well as megacities Miami and New York City. Many Florida and East Coast cities are high risk, e.g., Ft. Lauderdale, Norfolk, Hampton, Charleston, Cambridge, Jersey City, Chesapeake, Boston, Tampa, Palm Beach. It’s a long list.

    Unless and until citizen committees authorized by locals with demands en masse are presented to and accepted by local, state, and national policymakers and acted upon, according to a highly regarded analysis by The Universal Ecological Fund, working with climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Truth Behind the Climate Pledges: “An environmental and economic disaster from human-induced climate change is on the horizon. An analysis of current commitments to reduce emissions between 2020 and 2030 shows that almost 75 percent of the climate pledges are partially or totally insufficient to contribute to reducing GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030, and some of these pledges are unlikely to be achieved.”

    Moreover, the situation at hand is double trouble as the oil and gas industry has already committed to rapid expansion of fossil fuels at the same time as major corporations are turning up their noses at prior commitments. Climate change has lost its cachet at the worst possible moment: “In February 2024, three major investment companies stepped back from efforts to limit climate-damaging emissions. JPMorgan Chase’s and State Street’s investment arms have both quit a global investor alliance encouraging companies to avoid emissions, and BlackRock has largely limited its involvement. These companies aren’t the only ones backing out on climate agreements. In 2023, Amazon dropped an effort to zero out emissions of half its shipments by 2030, BP scaled back on its plan to reduce emissions by 35 percent by the end of 2030 and Shell Oil dropped an initiative to build a pipeline of carbon credits and other carbon-absorbing projects. Hundreds of companies across the world are backtracking on commitments toward green policies, despite growing concerns that the planet is reaching a crisis point.” (Source: Why Are Companies Reneging On Emissions Reduction? Earth Talk, April 11, 2024)

    Recent headlines tell the story: Top Companies Exaggerating Their progress (BBC) When Companies Reverse Their Climate Commitments (Yale Insights) Net Zero Promises from Major Corporations Fall Short (NBC News) Oil Companies Are Still Committed to Burn the Planet Down (Jacobin). A comprehensive list of reneging corporate interests is astonishing.

    Making matters more challenging yet, the polar scientists are severely compromised by politics, to wit: “Far-right parties opposing climate action are gaining significant momentum worldwide, especially in Western nations including Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. It is particularly noteworthy that despite their differing domestic agendas, these parties are unified in their resistance to climate initiatives.” (Source: The Betrayal: Why the Far Right Abandoned Action on Climate Change, Oxford Political Review, 18 June 2024)

    “The contemporary far-right’s turn against the environment is a major break from the past. During the 1980s, traditional conservatives, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, showed an interest in addressing environmental issues,” Ibid.

    The World at a Crossroads

    Which will it be? The choice is crystal clear. There are two and only two: (1) Fight dangerous climate change by stopping fossil fuel CO2 emissions now, or (2) Bale-out flooded megacities down the road?

    Based upon data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment and multiple lines of evidence, current and future emissions will determine the amount of additional sea level rise: the greater the emissions, the greater the warming, and the greater the likelihood of higher sea levels. Based upon emissions to date, two feet of sea level rise will likely occur along the U.S. coastline between 2020 and 2100. That’s already baked into the cake. Failing to curb future emissions could add an additional 1.5 to 5 feet of rise, for a total of 3.5 to 7 feet. (Source: U.S. Sea Level Change, USGS Technical Report, 2022)

    The USGS 2022 Technical Report, as outlined in the preceding paragraph, is now choking on the dust of two-years of the hottest 24 months on record, smashing all records with 2023 +1.48C hotter and January-September 2024 +1.54C above the pre-industrial average. A USGS technical update today would almost certainly add to sea level rise projections. Thus, prompting an obvious concern: Is global warming already getting out of hand?

    Which way will society turn: (1) stop fossil fuel emissions now, or (2) bale-out flooded megacities later? And would that even be possible?

    450 polar scientists are not scaremongers. They’re professionals that are deadly serious. We’ve got a much bigger problem than generally realized.

    The post Emergency Summit Regarding Antarctic Meltdown appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • How Animal Agriculture Threatens Freshwater Supplies

    Wheel of Fortune, woodcut, by Sue Coe.

    Fresh water is critical to the survival of ecosystems and living beings worldwide. However, as much as we all depend on water, some industries are notorious for their unsustainable water usage and rising contribution to water pollution. Factory farms are a prime offender.

    Groundwater—underground water in sand, soil, and rock—is a vital source of fresh water, comprising 99 percent of such water supply. “Groundwater provides almost half of all drinking water worldwide, around 40 percent of the water used in irrigation and about one-third of the supply required for industry,” according to UNESCO, which hosted the world’s first UN-Water summit in December 2022.

    The importance of groundwater was the main topic of discussion during the summit. Two issues of particular concern were overexploited aquifers, which could lead to water shortages, loss of ecosystems, and land subsidence, and polluted aquifers, which would have disastrous consequences for people, animals, and crops.

    With such a valuable natural resource quite literally underfoot, what happens above ground can have a significant effect—for better or worse. Factory farms dense with animal life sustain high levels of surface water usage and contribute to water pollution through runoff. Considering that factory farms exploit and pollute groundwater aquifers, their overall environmental effects are devastating.

    “The National Water Quality Assessment shows that agricultural runoff is the leading cause of water quality impacts to rivers and streams, the third leading source for lakes, and the second-largest source of impairments to wetlands,” points out the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

    Factory farming touches every aspect of our planet, from emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to contaminating the groundwater, rivers, lakes, and streams we rely on for fresh water. Factory farms house animals in crowded and often filthy conditions, subjecting millions of cows, chickens, and pigs to the worst forms of abuse for the entirety of their short lives. Driven by the demand for cheap eggs, meat, and dairy, the animal agriculture industry has disastrous consequences for the planet. This must change.

    Assessing Water Risk

    Agricultural runoff from barnyards, feedlots, and cropland carries pollutants like manure, fertilizers, ammonia, pesticides, livestock waste, toxins from farm equipment, soil, and sediment to local water sources. According to a February 2022 article by the Public Interest Research Groups, the factory farming industry is one of the leading causes of water pollution in the United States. The animal agriculture industry is also a front-runner for water risk, which makes it an environmentally unsustainable practice.

    Scientists assess “water risk” by evaluating the possibility of water-related issues like scarcity, flooding, drought, or water stress. A Ceres report called “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty,” which looked at public disclosures by companies until June 2021, identified four industries with the highest exposure to water risks: agricultural products, beverages, meat, and packaged foods.

    “Agricultural products” refer to items made by farming plants or animals. The International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that agricultural production is “highly dependent on water and increasingly subject to water risks.” The OECD also highlights agricultural production as a major source of water pollution.

    Why is this a problem? Water is vital in factory farming—from growing crops to feeding livestock to cleaning facilities. It’s also an essential resource for every living being. So, while agricultural organizations must ensure their water use remains in the realm of sustainability, a 2022 report by the Investigate Midwest suggests that’s not happening.

    “Most large companies have policies to reduce water use and pollution. But some of the largest meat companies in the U.S. lack measures such as water reduction targets, watershed protection plans, and incentives for suppliers to conserve water,” wrote Madison McVan of Investigate Midwest, citing the Ceres analysis.

    Further, Ceres reports that Pilgrim’s Pride, one of the largest global poultry producers, set a public goal to decrease its water use intensity (or the amount of water used to produce a pound of chicken) by 10 percent by 2020. Instead, it self-reported that it had increased its water use in its U.S. operations by 5 percent

    From 2019 to 2022, the company said it had increased its water use by 12 percent. To complicate matters, in February 2024, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against JBS (which owns Pilgrim’s Pride, among other meat companies), accusing it of greenwashing its product and misleading consumers about its impact on the environment.

    Water Scarcity

    It is increasingly critical for the agricultural industry to join water conservation efforts. As the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) indicates, water scarcity remains a pressing global concern. Just 3 percent of our planet’s water is fresh, including water frozen in glaciers (which accounts for about 2 percent). Because fresh water is a limited natural resource, the animal agriculture industry’s high water use is a growing concern.

    In 2024, animal agriculture accounted for almost a third of freshwater use globally. The Meat Atlas 2021 states that animal feed from arable crops requires about 43 times more water to produce than feed like grass or roughage that animals could access if they were allowed to graze. In 2014, more than 67 percent of crops in the U.S. went to animal feed. In 2020, WWF estimated that almost 80 percent of the world’s soybean crops were used in animal feed. In the same year, in the U.S., 38.7 percent of corn was used to feed animals.

    A 2020 study by the Animal Legal Defense Fund shows that just one slaughterhouse in Livingston, California, used approximately 4 million gallons of water daily in the live-shackle slaughter of chickens—accounting for about 60 percent of the city’s water usage. That’s equivalent to using about 2 billion gallons of water annually.

    Moreover, in January 2022, the New Roots Institute stated, “Every day, 2 billion gallons of water are withdrawn from freshwater resources for the farming of land animals in the U.S.”

    The slaughterhouse used some water in electrified stun baths and some in scalding tanks to de-feather chickens. Because this inhumane approach to slaughter is so terrifying for chickens, slaughterhouses also use vast amounts of water to clean feces and vomit from the chickens’ bodies after live-shackle slaughter.

    Water Use Is One of Many Harms Caused by Factory Farming

    The tremendous amount of water needed to grow crops for feed, clean facilities, raise animals, and slaughter them puts immense pressure on Earth’s limited freshwater resources. Evidence suggests most meatpacking organizations don’t ensure sustainable water practices in their supply chains. This does not bode well for the planet’s long-term impact on humans, animals, and ecosystems.

    Factory farming not only causes endless and unnecessary animal suffering but also uses an excessive amount of environmental resources, pollutes the planet, and consumes vast amounts of freshwater supplies. But animal agriculture impacts much more than freshwater: Meat-based diets harm the environment, nonhuman animals, and human health.

    We must work together as concerned citizens, consumers, and voters to end factory farming and repair our broken, cruel, damaging, and unsustainable food system. Activists worldwide are advocating for change, and plant-based diets are steadily increasing. According to the Plant Based Foods Association, the number of U.S. citizens choosing plant-based diets increased to 70 percent in 2023 from 66 percent in 2022. Moving to a world without animal suffering or environmental degradation is possible. But it requires all of us to change how we eat and live to make it happen.

    This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

    The post How Animal Agriculture Threatens Freshwater Supplies appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Climate protests to continue despite 170 charged in Newcastle ‘protestival’

    Despite Australia’s draconian anti-protest laws, the world’s biggest coal port was closed for four hours at the weekend with 170 protesters being charged — but climate demonstrations will continue. Twenty further arrests were made at a protest at the Federal Parliament yesterday.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon

    Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal port, was closed for four hours on Sunday when hundreds of Rising Tide protesters in kayaks refused to leave its shipping channel.

    Over two days of protest at the Australian port, 170 protesters have been charged. Some others who entered the channel were arrested but released without charge. Hundreds more took to the water in support.

    Thousands on the beach chanted, danced and created a huge human sign demanding “no new coal and gas” projects.

    Rising Tide is campaigning for a 78 percent tax on fossil fuel profits to be used for a “just transition” for workers and communities, including in the Hunter Valley, where the Albanese government has approved three massive new coal mine extensions since 2022.

    Protest size triples to 7000
    The NSW Labor government made two court attempts to block the protest from going ahead. But the 10-day Rising Tide protest tripled in size from 2023 with 7000 people participating so far and more people arrested in civil disobedience actions than last year.

    The “protestival” continued in Newcastle on Monday, and a new wave started in Canberra at the Australian Parliament yesterday with more than 20 arrests. Rising Tide staged an overnight occupation of the lawn outside Parliament House and a demonstration at which they demanded to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

    News of the “protestival” has spread around the world, with campaigners in Rotterdam in The Netherlands blocking a coal train in solidarity with this year’s Rising Tide protest.

    Of those arrested, 138 have been charged under S214A of the NSW Crimes Act for disrupting a major facility, which carries up to two years in prison and $22,000 maximum fines. This section is part of the NSW government regime of “anti-protest” laws designed to deter movements such as Rising Tide.

    The rest of the protesters have been charged under the Marine Safety Act which police used against 109 protesters arrested last year.

    Even if found guilty, these people are likely to only receive minor penalties.Those arrested in 2023 mostly received small fines, good behaviour bonds and had no conviction recorded.

    Executive gives the bird to judiciary
    The use of the Crimes Act will focus more attention on the anti-protest laws which the NSW government has been extending and strengthening in recent weeks. The NSW Supreme Court has already found the laws to be partly unconstitutional but despite huge opposition from civil society and human rights organisations, the NSW government has not reformed them.

    Two protesters were targeted for special treatment: Naomi Hodgson, a key Rising Tide organiser, and Andrew George, who has previous protest convictions.

    George was led into court in handcuffs on Monday morning but was released on bail on condition that he not return to the port area. Hodgson also has a record of peaceful protest. She is one of the Rising Tide leaders who have always stressed the importance of safe and peaceful action.

    The police prosecutor argued that she should remain in custody. The magistrate released her with the extraordinary requirement that she report to police daily and not go nearer than 2 km from the port.

    Planning for this year’s protest has been underway for 12 months, with groups forming in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra Sydney and the Northern Rivers, as well as Newcastle. There was an intensive programme of meetings and briefings of potential participants on the motivation for protesting, principles of civil disobedience and the experience of being arrested.

    Those who attended last year recruited a whole new cohort of protesters.

    Last year, the NSW police authorised a protest involved a 48-hour blockade which protesters extended by two hours. Earlier this year, a similar application was made by Rising Tide.

    The first indication that the police would refuse to authorise a protest came earlier this month when the NSW police successfully applied to the NSW Supreme Court for the protest to be declared “an unauthorised protest.”

    But Justice Desmond Fagan also made it clear that Rising Tide had a “responsible approach to on-water safety” and that he was not giving a direction that the protest should be terminated. Newcastle Council agreed that Rising Tide could camp at Horseshoe Bay.

    Minns’ bid to crush protest
    The Minns government showed that its goal was to crush the protest altogether when the Minister for Transport Jo Haylen declared a blanket 97-hour exclusion zone making it unlawful to enter the Hunter River mouth and beaches under the Marine Safety Act last week.

    On Friday, Rising Tide organiser and 2020 Newcastle Young Citizen of the year, Alexa Stuart took successful action in the Supreme Court to have the exclusion zone declared an invalid use of power.

    An hour before the exclusion zone was due to come into effect at 5 pm, the Rising Tide flotilla had been launched off Horseshoe Bay. At 4 pm, Supreme Court Justice Sarah McNaughton quashed the exclusion zone notice, declaring that it was an invalid use of power under the Marine Safety Act because the object of the Act is to facilitate events, not to stop them from happening altogether.

    When news of the judge’s decision reached the beach, a big cheer erupted. The drama-packed weekend was off to a good start.

    Friday morning began with a First Nations welcome and speeches and a SchoolStrike4Climate protest. Kayakers held their position on the harbour with an overnight vigil on Friday night.

    On Saturday, Midnight Oil front singer Peter Garrett, who served as Environment Minister in a previous Labor government, performed in support of Rising Tide protest. He expressed his concern about government overreach in policing protests, especially in the light of all the evidence of the impacts of climate change.

    Ships continued to go through the channel, protected by the NSW police. When kayakers entered the channel while it was empty, nine were arrested.

    84-year-old great-gran arrested, not charged
    By late Saturday, three had been charged, and the other six were towed back to the beach. This included June Norman, an 84-year-old great-grandmother from Queensland, who entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience.

    The 84-year-old protester Jane Norman
    The 84-year-old protester Jane Norman . . . entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience. Image: Wendy Bacon/MWM

    She told MWM that she felt a duty to act to protect her own grandchildren and all other children due to a failure by the Albanese and other governments to take action on climate change. The police repeatedly declined to charge her.   

    On Sunday morning a decision was made for kayakers “to take the channel”. At about 10.15, a coal boat, turned away before entering the port.

    Port closed, job done
    Although the period of stoppage was shorter than last year, civil disobedience had now achieved what the authorised protest achieved last year. The port was officially closed and remained so for four hours.

    By now, 60 people had been charged and far more police resources expended than in 2023, including hours of police helicopters and drones.

    On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of kayakers again occupied the channel. A ship was due. Now in a massive display of force involving scores of police in black rubber zodiacs, police on jet skis, and a huge police launch, kayakers were either arrested or herded back from the channel.

    When the channel was clear, a huge ship then came through the channel, signalling the reopening of the port.

    On Monday night, ABC National News reported that protesters were within metres of the ship. MWM closely observed the events. When the ship began to move towards the harbour, all kayaks were inside the buoys marking the channel. Police occupied the area between the protesters and the ship. No kayaker moved forward.

    A powerful visual message had been sent that the forces of the NSW state would be used to defend the interests of the big coal companies such as Whitehaven and Glencore rather than the NSW public.

    By now police on horses were on the beach and watched as small squads of police marched through the crowd grabbing paddles. A little later this reporter was carrying a paddle through a car park well off the beach when a constable roughly seized it without warning from my hand.

    When asked, Constable Pacey explained that I had breached the peace by being on water. I had not entered the water over the weekend.

    Kids arrested too, in mass civil disobedience
    Those charged included 14 people under 18. After being released, they marched chanting back into the camp. A 16-year-old Newcastle student, Niamh Cush, told a crowd of fellow protesters before her arrest that as a young person, she would rather not be arrested but that the betrayal of the Albanese government left her with no choice.

    “I’m here to voice the anger of my generation. The Albanese government claims they’re taking climate change seriously but they are completely and utterly failing us by approving polluting new coal and gas mines. See you out on the water today to block the coal ships!”

    Each of those who chose to get arrested has their own story. They include environmental scientists, engineers, TAFE teachers, students, nurses and doctors, hospitality and retail workers, designers and media workers, activists who have retired, unionists, a mediator and a coal miner.

    They came from across Australia — more than 200 came from Adelaide alone — and from many different backgrounds.

    Behind those arrested stand volunteer groups of legal observers, arrestee support, lawyers, community care workers and a media team. Beside them stand hundreds of other volunteers who have cleaned portaloos, prepared three meals a day, washed dishes, welcomed and registered participants, organised camping spots and acted as marshals at pedestrian crossings.

    Each and every one of them is playing an essential role in this campaign of mass civil disobedience.

    Many participants said this huge collaborative effort is what inspired them and gave them hope, as much as did the protest itself.

    Threat to democracy
    Today, the president of NSW Civil Liberties, Tim Roberts, said, “Paddling a kayak in the Port of Newcastle is not an offence, people do it every day safely without hundreds of police officers.

    “A decision was made to protect the safe passage of the vessels over the protection of people exercising their democratic rights to protest.

    “We are living in extraordinary times. Our democracy will not irrevocably be damaged in one fell swoop — it will be a slow bleed, a death by a thousand tranches of repressive legislation, and by thousands of arrests of people standing up in defence of their civil liberties.”

    Australian Institute research shows that most Australians agree with the Council for Civil Liberties — with 71 percent polled, including a majority of all parties, believing that the right to protest should be enshrined in Federal legislation. It also included a majority across all ages and political parties.

    It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is a fear of accelerating mass civil disobedience in the face of a climate crisis that frightens both the Federal and State governments and the police.

    As temperatures rise
    Many of those protesting have already been directly affected by climbing temperatures in sweltering suburbs, raging bushfires and intense smoke, roaring floods and a loss of housing that has not been replaced, devastated forests, polluting coal mines and gas fields or rising seas in the Torres Strait in Northern Australia and Pacific Island countries.

    Others have become profoundly concerned as they come to grips with climate science predictions and public health warnings.

    In these circumstances, and as long as governments continue to enable the fossil fuel industry by approving more coal and gas projects that will add to the climate crisis, the number of people who decide they are morally obliged to take civil disobedience action will grow.

    Rather than being impressed by politicians who cast them as disrupters, they will heed the call of Pacific leaders who this week declared the COP29 talks to be a “catastrophic failure” exposing their people to “escalating risks”.

    Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a Rising Tide supporter, and is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Plastic treaty faces hurdles as Russia, Saudi Arabia mire negotiations

    BANGKOK, JAKARTA and HONIARA – Oil producers including Russia and Saudi Arabia have slowed negotiations for a plastic pollution treaty to a crawl, dimming chances that an agreement to tackle a burgeoning environmental and health threat can be reached this year.

    Negotiators from dozens of countries are meeting in Busan, South Korea, this week for what critics of the plastics industry hope will be the final negotiations for a treaty that paves the way for limits on plastics production.

    However, oil states appeared intent on blocking or delaying progress. Most plastics are derivatives of crude oil and natural gas.

    Convenient and cheap, plastics are produced in ever growing volumes and found in every nook and cranny of daily life – from the flimsy stools at street food stalls in Southeast Asia to the componentry of sophisticated smartphones and the hundreds of billions of water bottles and plastic bags discarded worldwide every year after just seconds of use.

    Mostly unrecycled, plastic waste has a lifespan of centuries and is exacting an increasing toll on the environment including in the oceans where it injures and kills marine life.

    A growing body of research links plastics and their additives, which provide properties such as flexibility and color, to health problems including cancers, birth defects, reduced immunity to disease and hormonal disorders.

    Climate activists march on a street to demand stronger global commitments to fight plastic waste at the upcoming fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan, South Korea, Nov. 23, 2024
    Climate activists march on a street to demand stronger global commitments to fight plastic waste at the upcoming fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan, South Korea, Nov. 23, 2024

    Campaigners say an effective treaty should address the source of plastic pollution and not only management of the swelling amount of plastic waste.

    That approach involves reducing the production and use of plastic through steps such as banning particular pernicious types, redesigning packaging and other measures. There are also calls to mandate the phasing out of chemicals linked to health problems.

    After two years of negotiations led by the United Nations Environment Programme, or UNEP, some activists say the risk is that only a toothless agreement is produced.

    The UNEP had touted the Busan meeting as the final round of negotiations but Russia, Saudi Arabia, as the representative of a block of 22 Arab states, and India, which is a net oil importer but has aligned itself with the oil producers, are insisting on unanimity for every substantive issue.

    At the opening session of this week’s negotiations, the Russian and Saudi Arabian envoys warned other delegates against invoking a rule that would allow a vote on the treaty if consensus isn’t reached.

    Russian representative Dmitry Kornilov and Saudi Arabia’s Eyad Aljubran threatened to mire the negotiations in procedural issues if their demands were ignored.

    “We would like to again remind you that all decisions on substantive issues within the framework of the meeting must be taken by consensus,” Kornilov told the hundreds of conference delegates.

    “Now, if any of the delegates decides to reopen [this issue], we reserve the right to revisit the rules of procedure,” he said.

    Climate activists march on a street to demand stronger global commitments to fight plastic waste at the upcoming fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan, South Korea, Nov. 23, 2024.
    Climate activists march on a street to demand stronger global commitments to fight plastic waste at the upcoming fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan, South Korea, Nov. 23, 2024.

    Russia and Arab nations also rejected a draft treaty text put forward by the chairman of the negotiations as a circuit breaker. Negotiators have been working with a 70-page document that contains nearly 1,900 sets of brackets encapsulating all of its disputed words and sentences, which Russia and its supporters want to remain the basis for negotiations.

    The threats are part bluster “backed up by the ability to waste time because they have no desire to see an actual treaty,” said Melissa Blue Sky, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law and observer at the negotiations.

    ‘Huge distances’

    International Energy Agency forecasts for crude oil demand suggest that plastics will become more financially crucial to petrochemical companies and oil-exporting nations as increased adoption of electric and hybrid cars reduces demand for fuels.

    At the second round of treaty negotiations in mid-2023 in Paris, the petro states managed to derail negotiations for several days by talking about procedural issues. The delaying tactics have continued during the closed door sessions of the current negotiations, Blue Sky told Radio Free Asia.

    “There’s still huge distances between what most countries want and what the least ambitious countries want. And so the question is, are the majority of countries willing to stand up for a treaty that has substantial provisions and obligations,” she said.

    “If the majority of countries who want an actual treaty, not just a voluntary waste management cooperation agreement, if they are not willing to stand up for certain provisions, then the treaty we end up with is a treaty that even the least ambitious countries can agree to, and it will do very little.”

    This undated November 2023 photo shows volunteers from Indonesian community organization Trash Hero sorting through discarded plastic in Lapangan Banteng, Jakarta
    This undated November 2023 photo shows volunteers from Indonesian community organization Trash Hero sorting through discarded plastic in Lapangan Banteng, Jakarta

    On Wednesday, the chair of the negotiations, Luis Vayas, said after three days there had been only “limited” progress toward a treaty and time was running out to conclude an agreement.

    Colombia’s vice minister of environment, Mauricio Cabrera Leal, said a number of countries were acting in bad faith and deliberately stalling the negotiations. He did not specify which countries.

    Representatives of India, Russia and Iran said a shortage of time for negotiations should not be a reason to force through an agreement without consensus.

    At least 400 million tons of plastic are produced each year, according to recent industry data, a more than 200-fold increase since the early 1950s. Based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates, about three quarters of it becomes waste and nearly a fifth is so-called mismanaged waste – burned, discarded on land and in waterways or left in open dumps and substandard landfills.

    The burden of dealing with the profusion of plastic is greatest in lower income countries with little or inadequate infrastructure for processing garbage.

    ‘Unbearable’

    In the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara in the South Pacific, a reporter this week documented discarded plastic clogging its shoreline and countless plastic bottles filling its waterways.

    The ubiquity of the waste is despite a government ban, announced in 2023, on single-use plastics such as shopping bags, straws, polystyrene takeaway containers and water bottles smaller than 1.5 liters.

    Discarded plastic bottles are pictured on Nov. 27, 2024 clogging the shoreline of the Solomon Islands capital Honiara despite a government ban on single-use plastics.
    Discarded plastic bottles are pictured on Nov. 27, 2024 clogging the shoreline of the Solomon Islands capital Honiara despite a government ban on single-use plastics.

    In Cimahi, a city of half a million people in Indonesia’s West Java province, resident Saifal said problems stemming from plastic pollution occur on a near daily basis.

    “Single-use plastics end up in drains, causing constant flooding and leaving garbage scattered on the streets during heavy rain,” said Saifal, who goes by one name.

    “At night, neighbors often burn trash that contains plastic. The smell is unbearable,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

    Indonesia, which is one of the largest sources of plastic pollution in the ocean, has been intensifying its efforts to control plastic waste but challenges remain, said Vinda Damayanti, director of waste reduction at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

    A ministerial regulation requires producers in industries such as manufacturing, hospitality and retail to reduce waste by redesigning packaging, reusing materials and enhancing recycling, Damayanti said.

    Discarded plastic bottles are pictured on Nov. 27, 2024 overflowing a drain in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara despite a government ban on single-use plastics.
    Discarded plastic bottles are pictured on Nov. 27, 2024 overflowing a drain in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara despite a government ban on single-use plastics.

    The ministry is also advocating for a nationwide ban or fees for single-use plastic bags after success there with such measures.

    Indonesia wants an international framework on plastic waste to ensure that developing countries have access to funding and technology that will help deal with the problems, according to Damayanti.

    “Many people don’t understand the environmental damage caused by plastic waste,” she said.

    “This is a global problem that requires a global solution.”

    Edited by Taejun Kang.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA, Pizaro Gozali Idrus and Charley Piringi for Benar News.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 6 Essential Movie Distribution Tips for Indie Filmmakers

    Crafting a movie is half of the battle. The indie film distribution process requires a lot of effort but might cause headaches. Without the help of a major studio, one person needs to figure out too many things when it comes to reaching viewers. 

    Practical Tips on Movie Distribution

    1. Understand Your Target Audience

    Knowing the target audience is essential in any field. Understanding your audience helps save resources that otherwise would be spent on unnecessary actions or distribution channels. 

    Indie movies often appeal to specific demographics. Identify who your film resonates with and tailor a distribution strategy to their interests and preferences. 

    Tools like social media insights, streaming platform analytics, and audience feedback can help optimise your marketing efforts.

    2. Maximise Your Film’s Online Presence

    Being presented online across multiple social media or platforms like IMDb helps build anticipation and maintain interest. Consistent messaging can help you build anticipation and maintain interest.

    Interact with your audience. Sharing behind-the-scenes content, and updates, and engaging in conversations about your movie’s themes can build a loyal following even before the film is released.

    3. Consider Multi-Channel Distribution Strategy

    Don’t concentrate on one distribution channel. Testing multiple approaches can help find those that work the best. Here are the main ones that you should consider:

    • Theatrical distribution – this is the classic method when films are shown in cinemas. Theatrical release can be challenging but such cinemas as Art House Cinemas cater to niche audiences and are more likely to screen indie films. 
    • Streaming platforms – this is a medium that can help filmmakers reach global audiences and generate revenue simultaneously. Pay attention to the monetisation strategy – it can be subscription-based like Netflix, transactional-based like iTunes, or ad-supported like UVOtv.
    • Film festivals – Festivals are great for exposure. Submit your film to festivals that align with your film’s genre and audience. Winning awards or receiving critical acclaim will draw attention to your artwork, becoming a selling point for your distribution strategy. 
    • Self-distribution – selling directly from your website can provide filmmakers with greater control over revenue and audience engagement. 

    4. Leverage Partnerships and Collaborations

    Partnering with other indie filmmakers for joint screenings, cross-promotion, or shared marketing efforts can help you tap into each other’s audiences. 

    Also, collaborating with influencers and content creators can promote your movie. Their endorsement can provide valuable exposure, especially in niche markets.

    5. Optimise for Global Audiences

    If your film has international appeal, expand its reach. Make it more accessible to a broader audience by adding subtitles or dubbing in different languages. 

    Furthermore, don’t forget to explore distribution opportunities in international markets. Consider collaborating with streaming platforms, thus reaching those who appreciate indie films globally. 

    6. Monitor and Adapt Your Strategy  

    Use the analytics provided by platforms like UVOtv to monitor your film’s performance. Pay attention to viewer demographics, engagement rates, and revenue trends.

    If a particular distribution channel isn’t performing as expected, be prepared to adjust your strategy. Flexibility is key in the indie film distribution landscape.

    By Nathan Spears

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Three million people demand governments commit to a Global Plastics Treaty

    A petition signed by almost three million people from over 182 countries calling for a historic, legally binding, Global Plastics Treaty to drastically reduce production and use, and protect human health and the environment, has been delivered to the government delegates ahead of pivotal negotiations in South Korea.

    Demanding a Global Plastics Treaty

    The petition signatures were delivered to Rwanda Environment Management Authority Director General Juliet Kabera and US Senator Jeff Merkley. The symbolic handover was led by renowned poet Nikita Gill alongside South Korean youth activists and Baby Climate Plaintiffs, Hannah Kim and Jeah Han:

    Greenpeace, together with WWF and the Break Free from Plastic coalition delivers a global petition featuring 2.9 million signatures calling for an end to the age of plastic at the INC-5 Plastics Treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea.

    Nikita Gill, poet and writer, said:

    I am here in Busan today, representing the voices of millions asking our world leaders to put our beautiful planet before profits during this week’s Plastics Treaty negotiations. I hope these voices are being heard and can inspire key decision-makers because this is our only chance to secure a treaty that will drastically reduce plastic production and use for the sake of our collective future.

    Greenpeace, together with WWF and the Break Free from Plastic coalition delivers a global petition featuring 2.9 million signatures calling for an end to the age of plastic at the INC-5 Plastics Treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea.

    Jeah Han, Baby Climate Litigation Activist, said:

    If our planet is in danger, so is my future. While children’s voices can draw attention, it is the adults with decision-making authority who can truly drive change. We are calling for action and demanding that governments all around the world address the climate and plastic crisis.

    The event took place just a day before the fifth and final round of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting for a Global Plastics Treaty resumed in Busan, Republic of Korea.

    Gerance Mutwol, Plastics Campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said:

    These signatures represent millions of people across the world including Africa, who bear the brunt of plastic pollution. With talks starting tomorrow, world leaders have yet another opportunity to champion a treaty that will drastically cut plastic production and drive equitable transition for workers and the health of the most affected communities across the plastic value chain.

    South Korea must be a pivotal moment

    The gathering drew together government leaders, civil society organizations, activists, businesses, and scientists to highlight the overwhelming public demand for decisive action on one of the most urgent environmental crises of our time:

    Greenpeace, together with WWF and the Break Free from Plastic coalition delivers a global petition featuring 2.9 million signatures calling for an end to the age of plastic at the INC-5 Plastics Treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea.

    Eirik Lindebjerg, WWF Head of Delegation to INC-5 and Global Plastics Policy Lead, said:

    These signatures reinforce what is already commonly known – that a legally binding global treaty that regulates plastics across the entire lifecycle and eliminates harmful plastic products and chemicals is the only way our leaders can deliver on their promise to end plastic pollution. We simply cannot achieve this goal through fragmented and voluntary actions which have dominated our collective response for so many years. At INC-5, governments can and must create the treaty people are demanding, one which decisively and definitely protects people and nature now and for generations to come.

    Von Hernandez, Break Free From Plastic Global Coordinator, said that “millions worldwide demand a strong Global Plastics Treaty to reverse the global plastic pollution crisis now harming our health, our climate, and the planet’s life support systems”:

    World leaders gathering here in Busan must deliver an agreement that progressively cuts the unfettered production of plastic and eliminates the toxic chemicals associated with their manufacture and use. Anything less than this would be a regrettable missed opportunity.

    INC-5 will happen in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 25 November to 1 December, when governments are expected to agree on a Global Plastics Treaty.

    The millions of signatures collected demanding a strong global Plastics Treaty were an effort led by WWF and Greenpeace, supported by dozens of Break Free From Plastic member organisations including Plastic Pollution Coalition, Story of Stuff, Only One, EarthDay, Fenceline Watch, Plastic Change, Nipe Fagio, Friends of the Earth Action, Defend Our Health, Plastic Free Future, Trash Hero World, Plastic Free Delaware, and 5 Gyres Institute.

    Featured image and additional images via Greenpeace

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • COP29: Pacific climate advocates decry outcome as ‘a catastrophic failure’

    RNZ Pacific

    The United Nations climate change summit COP29 has “once again ignored” the Pacific Islands, a group of regional climate advocacy organisations say.

    The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) said today that “the richest nations turned their backs on their legal and moral obligations” as the UN meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, fell short of expectations.

    “This COP was framed as the ‘finance COP’, a critical moment to address the glaring gaps in climate finance and advance other key agenda items,” the group said.

    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

    “However, not only did COP29 fail to deliver adequate finance, but progress also stalled on crucial issues like fossil fuel phase-out, Loss and Damage, and the Just Transition Work Plan.

    “The outcomes represent a catastrophic failure to meet the scale of the crisis, leaving vulnerable nations to face escalating risks with little support.”

    The UN meeting concluded with a new climate finance goal, with rich nations pledging a US$300 billion annual target by 2035 to the global fight against climate change.

    The figure was well short of what developing nations were asking for — more than US$1 trillion in assistance.

    ‘Failure of leadership’
    Campaigners and non-governmental organisations called it a “betrayal” and “a shameful failure of leadership”, forcing climate vulnerable nations, such as the Pacific Islands, “to accept a token financial pledge to prevent the collapse of negotiations”.

    PICAN said the pledged finance relied “heavily on loans rather than grants, pushing developing nations further into debt”.

    “Worse, this figure represents little more than the long-promised $100 billion target adjusted for inflation. It does not address the growing costs of adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage faced by vulnerable nations.

    “In fact, it explicitly ignores any substantive decision to include loss and damage just acknowledging it.”

    Vanuatu Climate Action Network coordinator Trevor Williams said developed nations systematically dismantled the principles of equity enshrined in the Paris Agreement at COP29.

    “Their unwillingness to contribute sufficient finance, phase out fossil fuels, or strengthen their NDCs demonstrates a deliberate attempt to evade responsibility. COP29 has taught us that if optionality exists, developed countries will exploit it to stall progress.”

    Kiribati Climate Action Network’s Robert Karoro said the Baku COP was a failure on every front.

    ‘No meaningful phase out of fossil fuels’
    “Finance fell far short, Loss and Damage was weakened, and there was no meaningful commitment to phasing out fossil fuels,” he said.

    “Our communities cannot wait for empty promises to materialise-we need action that addresses the root causes of the crisis and supports our survival.”

    Tuvalu Climate Action Network’s executive director Richard Gokrun said the “outcome is personal”.

    “Every fraction of a degree in warming translates into lost lives, cultures and homelands. Yet, the calls of the Pacific and other vulnerable nations were silenced in Baku,” he said.

    “From the weakened Loss and Damage fund to the rollback on Just Transition principles, this COP has failed to deliver justice on any front.”

    PICAN’s regional director Rufino Varea described the outcome of the meeting as “a death sentence for millions”.

    He said the Pacific Islands have been clear that climate finance must be grants-based and responsive to the needs of frontline communities.

    “Instead, developed countries are handing us debt while dismantling the principles of equity and justice that the Paris Agreement was built on. This is a betrayal, plain and simple.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Millions Demand Major Cuts in Plastics Production Ahead of Treaty Talks

    With the fifth and final round of global plastics treaty negotiations set to begin Monday in Busan, South Korea, an estimated 1,500 people took to the city’s streets and nearly 3 million more signed a petition calling for a legally binding pact “to drastically reduce production and use, and protect human health and the environment.” The Saturday march at the Busan Exhibition and Convention…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • COP29: Carbon credit trading scheme criticised as ‘get out of jail free card’

    By Kate Green , RNZ News reporter

    A new carbon credit trading deal reached in the final hours of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been criticised as a free pass for countries to slack off on efforts to reduce emissions at home.

    The deal, sealed at the annual UN climate talks nearly a decade after it was first put forward, will allow countries to buy carbon credits from others to bring down their own balance sheet.

    New Zealand had set its targets under the Paris Agreement on the assumption that it would be able to meet some of it through international cooperation — “so getting this up and running is really important”, Compass Climate head Christina Hood said.

    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

    “It’s a tool, it’s neither good nor bad, but there’s going to have to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the government is taking a high-ambition, high-integrity path, or just trying to do the minimum possible.”

    The plan had taken nine years to go through because countries determined to do it right had been holding out for a process with the right checks and balances in place, she said.

    As it stood, countries would have to report yearly to the UN on their trading activities, but it was up to society and other countries to scrutinise behaviour.

    Cindy Baxter, a COP veteran who has been at all but seven of the conferences, said it was in-line with the way Aotearoa New Zealand wanted to go about reducing its emissions.

    ‘We’re not alone, but . . .’
    “We’re not alone, Switzerland is similar and Japan as well, but certainly New Zealand is aiming to meet by far the largest proportion of our climate target, [out of] anywhere in the OECD, through carbon trading.”

    The new scheme fell under Article six of the Paris Agreement, and a statement from COP29 said it was expected to reduce the cost of implementing countries’ national climate plans by up to US$250 billion (NZ$428.5b) per year.

    COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said “climate change is a transnational challenge and Article six will enable transnational solutions. Because the atmosphere does not care where emissions savings are made.”

    But Baxter said there was not enough transparency in the scheme, and plenty of loopholes. One of the issues was ensuring projects resulting in carbon credits continued to reduce emissions after the credits were traded.

    “For example, if you’re trying to save some mangroves in Fiji, you give Fiji a whole bunch of money and say this is going to offset this amount of carbon, but what if those mangroves are destroyed by a drought, or a great big cyclone?”

    Countries should be cutting emissions at home, she said.

    “And that is something New Zealand is not very good at doing, has a really bad reputation for doing. We’ve either planted trees, or now we’re trying to throw money at offset.”

    Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson said she, too, was concerned it would take the onus off big polluters to make reductions at home, calling it a “get out of jail free card”.

    ‘Lot of junk credits’
    “Ultimately, we really need to see significant cuts in climate pollution,” she said. “And there’s no such thing as high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, and a history of a lot of junk credits being sold.”

    Countries with the means to make meaningful change at home should not be relying on other countries stepping up, she said

    The Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said there was strong potential in the proposal, but it was “imperative to ensure the framework is robust, and protects the rights of indigenous peoples at the same time as incentivising carbon sequestration”.

    It should be a wake-up call to change New Zealand’s over-reliance on risky pine plantations and instead support permanent native afforestation, he said.

    “This proposal emphasises how solving the climate crisis requires global collaboration on the most difficult issues. That requires building trust and confidence, by meeting commitments countries make to each other.

    “Backing out of these by, for instance, restarting oil and gas exploration directly against the wishes of our Pacific relatives, is not the way do to that.”

    Conference overall ‘disappointing and frustrating’
    Baxter said it had been “very difficult being forced to have another COP in a petro-state”, where the host state did not have much to gain by making big progress.

    “What that means is that there is not that impetus to bang heads together and get really strong agreement,” she said.

    But the blame could not be placed entirely on the leadership.

    “The COP process is set up to work if governments bring their A-games, and they don’t,” she said.

    “People should be bringing their really strong new climate targets [and] very few are doing that.”

    Another deal was clinched in overtime of the two-week conference, promising US$300 billion (NZ$514 billion) each year by 2035 for developing nations to tackle climate emissions.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • What’s On Deck for Climate Change?

    Image by Andrej Lišakov.

    Dr. Peter Carter, an Expert Reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has new information about the status of climate change that meets the IPCC 6th Assessment worst-case scenario. Carter makes the case that the climate system is several years ahead of expectations, and in fact, knocking on the door of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment worst-case scenario decades early.

    Experts on climate change are at a loss for words and at a loss for understanding how and why the climate change issue, which is negatively impacting planetary ecosystems, is largely ignored. The proof of this is found at the celebrated UN climate conferences, where talk is cheap, like COP29 held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. These are annual events with a long history of poor results. This frustrating stagnation has been ongoing for over 30 years.

    Meanwhile, climate denialists, including the entire Republican Party, have brainwashed the public that climate change is not all that it’s cracked out to be, “no worries, it’s a hoax, ignore the radical leftists, ignore science, and oh, yes, they are communists.”

    However, the climate system is not listening to fairy tales. It’s on a tear that’s broadcast nightly via headline news re super hurricanes: Disastrous Hurricane Season Cost Soar Past $100 Billion in US, Estimates Say, USA Today, November 1, 2024. And severe drought that threatens the existence of the Amazon rainforest, The Shriveling Mighty Amazon River Drying Out, October 11, 2024, as Antarctic glaciers slip slide away: Scientists in Chile Question Whether Antarctica Has Hit a Point of No Return, Reuters, August 8, 2024.

    The world has changed like never before.

    Meanwhile, insurance premiums for home ownership skyrocket, especially Florida and California. Climate change is challenging homeownership as some insurers in regions where radical climate change hit hardest drop coverage altogether: Cimate Change Should Make You Rethink Homeownership, The New York Times, October 29, 2024.

    And: Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and Homeowner’s Insurance, Congressional Budget Office, August 2024. How do deniers explain this?

    When studying climate change, there are climate scientists and advocates of all sorts, but few understand and relate the true impact as well as Dr. Peter Carter, who’s studied the science since 1988 and an Expert Reviewer of IPCC reports. His analyses go to the core of the climate change issue. He’s openly critical of the failures of national economies to act quickly enough, and he’s on a warpath to crush climate deniers that preach falsehoods.

    Tough Climate Times Ahead

    Dr. Peter Carter (retired physician and founder of Climate Emergency Institute, est. 2008) posted a climate update, November 2024: Tough Climate Times Ahead. A synopsis of his report, in part, follows herein:

    Ever since the IPCC 2018 1.5C warning of a climate emergency that required immediate mitigation efforts by major economies of the world to hold temps to 1.5C pre-industrial, everybody that can make a difference has sort of disappeared while the emergency gets worse, and worse. Where are they?

    With the ranks of active advocates shrinking, Carter has appealed for help in taking the case to the major nations of the world, reaching out to climate scientists to get involved publicly by telling it like it is, making the case for immediate mitigation measures to stem “a dire climate emergency.”

    And he’s looking for help to counter massive denial campaigns, especially in the U.S.: “There’s still dangerous climate change denial.” Social media is full of ridiculous denials, which originate from fossil fuel corporations and from the Republican Party. It’s not just Trump who denies it; it’s the whole Republican Party. Charlatans preach denialism from the rafters at MAGA conferences.

    However, there’s plenty of news to dispel the lies.

    The US has suffered back-to-back powerful hurricanes, not totally unusual, but the intensity is very unusual and off-the-charts bred by abrupt climate change. Hurricanes have caused $100B damage.

    These things don’t happen by themselves in isolation. Human influence has changed the climate and not for the better. It’s important to connect the dots of what is happening right before our eyes, meaning fossil fuel companies, big banks, and big economy governments all threaded to climate change: “They must be held accountable… They are getting away with mass murder on a scale we have never seen before.” (Carter)

    It’s a scientific fact that as the lower atmosphere warms via greenhouse gases, the more moisture it holds. Moreover, with tropical storms, water vapor increases five-to-seven times per degree of Centigrade, resulting in torrential rains, atmospheric rivers, and floods, some of the most damaging aspects of climate change.

    For example, because the UK is experiencing much heavier rains than ever before, agricultural fields become waterlogged, resulting in a decline of agricultural production. This new era of extreme climate behavior impacts food supply, as the UK suffers from “weather whiplash”: Climate Change is a Growing Threat to UK Farming, Yale Climate Connections, October 25, 2024.

    The IPCC 6th Assessment calls for immediate action on global emissions, but that call to action is nowhere to be found; it’s not happening. Therefore, we must force governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, a dead-end industry. For decades we’ve known fossil fuels can be completely replaced by renewables as Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surge to Record $7 Trillion, IMF, Aug. 24, 2023. Imagine splurging $7 Trillion per year on renewables, a 10-fold increase over current spending.

    Shocking New News for 2024

    “It’s very clear climate change is no longer decades in the future. It’s very obvious it’s happening now, so we need to adapt.” (Jim Skea, chairman IPCC)

    “The whole of Europe is vulnerable and especially the Mediterranean. We are already seeing desertification taking place, not only in North Africa, but some of the southern margins of Europe, like Greece, Portugal and Turkey,” (Jim Skea)

    The Telegraph interviewed IPCC Chair Jim Skea: It’s too Late to save Britain from Overheating, Says UN Climate Chief, October 5, 2024. According to the interview, humanity has lost the opportunity to hold global temperature to 1.5C. And it will take a heroic effort to limit it to 2C.

    Since the mid 1990s, the ultimate danger has been set at 2C above pre-industrial, which incidentally, according to Dr. Carter, is catastrophe on a global basis. All tipping points will be triggered at that level… then, it’s too late.

    The most feared tipping point is permafrost thaw, which is emitting more and more CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) than ever. It is melting in the Arctic and subarctic regions, emitting three major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4 and N2O (nitrous oxide). Atmospheric CH4 is going up a lot.

    “The observed growth in methane emissions follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most pessimistic greenhouse gas scenarios, which predict global temperatures could rise above 3°C by the century’s end if such trends continue.” (Source: The 2024 Global Methane Budget Reveals Alarming Trends, The European Space Agency, October 9, 2024)

    According to Dr. Carter, scientists are uniformly agreed that the permafrost plight may be irreversible. In the most recent The State of the Cryosphere Report scientists claim permafrost melt is so bad/threatening that people should “be frightened.” This alone should motivate worldwide mitigation measures to halt CO2 emissions.

    Alas, permafrost is now officially competing with cars, trains, planes, and industry: “An international team, led by researchers at Stockholm University, discovered that from 2000 to 2020, carbon dioxide uptake by the land was largely offset by emissions from it.” (Source: NASA Helps Find Thawing Permafrost Adds to Near-Term Global Warming, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, October 29, 2024)

    Moreover, some of the most shocking news is the State of Climate Change Report in 2023 of huge global surface increases in temperature, part of which was El Nino related, but it was not nearly powerful enough to kick up temperatures so radically. Obviously, something else was at work. Putting the 2023 experience of massive heat into IPCC projections, it hits the “very worst-case scenario category,” because the planet is now tracking above the worst-case scenarios at 8.5 W/m² (watts per square meter) which measures the radiative forcing that heats the planet. This is serious trouble.

    [Side Note: According to NOAA data, the Earth’s average radiative forcing in 2000 was approximately 2.43 W/m², with most of this forcing coming from increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. “Before the industrial era, incoming and outgoing radiation were in very close balance, and the Earth’s average temperature was more or less stable” – MIT Climate Portal]

    A major source behind the issue is straight-forward: We’ve never produced or burned more coal than today. It’s the worst thing we can do. According to the International Energy Agency -IEA- in 2023 global coal usage reached an all-time high, driven by strong demand in China and India, with production also peaking at record levels…  for 2024, global coal demand is expected to remain largely flat with production levels of 2023. This crushes Paris ’15.

    Earth’s Carbon Sinks Are Failing

    Earth’s carbon sinks are losing efficiency. This is horrific news. The Global Carbon Project of the past three years discovered land and ocean carbon sinks starting to lose efficiency. According to Dr. Carter, “this is a terrifying development.” We may be losing our most important natural buffers by up to 50%. The IPCC didn’t expect this to happen until after 2050, if at all, but it’s here now.

    A recent study claims the planet’s overall carbon sink absorbed zero carbon or negligible amounts last year. This is the shocker of the year. Well, actually, it’s the shocker of the century. It’s a game-changer, and a devastating climate curse.

    The Global Carbon Project 2nd Assessment on the status of methane CH4 and nitrous oxide N2O found each greenhouse gas to be tracking the “IPCC worst-case scenario.” This confirms Dr. Carter’s overriding thesis that we’re pushing the climate system to the edge of a dangerous spiral.

    Carter: “Yes, honestly, it is time to panic…. but mysteriously there is no panic in the world.” The 2nd Assessment found all three greenhouse gases going up faster than anybody ever thought possible.

    Is there hope?

    Dr. Carter says we must communicate with people and tell the truth. We must make sure the world knows we are in a global climate planetary emergency. All kinds of emergency declarations were initiated in 2018 with the alarming IPCC 1.5C warning, but it has faded; it is gone. That warning can be put back into place. And we must harass politicians “to stop fossil fuels, to stop wiping out our future.” And hold corporations accountable. And stop harassing and jailing peaceful climate protestors.

    There are possibilities of hope because we have the nuts and bolts of renewables to replace fossil fuels many times over. But fossil fuels are increasing at the same rate, or faster, as renewables. This is a road to nowhere.

    In summation, the climate system is tracking above the IPCC’s worst-case scenario, and in Dr. Carter’s words: “It is time to panic: Yes, panic.” But who really knows this? And who really knows but could care less? Something somehow must be done well in advance of the world suddenly waking up one day when it’s too late with the sudden realization: “We are screwed.”

    Academy Award Nominee Don’t Look Up (2021) is a perfect analogy for today’s situation.

    The storyline: Astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet the size of Mount Everest headed straight for Earth. Warned by Dibiasky and Mindy, the political establishment, brushing off the astronomers while they’re preoccupied with an election campaign, adopt a political slogan: “Don’t Look Up” to win the election.

    Sound familiär?

    The post What’s On Deck for Climate Change? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Queensland First Nations group lodges racial discrimination complaint against Adani

    Adani rejects allegations that press releases and social media posts implied members of the group were not ‘legitimate’ Aboriginal people with a connection to sacred site

    A group of Wangan and Jagalingou First Nations people have lodged a racial discrimination complaint against coalminer Adani, alleging the company engaged in a decade-long “pattern of conduct” that included making offensive statements and social media posts.

    The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission alleges Adani breached the federal Racial Discrimination Act by attempting to block them in 2023 from accessing Doongmabulla Springs, a sacred site near the Carmichael coalmine in outback Queensland.

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

  • Human rights activists face reprisals for opposing extractive industries, says report

    Peace Brigades International calling for new act to force companies with links to UK to do due diligence

    Human rights defenders have faced brutal reprisals for standing up to extractive industries with links to UK companies or investors, according to a report calling for a law obliging firms to do human rights and environmental due diligence.

    Peace Brigades International (PBI) UK says a corporate accountability law requiring businesses to do due diligence on their operations, investments and supply chains could have prevented past environmental devastation and attacks.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Climate Change and the Insurability Crisis

    Storm-ravaged house, Knappa, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    Home insurance rates are rising in the United States, not only in Florida, which saw tens of billions of dollars in losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton, but across the country.

    According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, homeowners insurance increased an average of 11.3% nationwide in 2023, with some states, including Texas, Arizona and Utah, seeing nearly double that increase. Some analysts predict an average increase of about 6% in 2024.

    These increases are driven by a potent mix of rising insurance payouts coupled with rising costs of construction as people build increasingly expensive homes and other assets in harm’s way.

    When home insurance averages $2,377 a year nationally, and $11,000 per year in Florida, this is a blow to many people. Despite these rising rates, Jacques de Vaucleroy, chairman of the board of reinsurance giant Swiss Re, believes U.S. insurance is still priced too low to fully cover the risks.

    It isn’t just that premiums are changing. Insurers now often reduce coverage limits, cap payouts, increase deductibles and impose new conditions or even exclusions on some common perils, such as protection for wind, hail or water damage. Some require certain preventive measures or apply risk-based pricing – charging more for homes in flood plains, wildfire-prone zones, or coastal areas at risk of hurricanes.

    Homeowners watching their prices rise faster than inflation might think something sinister is at play. Insurance companies are facing rapidly evolving risks, however, and trying to price their policies low enough to remain competitive but high enough to cover future payouts and remain solvent in a stormier climate. This is not an easy task. In 2021 and 2022, seven property insurers filed for bankruptcy in Florida alone. In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states.

    But these changes are raising alarm bells. Some industry insiders worry that insurance may be losing its relevance and value – real or perceived – for policyholders as coverage shrinks, premiums rise and exclusions increase.

    How insurers assess risk

    Insurance companies use complex models to estimate the likelihood of current risks based on past events. They aggregate historical data – such as event frequency, scale, losses and contributing factors – to calculate price and coverage.

    However, the increase in disasters makes the past an unreliable measure. What was once considered a 100-year event may now be better understood as a 30- or 50-year event in some locations.

    What many people do not realize is that the rise of so-called “secondary perils” – an insurance industry term for floods, hailstorms, strong winds, lightning strikes, tornadoes and wildfires that generate small to mid-size damage – is becoming the main driver of the insurability challenge, particularly as these events become more intense, frequent and cumulative, eroding insurers’ profitability over time.

    Climate change plays a role in these rising risks. As the climate warms, air can hold more moisture – about 7% more with every degree Celsius of warming. That leads to stronger downpours, more thunderstorms, larger hail events and a higher risk of flooding in some regions. The U.S. was on average 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer in 2022 than in 1970.

    Insurance companies are revising their models to keep up with these changes, much as they did when smoking-related illnesses became a significant cost burden in life and health insurance. Some companies use climate modeling to augment their standard actuarial risk modeling. But some states have been hesitant to allow climate modeling, which can leave companies systematically underrepresenting the risks they face.

    Each company develops its own assessment and geographic strategy to reach a different conclusion. For example, Progressive Insurance has raised its homeowner rates by 55% between 2018 and 2023, while State Farm has raised them only 13.7%.

    While a homeowner who chooses to make home improvements, such as installing a luxury kitchen, can expect an increase in premiums to account for the added replacement value, this effect is typically small and predictable. Generally, the more substantial premium hikes are due to the ever-increasing risk of severe weather and natural disasters.

    Insurance for insurers

    When risks become too unpredictable or volatile, insurers can turn to reinsurance for help.

    Reinsurance companies are essentially insurance companies that insure insurance companies. But in recent years, reinsurers have recognized that their risk models are also no longer accurate and have raised their rates accordingly. Property reinsurance alone increased by 35% in 2023.

    Reinsurance is also not very well suited to covering secondary perils. The traditional reinsurance model is focused on large, rare catastrophes, such as devastating hurricanes and earthquakes.

    Two maps show highest costs on the coasts and in the West and Northeast.
    Maps illustrate the average loss from flooding alone and expected increases by mid-century. About 90% of catastrophes in the U.S. involve flooding, but just 6% of U.S. homeowners have flood insurance.
    Fifth National Climate Assessment

    As an alternative, some insurers are moving toward parametric insurance, which provides a predefined payment if an event meets or exceeds a predefined intensity threshold. These policies are less expensive for consumers because the payouts are capped and cover events such as a magnitude 7 earthquake, excessive rain within a 24-hour period or a Category 3 hurricane in a defined geographical area. The limits allow insurers to provide a less expensive form of insurance that is less likely to severely disrupt their finances.

    Protecting the consumer

    Of course, insurers don’t operate in an entirely free market. State insurance regulators evaluate insurance companies’ proposals to raise rates and either approve or deny them.

    The insurance industry in North Carolina, for example, where Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage, is arguing for a homeowner premium increase of more than 42% on average, ranging from 4% in parts of the mountains to 99% in some waterfront areas.

    If a rate increase is denied, it could force an insurer to simply withdraw from certain market sectors, cancel existing policies or refuse to write new ones when their “loss ratio” – the ratio of claims paid to premiums collected – becomes too high for too long.

    Since 2022, seven of the top 12 insurance carriers have either cut existing homeowners policies or stopped selling new ones in the wildfire-prone California homeowner market, and an equal number have pulled back from the Florida market due to the increasing cost of hurricanes.

    To stem this tide, California is reforming its regulations to speed up the rate increase approval process and allow insurers to make their case using climate models to judge wildfire risk more accurately.

    Florida has instituted regulatory reforms that have reduced litigation and associated costs and has removed 400,000 policies from the state-run insurance program. As a result, eight insurance carriers have entered the market there since 2022.

    Looking ahead

    Solutions to the mounting insurance crisis also involve how and where people build. Building codes can require more resilient homes, akin to how fire safety standards increased the effectiveness of insurance many decades ago.

    By one estimate, investing $3.5 billion in making the two-thirds of U.S. homes not currently up to code more resilient to storms could save insurers as much as $37 billion by 2030.

    In the end, if affordability and relevance of insurance continue to degrade, real estate prices will start to decline in exposed locations. This will be the most tangible sign that climate change is driving an insurability crisis that disrupts wider financial stability.

    Justin D’Atri, Climate Coach at the education platform Adaptify U and Sustainability Transformation Lead at Zurich Insurance Group, contributed to this article.The Conversation

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

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    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Nuclear Propaganda Exposed

    false%20solution

    Image by Jonas Denil.

    As a physicist and concerned citizen, I find myself outraged every time I scroll through social media and encounter tweets from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) touting nuclear power as “clean, safe, and carbon-free.” This narrative not only misrepresents the dirty reality of nuclear power but also obscures the significant environmental and health risks associated with its production and waste. It’s infuriating to see government agencies knowingly lie and promote such misleading information, while ignoring the pressing issues faced by communities affected by the toxic reality of the nuclear power industry – propaganda paid for by US taxpayers!

    Oh, Canada! Leading the Charge Against Nuclear Greenwashing

    Finally, someone is doing something about it—but not in the U.S., where you’d expect it. In Canada, a coalition of seven environmental organizations recently filed a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau against the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA), accusing it of misleading the public by marketing nuclear power as “clean” and “emissions-free.” Based on Canada’s Competition Act, the complaint challenges the CNA for violating provisions related to false or misleading advertising, similar to greenwashing regulations in other countries, where deceptive environmental claims distort market competition and misinform consumers.

    The complaint argues that the CNA omits critical information about the environmental damage and health risks associated with the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, radioactive waste management, and the impacts on communities near nuclear facilities. By selectively framing nuclear power as a climate solution, the CNA diverts attention and resources away from truly sustainable alternatives like solar and wind energy.

    In the U.S., similar deceptive practices could be challenged under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, which includes the FTC’s Green Guides. These guidelines require that any environmental claims be substantiated, transparent, and not misleading about the overall environmental impact. Yet, industry organizations like the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) continue to promote nuclear power as a “clean” energy solution to climate change while conveniently ignoring the lifecycle emissions, radioactive waste, and long-term environmental costs.

    A screenshot of a social media post Description automatically generated

    Leading the charge in Canada are groups such as the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), Environmental Defence Canada, and the Sierra Club Canada. Here in the U.S., organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Sierra Club could take similar action against the NEI and ANS by leveraging the FTC’s guidelines to expose deceptive marketing practices in the nuclear sector.

    Small Modular Reactors: A Costly and Dangerous Gamble

    The Biden administration has funneled billions into developing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), touting them as the future of “clean” energy. This renewed investment includes funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which together allocate billion of dollars to accelerate the deployment of next-generation nuclear technologies which are riddled with technological problems and have no real launch date on the horizone. SMRs are still in the design and testing phase and the earliest they could come online is at least a decade away. The push for SMRs is also bolstered by private sector investments, particularly from tech companies looking to power energy-intensive AI by restarting moth balled nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island and to build future SMRs in these locations that also serve as short term storage for thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste.

    Global Greenwashing Nuclear at COP29

    The push for nuclear expansion is a global effort led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) one of the most powerful agencies at the United Nations whose mission is to promote nuclear power around the globe. At the UN COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan a Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050 led by the US and UK was also endorsed by 31 countries. The declaration falsley claims that nuclear power has net-zero carbon emissions while ignoring ongoing problems of radioactive waste and enviornmental impacts. Most climate experts agree nuclear power is not a solution to climage change due to high cost and delays. The acting Australian prime minister, Richard Marles, declined to join the pact, stating, “pursuing a path of nuclear energy would represent pursuing the single-most expensive electricity option on the planet.” Several international indigenous groups and activists protested at COP29 against the pact and nuclear greenwashing in general. According to Leona Morgan, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Climate, “Nuclear is not carbon-neutral. It’s fueled by fossil fuels… they just simply don’t count the carbon footprint before the nuclear power plant or after the nuclear power plant.”

    The author in front of an abandoned Uranium mine in Church Rock, NM, Navajo Nation.

    Let’s Be Real: Nuclear Power is Not Clean or Green

    Sure, nuclear fission may not produce direct carbon emissions, but the nuclear fuel cycle—including uranium mining, reactor construction, radioactive waste management, and decommissioning—creates significant greenhouse gas emissions. In places like the Diné Navajo Nation, uranium mining has already caused immeasurable harm. Over 500 abandoned uranium mines and mills continue to contaminate the land and water with radioactive waste, leading to severe health problems that affect multiple generations. The DOEʻs failure to clean up abandoned mines and address these ongoing harms while simultaneously promoting the narrative of “clean, safe, carbon-free” nuclear power is not just unethical—it’s a dangerous distraction from real solutions for our energy needs and the fight against climate change.

    In addition to the delayed deployment of SMRs, there are future problems with going nuclear. High grade uranium resources are finite, with estimates suggesting “peak Uranium” reserves may only last another 10 to 15 years at current consumption rates. This means that SMRs could face fuel shortages before they even become widespread. As high-grade deposits run dry, the industry may turn to in-situ leaching (ISL) methods, which pose severe environmental risks, particularly groundwater contamination. Furthermore, reprocessing nuclear waste—an extremely hazardous and costly endeavor—is not currently practiced in the U.S. due to its dangers. However, as peak uranium approaches, reprocessing may be reconsidered as a necessary evil if we rely on nuclear power as a primary source of energy.

    false%20solution

    Donʻt Nuke the Planet Protest at COP29 (global greenwashing at Cop29)

    Better Use of Funds: Investing in Renewables

    Instead of funneling billions into new unproven nuclear projects, those funds should be redirected to renewable energy sources that are ready for deployment today to reduce carbon emissions. The billions allocated for SMRs could fund solar panels on rooftops for every house in a city the size of Las Vegas. Investments in wind farms and solar plants can achieve far greater reductions in CO2 emissions without the risks of radioactive waste.

    Congress has the power to reprogram funds from nuclear projects to support wind, solar, and energy storage, providing immediate climate benefits.

    Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), told Democracy Now at COP29 that the push for nuclear power is an “elaborate greenwashing scheme.”  “The nuclear industry is, pound for pound, the most subsized energy industry in history and the fact that their pumping more and more money into it as the industry is on the verge of decline is one of the most false solutions we are talking about in the climate talks. If nuclear had to stand on its own two feet, it would phase out within a decade.”

    The Way Forward: Taking Action While We Can

    US citizens concerned about the DOE’s misleading promotion of nuclear power and SMRs can take meaningful action by contacting the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to advocate for oversight of nuclear greenwashing and request the reprogramming of funds from SMR development to renewable energy initiatives. Individuals can file complaints with the FTC and the DOE Office of Inspector General for industry and government greenwashing. We can also support non-profit environmental groups and ask that they follow Canada’s lead to hold the nuclear industry and government agencies accountable.  With the Trump administration poised to make sweeping cuts to federal agencies and roll back nuclear safety oversight and regulations, citizen advocacy is more crucial than ever before.

    We don’t need to face this challenge alone. Over the past four years, several formal complaints and legal actions have been initiated against nuclear greenwashing in the Eurpoean Union, Austria, South Africa and now Canada. In confronting the extremism of the Trump administration, it’s more vital than ever to collaborate with other nations committed to challenging nuclear misinformation and demand real sustainable energy solutions that prioritize our planet over corporate interests.

    The post Nuclear Propaganda Exposed appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • The Planet Under Threat of Breakdown

    There’s a new trend in the world that’s working against the planet, you know, the one you’re standing on. This new trend, over the past year or so, spells “thumbs down” for planet Earth. It’s a disheartening, and fraught with danger, change in attitude, dismissing commitments, left and right.

    A figurative Planet Support Switch has been turned off by several key players. Proof of this agnostic attitude is found in every meeting of nations of the world over the past couple of years. They are turning their noses up on prior commitments. This is a new attitude. And it’s happening as climate change has turned into an ogre of destruction that’s impossible to ignore, featured on nightly news programs with automobiles tumbling as if children’s toys in torrential rivers of city streets (Paiporta).

    Meanwhile, COP29, the UN Conference of the Parties on climate change, Nov 11th-22nd, is being held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. Such a strange coincidence: UN climate meetings have become an outgrowth of oil producer largess. After all, they do have spectacular venues, hmm. Gotta wonder what they’ll do to stave off all-time record heat, caused by fossil fuel emissions, Co2? The paradox is devastatingly inescapable.

    A key data point exposes the challenge COP29 faces: Annual CO2 released into the atmosphere, 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023 vs. 9 billion metric tons in 1960.

    According to Dr. Patrick McGuire, of the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science: “The new Global Carbon Budget reveals a disturbing reality – global fossil CO2 emissions continue to climb, reaching 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024. Despite clear evidence of accelerating climate impacts, we’re still moving in the wrong direction. The need for rapid decarbonization has never been more urgent.” (Source: “Fossil Fuel Co2 Emissions Increase Again in 2024,” University of Reading, November 13, 2024)

    Also, of more than passing interest at COP29, according to Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF: “Donald Trump’s dramatic victory in the US election will drip poison into the climate talks.” (Source: Bloomberg Green Daily: COP29 Climate Money Fight)

    The planet is losing key support. Yet, it doesn’t take a climate scientist to figure out the planet has already gone ballistic with (1) rampant wildfires (2) torrential rains (3) massive destructive floods (4) brutal scorching droughts (5) pounding hailstorms (6) frightening thunder/lighting all unprecedented and all on a regular schedule nowadays. There are no more once-in-100-year storms; they’re every other year.

    Recent talks on protecting nature at the UN Biodiversity Conference d/d October 21-November 1st in Colombia collapsed when nations could not agree on key goals. This was the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was a disaster: “Talks were overshadowed by a lack of progress on implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the landmark ‘Paris Agreement for nature’ deal made at COP15 in Montreal in 2022.” (Source: Carbon Brief Nov. 2, 2024) By summit’s end, only 44 out of 196 parties had come up with a new biodiversity plan. This is pitiful.

    As for Net Zero prospects to halt global warming, forget it!

    At the G20 summit September 9-10 countries demanded rolling back promises to cut back burning oil, coal, and gas (Source: “G20 Countries Turning Backs on Fossil Fuel Pledge, Say Campaigners,” The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2024).

    “Over the last few months, we’ve seen everyone from major corporations to countries backpedaling on climate commitments made in the recent months and years. Despite growing, urgent evidence that climate change continues to accelerate, this is no real surprise.” (Source: Countries Are Rolling Back Their Climate Commitments, Climatebase, October 7, 2024)

    Global corporations from Ford to J.P. Morgan Chase are all rolling back their commitments to climate change, which is all deeply intertwined with what played out ahead of COP29, now playing before bemused Middle Eastern oligarchs.

    “Instead of indicating that the money required to green the economy is ready to flow, industry leaders now say their first priority is delivering financial returns for clients—and that means energy-transition investments will only be undertaken if they’re considered profitable,” (Source: “Wall Street Wants You to Know Profit Comes Before Net Zero,” Bloomberg, September 18, 2024.)

    The bankers are pointing their fingers at the politicians and governments, who have been largely unwilling to make significant headway in fighting climate change globally.

    Meanwhile, stating the obvious, which cannot be emphasized enough, climate warning signs have never been stronger than this year. Just for starters, a 2–3-foot sea level rise hangs by a cryosphere thread at the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. If it goes down for the count, and there’s reason to think it’ll happen during current generations, all bets are off for 8 of the world’s 10 largest megacities, nestled along coastlines. This is but one of several tipping points at the edge, and tipping. The protagonist is fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) which makes up around 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions, making it the primary greenhouse gas responsible for the majority of climate change impacts.

    And it is a fool’s errand that carbon capture/sequester will save the day; it’s too slow too unwieldy too expensive too inefficient takes too long and overwhelmed by the task at hand, sans super-duper-effective technology. “Despite its long history, carbon capture is a problematic technology. A new IEEFA study reviewed the capacity and performance of 13 flagship projects and found that 10 of the 13 failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.” (Source: “Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1, 2022)

    Losing key support for the planet couldn’t come at a worse time. According to Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report, 25 of 35 planetary vital signs are at record extremes. Two-thirds with record-extremes is viewed by climate scientists as a clear mandate for a planet “on the edge.”

    Alas, losing key support because of “concern over profits” is nonsensical and trivial at best, thinking small, not big. A report by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research contradicts that notion and exposes the silliness behind focus on “profit over planet,” to wit: “The analysis of data from 1,500 regions over the past 30 years showed that 30 percent have managed to lower their carbon emissions while continuing to thrive economically.” (Source: Green Growth: 30 percent of regions worldwide achieve economic growth while reducing carbon emissions, Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, Oct. 29, 2024)

    Beyond the insanity of profits at the expense of mitigation efforts for the planet, which exposes the underbelly of high-end capitalism, some good news: According to some climate experts, Trump’s re-election and his statements that green energy is a scam, and the likelihood that he withdraws the US from UN Climate agreements might drive a new sense of unity, even building a coalition that actually does something positive to stop fossil fuel emissions to support a parched planet. It’s possible, but here in America Wall Street prefers profits over planet. Umm, honestly, shouldn’t that be reversed?

    The post The Planet Under Threat of Breakdown first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A vision for nature, economy, and wellbeing: the value of a new National Park in Wales

    The proposal for a new National Park in North-East Wales marks a significant milestone, being the first designation of its kind in over 60 years. Now, a new report outlines how this initiative is more than a nod to conservation. It represents a bold opportunity to integrate nature preservation, community development, and economic growth.

    From fostering biodiversity to enhancing rural economies, this potential park is poised to set a precedent for how landscapes can harmoniously serve people and the planet.

    As the British Mountaineering Committee wrote of the potential new National Park in Wales:

    In major news for those who love the outdoors, a new national park has been proposed in north-east Wales, in the area known as the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley, although the proposed area goes well beyond the area of the current National Landscape known by the same name…

    The proposal for the new park was a manifesto commitment for the Welsh Government during the 2021 election, and therefore they are expected to try and get it designated before the 2026 elections.

    Currently, the Welsh government has opened a public consultation on its new National Park proposals. You can access that here. Now, the Campaign for National Parks has released a report into what it sees as the economic and social benefits of the project. You can access the report here.

    Economic and social benefits of a new National Park

    Economic growth is a cornerstone of the National Park model. Current Welsh National Parks contribute over £500 million annually to Wales’ economy, supporting jobs in tourism, recreation, and conservation.

    With strategic investments, these parks generate returns of up to £7 for every £1 invested. The proposed park in North-East Wales is expected to amplify these benefits, drawing tourists year-round and boosting local businesses. Volunteering opportunities, like the 15,000 hours annually coordinated by existing parks, are likely to expand, fostering community engagement.

    Additionally, the park will support sustainable rural economies. Local products and businesses gain an international edge under the National Park brand, promoting everything from artisan foods to eco-tourism ventures. For farmers, the designation opens doors to funding and diversification, such as transitioning to organic practices or hosting visitors at farm stays.

    Protecting and enhancing nature

    Wales is grappling with significant ecological challenges, including species decline and habitat degradation. National Parks play a pivotal role in reversing these trends.

    As the report details, covering approximately 15% of Welsh land, these areas house vital ecosystems. The proposed park could extend protections to unique habitats, such as the Gronant Dunes and Berwyn Range, safeguarding rare species like little terns and red grouse.

    Restoration initiatives will be central, with peatlands and woodlands serving as natural carbon sinks. The report notes that Welsh peatlands, for instance, have the potential to store the equivalent of three times Wales’ annual CO2 emissions. Projects like the Celtic Rainforest initiative in Snowdonia offer a template for leveraging green funding to rejuvenate landscapes.

    Promoting recreation and wellbeing – but what about housing?

    National Parks are not only sanctuaries for nature but also spaces for public enjoyment and health.

    The report outlines how accessible trails, visitor centers, and ranger-led programs make nature experiences more inclusive. The pandemic underscored the importance of these spaces for mental and physical health, cementing their status as “wellbeing factories.” For every £1 invested, parks yield significant health benefits for visitors and volunteers.

    With its proximity to urban areas in England, the proposed park could become a major recreational hub. Strategies to manage visitor impacts, such as park-and-ride systems and high-frequency bus services, are already proven to reduce congestion and environmental stress in other parks.

    Housing affordability and sustainability are critical issues. National Park designation often raises concerns about inflated property values, but research indicates these effects are short-lived.

    The new park would, according to the Campaign for National Parks report, implement measures like Section 106 agreements, ensuring that new developments prioritise local needs. As a unified planning authority, the park can align housing, transportation, and conservation goals, ensuring cohesive development.

    A call for ambition amid a call for a new National Park

    The campaign for this park envisions it as an exemplar of modern conservation and community engagement. Recommendations include ecologically coherent boundaries, robust governance, and sustained funding.

    The Campaign for National Parks, along with 18 other organisations, has issued a joint statement. It says the Welsh government must implement a series of actions to make sure the new National Park is inclusive and sustainable. These include:

    • An emphasis on species recovery, climate change and a boundary which considers the full diversity of habitats and species present in the area. There should be targeted support for farmers and land managers in the area and an emphasis on nature recovery.
    • A commitment to new and ongoing funding at a level which will enable the new National Park to achieve its full potential whilst ensuring that there are no detrimental impacts on the existing National Parks in Wales.
    • Maintaining economic and social resilience for local communities. The new National Park will be an area where people live and work. The small towns, villages and communities within it must be supported to retain resilience, Welsh heritage and sustainability.
    •  Modernised governance arrangements which ensure that those involved in making decisions about the new National Park have the necessary skills and are representative of both local communities and the wider population of Wales.   

    By integrating biodiversity recovery, sustainable farming, and community resilience into its framework, the park should aim to address contemporary challenges head-on.

    Will it happen?

    Gareth Ludkin, senior policy officer at Campaign for National Parks stated:

    We welcome proposals for a new National Park in North East Wales and believe this is a once in a generation opportunity for Wales to create a truly exemplar National Park that leads the way for the rest of the UK.

    We want to see a new National Park which can tackle the dual climate and nature crises of today whilst also taking hold of the opportunity to build resilient communities, manage visitor pressures and innovate for the future health and wellbeing of Wales and the UK.

    The North-East Wales new National Park has the potential to redefine protected landscapes in the UK. By uniting economic vitality, environmental stewardship, and public wellbeing, it offers a roadmap for sustainable development in the 21st century.

    This vision calls for bold action, collaboration, and a commitment to preserving Wales’s natural and cultural heritage for generations to come.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Losing Honestly and Gracefully

    After election defeats, political writers are quick to explain that if only the politicians had read my book and followed my advice, things would have been different for our side.

    My pitch is a bit different. Please read It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, but not for a winning electoral strategy.

    If candidates opposed to reactionary authoritarian nationalism had advocated the positions I endorse, Trump and like-minded Republicans still would have won control of all three branches of the US government. But at least Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party, and activists further left (the category I put myself in) would have lost gracefully by being more honest.

    The book starts with an analysis of contemporary intellectual culture (defined in a non-snobby way, not just people with advanced degrees but the way we think together) before taking on three hot-button topics in today’s politics—race and white supremacy, sex/gender and the trans movement, and the economic implications of an ecological worldview.

    On race: I don’t hesitate to criticize the jargon and haughtiness of some anti-racist activists and acknowledge the failures of many institutionalized DEI programs, arguments that may have resonated with some white folks who voted for Trump. But I also argue that the United States remains a white-supremacist culture and that we white people have an obligation to change. Such “messaging” wouldn’t have won Democrats many white votes.

    On sex/gender: Mainstream feminism in the United States has gone all-in on the demands of the trans movement, even though that movement has never offered a coherent account of transgenderism. The Republicans exploited that incoherence effectively. For a decade, I have articulated a feminist challenge to transgender ideology, a position that would have made the Democrats a more credible voice for women’s rights. But because my analysis is rooted in a radical feminist critique of institutionalized male dominance, it’s bound to scare away many conservative voters.

    On environmentalism: Almost without exception, politicians on all sides advocate economic growth. The debate is usually about which policies are likely to be more effective. When population comes up in the United States, the most common concern is falling birthrates, not the problem of overpopulation. I argue that human survival depends on “fewer and less”—a dramatic reduction in the population and a dramatic reduction in aggregate consumption, with steps taken to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth. I know of no politician from any party who faces the reality that the human future—if there is to be a human future—depends on our ability to shrink the economy, not expand it.

    I realize that my race and sex/gender arguments are radioactive in some circles, and that demanding an ecological reckoning guarantees being ignored by most everyone in the mainstream. If unsuccessful center/liberal/left candidates had embraced these positions, they likely would have lost by larger margins than they did. But at least they would have lost gracefully, making principled arguments that may not carry the day politically but offer a model for honestly engaging difficult questions.

    If I can’t promise electoral success in the short term, why should anyone bother with these critical perspectives? That’s a reasonable question, given that electoral success matters. I don’t believe that any of today’s politicians are going to magically solve our problems, but which politicians are setting policy today can either reduce the chances of a decent human future or carve out some space for hope.

    My only answer: Responses I have received to the book tell me that there are people—not a majority, not even a significant minority right now—who are facing tough questions and want a space to explore this kind of politics without fear of being baited or insulted. It’s possible that from that small group, a more honest and graceful politics is possible.

    The post Losing Honestly and Gracefully first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Expanding the Possible, from Below

    The Green New Deal has been largely blocked at the national level, but it is thriving in communities, cities, and states. Jeremy Brecher’s new book is both an urgent call to action and proof of concept.

    Starting where we’re at

    Less than one week after Trump was re-elected to the single most powerful political office in the world, it seems like a horrible time to release a book about the Green New Deal.

    Thinking back to 2018, not so long ago in time but perhaps much longer in space, to when the Green New Deal was launched into public attention as a bold proposal for transformative national legislation, is frankly, beyond depressing. Loss, grief and rage compete with numbness and shock, easily overwhelming any effort to fathom where we were then, and where we find ourselves now.

    But this is not a depressing story. We have no time for that now.

    This is a story, a true story, about expanding the sense of what is possible and thereby expanding the actual limits of the possible. It is about shifting the balance of power and expanding democracy – what could be more right, right now? This story weaves once strange and wary bedfellows into a surprising sort of magical fabric, capable of keeping us safe as we pull the rug from under kings. This is the view from below.

    What makes a Green New Dealer?

    Jeremy Brecher’s new book, The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy, is a timely and important contribution for organizers and anyone thinking about rebuilding the world from the bottom up.

    Drawing on decades of hands-on experience at the intersections of environmental, labor, and justice movements, Brecher offers an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives across various sectors and locations, highlighting a diverse array of programs already in progress or under development. The initiatives shared by Green New Dealers are intended to inspire countless more projects, which can serve as the foundation for local, national, and even global mobilization and reconstruction – even, and perhaps especially in times when national legislation cannot be relied upon.

    Brecher begins with questions, “Is [the Green New Deal from Below] a brilliant flame that may simply burn out? Will it continue as a force, but not a decisive element in a society and world hurtling toward midnight? Or will it prove to be the start of a turn away from catastrophe and toward security and justice? The answer will largely depend on what people decide to do with the possibilities [it] opens up” (10).

    The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Like The New Deal of the 1930s, the Green New Deal is not a single program or piece of legislation – rather, according to Brecher, it exhibits many of the traits of a social movement. “[The New Deal] was a whole era of turmoil in which contesting forces tried to address a devastating crisis and shape the future of American society. In addition to its famous “alphabet soup” of federal agencies, the New Deal was part of a broader process of social change that included experimentation at the state, regional, and local levels; organization among labor, the unemployed, urban residents, the elderly, and other grassroots constituencies; and lively debate on future possibilities that went far beyond the policies actually adopted” (12). While the New Deal certainly had its limitations in terms of racial and gender justice, it was this unifying and expansive vision that set it apart as a cohesive and immensely transformative program.

    From its outset, the core principle of the Green New Deal has been and remains, “to unite the necessity for climate protection with the goals of full employment and social justice” (11). In other words, not only does the GND provide a unifying vision that aligns environmental, labor, and justice movements together in the pursuit of mutual aims, it weaves constituencies and communities into transformative power blocs, greater than the sum of their parts.

    Though the GND has so far been consistently blocked and largely coopted at the national level by the fossil fuel lobby, and by corporate interests antagonistic to its inherent socialist implications, a lesser-known wave of initiatives has also emerged. Driven by community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, students, and other nonfederal actors, all aimed at advancing the climate protection, economic and social justice objectives of the Green New Deal, this grassroots movement can be recognized as “a Green New Deal from Below.”

    “So far, these forces have managed to block the Green New Deal at a national level. The strategy of the Green New Deal from Below is to outflank them” (174). Brecher warns against mistaking the Green New Deal from Below movement for an unrelated collection of isolated or even of loosely related interventions – that would be to miss the forest for the trees, or as Brecher describes it, that would be like describing a collection of lecture halls, library, stadium, cafeteria, and dorms but failing to recognize the university.

    The type of vision fueled and integrative coalition building exemplified by diverse Green New Dealers has major potential for mass member organizing, shifting power, expanding democracy, and could provide the way forward from our current predicament, shoved between a neoliberal heat-rock and a cold, hard fascist place.

    How to Green New Deal from Below

    Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who has introduced a motion to create a new city office to support workers transitioning out of jobs affected by new technology, including those in the oil and gas industry, summed it up well: the city cannot “correct the sins of environmental racism” by “taking away jobs from working-class communities” (108).

    The core idea behind Green New Deal from Below initiatives is to address the urgent need for climate protection while also meeting the needs of working people and marginalized communities, an approach that moves beyond fragmented policies to a comprehensive set of strategies for social change. It integrates climate protection with the creation of good jobs and tackles the disproportionate concentration of carbon pollution, such as from fossil fuel plants, in low-income communities of color. This policy integration is reflected in the collaboration of previously separate or opposing constituencies. “When once-divided groups reach out to each other, explore common needs and interests, and start cooperating for common objectives they thereby create new forms of social action. That is the process that [Brecher has] called the emergence of “common preservation”” (180).

    The initiatives described by Brecher are largely driven by such coalitions of diverse groups working toward shared goals, often including neighborhood organizations, unions, racial and ethnic justice groups, political leaders, government officials, youth and senior organizations, religious congregations, and climate justice advocates. Chapters 1-4 provide detailed but highly accessible examples of such initiatives, including candid debriefs that don’t shy away from exploring lessons learned from mistakes, at the community, municipal, and state levels.

    One particularly potent lesson, gleaned through numerous campaigns, relates to tensions that can arise between environmental and labor protections. Historically and now, climate protection policies have often been viewed as a threat to workers and communities reliant on the fossil fuel economy. This perception generates opposition to climate action, with certain communities and worker groups highlighted as “poster children” for the negative impacts of such policies, leading to the widely framed “environment vs. jobs” debate, fueling conflict between environmentalists and organized labor, often amplified by fossil fuel interests.

    Brecher lays out three key shifts in mindset that are beginning to offer an alternative to this polarization (147). First, many trade unionists have come to recognize that the transition to cleaner energy is inevitable, and that their members will be vulnerable unless policies are put in place to protect them. Second, climate advocates are realizing that their policies will face significant resistance unless they also address the needs of workers and communities that could be negatively impacted by these changes. Third, the core idea of the Green New Deal, that climate protection can be an opportunity to address inequality and injustice, opens up a broader vision for social change that transcends narrow interest group politics.

    This “new thinking” often begins with specific interests but is increasingly fostering a broader awareness. Unions are recognizing the necessity of climate protection; environmentalists are acknowledging the importance of community well-being; and justice advocates see the potential for new coalitions to tackle long-standing inequities. “The result has been the development of coalitions among groups that had previously been at odds, lobbing virtual projectiles at each other from separate silos” (148).

    Green New Deal from Below initiatives contrast sharply with dominant neoliberal public policies that prioritize private enterprise as the primary vehicle for achieving social goals and restrict government action to facilitating private wealth accumulation – or more simply, they intentionally break from the profit over people and planet model of business as usual. Green New Deal from Below programs emphasize public planning, investment, and strict criteria for achieving public objectives. Their implementation involves not just private corporations but also government-run programs, public banks, cooperatives, and other alternatives to profit-driven enterprises. Resources are often raised through strategies like pollution fees, taxes on large corporations, and uber-wealthy individual incomes.

    The climate policies of Green New Deals from Below aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the pace required by climate science with a focus on proven strategies: expanding renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels, decreasing energy demand by increasing energy efficiency and doing more with less through programs focused on public abundance, while rejecting more costly, risky and green-washed approaches like carbon capture, hydrogen blends with fossil fuels, and nuclear energy.

    Brecher gets into detail via diverse examples of campaigns, direct actions, community and public projects, as well as overarching and particular strategies in chapters 5-11: Climate-Safe Energy Production, Negawatts (Efficiency and Managed Contractions), Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Transforming Transportation, Protecting Workers and Communities on the Ground, Just Transition in the States, and New Deal Jobs for the Future. This is a wealth of information in a highly accessible and actionable presentation – from the nitty gritty of organizing meetings and local bicycle lanes to very large-scale campaigns like public jobs guarantees.

    Strategy from below

    The Green New Deal from Below does not provide a strategy for total social transformation. “That would require transformation of the basic structures of the national and world order, including capitalism and the nation-state system. The Green New Deal from Below can be part of that more extensive process of change, but it cannot subsume it” (174).

    The Green New Deal from Below is a hybrid movement that operates both inside and outside the dominant political system, including elected officials, party leaders, government bureaucrats, and electoral activists, as well as communities, ethnic groups, labor organizations, and other civil society groups. It pursues its goals through a mix of conventional political tactics, such as supporting candidates, lobbying for legislation, and public education, alongside direct-action methods, including occupying political offices, blocking fossil fuel pipelines, and supporting strikes aimed at a just transition to a climate-safe economy.

    These initiatives strategically function both within, alongside, and in opposition to existing political institutions. Actions focus on tangible changes that directly improve people’s lives. Whether it’s shutting down a polluting coal plant in an asthma-ridden community or providing free transit or bicycles to young people, these initiatives aim to make a real difference. They also educate and inspire: free transit and bicycles not only reduce vehicle pollution but also allow young people to explore alternatives to car-dependent lifestyles.

    Additionally, participation and justice are centered in practice. Actions are also almost always led by coalitions of diverse groups. For example, the Green New Deal for Education brings together teachers, school staff, students, parents, unions, and racial justice advocates to fight for investment in healthy schools free from fossil fuel pollution. Sate coalitions have united unions, climate-impacted communities, racial and ethnic justice groups, and climate advocates to push for legislation that phases out fossil fuels in ways that create good jobs, support community development, reduce environmental injustices, and build climate-friendly housing and transit.

    Historical sociologist Michael Mann argues that new solutions to societal problems often arise from the overlooked spaces within existing power structures – what he calls the “interstices.” These gaps, often hidden from the mainstream, provide fertile ground for marginalized or seemingly powerless groups to propose alternatives to the status quo. This process is sometimes called the “Lilliput strategy,” where small, isolated efforts are linked to create larger systemic change. However, Brecher points out that this strategy is not without tension (169). It requires balancing the need for identity and independence within each group with the necessity of broader cooperation. The resulting tension can either lead to fragmentation or domination, but it can also spark a process of collaboration where the distinct needs and concerns of each group are incorporated into a larger, unified vision.

    This dynamic is key to the development of the Green New Deal from Below. While recognizing the unique needs of different constituencies, advocates of the Green New Deal have worked to forge connections between diverse groups that have historically been at odds. A notable example mentioned previously is the collaboration between organized labor and environmentalists – two groups that have often been in conflict. Rather than forcing these groups to give up their individual identities, the Green New Deal offers a shared identity centered on common goals. The success of these coalitions depends on ensuring that all participants benefit from cooperation through policies that combine labor protections, environmental justice, and greenhouse gas reductions. However, Brecher warns that these coalitions are fragile and can falter if the priorities of key constituencies are not given adequate attention.

    Ultimately, Green New Deal from Below actions seek to shift the balance of power away from fossil fuel polluters, exploitative corporations, and the wealthy elite, toward exploited workers, marginalized communities, and non-elite groups. At their heart, they aim to expand democracy, challenge the rise of autocracy and plutocracy, and ensure power is more equally distributed and accessible to all.

    By helping to build organized constituencies and coalitions that serve as political foundations for broader Green New Deal campaigns, these projects also create institutional building blocks, from energy systems to transportation networks, that can become integral parts of the economic and social infrastructure of a larger Green New Deal. By engaging people in projects that reflect common interests and a shared vision, these initiatives help overcome divisions and contradictions that weaken popular movements. They also reduce the influence of anti–Green New Deal forces by dividing them, disorienting them, undermining their support base, and, at times, even winning them over.

    Brecher’s presentation reveals that the fight for the Green New Deal is closely tied to the fight for democracy. These initiatives offer models for, and demonstrate the benefits of, popular democracy. Green New Deal from Below projects show that people can achieve tangible gains that improve their lives, building a base for the protection and expansion of democratic governance at every level, embodying local participatory democracy while also reinforcing representative democracy against the threat of fascism at the national level.

    Local and state-level Green New Deal initiatives are therefore crucial for achieving both climate and justice goals. They help build momentum and power for a national Green New Deal and serve as testing grounds, offering a “proof of concept.” These building blocks, when linked, form a more effective Green New Deal with deep local roots. Programs “from below” can then connect with each other and align with national planning and investment. Some national proposals even outline policies to facilitate this coordination. While federal and global action are needed to fully realize Green New Deal goals, the movement is already taking shape at the local level.

    Going further

    Brecher cautions, that while the Green New Deal program is crucial and beneficial, it is not sufficient on its own to address the deeper structural issues of an unjust and self-destructive global order. There are also critiques outside the scope of this book which assert that even if the Green New Deal was adopted at the national level today, on its own, it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough on climate protection to avert devasting outcomes.

    One of its strategic objectives must therefore be to pave the way for more radical and far-reaching forms of change. Indeed, an internationalist Global Green New Deal has begun to materialize – both “from below” and championed to various degrees by a few government and multinational formations. The key will be to continue to build and connect participatory, justice centered activity around the world in ever widening and deepening solidarity.

    Today, we are living with a profound sense of urgency – the urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the urgency of those suffering and dying due to injustice. The original Green New Deal proposal responded to this by calling for a ten-year mobilization aimed at transforming American society and economy as dramatically as the New Deal and the wartime mobilization during World War II. “The Green New Deal arose in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It pointed the way toward viable alternatives to the realities that evoked that hopelessness and despair. The Green New Deal from Below provides people with a way to start building those alternatives day by day, where they live and work” (180).

    Seven years later, a recent headline from New Scientist reads: “The 1.5°C target is dead, but climate action needn’t be”. For the first time, climate scientists have explicitly said it will be impossible to limit peak warming to 1.5°C. Our focus must be on taking real action, like the initiatives Brecher has laid out and like many others around the world, not on meaningless platitudes and slogans like “Keep 1.5°C alive” or vague promises of “net-zero”.

    At the outset of the book, Brecher cites the world historian Arnold Toynbee on how great civilizational changes occur. The existing leadership of existing institutions face new challenges and fail to change to meet them. But a “creative minority” may arise that proposes and begins to implement new solutions. “Those building the Green New Deal are creating such new solutions, from below” (180).

    Therefore, perhaps the greatest success, as well as the greatest potential, of the Green New Deal from Below is its ability to expand the boundaries of what is possible, bringing together and empowering people to fight for the things they need but have long considered out of reach.

    Workin’ on a world

    We may never know if these solutions will be sufficient or come in time. But Brecher offers us the chance to resonate with the feelings expressed by songwriter Iris Dement in her song “Workin’ on a World.” She recalls waking each day “filled with sadness, fear, and dread,” as the world she once knew seemed to be “crashing to the ground.”

    Looking around where we find ourselves this November of 2024, in the shadow of so much loss but with so much yet to lose, it wouldn’t be crazy to admit to feeling the same. Yet, as Iris “reflected on the struggles of those who came before her, the sacrifices they made, she realized those sacrifices had opened doors for her that they never lived to see” (180).

    “Now I’m working on a world I may never see,
    I’m joining forces with the warriors of love
    Who came before and will follow you and me.
    I get up in the morning knowing I’m privileged just to be
    Working on a world I may never see.”

    Brecher concludes, “whether we will see the world of the Green New Deal fully realized, in the Green New Deal from Below, we can see that right now we are making a part of that world” (180).

    I’d only add that in so doing, we are also each reaffirming our own and one another’s right to be here, to reclaim our world here and now with a place for us all in it, to choose to live and to help live, to occupy our lives. We’re not just doing it for the future, we’re doing it for the now. In the words of a different movement ancestor, Salaria Kea, an American nurse, desegregation activist, and the only black nurse who worked in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting against fascism on the frontlines:

    “I’m not just goin’ to sit down and let this happen. I’m going out and help, even if it is my life. But I’m helping. This is my world too.”

    Through action, especially through our collective action, we are our vision come to life. We are the embodiment of that world we’re busy working on. Through us, it already does exist.

    The Labor Network for Sustainability is taking the opportunity to launch the book, as well as the organizing models it provides, in a live webinar event scheduled for Wednesday, November 20th at 7:30 pm ET.

     

    The post Expanding the Possible, from Below first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Plea to bar Prabowo from UK as Indonesian security forces crack down on Papuan rally

    Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan advocacy group for self-determination for the colonised Melanesians has appealed to the United Kingdom government to cancel its planned reception for new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

    “Prabowo is a blood-stained war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua,” claimed an exiled leader of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda.

    He said he hoped the government would stand up for human rights and a “habitable planet” by cancelling its reception for Prabowo.

    Prabowo, who was inaugurated last month, is on a 12-day trip to China, the United States, Peru, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

    He is due in the UK on Monday, November 19.

    The trip comes as Indonesian security forces brutally suppressed a protest against Indonesia’s new transmigration strategy in the Papuan region.

    Wenda, an interim president of ULMWP, said Indonesia was sending thousands of industrial excavators to destroy 5 million hectares of Papuan forest along wiith thousands of troops to violently suppress any resistance.

    “Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land. He wants to destroy West Papua,” the UK-based Wenda said in a statement.

    ‘Ghost of Suharto’ returns
    “For West Papuans, the ghost of Suharto has returned — the New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.

    “It is gravely disappointing that the UK government has signed a ‘critical minerals’ deal with Indonesia, which will likely cover West Papua’s nickel reserves in Tabi and Raja Ampat.

    “The UK must understand that there can be no real ‘green deal’ with Indonesia while they are destroying the third largest rainforest on earth.”

    Wenda said he was glad to see five members of the House of Lords — Lords Harries, Purvis, Gold, Lexden, and Baroness Bennett — hold the government to account on the issues of self-determination, ecocide, and a long-delayed UN fact-finding visit.

    “We need this kind of scrutiny from our parliamentary supporters more than ever now,” he said.

    Prabowo is due to visit Oxford Library as part of his diplomatic visit.

    “Why Oxford? The answer is clearly because the peaceful Free West Papua Campaign is based here; because the Town Hall flies our national flag every December 1st; and because I have been given Freedom of the City, along with other independence leaders like Nelson Mandela,” Wenda said.

    This visit was not an isolated incident, he said. A recent cultural promotion had been held in Oxford Town Centre, addressed by the Indonesian ambassador in an Oxford United scarf.

    Takeover of Oxford United
    “There was the takeover of Oxford United by Anindya Bakrie, one of Indonesia’s richest men, and Erick Thohir, an Indonesian government minister.

    “This is not about business — it is a targeted campaign to undermine West Papua’s international connections. The Indonesian Embassy has sponsored the Cowley Road Carnival and attempted to ban displays of the Morning Star, our national flag.

    “They have called a bomb threat in on our office and lobbied to have my Freedom of the City award revoked. Indonesia is using every dirty trick they have in order to destroy my connection with this city.”

    Wenda said Indonesia was a poor country, and he blamed the fact that West Papua was its poorest province on six decades of colonialism.

    “There are giant slums in Jakarta, with homeless people sleeping under bridges. So why are they pouring money into Oxford, one of the wealthiest cities in Europe?” Wenda said.

    “The UK has been my home ever since I escaped an Indonesian prison in the early 2000s. My family and I have been welcomed here, and it will continue to be our home until my country is free and we can return to West Papua.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Conservation in the Age of Trump

    Alabama Rocks and the eastern face of the Sierra Nevada Range, on BLM lands near Lone Pine, California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    After Donald Trump’s election, many wildlands advocates have become depressed and disheartened and feel that conservation efforts are over. The Trump administration will no doubt try to eliminate, thwart, or dismantle conservation laws and policies.

    It is important to remember this is nothing new. The old phrase “two steps forward and one step back” often characterizes all political issues.

    Looking at conservation history, I see successes, like the Migratory Bird Act, the creation of national parks and national forests, the Wilderness Act, the Alaska Lands Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other legislation, like punctuated evolution. Long periods with little forward progress, then suddenly significant changes.

    Years often pass without significant conservation success, but the stars almost always line up at some point, and conservation legislation is approved. When and how this will happen can’t be predicted.

    For that reason, one must be prepared to move a legislative proposal when the opportunity is presented. This requires doing the background public advocacy for years before one can get a legislative hearing.

    In the 1930s Bob Marshall proposed that everything north of the Yukon River in Alaska should be protected as a huge national park. Marshall’s proposal must have seemed incredibly naïve to most Alaskans at that time. The entire 1930s Alaskan economy was based on resource exploitation like mining and commercial salmon fisheries.

    Nevertheless, Marshall’s idea simmered for years. The opportunity for protecting much of northern Alaska was a consequence of oil development. When oil companies tried to build the Alaska pipeline, Alaskan natives protested. They argued that they still had legal rights to the land and pipeline construction was delayed.

    Alaska pipeline TAPS near Delta Junction Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner.

    Paradoxically it was the oil companies that lobbied on behalf of native groups for some kind of rapid resolution. This obstacle to pipeline construction was settled as part of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

    One clause in the Native Claims legislation required the Secretary of Interior to nominate lands for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protection which ultimately led to the protected landscape we see today. The Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act passed Congress in 1980.

    If one looks at a map of Alaska today, almost everything north of the Yukon River is in some kind of protected land designation. There is the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak Preserve, Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Selawik Wildlife Refuge, Cape Krusenstein, Koyukuk Wildlife Refuge, Bering Sea Land Bridge Preserve, Yukon Flats Wildlife Refuge, Kanti Wildlife Refuge, and even the portion of the Naval Petroleum Reserve is semi-protected.

    It took fifty years, but then the stars lined up, and conservation groups mobilized to garner protection for much of the area north of the Yukon River.

    For 25 years, conservationists sought to preserve much of the California desert under the Wilderness Act. The first legislative efforts to preserve the desert wildlands began in 1986 when then Senator Alan Cranston introduced legislation. However, it was not until 1994 California Desert Protection Act passed Congress which established more than 69 new wilderness. It also upgraded Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve.

    Subsequent legislation added 1.6 million acre Mojave Trails National Monument and Snow to Sands National Monument to the protection of the California desert.
    One of the interesting historical factors in the California Desert Protection Act has lessons for all such efforts.

    Jim Eaton, now deceased, at the time was Executive Director of the California Wilderness Coalition. Jim told me that when they crafted the original legislative proposal, they included every BLM area that they thought qualified for designation under the 1964 Wilderness Act. They expected that in the legislative debate over the bill they would invariably lose some of these areas.

    However, opponents of the legislation focused all their energy trying to stop creation of a Mojave National Park. In the end, the compromise was the creation of a national preserve which allowed hunting and continued livestock grazing. But Eaton said, not one of the proposed wilderness areas was eliminated.

    The lesson learned was to put forth the best proposal you can defend, because you never know how the political debate will turn out.

    There are visionary proposals that emulate past conservation efforts. For instance, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) which would designate more than 23 million acres of wilderness across five states has been repeatably introduced into Congress since 1993 . Even though it has not yet been enacted, should not discourage wilderness advocates. One never knows when the stars will line up and NREPA may pass Congress.

    In the meantime, NREPA acts like a roadmap showing exactly what is at stake and what could be the future for northern Rockies wildlands. It is an articulation of what we need to defend. It is a constant reminder of the opportunity that exists for wildlands preservation across the region.

    Another example is the original 9-million-acre Southern Utah Wilderness Association (SUWA) Red Rock Wilderness Act proposal for Utah’s canyon country. The Act was first introduced in 1989. Since that time SUWA has defended its proposal, and successfully shepherded some wilderness legislation through Congress. Still the remaining 8 million acre proposal remains as a reminder of what is possible and what still remains to be preserved in southern Utah.

    There are other visionary efforts across the country that I believe will invariably gain Congressional support. For instance, the Unite the Parks effort in California Sierra Nevada seeks to bridge the land between Yosemite and Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks with a national monument designation.

    The effort to protect more than a million acres of Owyhee Canyonlands of Oregon is another long-term legislative effort that may soon bear fruit.Efforts to preserve all the wildlands north of Yellowstone National Park including NREPA, as well as expansion of Yellowstone National Park or the proposal by the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance for designation of all the roadless lands on the Custer Gallatin National Fork.

    A similar effort to garner substantial wilderness protection of Central Idaho wildlands by the Friends of the Clearwater in Idaho is on-going.

    And in Maine, RESTORE the North Woods, continues to lobby for a 3.2-million-acre national park in the region.

    Restoration of wildlife is also on-going. The spread of wolves across the West, including wolf packs in California and Colorado, demonstrates that activists can achieve success.

    The Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council seeks to establish several wild bison herds outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks across Montana and Wyoming.

    One of the conclusions I’ve come to from a review of these and other conservation campaigns is that boldness and vision generates public support. And even when one only accomplishes part of that vision, visionary proposals like SUWA’s Canyon Country Act or the Alliance for Wild Rockies NREPA continue to inspire people.

    So, while the Trump administration is unlikely to promote conservation efforts, serendipity plays a large roll in what is possible. The lesson I take home is one must create a visionary proposal, and continuously promote it, protect its contours and be ready when the opportunity to enact protection arises.

    One can get disheartened, or one can get to work. I prefer to continue working for the preservation of our wildlands and wildlife.

    The post Conservation in the Age of Trump appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • What a Trump Administration Means for the Environment


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • It’s Revolution or Death

    Just in time for the COP29 summit, where a group of self-congratulatory world leaders will meet in Baku, Azerbaijan for photo-ops, catered meals, and of course discussion of climate goals that they don’t intend to meet, subMedia, in collaboration with Peter Gelderloos, is pleased to release part one of a three part series: It’s Revolution or Death.

    The first installment of the series takes a look at the push for green capitalism, and questions the common-sense assumptions of its cheerleaders. Bolstered by unwavering, uncritical support from NGO’s, energy corporations portray themselves as cutting edge innovators in green energy technology while hedging their bets and maintaining diversified portfolios – packed with fossil fuel investments.

    The coming two installments will discuss Indigenous and anarchist struggles for land and autonomy and how local communities can get organized to build resiliency in the face of worsening climate catastrophe.

    The effects of runaway climate change are already here. If the past 50 years of gas-lighting have made one thing abundantly clear, it’s that the politicians and entrepreneurs leading the charge for green energy will never prioritize the interests of life on earth in their pursuit of profits. So what are we going to do about it?

    For more of Peter Gelderloos’ work check out They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us and The Solutions are Already Here. Both from Pluto Books.

    The post It’s Revolution or Death first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • COP29: Does NZ have the credibility to lead carbon trading talks?

    By Eloise Gibson, RNZ climate change correspondent

    New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is going to the global climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan next week, where he will be co-leading talks on international carbon trading.

    But the government has been unable to commit to using the trading mechanism he is leading high-level discussions about, and critics say he is also vulnerable over New Zealand’s backsliding on fossil fuels.

    New Zealand has consistently pushed for two things in international climate diplomacy — one is ending government subsidies for fossil fuels globally, and the other is allowing carbon trading across international borders, so one country can pay for, say, switching off a coal plant in another country.

    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

    Nailing down the rules for making sure these carbon savings are real will be an area of focus for leaders at the COP29 summit, starting on 11 November.

    But as Watts gets ready to attend the talks, critics say his government is vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy on both fronts.

    In a bid to bring back fossil fuel exploration, the government wants to lower financial security requirements on oil and gas companies requiring them to set aside money for the costs of decommissioning and cleaning up spills.

    The coalition says the current requirements — brought in after taxpayers had to pay to deal with a defunct oil field — are so onerous they are stopping companies wanting to look for fossil fuels.

    Billion dollar clean-ups
    At a recent hearing, Parliament’s independent environment watchdog warned going too far at relaxing requirements could leave taxpayers footing bills of billions of dollars if a clean-up is needed.

    The commission’s Geoff Simmons spoke on behalf of Commissioner Simon Upton.

    “The commissioner was really clear in his submission that he wants to place on record that he doesn’t think it is appropriate for any government, present or future, to offer any subsidies, implicit or explicit, to underwrite the cost of exploration.”

    The watchdog said that would tilt the playing field away from renewable energy in favour of fossil fuels.

    Energy Minister Shane Jones says the government’s Bill doesn’t lower the liability for fixing damage or decommissioning oil and gas wells, which remain the responsibility of the fossil fuel company in perpetuity.

    But climate activist Adam Currie says that only works if the company stays in business.

    “The watering down of those key financial safeguards increases the risk of the taxpaper having to yet again pay to decommission a failed oil field.

    “Simon Watts is about to go to COP and urge other countries to end fossil fuel subsidies while at home they are handing an open cheque to fossil fuels  .. This is a classic case of do as a say, not as I do.”

    Getting flack not feared
    Watts says he does not fear getting flack for the fossil-friendlier changes when he is in Baku, citing the government’s goal of doubling renewable energy.

    “No I’m not worried about flak, New Zealand is transitioning away from fossil fuels . . . gas [from fossil fields] is going to need to be a means by which we need to transition.”

    Nor does he see an issue with the fact he is jointly leading negotiations on a trading mechanism his own government seems unable to commit to using.

    Watts is leading talks to nail down rules on international carbon trading with Singaporean Environment Minister Grace Fu. Her country has struck a deal to invest in carbon savings in Rwanda.

    New Zealand also needs international help to meet its 2030 target, but the coalition government has not let officials pursue any deals. NZ First refuses to say if it would back this.

    Watts says his leadership role is independent of domestic politics and ministers around the world are keen to nail down the rules, as is the Azerbaijan presidency.

    “Our primary focus is to ensure that we get an outcome form those negotiators, our domestic considerations are not relevant.”

    Paris target discussions
    He said discussions on meeting New Zealand’s Paris target were still underway.

    His next challenge at home is getting Cabinet agreement on how much to promise to cut emissions from 2030-2035, the second commitment period under the Paris Agreement.

    Countries are being urged to hustle, with the United Nations saying current pledges have the planet on track for what it calls a “catastrophic” 2.5 to 2.9 degrees of heating.

    A new pledge is due for 2030-2035 in February.

    A major goal for host Azerbaijan is making progress on a deal for climate finance.

    Currently OECD countries committed to pay $100 billion a year in finance to poorer countries to adapt to and prevent the impacts of climate change.

    Not all the money has been paid as grants, with a large proportion given as loans.

    Countries are looking to agree on a replacement for the finance mechanism when it runs out in 2025.

    Watts said New Zealand would be among the nations arguing for the liability to pay to be shared more widely than the traditional list of OECD nations, bringing in other countries that can also afford to contribute.

    Oil states such as UAE have already promised specific funding despite not being part of the original climate finance deal.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Warning by Indonesian survey on Papua mega project appears to go unheeded

    Indonesia’s plan to convert more than two million hectares of conservation and indigenous lands into agriculture will cause long-term damage to the environment, create conflict and add to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a feasibility study document for the Papua region mega-project.

    The 96-page presentation reviewed by Radio Free Asia was drawn up by Sucofindo, the Indonesian government’s inspection and land surveying company. Dated July 4 this year, it analyzes the risks and benefits of the sugar cane and rice estate in Merauke regency on Indonesia’s border with Papua New Guinea and outlines a feasibility study that was to be completed by mid-August.

    Though replete with warnings that “comprehensive” environmental impact assessments should take place before any land is cleared, the feasibility process appears to have been a box-ticking exercise. Sucofindo didn’t respond to questions about the document.

    Even before the study was completed, President Joko Widodo took part in a ceremony in Merauke on July 23 that marked the first sugar cane planting on land cleared of forest for the food estate, the government said in a statement. Widodo’s decade-long presidency ended last month.

    In late July, dozens of excavators shipped by boat were unloaded in the Ilyawab district of Merauke where they destroyed villages and cleared forests and wetlands for rice fields, according to a report by civil society organization Pusaka.

    Security personnel watch from behind barbed wire as indigenous Papuans from Merauke in eastern Indonesia protest in Jakarta on Oct. 16, 2024 against plans to convert indigenous and conservation lands into sugar cane plantations and rice fields.
    Security personnel watch from behind barbed wire as indigenous Papuans from Merauke in eastern Indonesia protest in Jakarta on Oct. 16, 2024 against plans to convert indigenous and conservation lands into sugar cane plantations and rice fields.

    Hipolitus Wangge, an Indonesian politics researcher at Australian National University, told RFA the feasibility study document doesn’t provide new information about the agricultural plans. But it makes it clear, he said, that in government there is “no specific response on how the state deals with indigenous concerns” and their consequences.

    The plan to convert as much as 2.296 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of forest, wetland and savannah into rice farms, sugarcane plantations and related infrastructure in the conflict-prone Papua region is part of the government’s ambitions to achieve food and energy self-sufficiency. Similar previous programs in the nation of 270 million people have fallen short of expectations.

    Echoing government and military statements, Sucofindo said increasingly extreme climate change and the risk of international conflict are reasons why Indonesia should reduce reliance on food imports.

    Taken together, the sugarcane and rice projects represent at least a fifth of a 10,000 square kilometer (38,600 square mile) lowland area known as the TransFly that spans Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and which conservationists say is an already under-threat conservation treasure.

    Indonesia’s military has a leading role in the 1.0 million hectare rice plan while the government has courted investors for the sugar cane and related bioethanol projects.

    According to Sucofindo’s analysis, the likelihood of conflict with indigenous Papuans or of significant and long-term environmental damage applies in about 80% of the area targeted for development.

    The project’s “issues and challenges,” Sucofindo said, include “deforestation and biodiversity loss, destruction of flora and fauna habitats and loss of species.”

    It warns of long-term land degradation and erosion as well as water pollution and reduced water availability during the dry season due to deforestation.

    Sucofindo said indigenous communities in Merauke rely on forests for livelihoods and land conversion will threaten their cultural survival. It repeatedly warns of the risk of conflict, which it says could stem from evictions and relocation.

    “Evictions have the potential to destabilize social and economic conditions,” Sucofindo said in its presentation.

    If the entire area planned for development is cleared, it would add about 392 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere in net terms, according to Sucofindo.

    That’s approximately equal to half of the additional carbon emitted by Indonesia’s fire catastrophe in 2015 when hundreds of thousands of hectares of peatlands drained for pulpwood and oil palm plantations burned for months.

    This handout photo released by the Indonesian presidential office shows Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia until October this year, on July 23, 2024 at a sugar-cane planting ceremony in the Merauke regency of South Papua Province.
    This handout photo released by the Indonesian presidential office shows Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia until October this year, on July 23, 2024 at a sugar-cane planting ceremony in the Merauke regency of South Papua Province.

    Indonesia’s contribution to emissions that raise the average global temperature is significantly worsened by a combination of peatland fires and deforestation. Carbon stored in its globally important tropical forests is released when they’re cut down for palm oil, pulpwood and other plantations.

    In a speech on Monday to the annual U.N. climate conference, Indonesia’s climate envoy, a brother of recently inaugurated president Prabowo Subianto, said the new administration has a long-term goal to restore forests to 12.7 million hectares of land severely degraded by fires in 2015 and earlier massive burnings in the 1990s and 1980s.

    Indonesia’s government has made the same promise in previous years including in its official progress report on its national contribution to achieving the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the rise in average global temperature to well beyond 2 degrees Celsius.

    “President Prabowo has approved in principle a program of massive reforestation to these 12.7 million hectares in a biodiverse manner,” said Hashim Djojohadikusumo in the livestreamed speech from Baku, Azerbaijan. “We will soon embark on this program.”

    The government under Subianto has also announced plans to encourage outsiders to migrate to Merauke and other parts of Indonesia’s easternmost region, state media reported this month.

    Critics say such large-scale movements of people would further marginalize indigenous Papuans in their own lands and exacerbate conflict that has simmered since Indonesia took control of the region in the late 1960s.

    Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Letter From London: Urban Wildlife

    Animal sculptures on the exterior of the British Museum of Natural History, London. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    While the rest of the world realigns, the little reported super-fast 200mph peregrine falcon is once more king of the London skies. There is even such a thing as the London Peregrine Partnership now, a kind of City firm invested in Falco peregrinus. This has been created to protect them when breeding and nesting in the capital. It may not be the bald-headed eagle but I know some Londoners immensely proud of its return. The Partnership actually comes on the back of what became too many persecutions and peregrinations faced by these birds of prey, coming mainly from illegal trading but also from pesticides and toxic chemicals, the avian equivalent of Big Pharma. When the peregrine falcon abandoned the London scene altogether, ignoring the Samuel Johnson maxim that when you tire of London, you tire of life, some people believed it gone forever.

    What they make of London this time round is anyone’s guess. Maybe they’re amazed by everyone’s abstemiousness, as London goes through the motions of smartening up its act (unless it’s just the price of alcohol). Or maybe they fancy themselves as a cast—right collective noun—of Eddie Redmaynes from The Day of the Jackal. Either way, these creatures have the most wonderful of faces as well as coats of feathers like ancient coats of arms. Only the mice in the parks will be diving for cover but the mice can be pretty nifty too. It is territorial aggression against common buzzards attracting most of the complaints against peregrine falcons in other cities—like Exeter—but here in London no one minds when they prey instead on rats, more of which later.

    One friend asked in a moment of genuine eccentricity which actor I would ‘cast’ as a peregrine falcon. If complexity my criterion rather than darting eyes, I told him I would probably go for David Costabile from Billions. Perhaps trying too hard to match my friend’s eccentricity, I asked if he knew that the Ancient Egyptian solar deity Ra had the head of a peregrine falcon. He said he didn’t but what he did know somehow was that any building work in London near the nest of a peregrine falcon needs a specific licence from Natural England.

    I sometimes believe I see bats at night close to where we live. I am pretty sure it is them dancing in the glow of a London streetlight, chasing what only they see despite being blind as bats. I am told the London bat most likely seen out there is the common pipistrelle. They are so tiny they can fit in the palm of a small hand. Amazingly, they can also eat as many as 3,000 insects a night. Pure carnage. I tell my eccentric friend there is a London Goth Meet-up in the capital which maybe the indigenous London bat community should know about. Bats start hibernating this time of year, in fact, so any Goth meet-ups will have to proceed without them until April. I don’t know if anyone has seen the footage doing the rounds of upside-down bats flipped in such a way that they look like characters standing at the bar of a Goth nightclub—it is well worth the look. Goth subculture actually began in London with a solid-haired Siouxsie and the Banshees. Its bat-like cousins—cold wave, death rock and ethereal wave—would surely be equally welcoming to the common pipistrelle.

    The London skies have been busy. I have mentioned the London parakeet in the past but two far more rare and extremely colourful parrots took to the skies above the capital a few weeks ago after fleeing London Zoo. Lily and Margot—their names—are two critically endangered and beautiful blue-throated macaws, clearly with what perhaps we should call Thelma and Louise dispositions. Regardless, these two obvious freedom lovers—more used to a Bolivian savannah than a north London landmark—were found 60 miles away from the capital. This was where the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) described them as ‘in good health’. It was not recorded if they said anything upon re-arrest. I must confess that after reading about them I thought again of Jack Nicholson with his fellow patients by the harbour denying all knowledge of anything other than everybody else’s serious academic medical careers.

    Remarkable to consider that even our garbage bins are redesigned to out-fox the fox. At night I can hear them still struggle to open them, still not having given up. As if one day a light will suddenly come on in their heads and they will have cracked it. The night is for foxes, for sure, though the sight of a wandering one during the day is not uncommon. You occasionally see them slink past like former rock stars. Certain cultures swear that the fox possesses great spiritual significance and should be treated as a spiritual guide. Certainly London’s foxes first hit the city in earnest at the end of World War One. Demob happy or otherwise, spiritual or not, or the ghosts of former soldiers, as some people would say, they never left. The London Wildlife Trust reckons there are as many as 10,000 foxes in London. That feels like enough for official representation at the London Assembly. However, to say their numbers are still growing is a common myth. What they call ‘maximum densities’ were reached for the vulpine population a long time ago. Indeed, the foxes themselves keep the number at a constant level.

    Unfortunately, not everyone likes them. No matter how waistcoated-up they can appear in beautifully rendered London beer commercials, some people think they will eat their babies. Four years ago, here in south-east London, one mysterious Londoner, a father perhaps, like a deranged William Tell, actually began with a crossbow killing these nimble creatures. Less extreme, though not entirely unrelated, is the occasional sight of middle-aged men marking their territory by relieving themselves at certain points around their garden, even scattering cut human hair that they have gleaned from their local barbers in order to keep away the foxes.

    I was reading last week that compared to the rural fox the urban fox has a smaller brain. Something to do with an evolutionary trick caused by too many interactions with human beings. They also help get rid of one or two pockets of the rodent community. In fact, they say it can take just a few weeks for a fox to root out the rats in your garden.

    London, of course, is not without its rats. If there really are twice as many rats as people in London, as everyone is always telling us, we will presently have 18,851,244 roaming our drains, attics and walls. Trouble is, they just don’t help their cause. They have a serious image problem. Rats average five litters a year. Maybe that’s it. That means a dozen offspring from each litter. Which equates to 60 rats from just one female in one year. More peregrine falcons anyone? Or foxes?

    The post Letter From London: Urban Wildlife appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Spain’s Climate Catastrophe

    In the 35 years since we first protested for action against climate change on the streets of London, we have often wondered what it is exactly we are trying to avert. Sometimes, notably in the wee small hours, we have tried to imagine how a destabilised climate might one day cause society to collapse. Would the lights just go out? Would supermarkets suddenly be empty of food? Would there simply be no-one to call for help? Would law and order progressively vanish from a newly barbarised world? For a long time, this all seemed like far-distant, dystopian science fiction.

    Unfortunately, the catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain offer a glimpse of how, in the absence of the kind of drastic action that is currently nowhere on the horizon, human societies will ultimately be dismantled and destroyed.

    The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, described the floods as the ‘worst natural weather disaster’ Spain has witnessed ‘this century’.

    But of course, there was nothing straightforwardly ‘natural’ about what hit Turis, Chiva, Paiporta and other towns in the region. Yes, high-altitude isolated depressions, known locally as ‘cold drops’, are a painful fact of life on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, but this ‘cold drop’ was different.

    The town of Turis, for example, received 771.8 mm (30.4 inches) of rainfall in 24 hours; the equivalent of a year and a half’s rain in one day. Rubén del Campo, the spokesperson for Spain’s meteorological agency Aemet, commented:

    ‘A relatively strong storm, a powerful downpour like those we see in spring or summer, can bring 40 mm or 50 mm. This storm was almost 10 times that amount.’

    Dr Ernesto Rodríguez Camino, a senior state meteorologist and member of the Spanish Meteorological Association, observed:

    ‘Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater.’

    The floods left at least 223 dead with 32 people missing. Power outages have affected 140,000 people, closing more than 50 roads and most rail lines.

    An idea of the scale of the event is also provided by the fact that more than 100,000 cars were damaged or destroyed. These now constitute 100,000 obstructions weighing about 1.5 tons each that take half an hour to be removed by heavy machinery. Moving them all may take months. An estimated 4,500 businesses have been damaged, around 1,800 of them seriously.

    Despite his awareness of the severity of the floods, Prime Minister Sanchez has not covered himself in glory. While 7,500 soldiers and 10,000 police officers, trucks, heavy road equipment and Chinook helicopters have been deployed, they were desperately slow to arrive. After one week, many residents were reportedly still surviving without electricity and water, and without seeing a single emergency worker. Numerous streets remained filled with debris and increasingly toxic mud.

    The sight of elderly couples sleeping outside on balconies without heating, water or light one week after the rains offered a glimpse into the near future. The Spanish authorities have clearly been overwhelmed by the scale of the event. We can imagine how this will become an overwhelming problem as temperatures rise – the lights will go out one day and will stay out.

    Widespread anger at the inadequate relief effort culminated in mud, rocks, sticks and bottles being thrown at the Spanish King and Queen, and Sanchez, on a visit to the disaster zone. Two bodyguards were treated for injuries: one receiving a bloody wound to the head. While the King braved the angry crowd, and the Queen was hit in the face with mud, Sanchez beat a hasty retreat as citizens screamed ‘Killer!’ and ‘Son of a bitch!’ The PM’s car was repeatedly kicked and hit with sticks that smashed the rear and side windows. At the weekend, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets in Valencia, clashing with riot police.

    Again, this offers a glimpse of how escalating climate disasters devastating communities will fuel extreme, ultimately uncontrollable, anger and violence. People who lose everything, including their loved ones, will be looking to blame local authorities and national governments, not carbon emissions, or fossil fuel companies.

    Climate deniers have made much of the fact that Spanish engineers have described how the extreme loss of life was the result of a failure to properly maintain and clear flood channels. This led to blockages in the flow of floodwater which, when subsequently breached, released a tsunami-like wave of water that tore through residential areas at lower levels where it had not even been raining. But the fact is that nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in just eight hours. Dr Friederike Otto, who leads World Weather Attribution (WWA) at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, commented:

    ‘No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change.’

    Dr Linda Speight, lecturer at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE), said:

    ‘Unfortunately, these are no longer rare events. Climate change is changing the structure of our weather systems creating conditions where intense thunderstorms stall over a region leading to record-breaking rainfall – a pattern that we are seeing time and time again.’

    Otto adds:

    ‘With every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier bursts of rainfall. These deadly floods are yet another reminder of how dangerous climate change has already become at just 1.3°C of warming.’

    In fact, last week, the European climate agency Copernicus reported that our planet this year reached more than 1.5°C of warming compared to the pre-industrial average. The Mediterranean Sea had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit).

    The wider context is deeply alarming:

    ‘Fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds.

    ‘Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era.’

    An additional factor is that the ground in many parts of eastern and southern Spain is less able to absorb rainwater following severe drought.

    WWA expert Clair Barnes commented:

    ‘I’ve heard people saying that this is the new normal. Given that we are currently on track for 2.6 degrees of warming, or thereabouts, within this century, we are only halfway to the new normal.’

    The results of Valencia’s floods will also be felt elsewhere. Dr Umair Choksy, senior lecturer in management at the University of Stirling Management School, said:

    ‘The severe flooding in Spain could lead to shortages of many products to the UK as Spain is one of the largest exporters of fruits and vegetables to the UK.’

    Shoppers have already suffered fruit and vegetable shortages in supermarkets this year in the weeks after storms wrecked Spain’s greenhouses growing food exported to Britain. The Daily Mirror reported:

    ‘Spain provides a quarter of Britain’s fresh food produce, mostly from Almeria, where 4,500 hectares of 13,000 hectares of greenhouses and polytunnels have been damaged by hail and floods. Cold weather in the region in February 2023 hit harvests, and saw many British supermarkets forced to ration customers to two or three items of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, salad, cauliflower broccoli and raspberries.’

    It is not hard to imagine how an escalating stream of climate disasters will one day genuinely threaten the food supply.

    Top Ten Extreme Weather Events: The Role of Human-Caused Climate Change

    Valencia follows a dizzying list of similar disasters in Europe and globally. Earlier in October this year, flooding killed 27 people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, causing landslides and major damage to infrastructure. In September, Storm Boris caused 26 deaths and billions of euros in damages in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria and Italy, in what was described as the worst flooding to hit Central Europe for almost 30 years. In June, Baden-Wurttemberg and Bavaria in southern Germany suffered massive flooding, with some areas receiving a month’s rainfall in 24 hours. In September, in the United States, Hurricane Helene was the deadliest mainland storm in two decades, claiming 233 lives, cutting off power to 4 million people and causing damage estimated at $87.9 billion.

    WWA published an analysis of the ten most deadly extreme weather events of the past 20 years as a result of which more than 570,000 people died. George Lee, environment correspondent for RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, reported:

    ‘They concluded unequivocally that, yes, human-caused climate change intensified every single one of those most deadly events.’

    Four of these top ten global weather disasters occurred in Europe:

    ‘Almost 56,000 people died during the 2010 heatwave in Russia from extreme temperatures made 3,000 to 7,000 more likely by climate change.

    ‘Nearly 54,000 deaths were attributed to the European heatwave of two years ago. Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Romania, Portugal and the UK were all impacted. Daily temperature peaks were up to 3.6C hotter and 17 times more likely because of climate change.

    ‘Then last year, 2023, yet another European heatwave made it onto the top ten, most deadly list.

    ‘More than 37,000 people died when mostly the same group of countries as in 2022 were impacted. Portugal and the UK escaped it this time.’

    Impossibly, one might think, fossil fuels continue to benefit from record subsidies of $13m (£10.3m) a minute in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF analysis found the total subsidies for oil, gas and coal in 2022 were $7tn (£5.5tn). That is equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education.

    The Disaster 0f Corporate Media Coverage

    The standard pattern of responses in corporate media coverage continues. At the more idiotic end of the spectrum, we have the likes of James Whale in the Daily Express:

    ‘The flooding in Spain has been a tragedy. But blaming it solely on manmade climate change is short-sighted at best, and dangerous at worst. The climate has always been changing and the planet has changed with it.’ (Whale, ‘Climate change not sole reason for disasters,’ Daily Express, 4 November 2024)

    Despite the highly credible evidence cited above, one BBC report was absurdly cautious:

    ‘The warming climate is also likely to have contributed to the severity of the floods.’ (Our emphasis)

    Elsewhere, brief references to climate change do appear, typically towards the middle or end of news reports:

    ‘Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream – the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe – that spawn extreme weather.’ (Graham Keeley, ‘211 now dead after Europe’s deadliest floods in 57 years,’ Mail on Sunday, 3 November 2024)

    To its credit, the Guardian went further in its leader on the floods, titled, ‘The Guardian view on climate-linked disasters: Spain’s tragedy will not be the last’:

    ‘In Spain, a large majority of the public recognises the threat from climate change and favours policies to address it. There, as in much of the world, catastrophic weather events that used to be regarded as “natural disasters” are now, rightly, seen instead as climate disasters. Policies that support people and places to adapt to heightened risks are urgently needed.’

    Jonathan Watts wrote an Observer piece titled, ‘Spain’s apocalyptic floods show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us’:

    ‘We are living in a time of unwelcome climate superlatives: the hottest two years in the world’s recorded history, the deadliest fire in the US, the biggest fire in Europe, the biggest fire in Canada, the worst drought in the Amazon rainforest. The list goes on. This is just the start. As long as people pump gases into the atmosphere, such records will be broken with increasing frequency until “worst ever” becomes our default expectation.’

    Should we be impressed by Watts’ piece and the Guardian leader? In reality, these are the same worthy, toothless analyses we have been reading for the last three decades. The pattern is so familiar, so universal, that it is hard to perceive the true disaster of corporate media coverage. As Nietzsche said:

    ‘The familiar is that to which we are accustomed; and that to which we are accustomed is hardest to “know”, that is to see as a problem, that is to see as strange, as distant, as “outside us”.’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘A Nietzsche Reader’, Penguin Classics, 1981, p.68)

    Imagine if Valencia had been comparably devastated by an ISIS-style terror attack. Imagine if the same attackers had recently devastated Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, Italy, the United States, and numerous other countries.

    Yes, reporting would focus on the precise details of the attacks and their impacts. But would the agency responsible be mentioned as an afterthought towards the middle and end of news reports, and almost never mentioned in the headlines?

    The terrorists responsible would be front and centre in lurid headlines, as was the case with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Priority would be given to the blistering denunciations of Western political and military leaders, and their calls for immediate action to counter the threat. The public would be mobilised – each day, every day, for months and years – for ‘WAR!’

    Almost none of this appears in corporate media in response to a rapidly growing climate threat which, as Valencia’s fate shows very well, is infinitely more serious than anything offered by terrorism.

    The impact of climate change continues to be presented as a human-interest story, or as a niche scientific issue best covered by the likes of Sir David Attenborough in glossy BBC documentaries. It is not presented as an immediate, existential threat that dwarfs in importance literally every other subject – even Gaza, even Ukraine, even Trump’s re-election – on the front pages. The disastrous impacts are afforded massive, alarming coverage, but the causes are not.

    The strange, fake, otherworldly quality of the ‘mainstream’ response to the crisis was captured in an encounter between a traumatised survivor of the Spanish floods and Spain’s Queen Letizia. The survivor, breathless with grief and despair, said:

    ‘They didn’t warn us. They didn’t warn us. That’s why this happened. Many dead. Many dead.’

    Queen Letizia responded:

    ‘You’re right. You’re right.’

    Did this despairing woman who had lost everything really need to have the truth of her experience affirmed by a member of the fabulously privileged Royal Family? Did the Queen have anything material or medical to offer a woman with nothing? Did she have any expertise on any related issue to render her reassurances meaningful?

    Queen Letizia’s words, like the royal visit – like humanity’s entire stance on climate collapse – were a benevolent-seeming but vacuous public relations non-response to a desperately real problem that needs real solutions.

    The post Spain’s Climate Catastrophe first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Despite Biden’s Promise to Protect Old Forests, His Administration Keeps Approving Plans to Cut Them Down

    by April Ehrlich, Oregon Public Broadcasting, McKenzie Funk, ProPublica, and Tony Schick, Oregon Public Broadcasting

    This article was produced by ProPublica in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

    On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling their power to fight climate change.

    The amount of carbon trees suck out of the air increases dramatically with age, making older trees especially important. These trees are also rare: Less than 10% of forests in the lower 48 states remain unlogged or undisturbed by development.

    The president uncapped his pen, preparing to sign an executive order to protect mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. “I just think this is the beginning of a new day,” Biden said.

    But two years later, at a timber auction in a federal office in Roseburg, Oregon, this new day was nowhere to be seen. As journalists and protestors waited outside, logging company representatives filed through a secure glass door to a room where only “qualified bidders” were allowed.

    Up for sale this September morning were the first trees from an area of forest the Bureau of Land Management calls Blue and Gold. It holds hundreds of thousands of trees on 3,225 acres in southern Oregon’s Coast Range. Forests here can absorb more carbon per acre than almost any other on the planet.

    A week after Biden’s executive order, the Blue and Gold logging project had been shelved. Now it was back on.

    The BLM is moving forward with timber sales in dozens of forests like this across the West, auctioning off their trees to companies that will turn them into plywood, two-by-fours and paper products. Under Biden, the agency is on track to log some 47,000 acres of public lands, nearly the same amount as during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. This includes even some mature and old-growth forests that Biden’s executive order was supposed to protect. An Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica analysis found the bureau has allowed timber companies to cut such forests at a faster pace since the executive order than in the decade that preceded it.

    Environmental activists protest outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Roseburg, Oregon, during a timber sale. The auction itself took place behind closed doors and only “qualified bidders” were allowed in. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    The BLM still reports to Biden until Trump takes office again in January, and it’s unclear what changes, if any, the new administration will make. Outgoing presidents often use this lame-duck period to take additional action on the environment and to protect public lands. In a statement, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández wrote that the “Biden-Harris Administration has made unprecedented progress toward the climate-smart management and conservation of our nation’s forests.” He did not specifically answer questions about why Biden’s actions didn’t slow the BLM’s cutting of old forests — or about any further protections the administration is planning now.

    At the timber auction that September morning, the bidders emerged 80 minutes after they started. For $4.2 million, the administration had just sold off the first 561 acres of Blue and Gold, an estimated 83,259 trees.

    One of the most accessible patches of forest in the Blue and Gold project is 30 minutes up the highway from Roseburg.

    On a recent fall afternoon, Erich Reeder, a BLM wildlife surveyor who had just retired from the agency after 23 years, led the way there. The sun was out as he drove into the Coast Range, but soon after he turned off the highway and followed a single-lane road along the banks of Yellow Creek, trees shaded the way.

    Ribbons marked the edge of the area that will be logged. Reeder walked past them and into the forest, stepping lightly through sword ferns and over moss-covered logs, pausing to look down at a paper map or straight up at the varied canopy above.

    Erich Reeder, a retired BLM wildlife surveyor, in the forest above Oregon’s Yellow Creek, an area slated for future logging. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    In planning documents for Blue and Gold, the BLM describes this part of the forest as being composed of young, tightly packed trees with no remnants of older forest.

    But the trees here did not match that description. They were widely spaced. There were no stumps, no signs of previous logging. The forest was tall and wild, with large branches and multiple layers of canopy and understory. Native tree species including chinkapin oaks, western hemlock, western red cedar and grand fir intermixed with the dominant Douglas fir. Many of the biggest trees had thick, wrinkled bark, indicating old age.

    “You’re familiar with tree farms?” Reeder asked, describing the monoculture rows timber companies often plant after clear-cutting. This was the opposite.

    For some endangered species, old-growth forest matters immensely. Marbled murrelets, rotund coastal birds sometimes described as “flying potatoes,” nest only in the large, mossy branches of old trees. Spotted owls, which were at the center of the 1990s timber wars in this part of Oregon, require similar habitat to survive.

    Old trees also matter for climate change, as Biden noted in his Seattle speech. The larger a tree is, the more carbon it absorbs. Data from the U.S. Forest Service shows that in forests older than 200 years in Oregon, on average, the trees hold more than three times as much carbon per acre as young industrial timber plantations. Ultimately, leaving forests intact keeps more carbon out of the atmosphere than logging them and planting new ones.

    Down the hill toward Yellow Creek, Reeder pulled out a measuring tape at the base of one particularly large Douglas fir. Its diameter: 86 inches. If it was chopped down, Reeder could lie across the stump with more than a foot to spare.

    In the planning documents, the BLM estimated the trees in this area were around 90 years old.

    “Yeah, this is a little bit older than 90,” Reeder said dryly. He put its age at 400 to 600 years.

    Reeder, left, and Madeline Cowen, an organizer with the environmental group Cascadia Wildlands, measure an old-growth tree in the Yellow Creek area. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    BLM officials believe federal law forces them to keep chopping trees. It’s part of a balancing act between resource extraction and other priorities, like recreation and conservation. “We are a multi-use agency,” spokesperson Brian Hires wrote in response to questions from OPB and ProPublica. “We are committed to forest health and providing the timber Americans need.”

    Across the country, the agency manages 245 million acres, including vast territories of desert and juniper trees, along with rangeland it leases out to ranchers. Among its holdings in Oregon are 2.4 million acres of green forests.

    A big portion of these are known as O&C lands because they once belonged to the Oregon and California Railroad until a deal with Congress went wrong. The federal government took them back, resulting in a giant checkerboard of alternating public and private squares. The O&C Act of 1937 says the federal government must manage these lands for “permanent forest production” under the principle of “sustained yield,” helping local economies while also protecting watersheds and providing recreation opportunities.

    The timber industry interprets the 1937 act as primarily a logging mandate, and it has sued the BLM for setting aside too many O&C acres for conservation. This view is shared by local counties that historically received part of the BLM’s sales revenues to pay for schools and roads and that still rely on the industry for jobs. Trees cut on federal lands can’t be shipped overseas and typically go to local mills. And “it’s not just the mills,” says Doug Robertson, executive director of the Association of O&C Counties. “It’s everything that supports the mills: all of the manufacturing, the trucking, and on and on.”

    But how much logging the O&C Act mandates is subject to debate. The act directs the BLM to set its own quotas for timber sales, and it does so. In 2016, the agency drew up a regional logging plan with annual targets for each district in Oregon’s Coast Range, taking care, in theory, to avoid sensitive habitat for species like the spotted owl. It protected three-quarters of the O&C lands from regular logging, and even in those areas where logging would be allowed, there were new prohibitions against cutting the biggest, oldest trees.

    There were problems with the bureau’s approach, however.

    It created its logging maps based on a database of tree ages that local staff in Oregon warned didn’t accurately capture the old-growth forest that serves as owl habitat. A leaked 2014 memo by a BLM wildlife biologist suggested that the bureau “field verify all stands” before deciding which areas could be cut, meaning it should visually inspect them instead of relying on data alone.

    There’s no evidence agency officials followed this recommendation. They used the database in developing the 2016 plan and again in recent years in deciding which Blue and Gold areas would be up for sale.

    The BLM also has tried to avoid detailed environmental reviews as it moves to log in new areas, saying it sufficiently considered impacts in 2016. Over and over, conservation groups have sued to demand full reviews, which can be required by federal law. Over and over, courts have decided against the bureau, in most cases directing it to redo its analysis before logging can continue. The BLM lost at least three such lawsuits between 2019 and 2022, with judges ruling that it failed to take a “hard look” at impacts or calling its decisions “arbitrary and capricious.”

    This approach could have ended with Biden’s Earth Day executive order. It called for a national inventory of mature and old-growth forests, an analysis of the threats to them, and future regulations to protect them. But all of these prescriptions ultimately have proved too vague to bring about change.

    Unlike the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, the biggest federal forestland manager in Oregon and the country, responded to Biden’s order by proposing to update management plans for all national forests with new regulations for protecting old growth. These plans outline how a forest will be managed — like logging parameters, species protections, restoration projects and road maintenance. The updates will include a prohibition on cutting old growth solely for commercial reasons.

    The BLM, on the other hand, said nothing about changing its current forest plans. Hires, the agency spokesperson, wrote that Biden’s executive order builds on the bureau’s “existing efforts” to protect mature and old-growth forests, offering “further clarity” but not a new direction. The BLM did issue a new rule stating it is “working to ensure” that these forests are managed to “promote their continued health and resilience.” But the rule does not include hard stipulations protecting them from logging — so the logging continues.

    OPB and ProPublica compared the agency’s forest database for Oregon to its timber records and found that in the past two years, the BLM oversaw logging in more than 10,000 acres of forest it labeled as at least 80 years old — the age at which the BLM and Forest Service consider western Oregon’s conifers to be “mature”. The average number of acres of older forest logged annually since the president’s executive order is already higher than in any two-year span since at least 2013.

    On Dead Horse Ridge, in a part of Oregon’s Coast Range known as Blue and Gold, clear-cut private lands meet forested public lands. Soon, much of this whole area could be logged. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    Last year, a pair of appellate court rulings called into question the idea that the O&C Act is little more than a logging mandate. Judges affirmed the BLM and its parent agency, the Department of Interior, have “significant discretion” in determining how much to cut and where. “The Department’s duty to oversee the lands is obligatory,” reads a 2023 opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “but treating every parcel as timberland is not.”

    For now, tree sales set in motion in 2016 are still in motion. The bureau does not expect to revisit its logging plan for Oregon’s Coast Range until 2028 at the earliest. The list of areas to be cut, including Blue and Gold, remains unchanged. And it is likely the incoming administration will look to expand logging on public lands. Project 2025, a transition plan prepared by Trump allies at The Heritage Foundation, mentions the O&C Act by name and recommends that “the new Administration must immediately fulfill its responsibilities and manage the O&C lands for ‘permanent forest production’ to ensure that the timber is ‘sold, cut, and removed.’”

    Since Biden’s executive order, environmental groups have sued the BLM at least four more times for avoiding full environmental reviews of logging projects. In two of these cases, the bureau again lost in court. A third case ended in a settlement, with the bureau agreeing to pause operations and redo its environmental analysis.

    The newest case, filed three days before the timber auction in Roseburg, is over Blue and Gold.

    To give access to loggers within the Blue and Gold project area, the BLM plans to improve “existing roads” like the one pictured here, which would include clearing underbrush and potentially cutting trees. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    Environmental groups in Oregon can’t challenge every BLM logging project. “We just don’t have the capacity,” said attorney Nick Cady of Cascadia Wildlands, one of three groups that filed a joint lawsuit to stop the plan for Blue and Gold. This one stands out, he said, because of the apparent age of the forest.

    Blue and Gold is also the only logging project known to have been paused in response to Biden’s executive order, then reinstated.

    Heather Whitman, the BLM district manager in Roseburg, says the bureau remade the logging plan for Blue and Gold after she decided to pause it. The project now relies more on forest thinning and less on methods that, to a layperson, can look much like clear-cuts. “Quite a bit changed,” she says.

    But Blue and Gold still depends on the same database of forest ages as before, and, as the new lawsuit points out, questions about the data’s accuracy remain. In 2022, the bureau declared the forest above Yellow Creek to be 60 years old. In 2024, after restarting the project, the bureau inexplicably revised the forest’s age to 90 years. A dozen other areas had their ages jump around, too. A handful are said to be younger now than they were two years ago.

    After all that, nearly as many acres of Blue and Gold will be logged as would have been before. Roseburg officials wrote that the project must proceed because of their district’s ongoing “need to produce timber volume.”

    Trees greater than 40 inches in diameter or older than about 175 years are, in most cases, protected under the BLM’s 2016 management plan for Oregon’s Coast Range. But if logging does go forward here, the intact forests these trees now anchor will be transformed, says Reeder, the retired BLM surveyor. The older trees themselves, more exposed in the landscape, could be more vulnerable to windstorms. The soil around them could dry out.

    The BLM estimates that after logging, the risk of wildfires — a focus of Biden’s Earth Day speech — will go down in Blue and Gold in the long term, but that for decades some areas of forest will have a higher fire risk. If burned, the trees’ stored carbon will be released back into the atmosphere.

    Because the BLM skipped a comprehensive environmental review of Blue and Gold, it did not look in detail at how the project will affect carbon storage and climate change. The new lawsuit claims that the bureau also skipped detailed analyses of other potential impacts, including heightened landslide risk and invasions of nonnative plants.

    The BLM did carry out a quicker initial review of likely impacts to the ecosystem, including hiring a contractor to search the forest for endangered spotted owls. But “it was rushed at the beginning,” recalled Tom Baxter, one of the owl surveyors hired to do the job.

    First image: Tom Baxter, who has been a spotted owl surveyor for 14 years, at his home in Dexter, Oregon. Baxter, who surveyed the Blue and Gold project area for the Bureau of Land Management, said the project was rushed and short-staffed, and that the equipment he was given was not high quality. Second image: Spotted owl survey markers in the Yellow Creek area. (Leah Nash, special to ProPublica)

    Baxter said the contractor he worked for was called in just weeks ahead of the survey. As a result, his team was shorthanded. Then the BLM had the surveyors fan out across the entire project area, instead of focusing on the parts of the forest most likely to have owls — a “peanut butter” approach that he says spread the team too thin.

    “We were wasting our time in places where I knew there weren’t going to be spotted owls,” Baxter recalled.

    What the bureau’s initial review does show is that the Blue and Gold project will destroy 119 acres of prime spotted owl habitat and “downgrade” another 1,539 acres. The logging will periodically cloud the waters of Yellow Creek, where threatened Oregon Coast coho salmon go to spawn. And it will lead to the deaths of 13 endangered murrelet chicks.

    But the BLM, summing up its findings in a notice published two weeks before the first trees went on sale, concluded that there would be “no significant impact” on the environment.

    Cady, the Cascadia Wildlands attorney, disagrees. For conservation groups, Blue and Gold is just the latest logging project that Biden’s executive order failed to stop. “There is a massive disconnect between the administration and what’s happening on the ground,” Cady said.

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    Agnel Philip of ProPublica contributed data analysis.

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • Trump win, 1.5 C warming breach weigh on UN climate ‘finance COP’

    By Sera Sefeti of Benar News

    Pacific delegates fear the implications of a Trump presidency and breach of the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target will overshadow negotiations on climate finance at the UN’s annual COP talks that have started in Azerbaijan this week.

    At the COP29 summit — dubbed the “finance COP” — Pacific nations will seek not just more monetary commitment from high-emitting nations but also for the funds to be paid and distributed to those countries facing the worst climate impacts.

    With the US as one of the world’s largest emitters, it is feared Trump’s past withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could foreshadow diminished American involvement in climate commitments.

    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

    “We have our work cut-out for us. We are wary that we have the Trump administration coming through and may not be favourable to some of the climate funding that America has proposed,” Samoan academic and COP veteran Salā George Carter told BenarNews.

    “We will continue to look for other ways to work with the US, if not with the government then maybe with businesses.”

    Salā Dr George Carter
    President’s Scientific Council member Salā Dr George Carter (right) at the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) preliminary meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. Image: Dylan Kava/PICAN

    This year, for the first time, a COP President’s Scientific Council has been formed to be actively involved in the negotiations. Carter is the sole Pacific representative.

    Past COP funding promises of US$100 billion annually from developed countries to support vulnerable nations “has never been achieved in any of the years,” he said.

    Disproportionate Pacific burden
    Pacific nations contribute minimally to global emissions but often bear a disproportionate burden of climate change impacts.

    Pacific Island Climate Action Network regional director Rufino Varea argues wealthier nations have a responsibility to support adaptation efforts in these vulnerable regions.

    “The Pacific advocates for increased climate finance from wealthier nations, utilizing innovative mechanisms like fossil fuel levies to support adaptation, loss and damage, and a just transition for vulnerable communities,” Varea told BenarNews.

    COP29 is being held in the capital of Azerbaijan, the port city of Baku on the oil and gas rich Caspian Sea, once an important waypoint on the ancient Silk Road connecting China to Europe.

    The country bordering Russia, Iran, Georgia and Armenia is now one of the world’s most fossil fuel export dependent economies.

    About 40,000 delegates will attend COP29 from all the U.N. member states including political leaders, diplomats, scientists, officials, civil society organizations, journalists, activists, Indigenous groups and many more.

    All nations are party to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and most signed up to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the 1.5 degree target.

    Priorities for Pacific
    Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa in a statement yesterday said “the priorities of the Pacific Islands countries, include keeping the 1.5 degree goal alive.”

    “The outcomes of COP 29 must deliver on what is non-negotiable – our survival,” he said.

    Delegates of Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)
    Delegates of Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) formulated their negotiating strategies at preliminary meetings in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in preparation for COP29 talks. Image: Dylan Kava/PICAN

    Ahead of COP29, the 39 members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — representing the Pacific, Caribbean, African, Indian, and South China Sea — met in Baku to discuss negotiation priorities to achieve the 1.5 degree target and make meaningful progress on climate finance.

    Pacific negotiators have historically found COP outcomes disappointing, yet they continue to advocate for greater accountability from major polluters.

    “There have been people who have come to COP and refuse to attend anymore,” Carter said. “They believe it is a waste of time coming here because of very little delivery at the end of each COP.”

    Papua New Guinea is not attending in Baku in an official capacity this year, citing lack of progress, but some key PNG diplomats are present to support the Pacific’s goals.

    Climate data last week from the Europe Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service predicted 2024 will be the hottest year on record, and likely the first year to exceed the 1.5 degree threshold set in Paris.

    Science becoming marginalised
    Delegates worry science is becoming marginalised in climate negotiations, with some “arguing that we have reached 1.5, why do we continue to push for 1.5?,” Carter said.

    “Although we have reached 1.5 degrees, we should not remove it. In fact, we should keep it as a long-time goal,” he said.

    Carter argues for the importance of incorporating both scientific evidence and “our lived experience of climate change” in policy discussions.

    The fight for the Paris target and loss and damage funding has been central to Pacific advocacy at previous COPs, despite persistent resistance from some countries.

    The 1.5-degree target is “a lifeline of survival for communities and people in our region and in most island nations,” Varea said.

    He stressed the need for “a progressive climate finance goal based on the needs and priorities of developing countries, small island developing states (SIDS), and least developed countries (LDC) to enable all countries to retain the 1.5 ambition and implement measures for resilience and loss and damage (finance).”

    “As Pacific civil society, we obviously want the most ambitious outcomes to protect people and the planet.”

    Pacific negotiators include prominent leaders, such as President Hilde Heine of the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu’s Special Envoy Ralph Regenvanu, Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister Maina Talia and negotiators Anne Rasmussen from Samoa and Fiji’s Ambassador Amena Yauvoli.

    Republished from BenarNews with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Removing Hydropower Dams Can Restore Ecosystems, Build Climate Resilience, and Restore Tribal Lands

    Bonneville Dam, Columbia River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    A free-flowing river supports abundant fish and wildlife, provides drinking water, and other intangible recreational benefits. But humans have sought to block rivers with dams for millennia. While dams have provided benefits like hydroelectricity and water storage, they have also been ecologically disastrous. Besides blocking fish migrations, these human-made structures can destroy seasonal pulses of water that keep ecosystems in balance. Some dams—especially those used for power—can deplete water in streams, leaving entire stretches of river bone dry.

    Dams are not built to last forever. Most have a lifespan of more than 50 years, and 70 percent of dams in the United States will be older than that by 2030, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers 2021 Infrastructure Report Card. The cost of repairing and maintaining these obsolete structures can be significant—even more expensive than removing them altogether.

    “Dams are not like the pyramids of Egypt that stand for eternity,” said former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt in 1998. “They are instruments that should be judged by the health of the rivers to which they belong.”

    The National Inventory of Dams (NID), an online database maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, tracks 92,366 dams across the United States as of October 18, 2024, with an average age of 63 years. Of these, 16,720 dams are classified as “high hazard potential,” meaning their failure will likely result in loss of life and significant economic damage. Less than 40 percent of the dams in the inventory provide critical services such as water supply, irrigation, hydropower, navigation, or flood risk reduction. However, it’s important to note that the NID has size limits for inclusion in its inventory; there are more than 500,000 dams in the United States.

    Removing dams is the fastest way to restore a river. The selective removal of outdated or unsafe dams offers an economical and effective way to eliminate liability for dam owners while improving river health. By restoring rivers to their natural state, dam removal can result in a wide range of long-term benefits, including enhancing public safety and quality of life and boosting economic development in communities nationwide. Dam removal can also protect Tribal lands, increase property values, protect against flooding, support wildlife and biodiversity, and enhance recreational opportunities.

    In addition to restoring the river channel, restoring the low-lying areas—or floodplains—around rivers is an essential part of dam removal, and it gives our waterways room to spread out. Healthy floodplains provide vital habitats for fish and wildlife, help rivers accommodate floodwaters resulting from frequent and intense storms, and—in concert with limiting development in areas prone to flooding— shore up some communities’ resilience in the era of climate change.

    Case Study: Bloede Dam

    In cases like Bloede Dam, which blocked the natural flow of the Patapsco River in Maryland, removal was the preferred option for a dam owner burdened with an unsafe structure. Like many outdated dams in the United States, the Bloede Dam’s negative impact on the Patapsco River exceeded its usefulness. It generated electricity for less than 20 years before its turbines became clogged with sand and rock, making maintenance too costly. Consequently, the power company shut it down. Despite this, the dam stood for around a century, blocking the river’s natural flow and acting as a drowning hazard in a public park until it was removed in 2018.

    During that time, it blocked migrating fish like alewife and blueback herring from reaching upstream habitats where they spawn and grow. Publicly owned dams like Bloede can significantly cost taxpayers in necessary upkeep and repairs–often for structures that no longer serve a purpose. In addition, the Bloede Dam was a low-head dam with water continuously flowing over the crest of the dam, creating a dangerous swirl at the dam’s base. Low-head dams have resulted in thousands of fatalities across the nation, and Bloede Dam led to the deaths of at least 10 people between 1981 and 2015.

    In September 2018, explosives blasted a hole in the concrete Bloede Dam, opening a new era of ecosystem restoration. Over the following weeks, the remainder of the dam was removed with explosives and heavy equipment. The dam’s removal restored more than 65 miles of habitat for resident and migratory fish. For diadromous fish species, which must migrate between fresh and marine waters to complete their life cycle, it meant that their freedom of movement had finally been restored. Several species of diadromous fish migrate between the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay, returning to where their ancestors have spawned for millennia.

    This reconnected river is now safer for visitors and is helping to revitalize the health of the entire Chesapeake Bay. Removing Bloede Dam opened more than 65 miles of spawning habitat to native river herring, American shad, and hickory shad. Without the dam blocking them from tributaries that are key to their migration, American eel can now access 183 miles of open river.

    In addition to restoring the river ecosystem, the removal of the Bloede Dam means that visitors to the park can safely enjoy this now-thriving river. Since its removal, we have witnessed local communities return to its banks, kayaking through the former impoundment, fishing from recently uncovered boulders in the stream, and cooling off on hot summer days. Removing unused dams like Bloede is one of the most important things we can do to maintain healthy rivers and the ecosystems and economies they support.

    A Brief History of Hydropower Dams

    While damming rivers began in ancient times, the construction of hydropower dams started in earnest during the Industrial Revolution to power local mills. Hydropower dams began powering the electricity grid in the early 20th century, driven by the demand for reliable and renewable energy sources. These massive engineering projects were feats of modern ingenuity and engineering, promising electricity, flood control, irrigation, and water supply. Once seen as symbols of progress and innovation, many hydropower dams are now recognized for their significant negative ecological and social impacts. Removing dams as they become uneconomical or unsafe is essential to restoring river ecosystems and communities.

    More than 2,500 hydropower dams have been built across the country. Federal agencies, states, municipalities, and private organizations own these. Most of the dams were built during a building boom that lasted from the 1930s to the 1970s. Several federal agencies took part in reshaping rivers, including the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water resource management; the Bureau of Land Management, which administers federal lands; and the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates and maintains approximately 740 dams across the United States.

    In retrospect, most of these projects’ ecological and social costs were often overlooked and continue to be forgotten.

    Rivers were dammed, ecosystems were disrupted, wildlife migrations were blocked, and communities, many Indigenous, were displaced. As environmental awareness grew in the latter half of the 20th century, the negative impacts of dams became more evident, leading to a reevaluation of their role and the dam removal movement.

    The dam removal movement was ignited with the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine in 1999. This federally regulated hydropower dam fully blocked fish migration for 160 years, and environmental groups advocated for its removal. Edwards Dam was the first project for which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied a relicensing application and ordered a dam to be removed against the owner’s wishes, determining that the river’s ecological, economic, and community benefits outweighed the hydropower production of the project.

    Across the nation, tens of thousands of dams that have outlived their purpose continue negatively impacting natural ecosystems. Removing these dams could save money, reduce the liability of owning them, and restore the natural environment.

    Between 1912 and 2023, 2,119 U.S. dams were removed, with more than three-quarters demolished since the turn of the 21st century. The nation saw a major milestone in 2023 with the initiation of the nation’s largest dam removal project on the Klamath River in California. Still, only 46 federally regulated hydropower dams have been removed, representing less than 3 percent of removals across the country.

    “Dam removal can rewrite a painful chapter in our history, and it can be done in a manner that protects the many interests in the [Klamath River] basin,” wrote U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in 2016.

    Tribal salmon fishing site below The Dalles Dam, Columbia River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    Indigenous Communities and Tribal Land

    In many cases, removing dams restores Indigenous territory. We must acknowledge that the land and rivers in the Americas and many regions across the globe are the homelands of Indigenous communities who have been stewards of these lands for thousands of years. The historical and ongoing injustice of the theft of tribal lands must be addressed through legislation, regulation, restoration, cooperation, community engagement, and increasing awareness by citizens and local, state, regional, and federal agencies.

    Many hydropower developments have negatively impacted Indigenous communities by depleting native fish runs, damming sacred rivers and sites, and disrupting the communities’ relationships with waterways. Therefore, removing dams and letting rivers flow naturally is an essential part of respecting the values of these tribes and supporting their efforts to ensure land and water protection and restoration.

    “Removing dams can serve as a form of land back for Native nations,” said Heather Randell, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, in a February 2024 episode of the podcast Resources Radio. “Dam removal can be a way to restore tribal sovereignty over their ancestral land and enable tribes to rehabilitate the land and water ecosystems that supported their livelihoods for thousands of years and were damaged by dam construction,” said Randell, who co-authored the article, “Dams and Tribal Land Loss in the United States,” published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in August 2023.

    Impacts on Wildlife

    While hydropower dams provide renewable energy, they often cause substantial ecological disruption. Dams alter water flow, temperature, and sediment transport, leading to degraded water quality and negatively impacting aquatic habitats. Fish populations, particularly migratory species, suffer as dams block access to spawning grounds, causing a decline in biodiversity.

    One of the most significant environmental impacts of dams is the fragmentation of river ecosystems. Rivers naturally flow from their headwaters to the sea, creating diverse habitats that support a wide range of species. Dams interrupt this flow, creating reservoirs often inhospitable to native species and promoting the proliferation of non-native ones. This disruption can lead to the collapse of local fisheries and the loss of recreational activities that are dependent on healthy, free-flowing rivers. Hydropower dams can be incredibly impactful as they are often constructed on the mainstem of rivers, lower in the watershed, and can completely cut off the watershed’s upper reaches from migratory species.

    For example, in October 2023, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported that the Nez Perce Tribe would do “whatever it takes to save the salmon” while referring to a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s plan to keep dams on the Snake River functional. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has four dams on the lower Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. These dams collectively kill 50-80 percent of juvenile salmon and steelhead fish that try to migrate downstream.

    “As Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), we are bound to the salmon and the rivers—these are our life sources,” said Shannon F. Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, in a March 2024 press release about the landmark agreement between the federal government, tribes, and states from the Pacific Northwest to restore salmon and other native fish populations in the Columbia River Basin. “We will not allow extinction to be an option for the salmon, nor for us,” he said.

    The U.S. government has lost several lawsuits, with federal judges ruling that dams threaten salmon populations in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

    In May 2024, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the ESA by releasing water from the Coyote Valley Dam on Lake Mendocino County, California, which disturbed endangered salmon and steelhead trout populations in the Russian River. Intended as flood control (in preparation for a storm, for example), the released water increased the river’s turbidity (amount of sediment or organic matter), harming fish development and survival.

    After a dam is built, the land upstream of the structure becomes permanently flooded as the reservoir fills. Water inundation can harm wildlife and water quality and even trigger natural disasters like earthquakes.

    Impacts on Water Security and Safety

    Dams can lead to the accumulation of sediment, which puts access to clean water at risk. In a paper published in December 2022 in the journal Sustainability, researchers from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health warned of dams’ threat to water security, saying that thousands of the world’s large dams are filling up with sediment to such a degree that they may lose more than 25 percent of their storage capacity—around 1.65 trillion cubic meters—by 2050.

    According to the study, “The decrease in available storage by 2050 in all countries and regions will challenge many aspects of national economies, including irrigation, power generation, and water supply.”

    Dredging sediment from reservoirs to reclaim storage space is often cost-prohibitive. Sediment can also contain harmful pollutants, including legacy chemicals like TDDT, PCBs, and the pesticide chlordane; chemicals currently in use like the insecticide bifenthrin and a variety of flame retardants; and metals like lead, zinc, and cadmium, which concentrate in sediment instead of water.

    The sediment release during dam removal must be carefully managed to prevent downstream contamination and ecological damage. Sediment management is a critical aspect of the dam removal process, as the sudden release of stored sediments can smother aquatic habitats, harm aquatic biota, and degrade water quality, affecting both wildlife and human communities downstream.

    Economic and Social Considerations

    Each dam removal project requires detailed studies, engineering, permits, and planning. Evaluating the economic and social implications of dam removal is crucial. While the initial construction of dams has often spurred economic growth, their long-term costs—including maintenance, environmental degradation, and lost recreational activities—can outweigh the benefits. The financial burden of maintaining aging dams can be significant, and many communities find that removing outdated structures is more cost-effective than continuing to repair them.

    Communities may experience significant changes, both positive and negative, from dam removal. These include job losses in the hydropower sector. Their removal, however, leads to potential gains in tourism and recreation. Engaging with stakeholders and conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis are essential steps in decision-making. The revitalization of river ecosystemscan lead to new economic opportunities, such as increased tourism, enhanced recreational fishing, and the restoration of cultural heritage sites often submerged or inaccessible due to dam reservoirs.

    Moreover, dam removal can have profound social impacts. For Indigenous communities and other groups with historical ties to river landscapes, dam removal can represent a restoration of ancestral lands and a reconnection with cultural practices centered on river ecosystems. However, addressing communities’ concerns is essential; comprehensive planning and open communication are vital in balancing these diverse needs and ensuring a smooth transition.

    Planning and Preparation for Dam Removal

    Successful dam removal requires meticulous planning and preparation. Initial assessments should evaluate the dam’s structural condition, potential environmental impacts, and the logistical aspects of removal. Engaging with local communities and stakeholders from the early stages is essential to ensure their concerns and insights are integrated into the planning process.

    Another critical step is obtaining the necessary regulatory permits. This involves navigating federal, state, and local regulations, which can be complex and time-consuming. Collaborating with regulatory agencies can help streamline this process.

    An environmental impact assessment is often required to ensure dam removal complies with legal standards and minimizes adverse ecological effects.

    Technical Aspects of Dam Removal

    The technical aspects of dam removal are multifaceted. Engineering and construction methods must be tailored to the specific characteristics of each dam and its surrounding environment. Techniques can range from controlled deconstruction to blasting and everything in between, depending on the dam’s size, type, and location. Hydraulic modeling and simulation tools can also help predict the effects of dam removal and design effective removal measures.

    Managing sediment and water flow during removal is a significant consideration that can and has been successfully managed thousands of times. Strategies must be developed to handle the release of trapped sediments and stabilize riverbanks. Sediment management plans often include phased removal, sediment dredging, and sediment traps or silt fences to control sediment dispersion. Ensuring the safety of workers and nearby communities is paramount throughout the removal process. Safety protocols include monitoring for structural stability, water quality testing, and emergency response plans.

    Innovative engineering solutions have been developed to address these challenges. For example, temporary diversion channels or cofferdams can help control water flow during the deconstruction process, minimizing downstream impacts. Cofferdams are sometimes designed as temporary enclosures to allow excavation and deconstruction in an environment with reduced water flow. They also protect workers. Cofferdams were constructed during the dismantling of the Elwha Dam. To remove the taller Glines Canyon Dam, temporary spillways were built to help drain the reservoir.

    Case Studies and Lessons Learned

    Examining past dam removal projects provides valuable insights and lessons. Successful case studies, such as removing the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha River in Washington state, highlight the potential for ecological recovery and community benefits. These projects faced numerous challenges, from technical difficulties to stakeholder opposition, but ultimately demonstrated the feasibility and advantages of dam removal.

    The Elwha River restoration project, one of the largest dam removal efforts in U.S. history, offers a compelling example of the benefits of dam removal. Following the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, which began in September 2011, the river has experienced a dramatic recovery. Salmon and steelhead trout have returned to their historic spawning grounds, and the Elwha River ecosystem has shown significant signs of recovery. The project also provided valuable lessons in sediment management, stakeholder engagement, and adaptive management practices.

    Other notable examples include the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine and the Marmot Dam on the Sandy River in Oregon. Both projects resulted in substantial ecological benefits, including the return of native fish species and improved water quality.

    “Ten years after the Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine, was removed from the Kennebec River, the river has totally come alive,” according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “The coalition of groups that worked on this project for more than a decade knew that the benefits would be enormous, and they have been. The Edwards Dam had blocked the river since 1837. Since its removal on July 1, 1999, the water quality in the river has improved, millions of fish are returning to long-lost spawning habitat, ospreys and eagles soar along the river, and Maine people and visitors paddle [in] what feels like a wilderness river.”

    The Western Rivers Conservancy also reported the overall positive impact of the Marmot Dam removal project. “For a century, Marmot Dam had impeded access to nearly 100 miles of salmon and steelhead habitat in the upper Sandy River basin. The best-case scenario—everyone’s highest hope—was that Sandy’s salmon and steelhead would be spawning again in the upper river within two years. Some believed it would take 20.”

    “To everyone’s surprise, Sandy’s fish proved people wrong. Within 48 hours of the dam coming out, threatened coho salmon were already swimming upriver from the dam site. Within months, the Sandy flushed out the equivalent of 150 Olympic-size swimming pools full of sediment, a process that was expected to take two to five years,” added the report by the conservancy, highlighting the advantages of allowing the river to flow unobstructed.

    These case studies reveal the incredible and fairly rapid restoration of natural ecosystems after dam removal.

    Post-Removal Monitoring and Restoration

    The work does not end when the dam is removed. Post-removal observation and monitoring are essential for tracking the ecological recovery of the river and its surroundings. This includes monitoring water quality, sediment transport, and the return of fish and wildlife. Long-term monitoring helps identify potential issues and ensures timely interventions to support the river’s recovery.

    Likewise, habitat restoration efforts, such as replanting native vegetation and restoring wetlands, can add to the ecological benefits of dam removal. Riparian vegetation plays a crucial role, including stabilizing riverbanks, filtering pollutants and sediments from runoff into waterways, protecting croplands and downstream areas from flood damage, and providing habitat and food sources for native wildlife. Restoration projects often involve partnerships with local conservation groups, volunteers, and government agencies to achieve these goals.

    Adaptive management is a critical component of post-removal restoration. This approach involves regularly assessing the effectiveness of restoration efforts and making adjustments as needed. Adaptive management recognizes the dynamic nature of river ecosystems and allows practitioners to respond to unexpected challenges and opportunities. By incorporating scientific monitoring and community feedback, adaptive management ensures that restoration efforts are effective and sustainable in the long term.

    Policy and Legislation

    The regulatory framework governing dam removal can be complex, involving various government agencies and other stakeholders. Understanding and navigating this framework is crucial for successfully completing dam removal projects. Policy changes, such as the introduction of streamlined permitting processes and increased funding for river restoration, have facilitated dam removal efforts.

    In April 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided $70 million in grants for 43 projects to remove dams and other river barriers in 29 states. Federal initiatives, state programs, and local regulations are integral in shaping the process.

    Navigating the legal landscape requires collaboration with regulatory bodies, environmental organizations, and community stakeholders. Compliance with environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, is essential. Additionally, obtaining the necessary permits often involves conducting detailed ecological impact assessments and engaging in public consultations to address community concerns.

    Climate Change and Hydropower Dams

    Climate change adds another layer of complexity to the issue of hydropower dams. Changing precipitation patterns, frequent extreme weather events, and shifting temperature regimes affect dams’ operation and environmental impact. Some regions may experience reduced water availability, diminishing the effectiveness of hydropower generation, while others may encounter increased flooding risks.

    According to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Hydrology, “the trade-offs between reservoir releases to maintain flood control storage and drought resilience, ecological flow, human (domestic, agricultural, and industrial) water demand, and energy production (both thermoelectric and hydroelectric) will increasingly need to be reconsidered in light of climate change, population growth, and water technology deployments.”

    Extreme weather events, which have become more frequent and intense due to climate change, can imperil dam infrastructure. Kristoffer Tigue of Inside Climate News wrote in July 2024, “[C]limate change presents a growing threat to the nation’s nearly 92,000 dams, many [of them] more than 100 years old, as heavy rainfall, flooding and other forms of extreme weather become more common and severe.”

    The Midwest—notably Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—maintains a high risk for severe flood damage from rivers due to the increased severity and frequency of extreme weather events tied to climate change. The Fifth National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s primary report on climate change impacts and risks, released in November 2023, points out that since 2018, the Midwest has experienced 30 failures or near-failures of aging dams.

    Dam removal can be part of broader climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Restoring natural river flows can enhance ecosystem resilience to climate change by improving habitat connectivity and supporting biodiversity.  Free-flowing rivers can act as natural buffers against floods and droughts, providing essential ecosystem services that help communities adapt to changing climatic conditions.

    Removing dams reduces greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane. Methane is produced underwater by the anaerobic decomposition of organic material like algae and other vegetation sequestered in a dam’s reservoir. This process happens naturally in lakes but is unnatural when a dam causes it. Free-flowing rivers do not emit methane.

    A study conducted between 2013 and 2019 by scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden found that hydropower dams in tropical environments were “methane factories.” Project coordinator Sebastian Sobek said, “We found that methane bubbling (ebullition) was the most relevant conduit for greenhouse gas emissions in most reservoirs under study.” While the study focused on tropical environments, the unnatural process of methane release through the decomposition of organic materials occurs anywhere there is a dam.

    The free-flowing upper Klamath River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

    Global Opinion on Dam Removal

    The movement to remove hydropower dams is not confined to the United States; it is a global phenomenon. Worldwide, countries recognize the benefits of restoring free-flowing rivers.

    Europe, in particular, has seen a surge in dam removal projects driven by the European Union’s Water Framework Directive, which aims to achieve good ecological status for all water bodies in the region. Countries like France, Spain, and Sweden have undertaken significant dam removal projects, leading to improved river health and increased biodiversity.

    In Asia, countries such as Japan and China are also beginning to address the impacts of aging dams. Japan has removed several obsolete dams to restore river ecosystems and improve fish passage. Meanwhile, facing severe river pollution and biodiversity loss, China has been exploring dam removal as part of its broader environmental protection initiatives.

    “China benefited so much from decades of water conservancy projects,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, toldBloomberg News in 2021. “Maybe it’s time for the industry to pay back for the environmental restoration.”

    The biggest dam removal in Europe’s history, conducted in 2018, has restored more than 2,050 miles of free-flowing rivers in Estonia.

    “Our vision is to have rivers full of fish,” said Herman Wanningen of the World Fish Migration Foundation, a Dutch organization that works to protect fish populations and free-flowing rivers. There are great examples around the world where the environment is healthier because rivers were set free. We want to share these inspiring stories and show that dam removal is a viable option.”

    Sharing knowledge and experiences across borders can help interested parties worldwide to develop more effective strategies for restoring rivers and supporting sustainable water management practices.

    Future Directions and Innovations

    As the practice of dam removal evolves, so do the technologies and methodologies used to carry out these projects. Advances in remote sensing, geographic information systems, and environmental DNA are providing new tools for monitoring and assessing the impacts of dam removal. These technologies enable more precise measurements of ecological changes and can help identify the most effective restoration techniques.

    Innovations in engineering are also making dam removal safer and more efficient. Techniques such as advanced blasting methods allow for the controlled dismantling of dams with minimal environmental disruption. Furthermore, improved sediment management practices and eco-friendly construction materials are enhancing the sustainability of dam removal projects.

    Integrating climate resilience into dam removal planning will be crucial. As climate change continues to alter hydrological patterns, interested parties must consider how restored rivers can adapt. This might involve designing restoration projects that enhance floodplain connectivity, improve groundwater recharge, and support diverse and resilient ecosystems.

    How Local Communities Help Rivers Run Free

    Interested parties can help restore rivers in their communities. The first step is to learn if the dams in your area serve their intended purposes. The National Inventory of Dams is an excellent place to start.

    Connect with your local river volunteer group and cleanup organizations to participate in river conservation. Make your voice heard during discussions about proposals to build new dams and relicense existing dams. Spend time getting to know your local river or stream. Talk to your local, state, and federal elected officials about why removing dams that have outlived their usefulness can help restore ecosystems and biodiversity, honor Indigenous communities, support local communities, and combat climate change.

    Individuals and groups interested in learning more about dam removal can join American Rivers’ National Dam Removal Community of Practice to access the latest resources, including training opportunities and shared expertise, to expand and accelerate the practice.

    My organization, American Rivers, and the Hydropower Reform Coalitionhave created the “Practitioner’s Guide to Hydropower Dam Removal,” which offers a detailed roadmap for those interested in getting involved in hydropower dam removal. It provides a thorough overview of the procedures, challenges, and benefits of dam removal. In addition, American Rivers has a Basic Guide for Project Managers for removing non-powered dams.

    Removing hydropower dams represents a transformative approach to river restoration, offering substantial ecological, economic, and social benefits. Practitioners can restore river ecosystems and revitalize communities, including tribal nations and Indigenous communities, by learning from past experiences, engaging with stakeholders, and leveraging new technologies.

    As global awareness of environmental sustainability grows, the momentum for dam removal is likely to increase. By fostering international collaboration and innovation, we can restore the world’s rivers to their natural, free-flowing states, providing invaluable benefits for future generations.

    Serena McClain, the director of river restoration at American Rivers, who has assisted in the removal of dozens of dams, said it best: “With dam removal, it’s not about what we’re taking away. It’s what we’re gaining. This is about getting people to embrace the power and potential of a natural river. Free-flowing rivers will give us so much if we just give them the chance.”

    This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

    The post Removing Hydropower Dams Can Restore Ecosystems, Build Climate Resilience, and Restore Tribal Lands appeared first on CounterPunch.org.