The University of the South Pacific (USP) is at the heart of a global legal victory with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivering a historic opinion last week affirming that states have binding legal obligations to protect the environment from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

The case, hailed as a triumph for climate justice, was driven by a student-led movement that began within USP’s own regional classrooms.

In 2021, the government of Vanuatu took a bold step by announcing its intention to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on climate change. But what many may not have realised is that the inspiration behind this unprecedented move came from a group of determined young Pacific Islanders — students from USP who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).

• READ MORE: How Pacific students took their climate fight to the world’s highest court. And won
• The Pacific Community (SPC) climate justice resource
• Climate Justice at the ICJ
• Other Pacific climate justice reports

According to the United Nations background information, these USP students led the charge, campaigning for years to bring the voices of vulnerable island nations to the highest court in the world.

Their call for accountability resonated across the globe, eventually leading to the adoption of a UN resolution in March 2023 that asked the ICJ two critical legal questions:

• What obligations do states have under international law to protect the environment?
• What are the legal consequences when they fail?

The result
A sweeping opinion from the ICJ affirming that climate change treaties place binding duties on countries to prevent environmental harm.

As the ICJ President, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, stated in the official delivery the court was: “Unanimously of the opinion that the climate change treaties set forth binding obligations for States parties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

USP alumni lead the celebration
USP alumna Cynthia Houniuhi, president of the PISFCC, shared her pride in a statement to USP’s official news that this landmark opinion must guide not only courtrooms but also global climate negotiations and policy decisions and it’s a call to action.

“The law is on our side. I’m proud to be on the right side of history.”

Her words reflect the essence of USP’s regional identity, a university built not just to educate, but to empower Pacific Islanders to lead solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges.

Why is the ICJ’s climate ruling such a big deal?         Video: Almost

Students in action, backed by global leaders
UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres, in a video message released by the UN, gave credit where it was due.

“This is a victory for our planet, for climate change and for the power of young people to make a difference. Young Pacific Islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world, and the world must respond.”

Vishal Prasad, director of PISFCC, in a video reel of the SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community), also credited youth activism rooted in the Pacific education system as six years ago young people from the Pacific decided to take climate change to the highest court and today the ICJ has responded.

“The ICJ has made it clear, it cemented the consensus on the science of climate change and formed the heart of all the arguments that many Pacific Island States made.”

USP’s influence is evident in the regional unity that drove this case forward showing that youth educated in the Pacific are capable of reshaping global narratives.

A win for the Pacific
From coastal erosion and rising sea levels to the legacy of nuclear testing, the Pacific lives with the frontline effects of climate change daily.

Coral Pasisi, SPC Director of Climate Change & Sustainability, highlighted in a video message, the long-term importance of the ruling:

“Climate change is already impacting them (Pacific people) and every increment that happens is creating more and more harm, not just for the generations now but those into the future. I think this marks a real moment for our kids.”

Additionally, as Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change, noted to SPC, science was the cornerstone of the court’s reasoning.

“The opinion really used that science as the basis for its definitions of accountability, responsibility, and duty.”

Among the proud USP student voices is Siosiua Veikune, who told Tonga’s national broadcaster that this is not only a win for the students but for the Pacific islands also.

What now?
With 91 written statements and 97 countries participating in oral proceedings, this was the largest case ever seen by the ICJ and it all began with a movement sparked at USP.

Now, the challenge moves from the courtroom to the global stage and will see how nations implement this legal opinion.

Though advisory, the ICJ ruling carries immense moral and legal weight. It will likely shape global climate negotiations, strengthen lawsuits against polluting states, and empower developing nations especially vulnerable Pacific Islands to demand justice on the international stage.

For the students who dreamed it into motion, it’s only the beginning.

“Now, we have to make sure this ruling leads to real action — in parliaments, at climate summits, and in every space where our future is at stake,”  said Veikune.

Vahefonua Tupola is a second-year student journalist at University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus. Republshed from Wansolwara News, the USP student journalism newspaper and website in partnership with Asia Pacific Report.

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

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s EPA took a major step toward changing that. At a truck dealership in Indianapolis, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a formal proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, which has been in the works since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency. At the same time, Zeldin announced a plan to repeal all federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles. “If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” he said at the press conference.

Zeldin accused his predecessors at the EPA of making “many, many, many mental leaps” in the 2009 declaration, and he argued that the “real threat” to people’s livelihoods is not carbon dioxide but instead the regulations themselves, which he claimed lead to higher prices and restrict people’s choices.

If the EPA succeeds in reversing the endangerment finding, it would “eviscerate the biggest regulatory tool the federal government has” to keep climate change in check, said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Republicans in Congress have already repealed much of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, which aimed to put the U.S. within reach of its Paris Agreement targets primarily by funneling money to renewable energy sources. Rescinding the endangerment finding targets the other main tool the U.S. government can use to address climate change: the executive branch’s power to limit emissions through regulatory action. In other words, Republicans have already eliminated many of the federal government’s proverbial climate carrots — now they’re going after the sticks. 

“We will not have a serious national climate policy if this goes through,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor of climate policy and environmental law at Vermont Law School.

But that’s a big “if.” Experts say that the EPA’s plan is bound to be embroiled in years of lawsuits, perhaps one day making its way to the Supreme Court, which blessed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases in 2007 and declined to hear a challenge to the endangerment finding as recently as December 2023. And even if the EPA does manage to overturn the endangerment finding after all court challenges have been exhausted, it would result in sweeping consequences — including some that the administration’s allies in the oil industry may not like. Indeed, the risk is serious enough that some fossil fuel industry groups have urged the Trump administration not to repeal the finding.

The tussle over the endangerment finding stems from differing interpretations of the Clean Air Act. When Congress expanded the law in 1970, it tasked the EPA with regulating air pollutants that threaten public health, but it kept the definition of “pollutant” broad. “They had the foresight to understand that they could not foresee every potential air pollutant that would endanger public health and welfare in the many decades to come,” said Zealan Hoover, who was a senior adviser to the EPA under Biden. That gave the EPA some leeway to determine exactly what it should be regulating — a question that presidents have approached very differently, with Democrats typically trying to expand the agency’s power and Republicans trying to limit it. With its 2009 endangerment finding, the Obama administration added carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to the list.

Now that Zeldin has announced a plan to strike down the finding, the EPA will open a 45-day period for the public to weigh in on the proposal. The agency is supposed to take that feedback into account before moving to finalize the rule. At that point, states and environmental groups may sue the EPA in what’s expected to be a yearslong court battle.

“The lawyering that’s going to go on is going to make a lot of people rich,” Parenteau said. In the meantime, Zeldin would likely work to undo existing regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, unless the courts were convinced to pause the implementation of the new rule. 

Any lawsuit would probably end up in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases concerning federal policymaking. Law experts say the EPA’s argument may not fare well with those judges, as the circuit has upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act in the past. On top of that, when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, Democrats amended the Clean Air Act to explicitly declare carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases as air pollutants, bolstering the foundation for regulating them. Republicans did not repeal that language when they gutted much of the rest of the Biden-era law, and challengers are likely to invoke those amendments in court, Carlson said.

But that wouldn’t necessarily be the end of it, because such a case might go all the way to the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority could then choose to undermine Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 decision that gave the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and led to the endangerment finding. “That may be the ultimate aim here,” Carlson said, “to get the Supreme Court to revisit Massachusetts v. EPA to make it basically impossible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”

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Naveena Sadasivam

Undoing the finding wouldn’t just dismantle the foundation of U.S. climate regulation — it might also weaken oil companies’ best legal defense in the flood of climate lawsuits brought against them by cities and states. For years, oil companies have relied on a different Supreme Court ruling to argue that federal law shields them from state lawsuits over climate change. In the 2011 ruling American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court found that because the EPA was already regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, states couldn’t separately sue polluters under federal “nuisance” law — a type of legal claim used when someone’s actions interfere with public rights, such as the right to a healthy environment.

The court’s reasoning was that Congress had delegated the task of regulating emissions to the EPA, leaving no room for federal courts to step in on making climate policy. But if the endangerment finding is revoked, and the EPA no longer regulates those emissions, that argument could fall apart, leaving fossil fuel companies vulnerable in courts across the country.

“There is great concern that reversing the finding would open the door to a lot more nuisance lawsuits against all types of energy companies,” Jeff Holmstead, a partner with energy law firm Bracewell, told E&E News earlier this year. The oil industry may then pursue a backup plan: Companies could ask Congress, which is currently controlled by a narrow Republican majority, to grant them legal protection from climate lawsuits, according to Parenteau.

Undoing the endangerment finding could leave fossil fuel companies navigating a patchwork of state laws instead of a single cohesive federal policy. If greenhouse gas emissions are no longer regulated under the Clean Air Act, states would presumably be free to make their own rules, Carlson added. Among other consequences, that could strengthen California’s case against the Trump administration over its right to place stricter-than-federal standards on vehicle emissions. “There’s potential for a lot of chaos,” she said. 

It’s possible that a more liberal presidential administration could one day reinstate the endangerment finding, even if Zeldin manages to revoke it. But it would be a while before that could translate to any meaningful action on climate change, according to Hoover.

“Unfortunately, for anyone who wants to see government solve a big problem, there’s very little you can achieve through regulations in four years,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s EPA is attacking its own power to fight climate change on Jul 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

Vietnam, the world’s second-largest exporter of coffee, is known for growing robusta beans. Earthier and more bitter than the arabica beans grown in Brazil, Colombia, and other coffee-growing regions near the Equator, robusta beans are often thought of as producing lower-quality coffee. 

In an effort to rebrand robusta, Mullin signed deals with coffee farming cooperatives in Vietnam and created smooth blends. Over the years, she helped a cohort of farmers convert their operations to organic. “We put in huge investments and were certified as the first organic specialty-grade coffee farms ever in Vietnam,” said the CEO and founder. In a few weeks, Copper Cow is planning to launch its first line of organic coffee at Whole Foods and Target.

But the second Trump administration has changed the calculus of her business. Mullin said she “was bullish” about her company’s prospects when President Donald Trump first took office, believing that Vietnam would likely be exempt from exorbitant tariffs since the president has many supporters in the coastal Southeast Asian country. Then, in April of this year, the White House announced a 46 percent tariff on goods from Vietnam. 

The shock left Mullin rethinking the very thesis she had set out to prove. “A big part of our mission is about how robusta beans, when treated better, can provide this really great cup of coffee at a lower price,” she said. “Once you put a 46 percent tariff on there, does this business model work anymore?”

Trump soon paused his country-specific tariffs for a few months, replacing them with a near-universal 10 percent tax. This month, Trump announced on social media that he would lower Vietnam’s eventual tariff from 46 to 20 percent — a sharp price hike that still worries Mullin. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to impose an astounding 50 percent tariff on goods from Brazil, the nation’s largest importer of coffee, starting August 1. 

“I joke with my partner that I feel like I’m in a macroeconomics class,” said Mullin. In lieu of raising its prices, Copper Cow, which sells directly to consumers as well as to retailers, has scrambled to cut costs by reconsidering its quarterly team get-togethers and slowing down its timeline for helping more farmers go organic. The price of coffee hit an all-time high earlier this year, a dramatic rise due in part to ongoing climate-fueled droughts in the global coffee belt. As the U.S. considers fueling a trade war with coffee-producing countries, “it just feels like such an insult to an injury,” said Mullin. “It’s like, let’s have an earthquake hit a place that is in the middle of a hurricane.”

Economists like to say that demand for coffee is relatively inelastic — drinkers are so attached to their daily caffeine fix that they keep buying it even when prices increase. As the Trump administration mounts its retaliatory trade agenda, that theory will be put to the test. Coffee growers, as well as the roasters and sellers that purchase them in the U.S., are now facing unforeseen geopolitical and economic challenges. “We have not seen tariffs of this magnitude before,” said David Ortega, a professor of food and economics policy at Michigan State University. “There’s no playbook for this.” 

Should Trump’s threatened tariffs go into effect next month, it will likely hurt consumers, as many businesses will pass on the costs by raising prices. But it could also have ripple effects on coffee farms, as companies may cut costs by pulling back on investments in environmentally-conscientious practices like organic or regenerative agriculture. “Our goal was always to slowly convert the rest of our products to certified organic,” said Mullin. “And we feel like that is not an option anymore because of the tariffs.”

Even if the tariffs do not go into effect in August, the ongoing economic uncertainty will likely impact coffee growers in Brazil, which provided 35 percent of America’s unroasted coffee supply as of 2023. As U.S. coffee companies navigate the Trump administration’s evolving trade policies, they are likely to seek out new, cheaper markets for coffee beans. “Suddenly, they become less attached to where they source their coffee from,” said João Brites, director of growth and innovation at HowGood, a data platform that helps food companies measure and reduce carbon emissions along their supply chain. 

The problem with that, according to Ortega, is that other countries in the coffee belt, such as Colombia, do not have the production capacity to match Brazil’s and meet U.S. demand for coffee. If the threat of punitive tariffs on Brazil kickstarts an increase in demand for coffee from other countries, that will likely raise prices. For coffee drinkers, “there are very few substitutes,” said Ortega.

These pressures on coffee farmers and buyers are coming after a period of worsening climate impacts. A majority of coffee grown in Brazil — about 60 percent — comes from smallholder farms, grown on about 25 or fewer acres of land. “The current reality they’re operating in is that they’re already very stretched,” particularly because of weather disruptions, said Brites. Coffee grows best in tropical climates, but in recent years unprecedented droughts in Brazil have stunted growers’ yields, forcing exporters to dip into and almost deplete their coffee reserves. Vietnam has been rocked by drought and heat waves — and though robusta beans need less water to grow than arabica beans, making them a relatively climate-resilient crop, growers have also seen their yields decline. (Mullin said she is seeing early signs of harvests rebounding this year.)

Brites speculated that U.S. companies buying from smallholder farms in Brazil may be able to pressure growers into selling their beans at lower prices, adding to the economic precarity that these growers face. “For a lot of these coffee growers, the U.S. is such a big market,” he said, adding that it would take time for them to find new buyers in other markets.

Growers themselves are worried. Mariana Veloso, a Brazilian coffee producer and exporter, said producers are facing logistical challenges — and anticipating more. “If we want to ship a coffee in the next month, we will probably not be able to,” said Veloso, remarking that sometimes cargo ships holding coffee sit at Brazilian ports for weeks before setting out. Shipping companies seem to be delaying shipments from Brazil, said Veloso, perhaps in anticipation of the looming tariffs.

In the U.S., not every coffee company sources from Brazil or Vietnam. But the Trump administration’s existing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs are still rattling the coffee business. “We source coffees from all around the world. So we’re not immune to anything,” said Kevin Hartley, founder and CEO of Cambio Roasters, an aluminum K-cup coffee brand. He added, “You know, 10 percent here and 30 percent there, that’s not trivial.”

Hartley added that one of the impacts of droughts on coffee growers is that younger farmers worried about the future are considering leaving the business. “In coffee farming families around the world, it’s a tough life and the current generation is showing reticence to take off where their parents began,” he said. 

Regardless of whether the U.S. imposes prohibitive tariffs on individual coffee-growing countries, climate change is already taking a toll on this workforce. “Everyone’s looking for a solution for this,” said Mullin, who believes robusta beans can offer a drought-resistant alternative to the ever-popular arabica beans. 

Copper Cow has even started experimenting with a lesser-known varietal of coffee beans called liberica, which requires even less water to grow than robusta beans. “And it’s delicious,” Mullin said. It’s an extremely labor-intensive crop because the coffee plant grows so tall, but one of the farmer cooperatives she works with is starting to plant them now, thinking the investment will be worth it as temperatures keep rising. 

This new era of environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenges has shaken coffee brands. “Everybody’s wondering, in 50 years, will there be much coffee anymore? People are trying to be really realistic about what that world is going to look like,” said Mullin. In the midst of that broader uncertainty, the impact of Trump’s tariffs is another question only time can answer.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher. on Jul 29, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

In 2019, a group of law students at the University of the South Pacific, frustrated at the slow pace with which the world’s governments were moving to address the climate crisis, had an idea — they would take the world’s governments to court.

They arranged a meeting with government ministers in Vanuatu and convinced them to take a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, where they would seek an opinion to clarify countries’ legal obligations under international law.

Six years after that idea was hatched in a classroom in Port Vila, the court will today (early Thursday morning NZT) deliver its verdict in the Dutch city of The Hague.

• READ MORE: Other climate crisis reports

If successful — and those involved are quietly confident they will be — it could have major ramifications for international law, how climate change disputes are litigated, and it could give small Pacific countries greater leverage in arguments around loss and damage.

Most significantly, the claimants argue, it could establish legal consequences for countries that have driven climate change and what they owe to people harmed.

“Six long years of campaigning have led us to this moment,” said Vishal Prasad, the president of Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, the organisation formed out of those original students.

“For too long, international responses have fallen short. We expect a clear and authoritative declaration,” he said.

“[That] climate inaction is not just a failure of policy, but a breach of international law.”

More than 100 countries — including New Zealand, Australia and all the countries of the Pacific — have testified before the court, alongside civil society and intergovernmental organisations.

And now today they will gather in the brick palace that sits in ornate gardens in this canal-ringed city to hear if the judges of the world’s top court agree.

What is the case?
The ICJ adjudicates disputes between nations and issues advisory opinions on big international legal issues.

In this case, Vanuatu asked the UN General Assembly to request the judges to weigh what exactly international law requires states to do about climate change, and what the consequences should be for states that harm the climate through actions or omissions.

Over its deliberations, the court has heard from more than 100 countries and international organisations hoping to influence its opinion, the highest level of participation in the court’s history.

That has included the governments of low-lying islands and atolls in the Pacific, which say they are paying the steepest price for a crisis they had little role in creating.

These nations have long been frustrated with the current mechanisms for addressing climate change, like the UN COP conferences, and are hoping that, ultimately, the court will provide a yardstick by which to measure other countries’ actions.

“I choose my words carefully when I say that this may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity,” Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu said in his statement to the court last year.

“Let us not allow future generations to look back and wonder why the cause of their doom was condoned.”

But major powers and emitters, like the United States and China, have argued in their testimonies that existing UN agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, are sufficient to address climate change.

“We expect this landmark climate ruling, grounded in binding international law, to reflect the critical legal flashpoints raised during the proceedings,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the US-based Centre for International Environmental Law (which has been involved with the case).

“Among them: whether States’ climate obligations are anchored in multiple legal sources, extending far beyond the Paris Agreement; whether there is a right to remedy for climate harm; and how human rights and the precautionary principle define States’ climate obligations.”

What could this mean?
Rulings from the ICJ are non-binding, and there are myriad cases of international law being flouted by countries the world over.

Still, the court’s opinion — if it falls in Vanuatu’s favour — could still have major ramifications, bolstering the case for linking human rights and climate change in legal proceedings — both international and domestic — and potentially opening the floodgates for climate litigation, where individuals, groups, Indigenous Peoples, and even countries, sue governments or private companies for climate harm.

An advisory opinion would also be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions related to the climate crisis, and give small countries a powerful cudgel in negotiations over future COP agreements and other climate mechanisms.

“This would empower vulnerable nations and communities to demand accountability, strengthen legal arguments and negotiations and litigation and push for policies that prioritise prevention and redress over delay and denial,” Prasad said.

In essence, those who have taken the case have asked the court to issue an opinion on whether governments have “legal obligations” to protect people from climate hazards, but also whether a failure to meet those obligations could bring “legal consequences”.

At the Peace Palace today, they will find out from the court’s 15 judges.

“[The advisory opinion] is not just a legal milestone, it is a defining moment in the global climate justice movement and a beacon of hope for present and future generations,” said Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat in a statement ahead of the decision.

“I am hopeful for a powerful opinion from the ICJ. It could set the world on a meaningful path to accountability and action.”

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

After getting a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, Jaz Brisack became a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helped organize the first unionized Starbucks in the US in December of 2021. In their new book, Get on the Job and Organize, Brisack details the hardwon lessons they and their coworkers have learned from building one of the most significant and paradigm-shifting worker organizing campaigns in modern history. In this extended episode of Working People, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian speaks with Brisack about their book, the facts and fictions characterizing today’s “new labor movement,” and why union organizing is essential for saving democracy and the world.

Guests:

• Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Jaz got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States in December of 2021. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry’s to Tesla.

Additional links/info:

• Jaz Brisack, One Signal Publishers, Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World
• Jaz Brisack, Teen Vogue, “Starbucks Workers United grew out of Jaz Brisack’s undercover organizing. Here’s how”
• Starbucks Workers United website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Inside Organizer School website

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and extreme heat. 

The relationship between climate change and heat waves is perhaps the most straightforward of any disaster. “If we have an extreme heat wave, the null hypothesis is, ‘Climate change is making that worse,’” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told Grist after a record-breaking heatwave hit the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The planet has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit compared to pre-industrial times, and most heat waves we’ve experienced since have either been caused or strengthened by that. In 2020, scientists concluded that extreme heat in Siberia — with temperatures nearing 100 degrees in the Arctic Circle — was made 600 times more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Cities in the U.S. are seeing 100-degree days more often, and they’re not just reserved for the dead of summer. Some places, like Houston, have hit triple digits in February. Cities with mild climates might be ill-equipped to respond to the new normal, and will need to invest in interventions like better warning systems and outreach, subsidizing air conditioning installations in low-income housing, maintaining a network of public cooling centers and transportation services during heat waves, and strengthening the electrical grid to withstand the additional energy load. 

Policies barring utility companies from disconnecting electric services can also protect vulnerable residents, who may be afraid to run their AC all day due to the costs. Forty states have disconnection moratoriums during extreme cold — but only 21 have similar laws for extreme heat. 

Nighttime temperatures are rising as well, intensifying the risk of heat waves. This is especially troubling for people who don’t have access to air conditioning (over 35 million people in the U.S., for example), or those who live in urban heat islands, where the abundance of heat-trapping concrete combined with a lack of trees and shade in some neighborhoods can cause temperatures to rise 15 to 20 degrees higher than neighborhoods with parks and green spaces.  

Extreme heat can cause a myriad of health problems and even be deadly, particularly for the elderly, those who work outdoors, unhoused people, and people with pre-existing heart or lung conditions. Even for healthy adults, extreme heat can make it difficult for the body to cool itself off, which puts acute stress on the heart and kidneys. A recent study found that chronic heat exposure ages the body more than habitual smoking. Between 2004 and 2021, the number of Americans who officially died from heat exposure rose by 439 percent. On average over the last 30 years, heat waves have killed more people than hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. 

Even though it’s becoming more common and more dangerous, FEMA still does not classify extreme heat as a natural disaster, so federal funding to support local relief efforts is not available. Labor unions, environmental groups, and health professionals are pushing the federal agency to change that. Some advocates even say that heat waves should be named and ranked on a simple scale, like hurricanes are, to increase public awareness about the risks of extreme heat. For example, a pilot program in Seville, Spain, named heat waves (similar to hurricanes), and ranked them in three classifications based on severity. Each category triggered specific alerts and public health interventions like cooling centers and wellness checks. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is worsening extreme heat on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and extreme heat. 

The relationship between climate change and heat waves is perhaps the most straightforward of any disaster. “If we have an extreme heat wave, the null hypothesis is, ‘Climate change is making that worse,’” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told Grist after a record-breaking heatwave hit the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The planet has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit compared to pre-industrial times, and most heat waves we’ve experienced since have either been caused or strengthened by that. In 2020, scientists concluded that extreme heat in Siberia — with temperatures nearing 100 degrees in the Arctic Circle — was made 600 times more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Cities in the U.S. are seeing 100-degree days more often, and they’re not just reserved for the dead of summer. Some places, like Houston, have hit triple digits in February. Cities with mild climates might be ill-equipped to respond to the new normal, and will need to invest in interventions like better warning systems and outreach, subsidizing air conditioning installations in low-income housing, maintaining a network of public cooling centers and transportation services during heat waves, and strengthening the electrical grid to withstand the additional energy load. 

Policies barring utility companies from disconnecting electric services can also protect vulnerable residents, who may be afraid to run their AC all day due to the costs. Forty states have disconnection moratoriums during extreme cold — but only 21 have similar laws for extreme heat. 

Nighttime temperatures are rising as well, intensifying the risk of heat waves. This is especially troubling for people who don’t have access to air conditioning (over 35 million people in the U.S., for example), or those who live in urban heat islands, where the abundance of heat-trapping concrete combined with a lack of trees and shade in some neighborhoods can cause temperatures to rise 15 to 20 degrees higher than neighborhoods with parks and green spaces.  

Extreme heat can cause a myriad of health problems and even be deadly, particularly for the elderly, those who work outdoors, unhoused people, and people with pre-existing heart or lung conditions. Even for healthy adults, extreme heat can make it difficult for the body to cool itself off, which puts acute stress on the heart and kidneys. A recent study found that chronic heat exposure ages the body more than habitual smoking. Between 2004 and 2021, the number of Americans who officially died from heat exposure rose by 439 percent. On average over the last 30 years, heat waves have killed more people than hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. 

Even though it’s becoming more common and more dangerous, FEMA still does not classify extreme heat as a natural disaster, so federal funding to support local relief efforts is not available. Labor unions, environmental groups, and health professionals are pushing the federal agency to change that. Some advocates even say that heat waves should be named and ranked on a simple scale, like hurricanes are, to increase public awareness about the risks of extreme heat. For example, a pilot program in Seville, Spain, named heat waves (similar to hurricanes), and ranked them in three classifications based on severity. Each category triggered specific alerts and public health interventions like cooling centers and wellness checks. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is worsening extreme heat on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and flooding. 

Flooding is one of the most common natural disasters that can devastate a community. Between 2000 and 2019, nearly 1.6 billion people globally were impacted by floods, according to a study published in Nature. 

In the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been criticized for outdated and incomplete maps that severely underestimate the number of people living in areas with a high risk of flooding. In 2018, a study estimated 41 million Americans live within a 100-year flood zone, or a region with a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year — over three times FEMA’s estimate of 13 million. 

In 2023, for example, thousands of homes in Vermont flooded during a historic storm, and some that weren’t officially listed on any floodplain maps were inundated with 5 feet of water. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 flooded some 200,000 homes or businesses, including tens of thousands of structures not classified as being in the flood zone.  

This undercount results in fewer people holding flood insurance policies than are actually at risk, leaving homeowners without financial support when disaster hits (regular home insurance does not cover floodwater). And because there are no federal requirements for a seller to disclose previous floods, potential home buyers might not even know they should have a policy. 

Floods can happen almost anywhere — not just next to bodies of water. Heavy rain can cause rivers and even small creeks to overflow. Strong winds can create storm surges, causing ocean water to inundate coastal communities. In urban and suburban areas, flash flooding takes place when heavy rain can’t drain through paved, concrete surfaces; it pools in streets and overwhelms sewer systems. 

Climate change is creating more extreme rainstorms, as warmer air can hold more moisture that will eventually come down as rain. Put another way: Earth “sweats” more as warmer air causes more water to evaporate and then condense and fall as rain. Models suggest that these storms can also stall for an extended period of time, deluging an area with more water than it can handle. Making matters worse, these storms can hit after extreme droughts and heat waves, a climate trend known as “weather whiplash.” When soil becomes hard and dry, it acts more like concrete, unable to soak up the excess water as effectively as it would in normal conditions. 

The warming oceans are also affecting rainfall: The Gulf of Mexico’s waters supercharged Hurricane Helene, for example, which made landfall in Florida before quickly moving inland and dumping 40 trillion gallons of water across the Southeast and into Appalachia. 

As rainfall becomes more extreme, experts have warned that existing flood control infrastructure won’t be adequate to protect communities in the future and is struggling under current conditions. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual infrastructure report card rates the nation’s dams, levees, and stormwater systems. This year, none of these categories received a grade above a D. These systems are in need of billions of dollars of repair and upgrades already, on top of the added stresses of climate change. In 2025, the Trump administration pulled funding for these types of projects as it reversed course from the previous administration’s climate goals, so many planned improvements are tied up in legal battles. Meanwhile, other projects being studied and planned aren’t factoring in the risks posed by climate change. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is worsening flooding and heavy rainfall on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and tornadoes. 

Readers from southern and central U.S. states are likely accustomed to the sound of tornado sirens during spring and summer. But tornadoes are not exclusive to that part of the world — they have been recorded everywhere except Antarctica. All it takes is a mass of cold, dry air colliding with a warmer, moist one, which usually happens during a thunderstorm. If these air masses begin to rotate, a funnel-shaped cloud forms, bringing dangerous high-speed winds that can rip homes from their foundations. 

In the U.S., these storms most frequently form in “tornado alley,” an area in the central U.S. that includes Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas. But they’re also common in southern states, including Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and some parts of the Midwest. 

Predicting exactly when, why, and where a tornado may hit has long mystified meteorologists and forecasters. Tornadoes form fast and move unpredictably. The temperature, humidity, and wind speeds might be exactly right, but some thunderstorms produce dozens of tornadoes while other storm patterns don’t produce any. Forecasting and warning systems have gotten much better over the years, but the lead time for a tornado warning is still about 10 minutes, compared to days for a hurricane evacuation. 

Climate scientists haven’t yet established if global warming has impacted the frequency or strength of tornadoes. But there have been some unusual events in recent years, as more tornadoes have touched down in the eastern United States. In December 2021, an outbreak of thunderstorms and tornadoes made headlines after nearly 100 people were killed across several states in the Midwest, South, and Great Plains. Typically, tornadoes don’t occur late into winter months, so these communities were caught off guard, leaving many to scramble to seek shelter. Warmer winter temperatures may contribute to tornado conditions, but more research is needed to understand the link.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change may be affecting tornadoes on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and wildfires. 

In a hotter, drier world, wildfires have become more frequent and destructive. Scientists have definitively linked anthropogenic climate change to increased wildfire risks: A 2016 study found that, because of human-caused carbon emissions, the total number of large fires since 1984 had doubled. A 2021 study supported by NOAA similarly concluded that climate change is primarily responsible for wildfire conditions, like hotter and drier summers. Wildfires themselves also release carbon when trees and other vegetation go up in flames. Globally, in 2023, wildfires caused 8.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. 

The Western United States is the epicenter of the country’s growing wildfire crisis: Dry, hot conditions are getting more dangerous, snow is melting earlier in the spring, and summer droughts have become more severe. Warming temperatures also encourage outbreaks of pests like bark beetles, weakening or killing wide swaths of forests. This dead and dried out vegetation becomes kindling waiting for a spark — whether that’s trash or debris fires, lightning strikes, or ill-advised fireworks. 

But these risky conditions are now more common in other parts of the country as well. On the East Coast, states are experiencing more “fire weather” days per year than they were 50 years ago. In New Jersey’s Pine Barren forest, for example, dry fall and winter conditions mean that deciduous trees shed drier leaves onto the forest floor — essentially, kindling waiting for a spark. 

As the conditions that fuel wildfires have worsened, so too has the number of people living in wildfire-prone zones. Between 1990 and 2010, according to the Forest Service, housing developments in the “wildland-urban interface” — a vulnerable ecological area where housing abuts or intermingles with the edges of forest — increased by 41 percent. 

Like most climate events, wildfires are an inherent natural process, and plant species have adapted to live alongside lower-intensity, cyclical fires. For thousands of years, Indigenous tribes reduced fire risks by using controlled or cultural burns, strategically clearing areas of dried-up vegetation before nature takes its course. European settlers, and later the federal government, did not have the same relationship to fires and forests. The cultural and ecological practice was banned for centuries in some states, including California. The U.S. Forest Service also had a “10 a.m. policy” for decades that instructed fire agencies to extinguish every blaze the same day it started — even those burning low and slow. Abandoning controlled burns and focusing on fire suppression caused a buildup of dead vegetation that helped fuel larger fires. Only recently have some ecologists and lawmakers reversed course, collaborating with tribes to reintroduce controlled burns to improve forest management. 

“There are solutions we have in our knowledge and in our management approaches that can help restore these ecosystems and can also benefit the public,” U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Frank K. Lake, a descendant of the Karuk tribe, told Grist in 2020. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is supercharging wildfires on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records. 

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and hurricanes. 

Every spring, the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, releases its forecast for the upcoming hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 through November 30. The agency’s projections for the Atlantic Ocean — and the communities living along the United States’ Eastern and Gulf coasts — paints an increasingly grim picture: Most seasonal predictions are now what NOAA considers “above normal,” with more hurricanes forming and warmer ocean waters fueling these storms to rapidly intensify into larger, more dangerous ones. Smaller-scale climate trends, like the El Niño and La Niña climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean, can also influence hurricane season. 

Hurricanes are intensifying at the same time that sea levels are rising, worsening the risks of flooding from dangerous storm surges. An unusual Pacific Ocean hurricane that hit Alaska in 2022, for example, caused a storm surge so powerful that a town 18 miles inland experienced major, unexpected flooding. 

Hurricanes are also developing stronger wind speeds, going through rapid intensification, and growing wetter — dropping more rain when they make landfall — as ocean waters heat up and air becomes warmer, thereby holding more moisture. In 2024, 11 hurricanes formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Five strengthened to major storms, Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Two of them — Beryl, which hit Houston in July, and Milton, which landed in Florida in October — peaked as Category 5 storms, the highest rating on the scale. 

“We would have had zero Category 5 storms without human-caused climate change,” Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist, told Grist in 2024. 

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Hurricanes or tropical storms are also increasingly moving slowly or stalling over land, unleashing devastating wind and rain on communities for days at a time, rather than the typical hours. Hurricane Harvey in 2017, for example, hit Texas as a Category 4 storm and sat over the southeastern part of the state for nearly four days, dumping upwards of 50 inches of rain and causing widespread flooding.

As storms become more intense, some scientists have cautioned that the current hurricane rating system might need an upgrade. The Saffir-Simpson scale’s categories — which only measure wind speed — are no longer a good proxy for potential danger or damage. Several recent storms have either exceeded Category 5 wind speeds or packed a wallop in other ways, from devastating rain or storm surge, not measured by the system. Meanwhile, researchers at Louisiana State University have also found that the official length of hurricane season, starting in June and ending in November, may also need to be extended. In 2023, a storm was observed forming over warm ocean waters as early as January. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change is intensifying hurricanes on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Surprisingly, it all comes down to Oscar Romero for Dan who voted for or supported Ronald Ray-Gun the first terrorist go-around:

Coming of age, he stated, at age 19 when he traveled to Nicaragua, and he’s been on that socialist and communist path since, now at age 57 with kiddos living the life in Pittsburgh.

He’s written books that will get anyone in trouble if they showed up at a mixed company event , or No Kings rally staffing a table with his books piled up high.

We talked about the Syria book, for sure, but then the case of regime change, well, Vietnam, anyone? El Salvador, folks?

Reagan’s legacy: President Ronald Reagan in 1982; Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in March 1980, and the four American Catholic missionaries murdered in the same year by the Salvadoran National Guard: Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel. (Reagan: Michael Evans / The White House / Getty Images; Romero: Bettmann; bottom: courtesy of the Maryknoll Sisters.)

Dan told me he has a lifesized statue of Saint Oscar Romero in his house, and the Catholic kid from Pittsburgh transformed into a Columbia University graduate of law and running into the Belly of the Beast of one of Many Proxy Chaos countries of the Monroe Doctrine variety — Colombia.

I’m 11 years older than Dan, and so my baseline is much different, for sure, and this prick, man, this prick was always a prick to me: Carter’s administration rejected Saint Óscar Romero’s pleas not to provide military aid to the Salvadoran junta before he was assassinated.

From the CIA pages of Wikipedia: He/Kovalik worked on the Alien Tort Claims Act cases against The Coca-Cola Company, Drummond Company and Occidental Petroleum over human rights abuses in Colombia.^[3] Kovalik accused the United States of intervention in Colombia, saying it has threatened peaceful actors there so it may “make Colombian land secure for massive appropriation and exploitation”.^[6] He also accused the Colombian and United States governments of overseeing mass killings in Colombia between 2002 and 2009.^[7]

Oh, remember those days, no, when I was young teaching college at age 25: Oh yeah, BDS CocaCola? Right brothers, right sisters:

“If we lose this fight against Coke,
First we will lose our union,
Next we will lose our jobs,
And then we will all lose our lives!”

“If it weren’t for international solidarity,
We would have been eliminated long ago. That is the truth.”

— Sinaltrainal VP Juan Carlos Galvis

Note: More Stream of Consciousness on my part: Sickly Sweet: The Sugar Cane Industry and Kidney Disease/ Ariadne Ellsworth | June 7, 2014

We are the world’s supreme terrorists, Dan and I agree. And, while we have BDS for Israel, think about it = BDS for UnUnited Snake$ of AmeriKKKa? How’s that Coke doing for you? Boycotting Walmart, Starbucks, Exxon, BP, Coke, etc. Ain’t going to have a revolution boycotting plastic bottles of water.

Almost Thirty Years ago, this book, School of Assassins, was published: The atrocities perpetrated on hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans by graduates of the US Army’s School of the Americas will not come as a surprise to many. For the uninitiated, however, this book is sure to be an eye-opener. How many of us remember, every time we read of plunder, torture, and murder by corrupt military regimes in Central and South America, that almost all of them employ officers trained in these “arts” at Fort Benning’s SOA, and that their clandestine education is funded by our tax dollars? In School of Assassins — vital reading for anyone who still harbors delusions about America’s role abroad — the author records the history of the school and its graduates. More important, he shows how the school’s very existence is a hidden consequence of the imperialistic foreign policy shamelessly pursued by our government for decades, all with the express purpose of maintaining world dominance. Nelson-Pallmeyer offers ideas for ways to work toward closing the school, but he suggests that the true task ahead of us is continual, active opposition to the death-bringing hunger for power and control — not only in the public arena, but in our personal lives.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Oliver Stone

Introduction

Chapter 1: The First U.S. Regime Change in Syria—The Early Cold War

Chapter 2: Back to the Future: Long-Term U.S. Regime-Change Strategy

Chapter 3: The Arab Spring and U.S. Interference in Syria

Chapter 4: Voices from Syria

Chapter 5: Charlie Wilson’s War Redux? Operation Timber Sycamore and Other Covert Operations in Syria

Chapter 6: Strange Bedfellows: The Multi-National Alliance Against Syria

Chapter 7: Shades of the Gulf of Tonkin: Chemical Weapons False Flag

Chapter 8: A War by Other Means: Sanctions and the U.S. Regime-Change Operation

Chapter 9: The White Helmets: Al Qaeda’s Partner in Crime

Chapter 10: The Liberal Intelligentsia Plays Its Role

Chapter 11: Syria After the Western-backed Al Qaeda Triumph—As Witnessed by Dan Kovalik

Epilogue

Here’s the first paragraphs of Oliver Stone’s forward:

Foreword by Oliver Stone

Another nation has fallen to the predations of Western interventionism. This time, it is Syria, a once beautiful and prosperous country, which has been home to peoples of different religions and ethnicities who lived together peacefully for centuries. That peaceful coexistence was purposefully destroyed by the U.S. and its allies who decided to effectuate regime change by inciting sectarian violence and supporting terrorist groups whose explicit plan was to set up an extremist religious Caliphate intolerant of all other religions.

Quite tragically, the terrorist group Al Qaeda, now named HTS, has taken over Syria and is now in the process of setting up such a Caliphate. Part of this process entails the mass slaughter of religious minorities, such as Alawites and Christians, and the kidnapping of young women from these groups who are raped and enslaved.

It would be shocking to know that this is all happening with the full connivance of modern, Western nations, except for the fact that we have seen this all before—most notably, in Afghanistan where the U.S. supported religious extremists to overthrow a secular, socialist government and to lure the USSR into the “Afghan trap,” in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Years later, the Soviet Union is gone, Afghanistan is now being ruled by the Taliban, and the offspring of the terrorist groups the U.S. supported in Afghanistan—namely, Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda—is now flourishing more than ever as the ruling group of a major country.

Oil oil oil, and anti-USSR and anti-socialist fervor, man: Here, those 9 steps toward regime change deployed in Syria — bloody sanctions kill more than physical bombs.

From Dan and Jeremy’s first chapter:

Direct Quoting: The U.S. State Department actually took credit for Assad’s overthrow. Spokesman Matthew Miller stated on December 9, 2024 that U.S. policy had “led to the situation we’re in today.” It “developed during the latter stages of the Obama administration” and “has largely carried through to this day.”[1] The regime-change operation in Syria was openly advertised even earlier, when General Wesley Clark was told during a visit at the Pentagon after 9/11 that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”[2]

The methods that were utilized to oust Assad fit a long-standing regime-change playbook that had been applied in many of the countries listed by Clark. This playbook involves:

a) a protracted demonization campaign that spotlights the dastardly human rights abuses allegedly committed by the target of U.S. regime change. This demonization campaign enlists journalists and academics and highlights the viewpoint of pro-Western dissidents while maligning politicians, journalists or academics who voice criticism of U.S. foreign policy or who are against the regime-change operation (the latter being derided as “dictator lovers” or “apologists”).[3]

b) National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency of international Development (USAID) funding of civil society and opposition groups and opposition media with the aim of mobilizing support of students and young people against the government.

c) a program of economic warfare designed to weaken the economy and facilitate hardship for the population that will push them to turn against their leader.

d) CIA financing of rebel groups and fomenting of protests or an uprising that aims to elicit a heavy-handed government response that can be used to further turn domestic and world opinion against the government.

e) a false flag is often necessary in which paid snipers dressed up in army or police uniforms fire on protesters. Blame is cast on the targeted government when it urges restraint. Chemical or biological warfare attacks are also staged in order to rally Western opinion in support of “humanitarian” military intervention.

f) drone warfare, bombing, and clandestine Special Forces operations using Navy Seals and private mercenaries. The light U.S. footprint approach will avert antiwar dissent at home.

g) enlisting third country nationals and proxy forces to carry out a lot of the heavy lifting and many of the military or bombing operations to ensure plausible deniability.

g) enlistment of disaffected minority groups who are paid to fight against government forces.

h) whitewashing of the background of rebel forces who are presented in the media as “freedom fighters” or “moderate rebels” and not the terrorists and Islamic extremists or fascists that they usually are.

i) accusing the government of enlisting foreigners to put down the rebellion when the rebellion itself has been triggered by foreign mercenaries financed by MI6/CIA/Mossad.

The targets for U.S. regime change are inevitably leaders who are independent nationalists intent on resisting U.S. corporate penetration of their countries and challenging U.S. global hegemony. Bashar al-Assad fit the bill for the latter because he backed Palestinian resistance groups and stood up to Israel, aligned closely with Iran and Russia, and adopted nationalistic economic policies.[4] Assad was also growing economic relations with China and refused to construct the Trans-Arabian Qatari pipeline through Syria, endorsing instead a Russian approved “Islamic” pipeline running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this latter pipeline would make “Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market” and “dramatically increase Iran’s influence in the Middle East and world”—which the U.S. and Israel would not allow.[5]

Oh, that dude who pushed cancer sticks onto women:

Edward Bernays and the Guatemalan Coup:

• In the early 1950s, the UFC, facing land reform policies in Guatemala that threatened their interests, hired Bernays to counter the government’s actions.
• Bernays led a “fact-finding” trip to Guatemala, cherry-picking information to portray the Guatemalan government as communist and a threat to American interests.
• He launched a misinformation campaign to discredit the Guatemalan government, framing the UFC as the victim of a “communist” regime.
• This campaign helped to create a climate of fear and suspicion about communism in Guatemala, which was used to justify the CIA-orchestrated coup.
• The coup, known as Operation PBSuccess, involved the CIA, the UFC, and the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza, according to Wikipedia.
• President Árbenz was overthrown and replaced by a military regime led by Carlos Castillo Armas, backed by the US.

Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire

On March 10, 2014, Chiquita Brands International announced that it was merging with the Irish fruit company, Fyffes. After the merger, Chiquita-Fyffes would control over 29% of the banana market; more than any one company in the world today. However, this is not the first time in history these companies have been under the same name. Chiquita Brands and Fyffes were both owned by United Fruit Company until 1986. The modern merger marks their reunion and continued takeover of the banana market [1]. United Fruit Company was known for its cruelty in the workplace and the racist social order they perpetuated. Though Chiquita and Fyffes are more subtle in their autocratic tendencies, they continue many of the same practices of political and social manipulation as their parent company once did [2].

Advertising has been one of the most prominent forms of manipulation conducted by both the two modern companies and United Fruit. In the mid-twentieth century, United Fruit Company embarked on a series of advertising campaigns designed to exploit the emotions and sense of adventure of a growing American middle class and furthered the racial polarization and political tension between the U.S. and Central America, all for the sake of selling their bananas.

United Fruit initiated its first advertising campaign in 1917. By this time the company had well establish plantations in various countries in Central and South America. All they needed now was to interest the American people in trying new, exotic things in order to sell the bananas they were producing. At this time in American history, it was thought that advertisements should target consumers’ rationale, not their emotions, so United Fruit hired scientists to author positive reviews about bananas whether they were true or not. One of these publications, Food Value of the Banana: Opinions of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities, offered a collection of articles by prominent scientists that promoted the nutrition value, health benefits, and even taste of the banana [3]. Today we know that bananas are good for us, but in the early 1900s, there was no way for these scientists to determine the nutrition value and other properties they claimed to have researched. However, Americans appear to have believed the scientists, for United Fruit’s banana sales began to soar.

Beginning in the 1920s, everything began to change. A successful young propagandist named Edward Bernays changed American advertising forever [4]. Bernays discovered that targeting people’s emotions instead of their logic caused people to flock to a product. His first experiment in this type of advertising was for the American Tobacco Company. Bernays thought that cigarette sales would sky rocket if it was socially acceptable for women to smoke, so at an important women’s rights march in New York City, Bernays had a woman light a cigarette in front of reporters and call it a “Torch of Freedom” [5]. Soon, women all over the United States were smoking cigarettes. After this initial public relations stunt, companies all over America began using emotionally-loaded advertising. United Fruit was no different. They launched an advertising campaign revolving around their new cruise liner called “The Great White Fleet” [6]. This cruise liner sailed civilians to the United Fruit-controlled countries in Central and South America to appeal to Americans’ sense of adventure and foster a good corporate reputation with the American people. When the cruise liner docked in a country, cruisers often toured one of United Fruit’s plantations. During this tour, the tourists would only be shown small areas of the banana plantations, theatrically set up to present the plantation as a harmonious place to work, when, in reality, it was a place of harsh conditions and corruption [7]. Their advertisements were key in swaying the American people to set out on an exotic adventure with the Great White Fleet. The flyer to the right (Fig. 1) describes Central America as a land of pirates and romance. The advertisement even portrays it as the place where “Pirates hid their Gold.” By giving the American tourists a false sense of the romanticism of Central America, they sold more cruise tickets, and through association, more bananas.

United Fruit’s unethical practices extended far beyond their manipulative advertising. They were also well known for their extremely racial politics in the workplace. They had employees from many different racial groups, and they would pit them against one another to control revolts that would otherwise be aimed at the company [8]. American whites would get the most prestigious jobs, like managers and financial advisers, while people of color got the hard labor. The company made a rigid distinction between Hispanics and West Indian workers. They administered different privileges and punishments to each ethnic group , and if one group were rewarded, the managers told them it was because they worked harder than the other group. If a punishment was administered, management would say it was the other group’s fault [9]. This gave the two groups something to focus their anger on, so they didn’t revolt against the company due to poor working conditions. United Fruit used the Great White Fleet to further these racial tensions. If the name was not obvious enough, all the ships were painted bright white and all the crew members wore pristine white uniforms [10]. The Fleet went so far as to encourage the passengers to wear white. The advertisement to the left (Fig. 2) further embodies the racial tensions experienced by the Americans and the United Fruit laborers. The large, white, American ship dwarfed the small, run-down, brown ship, symbolizing the power and prestige the whites had over the locals. The Central Americans in the corner of the picture are looking in awe of the massive ship, and are dressed in tropical garb to satisfy the need to appeal to the American people’s idealized version of the tropics. This is not only an advertisement, but a work of propaganda.

The United Fruit Company continued to advertise throughout the mid twentieth century until they found a new use for their public relations skills. A politician named Jacobo Arbenz was elected president in Guatemala, one of the Central American countries occupied by United Fruit [11]. Arbenz was a strict nationalist, and all he wanted was for his people to stop suffering in poverty. One of the most prominent issues in Guatemala, at the time, was scarcity of land. When United Fruit invaded Guatemala, they bought out many of the local farmers to acquire land for their plantations. This did not leave room for the peasants, who relied on farming as the sole source of their income. Arbenz created an agrarian reform that took land from the company and gave it back to the poor farmers that needed it [12]. United Fruit was outraged by this reform. They immediately launched a propaganda campaign led by Edward Bernays to convince the United States government and its people that Arbenz was a communist dictator [13]. In a 1953 article by the New York Times, Guatemala was described as “operating under increasingly severe Communist-inspired pressure to rid the country of United States companies” [14]. United Fruit was manipulating the media to make it sound like the agrarian reform was only created because Arbenz was being influenced by the Soviet government to sabotage America’s economic imperialism in Central America. Since it was during the Cold War, association with communists was a serious accusation. The United States’ aggressive stance toward communism encouraged them to take immediate action. The CIA hired civilian militias from Honduras to come into Guatemala and start a war against Arbenz and his followers. United Fruit also convinced U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to threaten Arbenz because Eisenhower and many other prominent American government officials had stock in United Fruit [15]. With these pressures, Arbenz feared for his life and submitted his resignation.

However, this did not satisfy United Fruit. They wished to make an example of Guatamala, so their other host nations wouldn’t dare oppose them. They had the CIA pay off the Guatemalan military so they would let the Honduras militia win [16]. After the victory, the leader of the Honduran militia, Castillo Armas, was appointed as president of Guatemala and Armas was a puppet of United Fruit Company for the rest of his term [17]. He returned all of United Fruit’s confiscated land, and gave them preferential treatment in all Guatemalan ports and railways. The company continued to influence the media of North and Central America to justify what they had done. They called Armas the “Liberator” and told the inspiring tale of how he freed Guatemala from its communist ties. They also destroyed what was left of Arbez’s reputation by calling him “Red Jacobo,” further tying him to the Soviets [18]. A New York Times article written in 1954 states that, “President Castillo Armas is continuing to act with moderation and common sense,” and “Jacobo Arbenz, anyway, is a deflated balloon, hardly likely to cause any more trouble” [19]. The media praised Armas for his good policy making, yet most of his policies were proposed by United Fruit or the American government. United Fruit and American controlled media also made Armas into a war hero to increase his acceptance and popularity with the Guatemalan people. Arbenz was made to look like an easy defeat to give the American people confidence in the ability of their government to eliminate communist threats.

*****

Back on track with Dan and Haeder. And so we discussed the genocide, the mass murder, the shifting baseline of acceptance, and how Israel and their Jewish Project for a Greater Tyrannical Israel has set down a new set of abnormalities in the aspect of guys like Dan and Jeremy having to bear witness, research the roots of these tyrannical empire building plots, and then write about it and publish books, which for all intents and purposes might be read by the choir.

Again, Dan lost his faculty job at the University of Pittsburg, why?

Russia. Putin Stoogery.

Dan and I talked off the mic about adjunct faculty organizing: He was interviewed 13 years ago on that accord: Interview with an Adjunct Organizer: “People Are Tired of the Hypocrisy”

The debate over the working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a longtime adjunct professor at Duquesne University who was fired in the last year of her life and died penniless. Moshe Marvit talks to Dan Kovalik, a labor lawyer who knew Votjko and has helped to publicize her story.

The debate over working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko on September 1. Vojtko, who had a long career as an adjunct professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died penniless after being fired from the university in the last year of her life. Her story served as a reminder of what has become a massive underclass of underpaid contingent labor in academia.

Dan Kovalik, senior associate general counsel of the United Steelworkers, wrote an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that brought news of Votjko’s death to a wider audience. Kovalik has been working with Duquesne adjunct faculty for several years, helping them organize a union and fight for better working conditions. At the time of Votjko’s death, he was assisting her in a legal fight to keep her job and her independence. I spoke with Kovalik in his office in the United Steelworkers building in Pittsburgh. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Moshe Marvit: Can you describe the working conditions of adjunct faculty?

Dan Kovalik: As I’ve come to learn, and I didn’t realize it until about a year and a half ago when adjuncts approached us to organize, the conditions are just abysmal. The folks that came to me at that time were making $3,000 for a three-credit course. So say you teach a load of two courses a semester, and you have two semesters a year, then that’s $12,000 right there. No benefits. Maybe you get a summer course in there, so maybe you make $15,000 per year. That’s barely enough to live on, especially if you have a family. I know a guy who teaches seven courses per semester to make ends meet at three different universities. They call it a “milk run.”

It had always been my perception that going into the academy would be a great life. You would get a good salary; you would get benefits; you would get the benefit where your kids could go to school for free there or at a reduced rate. Adjuncts don’t get that. I’ve come to learn that 75 percent of all faculty around the country are adjuncts. It’s this kind of dirty secret of the academy.

Meanwhile there are just a few at the top who are doing well. It looks a lot more like the corporate world than like nonprofit education. — DK

I knew about Mary before her firing and her death, and alas, Dan and I are brothers in arms when it comes to freeway fliers, just-in-time adjunct faculty, precarious teachers, 11th hour appointed non-tenure track and non-contracted instructors.

*****

Get the book, ASAP. Preorder at Baraka Books here.

I will use one chapter from their book, about a person Dan met in Syria, who is a journalist and is emblematic of the power of being Syrian, and in fact, Dan stated that the best and friendliest folk in the world are Syrians, and Lebanese and Palestinian. My experience that the Diaspora of those same folk for me absolutely resonates the same over my 6.6 decades. He dedicated the book to Yara:

In 2021, I twice visited both Lebanon and Syria. What I learned there was quite at variance with what we were being told in the mainstream press. One of the first people I met in Damascus, Syria, was Yara Saleh, a lovely and affable woman who was serving as a reporter and anchor for the Syrian News Channel, an official state news agency.

Yara, while working for this channel back in 2012, was kidnapped by the Free Syria Army (FSA) just outside Damascus, and held for six days until rescued in a daring mission by the Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAA). Yara’s kidnapping and rescue became the subject of a movie which the delegation I was with were invited to watch for its premier. I contacted Yara afterwards to hear her story in her words.

Yara still seemed shaken by her abduction years before. She was thin, almost to the point of emaciation, ate nothing, but chain smoked as she told her story. As Yara explained, she was traveling with a driver (Hussam Imad), a camera man (Abdullah Tabreh) and an assistant (Hatem Abu Yehya) to do a report on the clashes between the SAA and forces which she described as “armed terrorist groups.” She specifically wanted to report on the impact of the burgeoning war and terrorist threats upon the civilian population.

However, while traveling on the road to their destination (a Damascus suburb known as al-Tell), they were stopped by armed men. These armed men detained them, took their possessions, including their phones and money, and beat all of them, including Yara. Yara, a quite small woman, explains that the beatings upon her were quite hurtful. Yara said they decided to kidnap them after discovering that they were with the Syrian News Channel.

They were driven into town and to a location with hundreds of other armed militants. While en route, one of the armed captors held Yara’s head down between her legs.

One of the first questions Yara and her colleagues were asked was about their religious background. All of them were of “mixed” traditions in Yara’s words, and Yara stood out because she wore makeup and did not wear any head covering. I just found out recently that Yara is an Alawite. Yara, like many of her fellow Syrians, sees herself as a Syrian first and that is more important to her identity than being an Alawite. Before the sectarian violence brought to Syria from the outside, Syrians did not wear their religions on their sleeve and didn’t go around asking others what their religion is; that would be considered rude.

The sheikh told them that they all were to be executed because they worked with the Syrian government and because of their mixed religious affiliations. In response to the sheikh’s words, two of Yara’s colleagues, Hussam and Hatem, were taken away to a nearby location. Yara then heard the sound of gun fire. She believed that both of her associates were killed at that time. However, Hussam was shortly brought back, and he told Yara, with tears in his eyes, that he witnessed Hatem murdered in a spray of bullets.

Notably, Yara explained that the fighters who held them openly told them that they were taking orders from someone in Turkey and that they had been told to move them to Turkey. The fighters explained that the plan was to negotiate their freedom with the Syrian Arab Army, and that if the SAA did not give in to their demands, they would kill them. However, when Yara asked one of the fighters if they would be released if the SAA gave them what they wanted, he answered in the negative, saying that they would continue to hold them for leverage to gain more concessions.

In addition, according to Yara, a significant number of the fighters were not Syrian. They were not certain where they all were from, but they could tell by their accents that some were from Saudi Arabia and Libya. (from the unpublished manuscript, Syria: An Anatomy of Regime Change.)

*****

Listen to the interview I had with Dan. He fielded my more unconventional questions, with an open mind and grace and in the end this radio interview is an organic discussion, or in Dan the Lawyer’s words, “I have no problem with stream of consciousness.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Though the move was celebrated by Governor Gavin Newsom as he signed the bills into law, it has exposed tensions between the progressive priorities that motivate Democratic lawmakers. Housing affordability advocates have clashed with those promoting environmental justice, with the former boosting the bills and the latter remaining wary. More broadly, the move exposes divisions between those who want more tools to mitigate climate change and environmentalists who would rather maintain strict limits on what can be built and how.

The reforms target the California Environmental Quality Act, which then-governor Ronald Reagan signed more than 50 years ago. Known as CEQA, the legislation requires public agencies and decision-makers to evaluate the environmental impact of any project requiring government approval, and to publicize any effects and mitigate them if feasible.

Supporters say the law has prevented or altered scores of projects that would have been detrimental to the environment or Californians’ quality of life. But CEQA has also become the basis for a regular stream of formal complaints and lawsuits that pile substantial costs and delays onto projects that are ultimately found to have minimal harmful effects — sometimes killing them entirely. In one infamous instance, opponents of student housing near the University of California, Berkeley argued that the associated noise would constitute environmental pollution under CEQA, which led to a three-year legal battle that the university only won after it went to the state Supreme Court. Examples like this have led CEQA, which was once a national symbol of environmental protection, to become vilified as a cause of the state’s chronic housing shortage.

After this week’s reforms, most urban housing projects will now be exempt from the CEQA process. The new legislation also excepts many zoning changes from CEQA, as well as certain nonresidential projects including health clinics, childcare centers, and advanced manufacturing facilities, like semiconductor and nanotech plants, if they are sited in areas already zoned for industrial uses. (A related bill also freezes most updates to building efficiency and clean energy standards until 2031, angering climate advocates who otherwise support the push for denser housing.) Governor Newsom used a budgetary process to push the long-debated changes into law, with strong bipartisan support. 

Some activists welcomed the changes, saying they will lead to denser “infill” housing on vacant or underutilized urban land, slower growth in rents and home prices, and shorter commutes — with the welcome byproduct of fewer planet-warming emissions. 

“For those that view climate change as one of the key issues of our time, infill housing is a critical solution,” read one op-ed supporting the measures. Other environmentalists, however, lambasted the changes as environmentally destructive giveaways to developers. After Newsom signed the legislation, the Sierra Club California put out a statement calling the changes “half-baked” measures that “will have destructive consequences for environmental justice communities and endangered species across California.”

At a time when President Donald Trump’s assaults on climate policy and environmental protections have galvanized opposition from the left, what unfolded in California serves as a reminder that, even among Democrats, a divide remains on the extent to which regulation can help — or hurt — the planet. It’s the type of pickle that liberals across the country may increasingly face on issues ranging from zoning to permitting reform for renewable energy projects, which can face costly delays when they encounter procedural hurdles like CEQA. (Indeed, in California, CEQA has been an impediment to not just affordable housing but also solar farms and high-speed rail.)

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“How do we make sure the regulations we pass to save the planet don’t harm the planet?” asked Matt Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY, a housing advocacy organization and proponent of the CEQA reforms. Transportation accounts for the largest portion of California’s carbon footprint, and Lewis argues that denser housing will be key to keeping people closer to their jobs. But, he said, people with a “not in my backyard” attitude have abused CEQA to slow down those beneficial projects. (His organization’s name is a play on this so-called NIMBY disposition, with YIMBY standing for “yes in my backyard.”)

“One of the leading causes of climate pollution is the way we permit or do not permit housing to be built in urban areas,” Lewis said, adding that more urban development could reduce pressure to build on unused land in more sensitive areas. He pointed to other legal backstops, like state clean water and air laws, that can accomplish the environmental protection goals often cited by supporters of the CEQA process. “CEQA isn’t actually the most powerful law to make sure that manufacturing facilities and other industrial facilities protect the environment,” he said.

In short, Lewis believes that any downsides of the new reforms pale in comparison to their benefits for both people and the planet. “Did we fix it perfectly this time? I’m willing to admit, no,” he said, adding that any shortcomings that environmentalists are concerned about could be repaired in future legislative sessions.

But many environmentalists contend that the downsides in the new legislation are too large.

“We put one foot forward but we take another step back,” said Miguel Miguel, director of Sierra Club California, noting his opposition to the nonresidential exemptions. He said that CEQA often acts as a first line of defense that allows community input on development projects. Without it, he argues, community voices will be marginalized. Miguel speaks from personal experience: CEQA helped save the mobile home park where he grew up from being replaced by more expensive apartments. 

Kim Delfino, an environmental attorney and consultant who followed the legislation, said that the scope of the reforms expanded from simple support for urban housing development to become “a potpourri of industry and developer desires.” She added that CEQA requires biological surveys that can be the first step to invoking other environmental protections.

“If you never look, you will never know if there are endangered species there,” she said. “We’ve decided to take a head-in-the-sand approach.”

This impasse between environmentalists and housing-focused advocates like Lewis is now decades-old and among the reasons that CEQA reforms — or rollbacks, depending on whom you ask — have taken so long to come about. As the fight has drawn out, skepticism has become entrenched. 

“Maybe I’m wrong,” California YIMBY’s Lewis said of his optimism that the latest changes can thread the needle between the state’s housing needs and environmental priorities. But, he added, he’d rather defer to elected lawmakers than environmentalists, who have long opposed his housing advocacy. “The environmental movement in California has been fundamentally dishonest about housing,” he charged.

The Sierra Club’s Miguel, for his part, hopes for more cooperation between the competing parties, lest the disagreements poison future legislative efforts. At the end of the day, all parties involved share the same broad goals, if with different levels of emphasis.

“We have to do everything and anything all at once,” he said, referring to climate and environmental policy. “That is fine art.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can weaker environmental rules help fight climate change? California just bet yes. on Jul 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

Two recent studies — one historical and the other forward-looking — examine how rising temperatures have made and could continue to make agricultural production less efficient, fundamentally reshaping the global food system as producers try to adapt to hotter growing seasons.

The findings illuminate the bind that farmers and consumers find themselves in. Agricultural production is a driver of climate change; it’s estimated to be responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is also hampered by the changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. While producers struggle to harvest the same amounts of food in the face of droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes, shoppers are more likely to face climbing food prices.  

The forward-looking study, published June 18 in Nature, analyzes the impact of warming temperatures on the caloric output of agricultural production. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability found that for every additional degree Celsius of warming above the 2000-2010 average, the global food system will produce roughly 120 fewer calories per person per day.

In a scenario where the Earth experiences 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, that’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet missing out on breakfast, said Andrew Hultgren, lead author of the study.

Hultgren and his colleagues compiled a massive dataset on the production of six staple crops in more than 12,000 regions spread out over 54 countries. They then modeled how different warming scenarios might impact crop production; they also factored in how farmers around the world are adapting to higher temperatures. What they found is that, even with adaptation, global warming is associated with an “almost a linear decline in caloric output,” said Hultgren, who is also an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Measuring agricultural adaptation and its impact on output was important, said Hultgren, because research often assumes that farmers either adapt perfectly to global warming or not at all. The reality is that adapting to any growing season challenges comes at some cost, and farmers are constantly weighing the business benefits of implementing new techniques.

For example, one tool that corn farmers in the U.S. Midwest have to prevent hot days from thwarting their harvest is planting crop varietals that mature relatively quickly. “Corn is very sensitive to extreme heat,” said Hultgren, “so one very hot day can actually be bad for your entire growing season yield.”

But fast-maturing varietals also often produce lower yields overall, meaning these farmers likely can’t sell as much corn as they would have under cooler weather conditions, said Hultgren. “So there’s literally a cost of avoiding that extreme heat,” he said. 

A drop in the global supply of crops will also lead to an uptick in food prices. But Hultgren noted that the impacts of reduced agricultural output won’t be evenly distributed. In wealthier countries such as the U.S., for example, those who can afford higher food prices will likely eat the cost. In poorer countries, these shifts could worsen food insecurity. 

Additionally, rising temperatures will impact producers unevenly; the study estimated that in a high-warming climate scenario, corn farmers in the U.S. will experience 40 to 50 percent losses in yield by the end of the century. Based on these projections, “you wonder if the Corn Belt continues to be the Corn Belt,” said Hultgren. Meanwhile, other regional producers — like rice farmers in South and Southeast Asia — will see yields grow in the same time frame.  “There are absolutely regional winners and losers in this global aggregate,” he said.

The historical study, published June 20 in Nature Geosciences, looks at one of the ways agricultural production contributes to global warming: land clearing. When farmers want to cultivate new cropland, they often start by removing the plants that are already growing there, whether that’s grass, shrubs, or trees. When land clearing happens in carbon-rich regions in the Global South, like the Amazon rainforest, it increases deforestation and carbon emissions, said Jessica Till, the study’s co-lead author. 

“Deforestation in tropical areas is one of the most urgent issues and biggest areas of concern,” said Till, a research scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (Till and Hultgren were not involved in each other’s studies.) “The more land you clear, the more forest you remove to create cropland, that’s going to have a negative effect on the climate.”

Till and the other study authors examined this feedback loop between agriculture and the environment: When crop production becomes less efficient due to extreme weather and heat, farmers must acquire and clear more land to boost production. That expansion in croplands then in turn results in higher greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates warming and makes crop production even less efficient. 

They found that, even with improvements in agricultural productivity (due to technological improvements like new seed varieties and precision fertilizer application), climate change was responsible for 88 million hectares, or 217 million acres, in cropland expansion globally — an area roughly twice the size of California — between 1992 and 2020. 

They also determined that this expansion was led by major agricultural producers, including the United States, India, China, Russia, and Brazil. Unsurprisingly, these countries were also the top five highest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions stemming from climate-driven expansions in cropland. 

Both Till and Hultgren noted that these shifts can also influence global trade. When certain regions see a decline in agricultural productivity, said Till, other regions will gain a competitive advantage in the international market for agricultural commodities. 

Erwan Monier, co-director of the Climate Adaptation Research Center at the University of California Davis, said he was not surprised by either studies’ findings, and said they contribute to the growing body of research on climate impacts on agriculture. 

But he added that both come with caveats. Monier noted that the Nature study on caloric output fails to consider possible future advances in technologies like genetic editing that could make crops much more resilient to climate change. He said the paper demonstrates that “in order to really limit the impact of climate on our ability to grow food, we’re going to need a scale of innovation and adaptation that is really substantial, and that’s going to be a real challenge.”

Referring to the Nature Geosciences paper on the feedback loop between agriculture and climate, Monier said that it similarly does not take into account how farmer behavior might change in response to global warming. 

“The fact is we have an ability to change what grows where,” said Monier. In the U.S., for example, where corn and soy production reign, farmers could choose to plant different crops if they see yields fall consistently. These growers will not “continue growing corn with very low yields and invest more capital and land with very, very low returns,” said Monier. “Farmers are going to move away to something that actually is more valuable and grows well” — and that, in turn, could reduce the need to clear more land.

Monier acknowledged that the latter study might come across as quite pessimistic. But, he said, it underscores the importance of having difficult conversations now about how to grow enough food to feed the world’s population as temperatures climb. 

In order to avoid serious losses in agricultural production, he said, climate researchers and institutions must work hand-in-hand with farmers, helping them understand the risks of global warming and seek out new ways of adapting. This work should be “bottom up,” said Monier, rather than “top down.” “We need to engage the people who are going to be actually growing the food.”

He added that this will involve work that extends beyond the academic sphere. “I don’t know if publishing in Nature and Nature Geoscience is the way to really drive the bottom-up adaptation at the scale that is necessary.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What does climate change mean for agriculture? Less food, and more emissions on Jun 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” — The Book Of Proverbs, 16:18

“CEASEFIRE IS IN EFFECT!” Trump shouts in upper case impotent rage into the pixel abyss.

To bring about and sustain peace, the leaders of empires must surrender the illusion that they can maintain control of people and events in far-flung places. It is imperative, an empire’s elites let go of their domination compulsions and live by the principles inherent to compassion. Hopeless and risible fantasy, huh?

Trump, who cannot quote a single line of scripture, hero to Christian evangelicals, might fall from his golf cart, stricken by a Paul On The Road to Damascus experience, and renounce his past behavior, defined by cruelty and greed, then call Bibi Netanyahu, and advise him to fall to his knees, as did King David, and repent and beg for forgiveness to The Creator for the massive amount of blood he has been responsible for spilling.

According to scripture (hello, Ted Cruz): Jesus posited regarding John the Baptist: “For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he?” – Luke 7:28

What is meant by the word, “least”?

In Matthew 25:40: “The ‘least’ among us” is clarified: To wit, Jesus proclaims, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

One must be willfully deaf and blind to not grasp that to avoid earthly life becoming Hell on Earth: empathy must reign; the outsider must be bestowed with kindness; the poor must be lifted up; the sick must be attended to; and those imprisoned should be granted compassion.

Does any of the above sound like the policies of the current administration – whose most loyal supporters claim to be Christians? Yes, the mindset of Trump et al. is so at odds with the Gospel Of Jesus that a pentecost of derisive laughter should descend from Heaven that would shake the Earth and awaken the dead who would rise due to an apocalypse of hilarity.

King David On His Knees: “Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God” — Psalm 51-14

Yet another image arises: In Death’s Grand ballroom: The War Party’s dance of death with Christian Zionists proceeds as the capitalist media plays on.

In 1 Samuel 15, the God of Israel orders the first King of Israel, Saul, to carry out a genocidal rampage on the Amalekites (a semi-nomadic people inhabiting the edges of southern Canaan).

Old Testament Samuel said unto Saul, (1) “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. (2) This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. (3) Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

The unforgivable trespass committed by the Amalekites: A number of generations back, their ancestors had refused to be in alliance with the Israelites in their land-seizing, atrocity-inflicting wars to establish nationhood. Yet, later, King Saul was condemned by God, The Lord Of Hosts, for not slaughtering every person and all of the creatures within reach of his sword dwelling in Amalek. (Saul had spared The Amalekites’ King, Agag and a smattering of the land’s most valuable livestock.) Hence, Samuel, the prophet, channeling the command of the God Of Israelites, reported to Saul, due to his disobedience to a divine command, he must be dethroned.

Let’s think this through, Samuel hears voices in his head insisting on mass murder. King Saul, unquestioningly, follows the directions proffered by the prophecy – but not to the very blood-drench letter, thus he is disgraced and loses his kingship.

To say the least, this is a parcel of problematic mythos … if taken literally. And many in the present day Zionist state, evidence suggests, have done just that.

George W. Bush also heard the voice of The Lord Of Host (FYI: Lord Of Hosts (Geta Yeserawit) translates from the original biblical era Amharic as: “Lord of Armies” thus places emphasis on the God of Israel’s role as a warrior).

Donald Trump believes he was spared from assassination by a divine intervention and, thereby, has been called to fulfill a destiny of biblical scale.

John 1:29, where John the Baptist proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who [bombs] away the sin of the world!”

Therefore, The Sermon On Mar Largo follows verily:

The Sermon On Mar-a-Lago follows verily:

Beat farm equipment into the weapons of war. Blessed are the war machine propagandists. The grifters will inherit the (nuclear-scorched) earth.

Blessed are the sycophants who kiss The Donald’s Most High’s ass and call it holy communion. Blessed are those who pursue and prosecute powerless outsiders, for bullies are made in the image of dear leader, The Lord Of The Downward Punch.

Blessed are the pussy-grabbers for they will sojourn into the Land Of Epstein and be granted earthly immunity. Blessed are the on-bended knee media for they will inherit a diminishing viewer share yet be not cursed with self-awareness.

Blessed are those who hunger for the Holy Emperor Don’s approval and crave more and more for they will be seated at The Table Of Mendacity and eat and eat more of their own corruption and call it manna. Rejoice and revel in your spite, blood-lust, and war propaganda because your prophecy will be rewarded by high-dollar, donor-class funded think tanks.

Do not think that Donald J. Christ has come to abolish the Law Of Profiteers. He has not come to abolish human folly but to bloat it into such grotesque form that those possessed of a mustard seed-size of righteousness will finally and at long last rise up and whose cry of outrage will shake the unholy air and restore the land to sanity.

Speaking of the insanity of leadership:

In the Book Of Daniel, the prophet Daniel, during a period of exile and Jewish captivity in Babylon interpreted a dream for Babylon’s King, Nebuchadnezzar, involving a tall, magnificent tree, its expansive bough capable of bestowing succor to man and beast. But a messenger from Heaven commands the tree cut down to a stump. Daniel, going all Jungian on Nebuchadnezzar’s royal ass, interprets the dream thus: The tree is a representation of Nebuchadnezzar insofar as both the reach of his kingdom and the massive extent of his pridefulness. The Angel Of God commands, Nebuchadnezzar will fall prey to madness.

“He was driven away from people and ate grass like an ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until this hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird” –Daniel 4:33.

The symbol of the stump represents: The mad king will only recover when his humiliation, delivered by a power greater than his pride, causes him to repent thus cease attacking neighboring lands and slaughtering, deporting, imprisoning the inhabitant of the lands he occupies. The story goes, Nebuchadnezzar’s madness lasted seven years during which time he walked on all fours like a wild animal and grazed on grass in the manner of a bovine in the field.

William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar, 1795

It follows, only by their fall can the pride-bloated be lifted up. The splendor of empire will be reduced to a stump when it is built on the backs of the poor and watered in the blood of the innocent.

The present day embodiment of power-maddened, pride-bloated leadership struts, preens and boasts his bombing campaign was a thing of glory to behold under heaven. One does not require an Old Testament seer nor angel dispatched from a wrath-gripped God to apprehend the astounding degree of folly evinced by Trump and the parallels to the hubristic actions of the Zionist state.

In closing and in stark contrast, from The Book Of Proverbs:

16:7: When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him:

19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

If the verses above were taken to heart, regime change of the mind would come to be, and, in Washington and Tel Aviv, the political ground would shake, its corrupt leadership would be deposed in disgrace and relegated to crawl on their bellies through the dust of history, and peace might become a possibility.

O’ Ye of little faith…you have been proven right all too many times for your jaundiced opinion to be healed by a laying on the hands of faith alone. Yet, history reveals, overreaching tyrants find they are grasping a handful of dust.

“How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like the moth.” — Job 4:19

Marc Chagall, Daniel, 1956

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Phil Rockstroh.

Current CO₂ readings at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, as of June 15, 2025: 430.07 ppm, which is the highest daily average on record. Excessive atmospheric CO₂ is the primary source of extreme heat. One needs to go back millions of years to find higher levels. In 2016, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a global body of climate scientists stated: “CO2 at 430 ppm would push the world beyond its target for avoiding dangerous climate change.” We are there!

No business or government on Earth is impacted by climate change more so than the insurance industry. It’s the biggest canary in the coal mine. Swiss Re Ltd (founded 1863) is one of the world’s largest reinsurers. The company’s 2025 SONAR Report essentially puts the world on notice that global warming has become one of the world’s biggest killers.

Swiss Re says “extreme heat,” is the designated killer, to wit: “Extreme heat events can have a large impact on human health. Recent data show that around 480, 000 deaths per year can be attributed to extreme heat events.” (“Extreme Heat More Deadly Than Floods, Earthquakes and Hurricanes Combined, Finds Swiss Re’s SONAR Report,” Swiss Re Group, Media, Press Release, June 12, 2025)

According to Jérôme Haegeli, Swiss Re Group Chief Economist: “Extreme heat used to be considered the ‘invisible peril’ because the impacts are not as obvious as other natural perils… With a clear trend to longer, hotter heatwaves, it is important we shine a light on the true cost to human life, our economy, infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare system,” Ibid.

The SONAR 2025 Report claims extreme heat threatens industry as well as human life. For example, “the telecommunications industry faces significant risks from failing cooling systems in data centers or damage to terrestrial cables.”

Trump Administration re Extreme Heat

According to Time magazine: “What’s At Stake This Summer As Trump Targets Heat and Climate Experts,” June 16, 2025:  “Heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) were told in early April that their positions would be eliminated as part of the cuts made by the Trump Administration’s Department of Governmental Efficiency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) entire environmental health unit was cut, though some jobs were restored … What was lost there is just a giant value to communities, according to V. Kelly Turner, associate professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles.”

Trump does not recognize climate change as a threat to humanity, dropping out of the Paris Agreement of 2015, cutting $4 billion in prior pledges, no longer submitting carbon-cutting plans to the UN, removing electric vehicle mandates, and destroying Biden administration climate change mitigation plans while over-emphasizing and directing national attention to burning fossil fuels. These are sure-fire ways to increase the global warming hazard, in turn, leading to more severe extreme heat, thus, putting Trump in opposition to Swiss Re’s warnings about the death count of “extreme heat.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, the entire country will see above-normal temperatures—with the only difference being in severity. Across the contiguous United States, average temperatures have already risen about 60% more than the global average since 1970 (US EPA). In due course, the American South and Southeast will feel like the Persian Gulf countries of today, where it is currently too hot to safely work outside during the day for much of the summer.

On a global basis, America’s extraordinary push for fossil fuel emissions contributes to atmospheric CO₂ build up, thus impacting the world climate system by trapping more planetary heat. This direct relationship between increasing CO₂ emissions and increased global warming is established scientific fact. According to WMO (World Meteorological Organization) Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett: “We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record. Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”

Richard Betts, head of Climate Impacts Research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter, May 28, 2025, informed the Associated Press. “With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5 degrees C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also, we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape.”

Swiss Re’s SONAR Report warns the world of existential dangers of climate change by focusing, in part, on deaths caused by extreme heat, but the report goes on to suggest a threat to the entire infrastructure of economies. Swiss Re endorses policies to limit climate change, which are diametrically opposite Trump policies, to wit: Swiss Re suggests a multi-pronged approach to climate change mitigation: (1) reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (2) investing in carbon removal technologies (3) increasing climate resilience through adaptation measures (4) emphasize the importance of the Paris-aligned carbon reduction path (5) complemented by carbon removal strategies, and (6) advocate for collaboration and knowledge sharing to accelerate action.

Trump’s policies don’t jive with any, not even one, of the six suggestions by one of the world’s oldest most prestigious insurance companies. If his administration is not listening to one of the world’s leading providers of insurance coverage that’s on the front line of climate change, then who?

It’s shameful that the US government fails to recognize the most rapidly developing threat to existence, especially in the face of alarms set off by the staid insurance industry, as premiums go sky-high with claims choking the biggest players. The economy can’t handle it; homeowners can’t handle it; businesses can’t handle it. Solution: Stop burning fossil fuels oil, gas, and coal.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.

In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper’s management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1 of that year. After more than 2.5 years on strike, with other unions reaching contracts or taking buyouts and dissolving their units, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are the last remaining strikers holding the line. We speak with a panel of union officers for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about how they’ve managed to stay on strike so long and about recent legal updates that have given them hope that an acceptable end to the strike may be on the horizon.

Panelists include: Ed Blazina, striking transportation writer at the PPG and one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Erin Hebert, also one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and a striking copy-editor and page designer at PPG; Emily Matthews, photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post-Gazette Unit of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

Additional links/info:

• Pittsburgh Union Progress website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Donate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers
• Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Union Progress, “The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists’ strike continues”
• Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, “The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over”
• Mel Buer, Working People / The Real News Network, “Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren’t ready to give up”
• Bob Batz Jr. & Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work”
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, “‘AI will not scab us’: Post-Gazette newsroom decries use of artificial intelligence”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) After months of striking, media workers aren’t backing down”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s half-year strike”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are going back to the picket line to get an update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October of 2022, over a hundred workers represented by five labor unions including production, distribution, advertising and accounts receivable staff walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the storied publication the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The strike began after the newspaper’s management block Communications, which is owned by the block family cut off health insurance for employees on October 1st of that year.

As Ian Karbal wrote in December for the Pennsylvania Capital Star. Since 2017 Post Gazette journalists have worked without a union contract. The papers owners appeared to show little interest in negotiating a new one, but in 2020 they imposed new terms on employees. Workers learned during the pandemic that the cost of their healthcare plan would increase for many and some would lose banked sick days. Among other unfavorable changes, some newsroom staff were also fed up with the blocks who had drawn increased scrutiny to the paper through a series of widely criticized editorial and personnel decisions. For years, the Post Gazette had refused to cover annual premium increases for the production workers healthcare plan. According to Joe Pass, the lawyer for the three production unions and the Newsroom Guild, when the company imposed a $19 per week increase to employees in 2022 while pushing them into a high deductible plan pass said that that was a breaking point.

The ultimate tally was 38 to 36 in favor of the strike. The day after the vote, less than 60% of the newsroom walked out. According to Zach Tanner, president of the newspaper Guild. Though over a short time, the number of strikers grew with 60 on the picket line and 35 remaining at work. This is Max speaking. We call those scabs. Augh continues, but the paper was able to continue publishing online strike leaders say that documents shared with them by the paper a standard practice show. The company has given new hires and workers who remained at the paper unprecedented bonuses and ahead of schedule raises since the strike began. Their documents show that in total over 260 $900,000 has been awarded this way since October of 2022. An administrative law judge has ruled that the Post Gazette failed to bargain in good faith and the National Labor Relations Board took the rare step of issuing an injunction request to resume bargaining that could effectively end the strike.

The post gazettes owners have appealed that move now for two and a half years, strikers have held the line while putting their professional skills to work and producing without pay. Mind you, the Pittsburgh Union progress, an award-winning newspaper that we at the Real News have proudly taken out ads in and collaborated with striking journalist Steve Mellon and I actually just won a prestigious Izzy Award together for our collaborative reporting on the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. It’s absolutely remarkable what Steve and his colleagues have done with this strike paper and in my personal opinion, it is one of the single most impressive and inspiring feats of journalism and solidarity in the 21st century. And in a March update on the strike posted in the Pittsburgh Union progress editor Bob Batz Jr. Writes workers in three news production and advertising unions that have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for two years and five months over a dispute about their healthcare coverage have voted to accept settlements that end their strike, their jobs and their union locals or unit, but it’s over for the production and advertising workers.

They are members of the typographical or advertising union and the Mailers Union, both locals of the communication workers of America as well as the Pressman’s Union unit. There are 31 workers who are losing their jobs as well as their unions or unit as their buyout stipulate that their locals or unit drop all pending unfair labor practice charges and then dissolve. Now, we’ve been covering this strike and talking to striking workers over the past two years here on this show and at the Real News Network and today we’re going to dive back in to get an update on how folks are doing, where things stand now with the strike and what folks like you out there can do to help. And I’m honored to be joined on the show today. First by Ed Blaina, a striking transportation writer at the Post Gazette and one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

We are also joined by Aaron Abert, also one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and a striking copy editor and page designer at the Post Gazette. And we are joined as well by Emily Matthews, a photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Ed Aaron. Emily, thank you all so much for joining us today and I wish we were convening under better circumstances, but I just wanted to say up top to reaffirm that we here at The Real News, all of us here and our listeners at Working people continue to stand in solidarity with y’all as colleagues and fellow workers. And I know that our listeners are deeply invested in this struggle even though so many folks around the country have forgotten it, have not given it and y’all the support that you need over these past two and a half years. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But since this will be the first time in this strike that our listeners are hearing some of your voices, I wanted to just start by asking if we could go around and you could introduce yourself and just tell us a little more about who you are, the work that you did at the Post Gazette and the work that you’ve been doing for the strike and while on strike over the past two and a half years.

Ed Blazina:

Thanks, max. I’ll start. My name’s Ed Blazina. I am striking transportation writer. I’ve been a journalist for, I forget how old I am, sometimes 45 years, been at the Pittsburgh papers. We had the Pittsburgh press and then when it went out of business, the Post Gazette was there as well. I’ve worked for both of those papers since 1983. For the last 10 years I’ve been the transportation writer at the Post Gazette. I’ve been a union officer for 25 years and now we’ve been on strike for two and a half years. I’m eligible to retire. I’m old enough to retire and retire with full benefits. I refuse to let the blocks in my career this way. I’m not going to go down while we’re on strike. We’re going to fight this thing through to the end. What we’re doing now is raising as much money as we can to keep this going. As you mentioned, it’s gone on so long. Among the almost distressing things we hear is that people don’t remember that we’re still on strike. That’s particularly painful to me because the Pittsburgh press went out of business because of a strike back in 1991, and at that time it was a public tragedy that the newspaper was on strike. TV stations read the comics on television, they read obits. It was a calamity.

The Pittsburgh Press tried to print a edition, not scab. We were not unionized in the newsroom at the Pittsburgh Press, but they tried to print and distribute a paper while the other unions were on strike and there were 5,000 people in front of the building. I’m not sure. In two and a half years we’ve had 5,000 people show up total at the rallies we’ve had. It’s a different time now, so it makes striking much more difficult. Right now I’m doing two jobs. I’m covering transportation as well as I can for the union progress. Not everything I did before, but the major things keeps me sane, if you want to call it two and a half years on strike being sane. And the other aspect is we’re running a strike. I’m a vice president for the union. We’ve raised well over a million dollars to help people be able to stay on strike. We run speakers bureaus, we do all kinds of things to try to keep our name out there and let people know we’re on strike.

But it’s two and a half years now, so it’s difficult. You mentioned the numbers, it was sad hearing you recount what’s happened since the strike began. We probably have half the people that we had before because lots of people aren’t like me. I’ve had a career, I’m at the end of my career. We have folks here today with us who are younger who are still trying to build a career. It’s hard to tell somebody who’s 25, oh, stay on strike for two years, your career will come back. Don’t worry about it. That has to be extremely tough to do. I’m glad I don’t have to do that. I’m at the end of my career. I can afford to fight to strike through to the end, so it’s tough, but we’re still at it and we’re still going to be here. We’re not going anywhere.

Erin Hebert:

Yeah. My name is Erin Hebert. I actually graduated from journalism school 10 years ago this month. I got the reminders of that on my Facebook and I’ve been at the Post is that since 2016, vast majority of my professional career as a journalist. I started there as a copy editor as what was called a two year associate position, which does not exist anymore. But essentially when I was hired, I was making less than half of what top salary union hires make now at the post edge. So I was making about $25,000 working a full-time schedule, working a copy desk schedule. I had benefits. I was happy to have the opportunity, but the first couple of years for me, there were a struggle. And my experience at that point in my career as a really young person are a big part of why I think I’ve stayed out for so long and why I feel so committed to seeing this through.

Because I haven’t had a contract since March, 2017, which was it five months after I started. So I haven’t had a contract that entire time and the contract is the only reason that I was able to be hired as a 23-year-old. And then by the time I hit 25, after my two years of service were up as an associate, my salary jumped to $60,000, which is our top line salary. So it was a dream of mine to, especially when I was coming out of journalism school, hearing that newspapers were dying when I was so dedicated to this craft that I had studied, I was like, oh, cool, I can come here. I can tough it out for two years on a lower salary, be in a cool city as a young person, be in a newsroom and eventually make a good living in an affordable city.

And I really fell in love with Pittsburgh too. And that’s, I think a big part of why a lot of us are out here is because we care about the city and we care about making the journalism field here accessible and welcoming for new talent. I don’t know, I’m from Louisiana and I didn’t know anything about unions before I came here. So I show up on my first day and an officer comes up to me and tells me the spiel, Hey, there’s a union meeting. I didn’t know what I knew nothing. I didn’t know anything about it. And the education that I’ve gotten, the life education that I’ve gotten, being in Pittsburgh and being with this local and at this newspaper are really just completely, I can’t even begin to describe how much my life has changed over the past 10 years. And a couple of years into my time at the post gisette I started, it was when issues with the publisher started to prop up more and more.

He was interfering more. And I was seeing the frontline of that as a copy editor because I was on the night desk. I was getting the calls from John Block saying, we need to change this different things that have been well addressed in the media before Everyone knows that these have been issues at the paper. So I kind of started looking for a way out and thinking that maybe journalism in the age of Trump was not for me, that if this was the direction that it was headed in, that was not going to be that not going to work for me. So I started exploring social work as a career and ended up going down to part-time as a copy editor while I was in grad school for social work at the Post Gazette. And while I was studying all of the strike talk has started happening and I said, okay, well part of I want to do organizing work.

I was more involved with the union by then, and I just felt really passionate about the social welfare portion of striking and how people take care of each other in crisis because that’s what I was studying. So they wanted the strike. I did a call from Steve Mellon, or sorry, the night before, and he says, Hey, you want to be head of the health and welfare committee with me? And I said, yeah, of course I would do anything with Steve. He’s the best. And it’s been a real rollercoaster since then. But I’m really proud of the work that we put in at the beginning of the strike to keep this going because I don’t think we would’ve made it this long had we not actually spent time making the systems that have allowed us to take care of each other and to raise money. And that have allowed us to get closer to each other personally.

It is very much like a family at this point, and that’s not something that is ever going to go away even when we go back to work. So it’s really just completely changed my perspective on a lot of things, but especially the value of my labor and also the importance of rest because I think the strike was the first time that a lot of us were forced to stop our work that we had been doing for so long and kind of think about what our lives were looking like without work. And that’s kind of the stuff that I’m focused on right now is how do we continue to take care of each other and finish this out and raise money because you’re right, we haven’t had the amount of attention on this strike that we should have.

Emily Matthews:

Hi, I’m Emily Matthews. I’m a photographer on strike, and I’m also the treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. I started at the Post Gazette in February of 2020, so I’ve almost been on strike for as long as I had worked at the Post Gazette, which is kind of crazy to think about and kind of crazy to think about how much can change in two and a half years. I got engaged, got married, adopted a cat, and yet we were still on strike. Some things don’t change at the Post Gazette. When I was working at the Post Gazette, Aaron and I started off as a two year associate and it was described to me as in between an internship and full-time. But really I was just treated as a regular employee just making minimum wage. When my two years were almost up, the union actually had to get involved to see if I was staying or not because they just wouldn’t tell me.

I think about two weeks before my two years were up, they finally let me know that I was staying and my manager was like, well, at least we got you on a few months before your two years were up. I was like, no, it’s not a few months. It was a couple weeks. So just that experience and knowing that the company didn’t really seem to care got us as individuals and how much the union did help kind of made me realize that, oh, I should get involved with the union. I care about the people that I work with. I want to make sure that they can have a job that lasts for as long as they would like. And at the Post Gazette, I was taking photos of anything that came up depending on the day from events to sports to whatever portraits and on the union progress.

I mostly focus on high school sports. I take photos of, right now it’s baseball and softball. We’re getting into the championship season, so we’re in the quarterfinals and semifinals right now. I think working on the Pittsburgh Union progress has really helped me because when we first started out, like Aaron said, it was kind of a shock not to have that amount of work every day that I was used to not going to multiple assignments every day. And I think as journalists, we do kind of have our identity tied up in what we do for better or for worse. So I remember just sitting in my apartment thinking, what am I doing? Who am I without taking photos? And the union progress did really help with that too. It gives me a reprieve from doing all the strike related activity, even though it is strike related, it feels more like a day-to-day at a regular job almost while also doing our strike work, which includes raising money.

We have a Stewards network where we call each other and check in to make sure everyone’s feeling okay, see what people need, let people know what’s going on, what fundraising events or other things that we have going on that we want people to show up to and attend. And I think doing all this has just really shown me how much everyone cares about each other. Before the strike, I didn’t really go into the newsroom as much because I’m a photographer, so I would just go out on assignments and usually edit in my car or edit there. So I didn’t spend a lot of time in the newsroom talking to my coworkers. It wasn’t until we walked out on strike that I really started to get to talk to people and get to know people. And now I’ve come to realize that I really care about everyone that I’m on strike with and hope that strike comes to an end soon and you can get back to work. I’m from Pittsburgh, I grew up here. I grew up with the Post Gazette, so I always wanted to work at the Post Gazette and I would like to work there for as long as possible, but I don’t feel confident that I can do that without a contract. That’s where I’m at right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask before we sort of dig into the nitty gritty of strike updates, because I tried to jam in as many as I could in the intro, but I know there’s a lot more stuff that’s been going on from people crossing the picket line to people taking buyouts and union units essentially becoming non-existent to injunctions being issued against the Post Gazette. So I want to ask if you can kind of walk us and our listeners through that in a minute, but hearing you guys kind of talk in the first round, it was really making me think that our listeners and folks out there who maybe haven’t been following this strike the whole way through, really need to sit and think about what it actually takes to go out on strike in the middle of a pandemic and stay on strike for two and a half years along with everything else that’s going on in the goddamn world today. Can we just go back around and could you guys say a little more about what that was like personally for you? What it’s been like personally for you to hold the line this long

Ed Blazina:

Again, for me, it’s been a little bit different because I’m older. By dumb luck, I put in for full social security a month before the strike happened. We didn’t know we were going on strike. So financially the strike hasn’t been as big a deficit as it has been for other people. And my plan was because newspapers have been in bad shape for a long time. We’ve had our pension frozen for 15 years and I have a pension, but it hasn’t been growing. So my plan was to work two years after I went on Social security and bank that money put away some more for retirement. Well, right now, fortunately I’m living off of that money, so my experience isn’t quite the same as everybody else, but it’s been enlightening to see other people, how dedicated they have been. It’s humbling to see how people react when you tell ’em you’re on strike. For started out with nine months and then a year and a half now, two and a half years, I went to the CWA convention as part of our delegation.

My job there was to raise money. I wasn’t there as a delegate to the convention. And after three days I felt like a drug dealer. I hit $11,000 on the spread of my bed in the hotel room from people giving us money to support the strike that is humbling beyond belief. A couple of quick stories I to a democratic meeting up in Butler County, a small county north of Pittsburgh to speak at one of their candidate events, and they allowed us to put out a candidate to collect some money. At the end of the event, this woman who’s older than I am, came waddling up to me and handed me a $10 bill and said, my husband died six weeks ago, but I know he’d want me to give this to you. We had miners come up from Southern West Virginia out to the production plant out in Clinton by the Greater Pittsburgh airport, and big group of cuff guys and a few women.

And again, after they were done ka biting with us on the picket line, woman came up and handed us $20 and said, this is all I have, but you should have it. I think it’s important that you have it. That kind of stuff is amazing and it gives me hope every day that we know we’re on the right side and we know we can make it through this, through things like that. The help of other people, gifts, big and small, that’s how we get through this kind of thing, supporting each other, the support we get from other people. Even a show like this where you welcome us in to come in and tell our story, that’s amazing support.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and it just makes me think of another working person that I interviewed on this show the month after y’all went on strike. If I recall correctly, Marcus Darby, he was on strike at CNH industrial in November of 2022. And I remember talking to Marcus and he said something that really stuck with me when he was communicating to our listeners that he said, look, when you guys turn this episode off, you go back to your life. I’m still on strike. I can’t turn this off. So please just don’t forget that, right? And I think just having that appreciation for the time that this takes, the strength that it takes to endure for such a long period of time, I hope everyone listening out there understands how much your solidarity, your support, your refusal to forget struggles like these can keep them going in the darkest of times. Erin, Emily, I wanted to bring y’all back in here if you had anything else you wanted to add on, just what it’s been like for you personally to go out on strike and what it’s taken to stay on strike.

Erin Hebert:

I think one of the interesting things about, I guess strikes in general, but this strike from my perspective is that we obviously have this one common experience, but we also have vastly different experiences among individual people in this union. Age-wise, it’s a big variety, marital status, single childless children, whatever. And for me, I’m really good at the beginning of things. When something’s first going, I’m very gung ho. And then I found during the middle it got really, really hard for me, and part of it was just personal burnout from grad school and the pandemic and everything that comes with being a person in the world these days. So I did have to take a pretty significant chunk of time off from the strike. However, I also had to earn money outside of the strike because I don’t have retirement. I’ll be 32 in a couple of months.

I’m at a point in my career. I’m not married, I don’t have family who can help me, so I had to look for other work. And I was doing housing casework for a HUD funded program for unhoused people with disabilities in Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. So I was doing that for 10 months last year. And during that time I was, I wasn’t as active in the strike because I had to earn money and that job was so stressful and I ended up experiencing burnout from that as well. Had to take the winter off to rest and recover. I was having a lot of chronic health issues pop up. And since I would say March, I’ve been back at it and back working. And now that we got the 10 E, the 10 E decision that we got has been a big momentum push for me for sure, because it kind of showed, oh, there’s a light, we can see the end.

There’s this actionable thing that has come down that we hopefully will be able to rely on. At least it’s the biggest piece of leverage that we’ve ever had. So now that we have this, and like Emily said, she’s not ready to go back without a contract, I’m not ready either because I, over my almost nine years working or being aware of blocked communications existence, I’ll leave it that way. As a company, I have seen, and Ed has seen it too, just from different perspective, everything that a manager could do would do on any level. The ways that even a manager not sticking up for you can completely, even if your manager or a manager in general isn’t actively harmful to you, if you know that they’re not going to have your back because they’re afraid of what upper management will do, that’s not a good working environment.

So I’ve seen an experienced that side of the post A and the union that was 91, it’ll be 91 this year, newspaper deal A, yeah, 91 years old. That’s the only reason that the paper has persisted for so long because without it, who knows what would’ve happened. So I think reminding myself of that has been really important. Resting, listening to my body when it tells me to rest, to take time off, which is the case in any organizing space, is rest and recovery. And also making sure to save time for happy moments. And a lot of those happy moments come from interacting with the community and being out there and just having conversations with people who you never would’ve necessarily connected with otherwise, who tell you, oh, this family member of mine was in a union. I know the struggle my dad was on strike, whatever.

Hearing people’s personal stories when you know that they get it and they get what it’s like to, I mean, not have a steady income and not have enough to pay your bills. And I’m really proud of, like I said earlier, the work that we did to build up our strike fund and to get all the systems in place because that’s a lot of people we’ve had. We have such a variety of experiences on this strike, and it’s the only way that we’ve been keeping it going is through talking to people in our community and each other and raising money.

Emily Matthews:

I think being on strike, it’s easy to get in my own head, thinking journalism all across the country. Is it a bad place? Why am I doing this? Is it even worth it? Are we even going to have jobs in a couple years? Why am I losing all this money if it’s just going to go away anyways? And like Erin said, I think going out in the community and talking to people really helps with that because just the other day I was taking photos at a high school track meet and this one coach came up to me and he said, oh, you’re with the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Brad Everett, who’s one of our sports reporters, he’s amazing. He puts his whole heart into every story that he does. And I was like, oh yeah, I know Brad, I work with him. He’s great. And he was like, oh yeah, he’s the best. He deserves everything. He’s the best source reporter that I know. And so just hearing how much praise that my coworkers get and fellow strikers get just lights a fire in me to keep going and like, yeah, Brad does deserve everything and he works hard and he’s good at what he does and he deserves to have a job that he can go to.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now. Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask if y’all could sort of give our listeners an update since we last had post Gazette strikers on the show. We’ve had folks like Steve Mellon, Bob Bats, like so many incredible folks from the Pittsburgh Union, progress from your union, kind of helping to educate our listeners over the years on what this strike is about, why it’s important and what critical updates are coming. And I know there’s a lot there to unpack. So I wanted to ask if we could just spend the next 10 minutes here, really sort of given folks the key updates in the strike over the past year or so, particularly the past six months, because I think listeners know that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Post Gazette was bargaining in bad faith. Again, it feels like all these rulings have come down explicitly saying that the Post Gazette is being shitty, breaking the law, not fulfilling their legal obligations to bargain in good faith, yada, yada, yada, and then nothing happened or that’s what it feels like over here. So can you help walk us through what the back and forth has been like, what the key updates have been in the strike, especially over the past 6, 8, 10 months here? So Ed, let’s go back to you and please, all of y’all give us whatever updates you can.

Ed Blazina:

You think it sounds that way to you, try living through it. It was almost two. It was more than two years ago that we won the administrative law judge ruling from the NLRB, but the system is slow. It’s rigged per management. It’s not set up to help workers as much as it should. The company appealed that original decision from January of, I’m getting my years wrong. In 2023, they appealed. It took over a year for the full board of the NLRB to throw out their appeal, and the only thing we could find out along the way is it’s in process. In conjunction with that and running parallel to that was our attempt to get a court order to put us back to work. It’s an unfair labor strike. There’s ridiculous amounts of damage that’s been done to people’s lives because the company has repeatedly violated federal labor law.

So we went to court to get a 10 J injunction, sorry, this is going to be a little bit of alphabet soup here. A 10 J injunction is while something is going on, once the appeal was decided, then it moved over to what’s called a 10 E for enforcement. So there are no more appeals for the company at the NLRB level. So now the Labor Board goes to court to enforce its own order because the Labor Board has no power to do anything on its own. It has to go get a judge to order that what they have determined is in fact the case and decide what should happen from there. So back in February, we had a hearing before the third Circuit Court of appeals to argue whether there should be an injunction or not. It took another month for them to decide that yes, there should be an injunction.

It’s extremely rare for a union for the NLRB to get a 10 E injunction. There were, I think three or four filed in the previous year, and not all of them were approved by the courts. Ours was approved by the courts. What’s the first thing the company did? They appealed. They asked the same judges to go back and reconsider what they had ruled previously. No more evidence, nothing to change their opinion, just we think you were wrong. You should look at that again. Oh, and also your order was to restore the healthcare. Should that be just for the people who are on strike or should that be for everybody who should be in the unit that’s still working? As you said before, the scs, anything to delay they have done now, two weeks ago we court threw out that appeal. So there are no more appeals.

They are done appealing. There’s nowhere else they can go. So there’s an order that they restore the healthcare. They’ve missed now two deadlines for even taking any step towards doing that. There’s paperwork that has to be filled out by those still in the office. The union members, the strikers have filled out their paperwork and sent it in. The company hasn’t even, we know from people on the inside hasn’t even asked for the information from the employees. So the NLRB is preparing to file for fines against the company for refusing to follow a court order. And we don’t know what those fines will be, but we know that in previous cases, those fines are hefty and they usually double every day. They’re putting themselves at more financial risk to keep fighting for. We don’t know what that’s what’s most perplexing about this whole thing is what is their end game.

We have no idea what their end game is. They’ve now lost at every level of court that they’ve gone to. The other unions have been put out of business because they reached a point where I mentioned the 10 J injunction. They filed for a 10 J injunction and the US District court judge in Pittsburgh turned down their request. Basically her attitude was industries change and if that’s the conditions that you have to work under and you don’t want to, oh, well that’s too bad. So they were left without any recourse. So they took not very good buyouts, frankly. I’m sure they would say the same thing. They did the best they could, but they had nowhere else to turn. So they took buyouts and dissolved their units. So now the newspaper Guild is the only unit left on strike, and we’re waiting now for that enforcement procedure.

Emily Matthews:

I feel like one of the most frustrating things about all of this is just the long timelines and not having many answers to anything. And one of, well, the publisher for the post is that John Robinson block, he lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, and he seems like one of the people in the company who is actually willing to talk to us. He actually, when we knock on his door, he seems excited to talk to us. So we’ll go to his house every so often, especially when something comes up, something in the courts or just something that we hear through our sister unions in Toledo or whatever, and we’ll knock on his door and talk to him and he likes to talk. He’s a talker. It’s sometimes difficult to piece out some useful information from what he’s giving us, but it’s better than nothing. And his willingness to talk to us is beneficial too. It seems like from him, from his perspective, the other board members and his brother Alan, who also is the head of the BCI company, no one really talks to John. It seems like from what he tells us, even though he should have this power in the company to have an impact and make a difference, he claims that he doesn’t. It’s all his brother. He doesn’t have a say in anything. He doesn’t talk to their lawyer, he can’t do anything. I think that also makes them kind of angry and I think that also fuels his willingness to talk to us like, well, no one else is talking to me, so I might as well talk to my workers because they’ll actually provide an ear and listen to me.

Ed Blazina:

He is such a different individual. This is a dysfunctional family, unfortunately, that runs the paper. And if I had to guess, the reason they still have a paper in Pittsburgh is so that John has something to do and leaves Alan and the rest of them alone, and they just want to give enough money to keep the doors open, but not enough to treat people in a civil and humane fashion by giving them a raise. Oh, maybe once every 10 years. I don’t think it’s as important to the rest of the group as it is to John, and he’ll leave their other profitable businesses alone if they let him run the newspaper. So it’s a tough situation to deal with.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I want to ask in the last kind of 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what a realistic and good resolution to this strike looks like at this point. Like you guys said, you were the last ones standing. The newspaper guild strikers are the ones holding the line now after other unions that you walked out on strike with back in October of 2022, some signed deals, some got buyouts and their unions effectively dissolved, and you guys are still holding the line, fighting it out in the courts and waiting these agonizingly long periods for more updates on the decisions that have already been made that the block family is challenging, so on and so forth. So I think we gave listeners a good update there on where things stand now. But I guess in the final 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what should folks listening to this be looking for?

What can we expect? What kind of resolution are y’all hoping for right now? And frankly, what messages do you have for folks listening to this about what they can do to help what people out there have done to help that you want to lift up? What can folks listening to this who genuinely want to support their fellow workers, maybe they didn’t know that their fellow workers have been on strike for two and a half years over in Pittsburgh, but they know now and they want to know what they can do to help and they want to know why this is important. Any final messages that you have in that vein that you want to share with our listeners? I just wanted to kind of turn things over to you guys in the final minutes here to offer any closing thoughts you’ve got there.

Ed Blazina:

I think the important thing here is, and not to make it sound like we’re way more important than we are, but the fight we’re fighting could have happened anywhere. It happened to happen here, but it’s extremely important that companies can’t do what the post Gazette they’re trying to do. Employers are very much monkey see, monkey do. If they see an employer getting away with eliminating healthcare, bullying their employees, stretching out a strike for as long as possible, hoping people will just walk away and then they win. That’s what happens. Other companies will try to do the same thing. We can’t let that happen. It’s too important for all of us to be able to feed our families to have good jobs, good union paying jobs where we have rights in the workplace and a say in how things are run. So sticking it out for two and a half years, yes, that’s been tough, but we’re there because of everybody else and the people that have supported us, the people who will come up behind us and need a job and need the protections that we’re fighting for. It’s extremely important that the nlrbs power be upheld. There have been cases in Texas where they’ve tried to rule that the NLRB is unconstitutional. That’s just ridiculous, but it got through a court there. We can’t let that happen. And if we have to be the last people in line to draw that line in the sand and enforce that, so be it. We’ve been here this long, there’s no reason to go away now.

Erin Hebert:

For me, this strike has always been existential. It’s been about the contract and we’ve known that the blocks and Allen block especially has always wanted to get rid of the union in the newsroom. And for me, experiencing the difference between a union job as I have had at the post gisette and my first job out of college and also all the jobs that my family has had in right to work states where I’ve lived. I was in Louisiana then I moved to Florida immediately after, before I came to Pennsylvania. So I know the difference between a union job and a non-union job, especially in journalism. And I cannot fathom giving in to a company who is so flagrantly violating labor law and just for years has treated its employees with such disdain, I mean literal disdain that, I mean, I went to journalism school and was told that you comfort the afflicted and you afflict the comfortable.

So this is kind of the ultimate iteration of that. And I think moving forward, we just want people to know that we are fighting for good journalism in Pittsburgh and for a strong newspaper in the city that we really, really love and care about and that it’s Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I love the city and I want us to have a strong daily newspaper. I don’t want it to go under because of bosses who can’t treat their employees fairly or well at all. And being treated well is more about more than about, more than just pay. I want to make it clearer. So moving forward, I think we’re trying to make ourselves more seen in the community This summer, it was really hard starting the strike in October of 2022 and then going right into winter where in Pittsburgh, everyone hibernates and goes inside. So every time the spring rolling around, it’s a good chance for us to get out and about.

And I guess I would just say that if you’re a person who’s in Pittsburgh or you see any of us out, if we’re ever in DC doing an action with the News Guild, people come and talk to us and ask us what we’ve been through. We always have our QR codes when we’re out for you to donate for people to donate. We’re working on new merch and new projects for things to put out into the community like artwork and music and just different community-based projects that’ll help us raise money but also shine a light on our supporters in Pittsburgh and around the country.

Emily Matthews:

Also, if you’re not in Pittsburgh, but would also like to help, we have a link. I know it’s on the Union Progress website through the Action Network where you can donate, you can also buy t-shirts. We have two really cool designs designed by our own striker, Jen Kundra. So check out the Pittsburgh Union progress. We have updates all the time on strike related things as well as Pittsburgh things. And we do have a bargaining date coming up on June 5th, so hopefully, fingers crossed, something will come of that. Even if it doesn’t, we always update on the union progress. So make sure to check it out after that to see what’s going on. And in the meantime, we always appreciate just messages of support too. If you can’t donate money, send us a message. It’s always uplifting to hear from the community.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just with the last one to two minutes that we got here, I wanted to ask if any of y’all have direct messages to our fellow colleagues in the journalism industry. I’m doing my best here to still, I mean, on episodes like this, I try to be somewhat objective. I don’t have, objectivity is a myth, but I’m trying to be at least fair, transparent, get people the truthful factual information, firsthand information from y’all that they need. But all the while I’m sitting over here just boiling because I want to scream at every one of our fellow workers in the journalism industry, what the fuck are you guys doing? How have you not been, pardon my French, but how have you not been raising hell over this from the day this strike started? Like Ed said, if the blocks get away with this, what makes you think that you’re going to be safe when you’re employer looks over and says, Hey, why don’t we do what the Post Gazette did?

And think of all that we lose in the industry when we lose journalism as a good paying career, a career that people want to invest in and stay in and make their career lives out of. I’ve talked to Steve Mellon and Bob Batson and other colleagues of yours at Pittsburgh Union progress about the meaning of this strike for all of us who depend on journalism, local and national, and it makes my blood boil that so many in our industry have forsaken y’all and forgotten y’all and in my opinion, have frankly slit their own throats in our collective throat because this is going to impact all of us. So anyway, I’m getting hot here. So in the last minute, do any of you have any direct messages to folks out there in journalism that you want to share before we close?

Ed Blazina:

Just exactly what you said. It absolutely can happen to you. Don’t let it happen. Get involved in journalists have this thing, and it’s something I’ve had to learn. Even though I’ve been a union officer for 25 years, we always wanted to be neutral. We can’t take a stand on things. Well, I’m sorry. My job, I can take a stand over and absolutely I’m going to, but it’s something you have to learn. We are reticent to go to politicians to give us help. Well, heck, we have a bunch of politicians in the Pittsburgh area who have refused to talk to the Post Gazette because we’ve told them, don’t cross our picket line. It was hard for us to do, but you have to do it. There’s lots of things you don’t like to do, but you have to, and this is one where you have to

Emily Matthews:

Working in journalism too, it’s easy just to appreciate that you have a job in journalism and just to accept your working conditions for what they are. But you never know when your conditions can change for the worst and when you’re in a really bad spot and at that point it’s too late. So you need to unionize early, unionize ahead of the company’s, whatever they’re planning on doing, get one step ahead of them, unionize, organize, talk to your coworkers, make sure everyone’s doing okay. There could be things going on with different people that you just don’t know about because people are afraid to speak up and talk about it. I think that’s another important thing to do is to, even if you’re not in a union, start talking to your coworkers. See what issues arise, see what problems they’re having, try to organize and figure out how to unionize. There’s lots of resources out there to do that.

Erin Hebert:

I would say to also remember that not everyone in journalism, even at Legacy outlets, so to speak, come from a background where they have financial support. A lot of people working at big national outlets, I mean, there’s that whole, the scandal over the New York Times preferring to higher Ivy League graduates. There’s definitely a very stark class disparity in journalism that I’ve found and that I’ve discussed with other people on strike who also come from lower middle class backgrounds, I guess you would say socioeconomically, and just remember, not everybody has the freedom. Some of us need union protections to be able to earn a living in our field. Not all of us grew up with family connections to the industry. Not all of us can make the switch to pr. Like everyone says, oh, you can’t make it work in journalism, go to pr. We shouldn’t have to do that.

We should be guaranteed good jobs that allow us to do the work of covering our communities, and which over two and a half years of this strike, the city has been, I mean, the social circles that I’m in, it’s just everybody’s talking about this stuff and everybody has a different opinion on it, but nobody seems to really care to ask us directly. It’s kind of just talking, and I just think it’s important to remember that, as Emily said, this can happen to you at any time. You cannot trust the boss to have your back or anybody who is okay cowering to the boss and not standing up to the boss, and that you can only get past that by talking to your fellow workers and talking about your experiences. Honestly, even when it’s hard or it’s embarrassing or you think you’re not going to be believed based on what you’ve experienced,

Ed Blazina:

And even if you’re in a union, you have to pay it forward too. One good example of that is the New York Times tech workers had a short strike back at the beginning of the year. Actually it was before that. It was just before the election. They struck during election week, brilliant move because a lot of what the New York Times does on election night is based on what those folks do technically in their computer systems. They had a strike. Their strike fortunately lasted I think less than two weeks, but in that time, they raised so much money that after their strike, they had $114,000 left over that they donated to us. We end our strike. I’m sure there’s somebody we’ll pay it forward too, because that’s what you have to do. We’re all in this together whether we like it or not.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, ed Blaina, Aaron Abert and Emily Matthews, three union officers for the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh who have all been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for over two and a half years. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Speaker 6:

When my fish you no longer see, I live on, yes, I live on wherever we go. We are going to roll the union on the Some I live on. Yes, I live on wherever Hungry, hungry. Are we just as hungry as hungry can be? The some I live on, yes. I live on where mean things are happening in this land. It’s red or sung. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the book mean things are happening. In this land is read. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the video tape of me showing I live on. Yes, I live on. If I have help to make this a better world to live in, I’ll live on. Yes, I live on when my body is silent and in some lonesome grave I’ll live on. Yes I on when my songs are on, I.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Last May, Vermont became the first state to pass a climate Superfund law. The concept is modeled after the 1980 federal Superfund law, which holds companies responsible for the costs of cleaning up their hazardous waste spills. The state-level climate version requires major oil and gas companies to pay for climate-related disaster and adaptation costs, based on their share of global greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades. Vermont’s law passed after the state experienced torrential flooding in 2023. In December, New York became the second state to pass such a law. 

This year, 11 states, from California to Maine, have introduced their own climate Superfund bills. Momentum is growing even as Vermont and New York’s laws face legal challenges by fossil fuel companies, Republican-led states, and the Trump administration. Lawmakers and climate advocates told Grist that they always expected backlash, given the billions of dollars at stake for the oil and gas industry — but that states have no choice but to find ways to pay the enormous costs of protecting and repairing infrastructure in the face of increasing floods, wildfires, and other disasters.

The opposition “emboldens our fight more,” said Maryland state delegate Adrian Boafo, who represents Prince George’s County and co-sponsored a climate Superfund bill that passed the state legislature in March. “It means that we have to do everything we can in Maryland to protect our citizens, because we can’t rely on the federal government in this moment.” 

While the concept of a climate Superfund has been around for decades, it’s only in recent years that states have begun to seriously consider these laws. In Maryland, federal inaction on climate change and the growing burden of climate change on government budgets have led to a surge of interest, said Boafo. Cities and counties are getting hit with huge unexpected costs from damage to stormwater systems, streets, highways, and other public infrastructure. They’re also struggling to provide immediate disaster relief to residents and to prepare for future climate events. Maryland has faced at least $10 billion to $20 billion in disaster costs between 1980 and 2024, according to a recent state report. Meanwhile, up until now, governments, businesses, and individuals have borne 100 percent of these costs. 

“We realized that these big fossil fuel companies were, frankly, not paying their fair share for the climate crisis that they’ve caused,” Boafo said. 

Recent bills have also been spurred by increased sophistication in attribution science, said Martin Lockman, a climate law fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Researchers are now able to use climate models to link extreme weather events to greenhouse gas emissions from specific companies. The field provides a quantitative way for governments to determine which oil and gas companies should pay for climate damages, and how much. 

Vermont’s law sets up a process for the government to first tally up the costs of climate harms in the state caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of major oil and gas companies between 1995 and 2024. The state will then determine how much of those costs each company is responsible for, invoice them accordingly, and devote the funds to climate infrastructure and resilience projects. New York’s law, by contrast, sets a funding target ahead of time by requiring certain fossil fuel companies to pay a total of $75 billion, or $3 billion per year over 25 years. The amount each company has to pay is proportionate to their share of global greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2024. Both Vermont and New York’s laws apply only to companies that have emitted over 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their respective covered periods. That would include Exxon Mobil, Shell, and other oil and gas giants.

Maryland’s law is so far the only climate Superfund-related legislation to pass this year, although it hasn’t yet been signed by the state’s governor. The original draft of the bill would have required major fossil fuel companies to pay a one-time fee for their historic carbon emissions. But over the course of the legislative session, the bill was amended to instead simply require a study on the cumulative costs of climate change in Maryland, to understand how much money an eventual program would need to raise. The study would be due by December 2026, at which point Maryland lawmakers would need to propose new legislation to actually implement a climate Superfund program.

“I wish it wasn’t amended the way it was,” Boafo said, adding that lawmakers devoted much of their energy this legislative session to addressing Maryland’s $3.3 billion budget deficit. “At the same time, passing this new, amended version of the bill acknowledges to the state and to our constituents that we want to research how much actually would come to the state, how this program would be operated, what this would actually look like,” he said. “It’s not the step that a lot of us wanted, but it is a step forward.” 

In California, environmental groups are optimistic about the chances of a bill passing this year. This is the second year a climate Superfund bill has been introduced in the state, and the sponsors of the new bill have focused on building a broad coalition of environmental, community, and labor groups around the proposal, said Sabrina Ashjian, project director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. This year’s legislation was introduced shortly after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January, which could amplify lawmakers’ sense of urgency. The bill has now passed out of each legislative chamber’s environmental committee and is awaiting votes in their respective judiciary committees. If passed, the bill will next move to the full Senate and Assembly for a final vote. 

In the meantime, legislators are keeping a close eye on ongoing legal challenges to Vermont’s and New York’s laws. In January, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, two trade groups, launched a lawsuit against Vermont’s climate Superfund law. In February, 22 Republican state attorneys general and industry groups filed a lawsuit against New York’s law. Both challenges claim that the laws violate interstate commerce protections and are preempted by federal law. Because the federal Clean Air Act regulates greenhouse gas emissions, the groups argue, states cannot pass laws related to climate damages. 

Now the Trump administration has joined the legal battle. On May 1, the Department of Justice sued the states of New York and Vermont over their climate Superfund programs, echoing the same arguments raised by the fossil fuel industry. The same day, the department also sued the states of Hawaiʻi and Michigan over their intentions to sue fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages. All four lawsuits frequently use identical language, Lockman pointed out. The lawsuits follow last month’s executive order by President Donald Trump that called for the Justice Department to challenge state climate policies, and directly targeted Vermont and New York’s climate Superfund laws. Shortly after the Justice Department’s lawsuits were filed, West Virginia and 23 other states announced they would join the existing lawsuit against Vermont’s law led by the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. 

Legal experts noted that Trump’s executive order itself has no legal impact, and that states have well-established authority to implement environmental policies. Patrick Parenteau, a legal scholar at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told the New York Times he expected the Justice Department’s cases to be dismissed. A court could end up consolidating the federal suits with existing challenges against Vermont and New York’s laws, although given that they raise the same arguments, “there’s really nothing new being added here,” said Lockman. 

Climate experts told Grist that with huge amounts of money and liability at stake, lawsuits from the fossil fuel industry weren’t unexpected. Boafo said that given how much financial and political support the Trump campaign received from oil and gas corporations, it’s not a surprise that the Justice Department has sued New York and Vermont. Pursuing these laws invites inevitable opposition — but avoiding the growing costs of climate devastation is even riskier, advocates said. 

Lawmakers are “passing these bills because in writing budgets, in dealing with the day-to-day operation of their states, they’re facing really serious questions about how our society is going to allocate the harms of climate change,” said Lockman. “I suspect that the lawmakers who are advocating for these bills are in it for the long haul.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Despite backlash, more states are considering laws to make Big Oil pay for climate change on May 19, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

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British officials told the U.S. they are concerned about the safety of SpaceX’s plans to fly its next Starship rocket over British territories in the Caribbean, where debris fell earlier this year after two of the company’s rockets exploded, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica.

The worries from the U.K. government, detailed in a letter to a top American diplomat on Wednesday, follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision last week to grant SpaceX’s request for a fivefold increase in the number of Starship launches allowed this year, from five to 25. Growing the number of launches of the most powerful rocket ever built is a priority for SpaceX head Elon Musk, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers.

Of particular concern to British officials is the public’s safety in the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands — all of which could fall under Starship 9’s flight path.

After the explosion in January, residents of the Turks and Caicos reported finding pieces of the rocket on beaches and roads. A car was also damaged in the Starship 7 accident. Seven weeks later, after receiving the FAA’s blessing to proceed, SpaceX launched Starship 8 from Boca Chica, Texas, but it too exploded after liftoff. Air traffic in the region was diverted, and burning streaks from the falling rocket were visible in the sky from the Bahamas and Florida’s coast.

The British letter to a U.S. State Department official, Ambassador Lisa Kenna, asks the U.S. to consider changing the launch site or trajectory of Starship 9. If that isn’t possible, the request — from Stephen Doughty, the United Kingdom’s minister of state for Europe, North America and U.K. Overseas Territories — asks that agencies like the FAA consider altering the launch’s timing to minimize safety risks and the economic impact for the British territories.

The letter also requests that the U.S. government provide the United Kingdom more information on increased safety measures that will be put in place before Starship 9 launches, and that British territories be given enough warning to communicate with the public about those measures.

“We have been working closely with US Government partners regarding Starship Flight 9 to protect the safety of the UK Overseas Territories and to ensure appropriate measures are in place,” a  UK government spokesperson said Thursday in response to ProPublica’s questions about the letter.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has said it learns from its mistakes. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” the company said after the Starship 8 accident. “We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”

Musk — who sees the uptick in launches as critical to the development of technology that could help land astronauts on the moon and ultimately Mars — has been less diplomatic.

He downplayed the January explosion as “barely a bump in the road” and seemed to brush off safety concerns, posting a video of the flaming debris field with the caption, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

SpaceX has not announced the date of the Starship 9 launch, but news reports have said it could happen as soon as May 21. The last explosion, however, is still under investigation.

In response to questions for this story, the FAA said it “works closely with our international partners to mitigate risks to public safety for FAA-licensed launches. We are in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom and the Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as other regional partners, as we continue to evaluate SpaceX’s license modification request for its proposed Starship Flight 9 launch.”

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which licenses launches and reentries, is undergoing a leadership shakeup. Three top executives, including the head of the office, announced in April that they were accepting voluntary separation offers.

Musk has been leading efforts to shrink the federal government through the departures of thousands of federal workers. Critics say he has an inherent conflict of interest because his businesses are regulated by agencies such as the FAA and rely on their approvals.

Musk said in a February interview that “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Thursday that “All administration officials will comply with conflict of interest requirements.”

Last year, the FAA proposed $633,000 in fines against SpaceX for violations related to two previous launches. Musk, in turn, accused the FAA of engaging in “lawfare” and threatened to sue it for “regulatory overreach.” The administrative case remains open.

The number of rocket launches has increased dramatically in recent years, leading pilots and academics to warn about a growing danger in the air for flights that have only minutes to get out of harm’s way when a mishap — as explosions and other failures are called in industry parlance — occurs.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia found in a study published in January that the risk space objects pose to aircraft is rising. They said that the chance of an “uncontrolled reentry” from a rocket over a year is as high as 26% for some large, busy areas of airspace, such as those found in the northeastern U.S., in northern Europe or near major cities in the Asia-Pacific region.

A large union for airplane pilots told FAA officials in January that the Starship 7 breakup “raises additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights,” according to a letter sent the day after the rocket exploded.

“The ability of the FAA Air Traffic Control to respond in a timely fashion to an unanticipated rocket anomaly needs to be further evaluated,” said the letter from the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 79,000 pilots at 42 U.S. and Canadian airlines. It asked that flight crews receive more information about high-risk areas before a launch so they can “make an informed and timely decision about their need to potentially reject flight plans that route their aircraft underneath space vehicle trajectories.”

In a response, the FAA said it would review its processes to see whether more can be done to prepare flight crews before a launch.

Capt. Jason Ambrosi, the union’s president, said in a statement emailed to ProPublica that changes are necessary. “Any safety risk posed to commercial airline operations is unacceptable.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Heather Vogell.

“It’s obviously cliché to say that he’s like Willy Wonka because of the chocolate stuff,” he added. “But he really is.” 

“The chocolate stuff” refers to Brenner’s previous venture. In the ’90s, he co-founded Max Brenner, an international chain of chocolate-themed restaurants. There, his decor choices (like factory piping that evoked a chocolate river) and kitschy culinary creations (like a liquid-centered chocolate egg) earned him a reputation as a real-life Willy Wonka. The media ate it up. “I was this chocolate celebrity, doing all these crazy things,” Brenner said. Paula Deen once licked ganache off his head while he was whipping up a recipe on one of her Food Network shows. 

That chapter ended in 2012 when the conglomerate to which he’d earlier sold the Max Brenner chain sued him for breach of a noncompete agreement. Brenner has said the situation was more complicated than it looked, claiming he was given verbal permission to start the chocolate-centric coffee shop at the heart of the complaint. The resulting settlement prohibited him from selling or marketing chocolate for five years. 

Blue Stripes is Brenner’s return to cacao, now without the over-the-top decadence, and instead with a focus on addressing food waste. “I’m totally harnessed to the mission,” he told me. The company, which he co-founded with food-industry entrepreneur Aviv Schwietzer, is one of a growing number seeking to find culinary uses for the parts of the cacao plant that are typically discarded. Blue Stripes sells juice drinks and fruit snacks made of the fruit’s pulp, and whole-cacao trail mixes, granolas, and chocolate products, on Amazon and in premium grocery stores like Whole Foods and Sprouts. 

“I see the impact,” Brenner said about the company’s approach. “I know it can be something that is pivotal and a huge change to the industry.”

In Ecuador, where the company buys its cacao, Blue Stripes claims to be boosting the local economy and paring down some of the environmental impacts associated with waste. After raising $20 million last fall from a slate of investors that included The Hershey Company and Whole Foods, the company has its eye on reaching more customers. But will it be able to popularize cacao beyond the bean in a country that largely has no clue chocolate comes from a fruit? And would turning the fruit into a bestseller really make the chocolate industry more sustainable? 

Every chocolate bar starts with the seeds (or beans) found inside cacao fruits, which sprout from trees in equatorial regions of Africa, Asia, and South America in shades ranging from yellow to burgundy. 

The pithy pods are split open to access the beans, which are surrounded by a layer of pale pulp that makes them look remarkably like a clutch of alien eggs. These “wet beans” are removed and piled in heaps or in containers so they can dry as the pulp ferments, spurring important flavor changes in the beans. Typically all the pulp is left on the beans, where it then drips away, though a portion is sometimes removed first and discarded. Once all the pulp has dripped off, the beans are roasted, ground, and combined with other ingredients to make all manner of sweets.

The fibrous husks that surround the pulp and beans are also often treated as waste, leading to planet-warming emissions. Many farmers heap these empty pods in moist, methane-producing piles; in Ghana, this practice creates the equivalent emissions of powering more than 2 million U.S. homes a year. Other farmers let the husks decay in the fields, which acts as a natural mulch but creates emissions, too. Turning husks into a soil-enriching compost sharply decreases emissions and can also replace emissions-intensive fertilizers, but cacao farmers don’t often compost. Molly Leavens, the agriculture and development program manager at Sustainable Food Lab, a nonprofit that works with farmers and food companies to improve farmer livelihoods and advance sustainable agriculture, said it’s “really hard to get farmers to compost because it is a lot of work with relatively little financial return.”

Although these emissions are sizable, waste generally contributes a smaller part of cacao’s carbon footprint than deforestation. Farmers often clear-cut jungles to make space for their crops, and this practice is responsible for over 90 percent of cacao’s carbon footprint in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cacao-producing country. But experts consulted for this story said the relative impacts of deforestation and waste vary widely from region to region.

Chocolate is a more than $100 billion global industry, but selling the beans to intermediaries and traders — who in turn sell them to exporters, processors, or chocolate buyers — is far from lucrative for cacao farmers, most of whom are smallholders. Cacao growers earn, on average, just 6.6 percent of the proceeds from a chocolate bar, which makes any prospect of increasing their revenues compelling.

Although waste is common on cacao farms, it’s not inevitable. Indigenous peoples in South and Central America have been drinking the sweet-and-sour juice that results from fermenting cacao pulp for thousands of years. Today, chefs in cacao-growing regions across the world turn the pulp, which ranges in flavor from lychee to green apple with a hint of cucumber, into sorbet, jam, fancy Jell-O, sugar, honey, and more. In Ecuador, this kind of local cacao-upcycling know-how helped Blue Stripes get started. 

Brenner was at a Los Angeles cafe when he first learned the cacao plant could do more than just make chocolate. He ordered a smoothie bowl made with the pulp, which has a texture similar to pawpaw. “I was like, ‘Wow,’” he said. “Twenty years I’m making chocolate, and I obviously knew about the cacao fruit, but I didn’t know you can really use the cacao fruit and make almost like an acai-[like] product.”

He’d been wanting to start a chocolate business with a healthier feel than Max Brenner, and the cacao plant’s fruity potential felt like the missing piece. He envisioned cacao being used in all sorts of foods, just as different parts of coconut palms are converted into drinks, flakes, sugar, and more.

But first, he had to find cacao to use. “It was very hard,” Brenner said. He found small bags of frozen pulp at a Brazilian grocery store in Queens but didn’t think the quality was up to snuff. Eventually, he got connected to a cacao farmer and entrepreneur in Ecuador who Brenner said had by that point been working on cacao processing techniques and machinery for a couple years.

In 2018, Blue Stripes started working with the entrepreneur, who today is a key partner and owns the processing and some of the manufacturing facilities the company uses in Ecuador. (Blue Stripes said he declined to be named or interviewed in this story, and he did not respond to my request for comment through other channels.)

Blue Stripes now sources cacao pods from around two dozen farms in Ecuador, Brenner told me. At a factory on the entrepreneur’s cacao farm, a machine slices the pods open and workers remove the pulp-covered beans. Another machine separates most of the pulp, leaving around 10 to 20 percent of it on the beans to ferment. The pulp, which Blue Stripes currently uses far more of than beans or husk, is then bottled into cacao water or turned into dried fruit. The husks are ground and dried to a fibrous flour that gets transported to separate facilities to be incorporated into chocolate bars and other snacks. 

Brenner shared a graphic on LinkedIn claiming that Blue Stripes’ purchase of the forgotten parts of the cacao pod — 968 tons of them, to be exact — increased farmers’ revenue by $1.5 million between mid-2022 and late 2024. He told me that while the revenue benefit for farmers is small today, the downstream economic impact will grow as the company grows, because “it’s just built into the supply chain.” 

Blue Stripes pays farmers for final ingredients rather than whole pods. Brenner said that before the cost of cacao beans tripled last year, Blue Stripes paid around $3,000 for every metric ton of beans, pulp, and husk flour, offering the same rate for the parts of the plant that are usually tossed aside as for the beans. Now, he added, Blue Stripes pays a fluctuating rate for beans between $9,000 and $12,000 per metric ton, while the original rates for pulp and husk flour are unchanged. The company declined to put me in touch with one of the farmers it works with, saying the farmers requested not to have their names or information about their farms used in the media.

Experts on the chocolate industry who aren’t affiliated with Blue Stripes told me that the company’s business model sounds promising. 

Blue Stripes’s ideas and technology could set a valuable example for countries that are focused on improving cocoa farmer livelihoods, said Amourlaye Touré, senior advisor for Africa at the environmental advocacy organization Mighty Earth. “What they are doing in Ecuador will be useful … to show to other parts of the world,” he said.

Leavens at Sustainable Food Lab said that localizing processing and manufacturing in the region where cacao is grown is “building out the local economy, and that is really important.” Chocolate manufacturing is generally done in consuming countries, depriving producing countries of those potential jobs and profits. It’s also notable that Blue Stripes says it buys cacao from farmers rather than from an intermediary, since this “direct trade” practice keeps the full earnings from the crop with farmers. Leavens said what Blue Stripes says it’s paying for beans today is about what she’d expect for high-end beans in Ecuador, where she noted that farmers bring home a larger share of the market price than in West Africa, because Ecuador’s government doesn’t regulate the price.

Will Lydgate, owner of the cacao farm Lydgate Farms in Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i, said that while he wasn’t familiar enough with how Blue Stripes works with farmers to comment on its approach, he supports any model that improves farmer livelihoods. “Anything we can do to get more money in the hands of farmers is a good thing, especially cacao farmers,” he said.

Reducing the environmental impact associated with cacao waste is another reason Leavens said she “very much support[s]” what Blue Stripes is doing. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, waste prevention also conserves the water, energy, and other resources used to grow the husk and pulp. The environmental impact of Blue Stripes’s method is hard to quantify without a detailed study like a life-cycle assessment, which Brenner said he hopes to eventually undertake. Such a study would also detail any emissions saved or created during later stages like processing and transport.

Beyond limiting the ecological impact of waste, cacao upcycling ventures like Blue Stripes could also help prevent deforestation once they reach sufficient scale, though certain conditions would have to be met in the cocoa-producing region for that to happen. Touré explained that if cacao farmers earn more money from the same crop, they’ll be less pressured to clear additional land for farming. He added that there is a risk, however, that if the crop is more valuable, it could paradoxically drive more deforestation, so protections like forest monitoring by local governments and watchdog groups must be in place to make higher earnings work as a deforestation deterrent rather than an accelerant.

The experts I spoke to for this story said they couldn’t comment on whether those conditions are met in Ecuador, though cacao farming has historically driven very little deforestation there compared to other producing countries. Blue Stripes also recently had all its products certified by Rainforest Alliance, whose labeling scheme prohibits sourcing from farms on lands that have been deforested since 2014. The label is well known for indicating social and environmental responsibility at a glance but, like other voluntary certification schemes, has faced criticisms, such as for only conducting in-person certifications of farms considered medium- or high-risk.

Whether Blue Stripes can scale up further will depend in part on whether it can get people onboard with eating whole cacao, which is no small task, since the fruit is still mostly unfamiliar in the United States.  

The company’s strategy to draw in new customers leans heavily into health messaging, with language like “superfood” and “clean ingredients” prominent in its promotional videos and on its product labels. Brenner also cited the flavor and versatility of whole cacao as reasons people might become whole-cacao converts. “It tastes like heaven,” he said, and “there’s so many things you can do with it.” 

Blue Stripes sent me a box of their drinks and snacks to try for this story, and I thought most were tasty, though many of the chocolate bars were unremarkable. I especially liked the company’s cacao-fruit snacks and cacao-water drinks, the latter of which tasted like zingier versions of lychee. Two friends with whom I shared the drinks liked them too and said they’d drink them again, but that a whole bottle would be too much. “It’s a sipper,” said one friend. I couldn’t detect the fibrous cacao husk flour in the products it featured in, like granola and trail mix, which is probably a success, all things considered. 

Just how widely Blue Stripes will be able to popularize whole cacao remains to be seen. But Lydgate, whose cacao farm sells small-batch chocolates and teaches people about the fruit, said he’s glad to see Blue Stripes reaching for the mass market. The company “is drawing awareness to cacao as an ingredient,” he said. “And I’m really happy that Blue Stripes is doing that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This snack company is trying to change the way you think about chocolate on May 13, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Caroline Saunders.

The Republican plan calls for ramping up oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters, opening at least 4 million acres of public lands for new coal leasing, reinstating multiple highly contested mining leases, authorizing a massive road to aid mining in some of the most pristine wilderness areas in the country, and legislating increased timber production on public forests.

“This extreme proposal shows that House Republicans are hellbent on following Trump’s plan to sell out America’s public lands and offshore waters to the world’s worst polluters,” says Ashley C. Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Republicans are treating our most precious wild places as nothing more than opportunities for industry to plunder, profit and pollute.”

The bill would overturn several landmark decisions made by the Biden administration to prevent irreparable harm to sensitive resources. The bill mandates the following:

• Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska: Four more oil leases that would disrupt polar bear habitat, caribou calving grounds, and the migration patterns of other wildlife.
• Cook Inlet, Alaska: Six oil lease sales, putting fragile endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales at risk from seismic testing and oil spills.
• Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota: Reverses a mining ban on 225,000 acres of federal land and opening it to Twin Metal’s sulfide mining, which threatens to pollute the adjacent Boundary Water wilderness.
• Brooks Range Wilderness, Alaska: Reverses a ban on the 211-mile Ambler mining road that would stretch across the vast unspoiled wilderness of the Brooks Range, to facilitate an industrial mining complex on behalf of a foreign mining company. Caribou migrations may also be affected as the road intersects their migration paths.

The bill includes other provisions that expand extractive industries and undermine environmental protections. For example, it reduces royalties for oil producers, establishes rental fees for renewables on public lands, and directs agencies to increase timber harvests by 25%. It also allow project sponsors to pay a fee to cover environmental review and receive expedited completion.

“From oil drilling in the Arctic and Gulf, to coal mining in the Boundary Waters, to chopping down majestic old-growth trees across the country, a slew of ruinous projects are fast-tracked by this pay-to-play reconciliation package,” Nunes said. “This is nothing short of a plan to let Trump’s friends get rich by destroying our landscapes, coastal waters and wildlife habitat.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Pete Seeger

Folk musician

Banjo player

Singer of songs of unity

He sang songs of joy 

He sang for the unions

For the workers and the downtrodden. 

He sang songs for change

Civil Rights songs. Folk songs.

He sang for the people 

And he also served his country

In the US military—a corporal during World War 2

Fighting Hitler, the Nazis, and the Fascists

And when he came home, he founded the Weavers

A folk music quartet, which rocketed to the top of the charts.

They sang for the unions. 

They sang for social justice and progressive politics

Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts in Washington.

Hundreds of actors, artists, and musicians were blacklisted across the country.

That included the Weavers. They called them subversives.

They were watched by the FBI.

And they folded.

McCarthy dragged Pete Seeger in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He refused to answer. 

But was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was banned from playing on television and over the radio.

He was banned from performing almost anywhere.

But he played on. 

Performing for kids.

Performing in festivals.

He taught people to play the banjo. 

He recorded instruction videos and song books. 

He worked as a music teacher in schools and summer camps.

He traveled from university to university across the country 

Singing despite the protests from conservatives 

Because of the blacklist.

They said he was Un-American.

But he was more American than anyone.

Reviving the songs of old 

Re-singing the music that rang from the porches of weatherbeaten homes across the hillsides of America.

He recorded folk album after album.

He helped to transform “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem. He sang it on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

He helped to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. 

And he continued to play and sing throughout his life. 

His music and his legacy plays on.

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. 

He died at the age of 94, in 2014.

This is episode 28 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Here is a great 2007 PBS documentary about Pete Seeger’s life. It’s called “The Power of Song”:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Pete Seeger

Folk musician

Banjo player

Singer of songs of unity

He sang songs of joy 

He sang for the unions

For the workers and the downtrodden. 

He sang songs for change

Civil Rights songs. Folk songs.

He sang for the people 

And he also served his country

In the US military—a corporal during World War 2

Fighting Hitler, the Nazis, and the Fascists

And when he came home, he founded the Weavers

A folk music quartet, which rocketed to the top of the charts.

They sang for the unions. 

They sang for social justice and progressive politics

Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts in Washington.

Hundreds of actors, artists, and musicians were blacklisted across the country.

That included the Weavers. They called them subversives.

They were watched by the FBI.

And they folded.

McCarthy dragged Pete Seeger in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He refused to answer. 

But was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was banned from playing on television and over the radio.

He was banned from performing almost anywhere.

But he played on. 

Performing for kids.

Performing in festivals.

He taught people to play the banjo. 

He recorded instruction videos and song books. 

He worked as a music teacher in schools and summer camps.

He traveled from university to university across the country 

Singing despite the protests from conservatives 

Because of the blacklist.

They said he was Un-American.

But he was more American than anyone.

Reviving the songs of old 

Re-singing the music that rang from the porches of weatherbeaten homes across the hillsides of America.

He recorded folk album after album.

He helped to transform “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem. He sang it on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

He helped to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. 

And he continued to play and sing throughout his life. 

His music and his legacy plays on.

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. 

He died at the age of 94, in 2014.

This is episode 28 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Here is a great 2007 PBS documentary about Pete Seeger’s life. It’s called “The Power of Song”:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Yet carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have fallen from 6 billion annually in 2000 to less than 5 billion today. For that the country can largely thank its states and cities, which have embarked on ambitious campaigns to, among other things, electrify transportation, set automobile pollution standards, and incentivize the deployment of renewable energy. At the same time, wind and solar are now cheaper to build than new fossil fuel infrastructure, and there’s little Trump can do to stop those market forces from driving down emissions further.

Accordingly, Trump has set his sights on states during the first 100 days of his administration. He has tried to kill New York City’s congestion pricing, though last week the Department of Justice accidentally filed a document outlining the legal flaws with the administration’s plan. On April 8, he signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and halt any state climate laws that she deems illegal, including California’s pioneering cap-and-trade program. That directive, though, is probably illegal because the Constitution guarantees states broad authority to enact their own laws, legal experts told Grist. “This is the world the Trump administration wants your kids to live in,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.” 

In a counterintuitive way, the lack of federal climate ambition has made what action has occurred more resilient, because states are doing their own things and collaborating with each other. If the country had established a grand governing body years ago — something like an Environmental Protection Agency but focused exclusively on climate change — the Trump administration could easily dismantle it.

“States have been saying since the election that they retain the authority and the ability and the ambition to drive down pollution and keep America on track to meet its goals,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors (just one of them a Republican) focused on climate action. “This order is an indication that the president and this administration know that all of that is true.”

This is not the climate movement’s first tussle with an administration hostile to action. The U.S. Climate Alliance and America Is All In — a coalition of thousands of political, cultural, and business leaders — both formed after Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017. States also now regularly share information with each other, like the best ways to encourage the construction of energy-efficient buildings and to replace gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. They’re also collaborating to modernize their grids to meet the extra demand that comes with widespread electrification.

“That relationship-building and trust has not only allowed us to be truly a coalition, but it’s allowed us to move faster together on our climate action,” said Amanda Hansen, deputy secretary for climate change at California’s Natural Resources Agency. “The coalitions that came together very quickly in response to the first Trump administration are now significantly larger, more capable, and have really solid foundations for true collaboration.” 

While California and other states will have to wait and see which climate policies Bondi deems illegal, they’re already fighting on other fronts in court. When the Trump administration froze nearly $3 trillion in federal assistance funds in January, including those provided by the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, 23 attorneys general (including those in Republican-led Vermont and Nevada) sued, and a judge ordered the money released. 

Disbursing these sorts of funds isn’t optional — it is required, because Congress passed legislation allocating them. To stop the flow of money, Congress would have to change the laws. “It’s just costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to address these lawsuits for congressionally authorized funds that were critical to addressing the climate crisis,” said Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, a coalition of 125,000 attorneys, students, and activists.

Other organizations and nonprofits are joining in the litigation as well. Lawyers for Good Government worked with the Southern Environmental Law Center, for instance, which is suing the administration to release federal funds meant to invest in, among other things, energy-efficient affordable housing. “This administration appears to be just banking on the fact that they don’t need to follow the law until and unless someone sues them,” Blanchard said. “And that’s really an unfortunate state of affairs for the United States of America.”

Even as uncertainty looms, progressive states are doubling down on climate policies. For example, Washington state’s legislature recently passed an update to its clean fuel standard that could double emissions cuts from transportation, the state’s biggest source of carbon emissions. “We really need to continue to lead on this front,” said Leah Missik, the acting director for Washington at Climate Solutions. “States have always been the incubators for important climate policy work.” The state’s voters last fall resoundingly rejected an attempt to repeal a landmark law that caps emissions and raises money from polluters to install energy-efficient heat pumps, electrify ferries, and put solar panels on public buildings.

Ultimately, climate action is increasingly popular among voters. A spokesperson for Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois pointed to polling that shows 65 percent of people in the state are worried about climate change and 70 percent support fully transitioning to clean energy by 2050. “Voters are smart,” the spokesperson said, “and the more the Trump administration tries to kill clean energy policies that are giving us cleaner air, good-paying jobs, and lower energy bills, the more pushback you’re going to see, because those policies are popular for a reason.”

Kate Yoder contributed reporting for this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why Trump can’t stop states from fighting climate change on Apr 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

The nonpartisan nonprofit, which focuses on tailoring get out the vote efforts to low-propensity voters who they’ve identified as likely to list climate and environmental issues as a top priority, found that women far outpace men on the issue. Overall 62 percent of these so-called climate voters are women, compared to 37 percent of men. The gender gap is largest among young people, Black and Indigenous voters. 

The nonprofit identifies these voters through a predictive model built based on surveys it conducts among registered voters. It defines a climate voter as someone with at least an 85 percent likelihood of listing climate change or the environment as their number one priority. 

“At a time when other political gender gaps, such as [presidential] vote choice gender gaps, are staying relatively stable, there’s something unique going on with gender and public opinion about climate change,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the organization. 

While the models can predict the likelihood of a voter viewing climate as their number one issue, it can’t actually determine whether these same people then cast a vote aligned with that viewpoint. The report looks at data from 21 states that are a mix of red and blue.

Read Next

Where did all the climate voters go?

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Based on polling from the AP-NORC exit poll, 7 percent of people self-reported that climate change was their number one priority in the 2024 general election, Stinnett said. Of those who listed climate as their top priority, they voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by a 10 to 1 margin. 

The EVP findings are important, Stinnett says, because they also point the way to who might best lead the country in the fight against the climate crisis. “If almost two thirds of climate voters are women, then all of us need to get better at embracing women’s wisdom and leadership skills,” Stinnett said. “That doesn’t just apply to messaging. It applies to how we build and lead a movement of activists and voters.” 

Though the data reveals a trend, it’s unclear why the gender gap grew in recent years. In the six years that EVP has collected data, the gap has gone from 20 percent in 2019, and then shrunk to 15 percent in 2022 before beginning to rise in 2024. In 2025, the gap grew to 25 percentage points.

“I don’t know if men are caring less about climate change. I do know that they are much, much less likely now than they were before, to list it as their number one priority,” he said. “Maybe men don’t care less about climate change than they did before, right? Maybe it’s just that other things have jumped priorities over that.”

A survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, a nonprofit that gauges the public’s attitude toward climate change has seen a similar trend in its work. Marija Verner, a researcher with the organization, said in 2014 there was a 7 percent gap between the number of men and women in the U.S. who said they were concerned by global warming. A decade later in 2024, that gap had nearly doubled to 12 percent. 

Read Next

What do climate protests actually achieve? More than you think.

Kate Yoder

There is evidence that climate change and pollution impact women more than men both in the United States and globally. This is because women make up a larger share of those living in poverty, with less resources to protect themselves, and the people they care for, from the impacts of climate change. Women of color in particular live disproportionately in low-income communities with greater climate risk. 

This could help explain why there is a bigger gender gap between women of color and their male counterparts. In the EVP findings there is a 35 percent gap between Black women and men climate voters, and a 29 percent gap between Indigenous women and men. 

Jasmine Gil, associate senior director at Hip Hop Caucus, a nonprofit that mobilizes communities of color, said she’s not really surprised to see that Black women are prioritizing the issue. Gil works on environmental and climate justice issues, and she hears voters talk about climate change as it relates to everyday issues like public safety, housing, reproductive health and, more recently, natural disasters. 

“Black women often carry the weight of protecting their families and communities,” she said. “They’re the ones navigating things like school closures and skyrocketing bills; they are the ones seeing the direct impacts of these things. It is a kitchen table issue.”

The EVP survey also found a larger gender gap among registered voters in the youngest demographic, ages 18 to 24. 

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of youth voting organization NextGen America, said that in addition to young women obtaining higher levels of education and becoming more progressive than men, a trend that played out in the election, she also thinks the prospect of motherhood could help explain the gap. 

She’s seen how young mothers, particularly in her Latino community, worry about the health of their kids who suffer disproportionately from health issues like asthma. Her own son has asthma, she said: “That really made me think even more about air quality and the climate crisis and the world we’re leaving to our little ones.”

It’s a point that EVP theorizes is worth doing more research on. While the data cannot determine whether someone is a parent or grandparent, it does show that women between ages of 25 to 45 and those 65 and over make up nearly half of all climate voters.

Still, Ramirez wants to bring more young men into the conversation. Her organization is working on gender-based strategies to reach this demographic too. Last cycle, they launched a campaign focused on men’s voter power and one of the core issues they are developing messaging around is the climate crisis. She said she thinks one way progressive groups could bring more men into the conversation is by focusing more on the positives of masculinity to get their messaging across. 

“There are great things about healthy masculinity … about wanting to protect those you love and those that are more vulnerable,” she said. There are opportunities to tap into that idea of “men wanting to protect their families or those they love or their communities from the consequences of the climate crisis.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline More women view climate change as their number one political issue on Apr 26, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jessica Kutz, The 19th.

Mr. Thallinger’s provocative article starts by spelling out the relationship between CO2 emissions and “the amount of energy” trapped in the atmosphere, which is one way of saying “global warming trapped in the atmosphere,” as he draws a direct link between the two.

Mr. Thallinger spells out the risks: “These extreme weather phenomena drive direct physical risks to all categories of human-owned assets—land, houses, roads, power lines, railways, ports, and factories. Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time, which translates to loss of value, business interruption, and market devaluation on a systemic level.”

If this is how a board member of the world’s largest insurance company views risks to capitalism’s asset structure, then the world’s capitalist’s chieftains should seriously consider altering the destructive nature of climate change asap by omitting CO2 emissions.

Thallinger explains the risks to capitalism’s markets: “The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

Risks of Climate-induced Credit Crunch

Accordingly, “This is not a one-off market adjustment. This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze.”

Thallinger goes on to explain how excessive climate change damages capitalism to “climate-driven market failure.” Nothing could be a weirder coincidence than capitalism self-destroying via the genesis of industrialization powered by oil.

Solutions to climate change are difficult beyond halting fossil fuel emissions, full stop. For instance, state support where insurance fails to cover damage is not a realistic option as multiple climate-related disasters strain public budgets beyond acceptance by taxpayers. Consequently, multiple climate disasters ultimately lead to either governmental austerity or collapse. There is no in-between and neither option is satisfactory for a vibrant capitalistic economy.

As for adaptation to climate change, Thallinger does not see any easy ways out, claiming “the false comfort of adaptation” as one more downside to the global warming complexity. “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance.” And adaptation, by definition, is limited with mega fires and cities built on flood plains. There are no easy answers.

By implication, Thallinger assumes 3°C of warming is on deck as he states the situation is “locked in once 3°C is reached,” admitting there is no turning back due to carbon cycle inertia and absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. “At that point, risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

In conclusion, Thallinger says we must burn less carbon and/or capture it at the point of combustion. Meanwhile, the technology to switch out of fossil fuels is extant, solar, wind, battery storage, green hydrogen are scalable solutions. What’s missing is “speed and operating scale.” Although, some scientists believe ‘time is fast running out,” maybe too fast.

However, Thallinger does not mention the biggest impediment to solving the climate change imbroglio, politics. The U.S., normally the world leader for global scale issues, has bowed out of the fixit climate change race. The U.S. is promoting more CO2 emissions via increased oil & gas drilling and additional coal production in addition to dramatically downsizing the EPA and NOAA, which are key agencies to solving the climate change imbroglio all of which is the opposite of what Thallinger recommends to save capitalism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Mr. Thallinger’s provocative article starts by spelling out the relationship between CO2 emissions and “the amount of energy” trapped in the atmosphere, which is one way of saying “global warming trapped in the atmosphere,” as he draws a direct link between the two.

Mr. Thallinger spells out the risks: “These extreme weather phenomena drive direct physical risks to all categories of human-owned assets—land, houses, roads, power lines, railways, ports, and factories. Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time, which translates to loss of value, business interruption, and market devaluation on a systemic level.”

If this is how a board member of the world’s largest insurance company views risks to capitalism’s asset structure, then the world’s capitalist’s chieftains should seriously consider altering the destructive nature of climate change asap by omitting CO2 emissions.

Thallinger explains the risks to capitalism’s markets: “The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

Risks of Climate-induced Credit Crunch

Accordingly, “This is not a one-off market adjustment. This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze.”

Thallinger goes on to explain how excessive climate change damages capitalism to “climate-driven market failure.” Nothing could be a weirder coincidence than capitalism self-destroying via the genesis of industrialization powered by oil.

Solutions to climate change are difficult beyond halting fossil fuel emissions, full stop. For instance, state support where insurance fails to cover damage is not a realistic option as multiple climate-related disasters strain public budgets beyond acceptance by taxpayers. Consequently, multiple climate disasters ultimately lead to either governmental austerity or collapse. There is no in-between and neither option is satisfactory for a vibrant capitalistic economy.

As for adaptation to climate change, Thallinger does not see any easy ways out, claiming “the false comfort of adaptation” as one more downside to the global warming complexity. “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance.” And adaptation, by definition, is limited with mega fires and cities built on flood plains. There are no easy answers.

By implication, Thallinger assumes 3°C of warming is on deck as he states the situation is “locked in once 3°C is reached,” admitting there is no turning back due to carbon cycle inertia and absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. “At that point, risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

In conclusion, Thallinger says we must burn less carbon and/or capture it at the point of combustion. Meanwhile, the technology to switch out of fossil fuels is extant, solar, wind, battery storage, green hydrogen are scalable solutions. What’s missing is “speed and operating scale.” Although, some scientists believe ‘time is fast running out,” maybe too fast.

However, Thallinger does not mention the biggest impediment to solving the climate change imbroglio, politics. The U.S., normally the world leader for global scale issues, has bowed out of the fixit climate change race. The U.S. is promoting more CO2 emissions via increased oil & gas drilling and additional coal production in addition to dramatically downsizing the EPA and NOAA, which are key agencies to solving the climate change imbroglio all of which is the opposite of what Thallinger recommends to save capitalism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Image by Jon Tyson.

Capitalism, like Antarctica and like the Amazon rainforest, is under threat of destruction by excessive levels of CO2 emissions which cause radical climate change. Risk of some level of extinction of capitalism goes to the heart of a recent article written by Gunther Thallinger, Member of the Board of Management of Allianz Group (est. 1889, Munich) the world’s largest insurance company: Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism d/d March 25, 2025.

Mr. Thallinger’s provocative article starts by spelling out the relationship between CO2 emissions and “the amount of energy” trapped in the atmosphere, which is one way of saying “global warming trapped in the atmosphere,” as he draws a direct link between the two.

Mr. Thallinger spells out the risks: “These extreme weather phenomena drive direct physical risks to all categories of human-owned assets—land, houses, roads, power lines, railways, ports, and factories. Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time, which translates to loss of value, business interruption, and market devaluation on a systemic level.”

If this is how a board member of the world’s largest insurance company views risks to capitalism’s asset structure, then the world’s capitalist’s chieftains should seriously consider altering the destructive nature of climate change asap by omitting CO2 emissions.

Thallinger explains the risks to capitalism’s markets: “The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

Risks of Climate-induced Credit Crunch

Accordingly, “This is not a one-off market adjustment. This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze.”

Thallinger goes on to explain how excessive climate change damages capitalism to “climate-driven market failure.” Nothing could be a weirder coincidence than capitalism self-destroying via the genesis of industrialization powered by oil.

Solutions to climate change are difficult beyond halting fossil fuel emissions, full stop. For instance, state support where insurance fails to cover damage is not a realistic option as multiple climate-related disasters strain public budgets beyond acceptance by taxpayers. Consequently, multiple climate disasters ultimately lead to either governmental austerity or collapse. There is no in-between and neither option is satisfactory for a vibrant capitalistic economy.

As for adaptation to climate change, Thallinger does not see any easy ways out, claiming “the false comfort of adaptation” as one more downside to the global warming complexity. “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance.” And adaptation, by definition, is limited with mega fires and cities built on flood plains. There are no easy answers.

By implication, Thallinger assumes 3°C of warming is on deck as he states the situation is “locked in once 3°C is reached,” admitting there is no turning back due to carbon cycle inertia and absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. “At that point, risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

In conclusion, Thallinger says we must burn less carbon and/or capture it at the point of combustion. Meanwhile, the technology to switch out of fossil fuels is extant, solar, wind, battery storage, green hydrogen are scalable solutions. What’s missing is “speed and operating scale.” Although, some scientists believe ‘time is fast running out,” maybe too fast.

However, Thallinger does not mention the biggest impediment to solving the climate change imbroglio, politics. The U.S., normally the world leader for global scale issues, has bowed out of the fixit climate change race. The U.S. is promoting more CO2 emissions via increased oil & gas drilling and additional coal production in addition to dramatically downsizing the EPA and NOAA, which are key agencies to solving the climate change imbroglio all of which is the opposite of what Thallinger recommends to save capitalism.

The post Climate Change Kills Capitalism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

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More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.

We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.

The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy.

Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs. Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.

The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:

The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The department’s Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the country’s disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eviscerated divisions that oversee the WISQARS database on accidental deaths and injuries — everything from fatal shootings to poisonings to car accidents — and the team that maintains AtlasPlus, an interactive tool for tracking HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to measure and report their greenhouse-gas emissions, as they have done since 2010, making it difficult to know whether any of the policies meant to slow climate change and reduce disaster are effective. The EPA has also taken down EJScreen, a mapping tool on its website that allowed people to see how much industrial pollution occurs in their community and how that compares with other places or previous years.

The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and other indices of immigration enforcement, making it difficult to judge President Donald Trump’s triumphant claims of a crackdown; the last available numbers are from November 2024, in the final months of President Joe Biden’s tenure. (“While we have submitted reports and data files for clearance, the reporting and data file posting are delayed while they are under the new administration’s review,” Jim Scheye, director of operations and reporting in the statistics unit, told ProPublica.)

And, in a particularly concrete example of ceasing to measure, deep cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce weather balloon launches, which gather a vast repository of second-by-second data on everything from temperature to humidity to atmospheric pressure in order to improve forecasting.

Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy. In some cases, the data now being jettisoned is geared around concepts or presumptions that the administration fundamentally rejects: EJScreen, for instance, stands for “environmental justice” — the effort to ensure that communities don’t suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental harms. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency is “working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” The spokesperson added: “The EPA will continue to uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment” in Trump’s second term.) The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers public health professor, lamented the threatened pregnancy-risk data at the annual conference of the Population Association of America in Washington last week. In an interview, she said the administration’s cancellation of data collection efforts reminded her of recent actions at the state level, such as Florida’s withdrawal in 2022 from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state passed its law discouraging classroom discussion of sexual orientation. (The state’s education secretary said the survey was “inflammatory” and “sexualized.”) Discontinuing the survey made it harder to discern whether the law had adverse mental health effects among Florida teens. “States have taken on policies that would harm people and then are saying, ‘We don’t want to collect data about the impact of the policies,’” Lindbergsaid. “Burying your head in the sand is not going to be a way to keep the country healthy.” (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

Making the halt on data gathering more confounding, though, is the fact that, in some areas, the information at risk of being lost has been buttressing some of the administration’s own claims. For instance, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly cited, as an argument for tougher border enforcement, the past decade’s surge in fentanyl addiction — a trend that has been definitively captured by the national drug use survey that is now imperiled. That survey’s mental health components have also undergirded research on the threat being posed to the nation’s young people by smartphones and social media, which many conservatives have taken up as a cudgel against Big Tech.

Or take education. The administration and its conservative allies have been able to argue that Democratic-led states kept schools closed too long during the pandemic because there was nationwide data — the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card — that showed greater drops in student achievement in districts that stayed closed longer. But now NAEP is likely to be reduced in scope as part of crippling layoffs at the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which has been slashed from nearly 100 employees to only three, casting into doubt the future not only of NAEP but also of a wide array of long-running longitudinal evaluations and the department’s detailed tallies of nationwide K-12 and higher education enrollment. The department did not respond to a request for comment but released a statement on Thursday saying the next round of NAEP assessments would still be held next year.

Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, cast the self- defeating nature of the administration’s war on educational assessment in blunt terms: “The irony here is that if you look at some of the statements around the Department of Education, it’s, ‘We’ve invested X billion in the department and yet achievement has fallen off a cliff.’ But the only reason we know that is because of the NAEP data collection effort!”

Shelly Burns, a mathematical statistician who worked at NCES for about 35 years before her entire team was laid off in March, made a similar point about falling student achievement. “How does the country know that? They know it because we collected it. And we didn’t spin it. We didn’t say, ‘Biden is president, so let’s make it look good,’” she said. “Their new idea about how to make education great again — how will you know if it worked if you don’t have independent data collection?”

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” Stephen Colbert liked to quip, and there have been plenty of liberal commentators who have, over the years, taken that drollery at face value, suggesting that the numbers all point one way in the nation’s political debates. In fact, in plenty of areas, they don’t.

It’s worth noting that Project 2025’s lengthy blueprint for the Trump administration makes no explicit recommendation to undo the government’s data-collection efforts. The blueprint is chock full of references to data-based decision-making, and in some areas, such as immigration enforcement, it urges the next administration to collect and share more data than its predecessors had.

But when an administration is making such a concerted effort to stifle assessments of government and society at large, it is hard not to conclude that it lacks confidence in the efficacy of its current national overhaul. As one dataset after another falls by the wayside, the nation’s policymakers are losing their ability to make evidence-based decisions, and the public is losing the ability to hold them accountable for their results. Even if a future administration seeks to resurrect some of the curtailed efforts, the 2025-29 hiatus will make trends harder to identify and understand.

Who knows if the country will be able to rebuild that measurement capacity in the future. For now, the loss is incalculable.

Jesse Coburn, Eli Hager, Abrahm Lustgarten, Mark Olalde, Jennifer Smith Richards and Lisa Song contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Alec MacGillis.

This led Hasegawa last fall to South Seattle College, the setting for MLK Labor’s community assembly on extreme weather and worker rights. One October evening, a lecture hall filled with union workers, including teachers, firefighters, home health care workers, postal workers, and more, ready to try out the Community Assembly model. Community Assemblies are participatory spaces where people come together to learn, deliberate, and make collective decisions on programs and policies that influence the actions of government and community action. Hasegawa watched closely as the assembly unfolded.

After years of making policy for communities of color, workers, and other communities on the frontlines of climate change, lawmakers and city officials are now shifting towards making policies with constituents — particularly those who historically have been harmed by local policy. In Seattle, these Community Assemblies are part of a pilot program in partnership with the City of Seattle — one of the latest efforts in a larger trend of more inclusive governance around climate change. In that room, 50 union members came together for three assembly sessions over three weeks to test a new tool for co-governance.

Assemblies have been implemented across the U.S. and around the world, including in Hawai’i after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; in Jackson, Miss., to bring community-based perspectives into the city’s contracting process; and in the Bronx, N.Y., to advocate for stronger policies on housing, economic inequality, and health. While not government-funded or directly initiated with officials, these assemblies create opportunities for deeper collaboration between communities and policymakers. 

“This is a model that has always existed — the assembly, a deep form of engagement — and it exists across the globe in different variations, demonstrating how structured public participation can inform policies and decisions that directly impact people’s lives,” said Faduma Fido, Lab Leader with Seattle partner organization People’s Economy Lab. 

One thing that distinguishes Washington’s Community Assemblies is that they’re funded by government entities. MLK Labor’s assembly, along with an assembly led by the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, were funded by the City of Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment in partnership with Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board. The oversight board will use recommendations from community assemblies to inform Seattle’s Climate Action Plan update and future climate policies and priorities. With all of this in mind, it was important for the sustainability office and the oversight board to wisely choose the organizations that would lead these community assemblies. The Green New Deal legislation funded this program with $100,000 set aside to invest in participatory decision-making. 

Choosing MLK Labor and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle came after lengthy research, according to Elise Rasmussen, Climate and Environmental Justice Associate at Seattle’s sustainability office. Most importantly, both organizations prioritized communities disproportionately affected by climate change.

For MLK Labor’s Community Assembly, this included individual union members who had voiced past concerns about climate change and workers in roles that would put them in the path of extreme weather events. For the Urban League’s, which was focused on community resilience in the face of climate change, participants were chosen for their connection and lived experience to climate change and equity. This group included 25 members from Indigenous communities, as well as other communities of color, immigrants, unhoused people, elders, and youth who were engaged in efforts to fight climate change locally. 

In the South Seattle College lecture hall, Hasegawa saw the type of camaraderie common in unions, but this time solidarity formed around facing climate change. “People found that they were not alone in having to deal with extreme weather,” he said, “and [workers were] not being given the tools or the protections from their managers to do what they needed to do.” Firefighters talked about having to work in extreme heat, home health care workers described elderly and vulnerable patients struggling without air conditioning, and teachers detailed sweaty days in classrooms, burst pipes, and mold. 

The point, according to Fido, is to ensure that no one gets left behind in Seattle’s climate planning. Community Assemblies are a way for frontline community members to share their experiences and expertise, discuss issues and collaborate on solutions, and make their voices heard through policy recommendations. And community assemblies are gaining traction throughout the state. The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services is also funding a series of Community Assembly pilots. 

Longtime organizer Rosalinda Guillen had advocated for the model locally, after working with numerous farmworker organizations and advocates from Washington State to South America. She was a community organizer with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, helping organize the first farmworker union in the state’s history. “Every state agency needs to replace their community engagement plan with the community assembly model,” Guillen said on a 2023 panel. 

Another goal of Community Assemblies is to support Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities to participate more fully in the process of policymaking. “We’re working with frontline communities to be able to build and sustain a civic muscle where they are active participants in the conversation of better policies, better investments, and more targeted programming,” said Fido. 

For Camille Gipaya, the process has already had immediate, visible effects. Gipaya is a community outreach organizer at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle. While the issues their assembly addressed were broad — food and water, land use, pollution, and redlining — she says that bringing people together has very literally changed how they show up. “We [went] to Olympia [to] talk to legislators, and we had individuals that we met at the Community Assembly that were there who were not interested in talking to politicians beforehand, but [then] they felt empowered to be more engaged,” she said. 

Using this model is important to Gipaya, because it prioritizes the communal lived experiences of people who will be most affected by climate change. Instead of trying other methods to determine the best way forward, this initiative simply asks people to determine the best path themselves. “When looking at policy, it has to be more than just data and numbers,” she said. “Oftentimes, having seen [how policy has worked] in the past, we really have to connect with community members. We cannot afford to be disconnected with frontline communities.”

This story was produced in partnership with Communities of Opportunity, a growing partnership that believes every community can be a healthy, thriving community. Communities of Opportunity is a unique community-private foundation-government partnership that invests in the power of communities in King County, Washington.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Looking to create effective climate change policy? Ask the community. on Apr 15, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist Creative.

While scientists will need to do proper research to suss out exactly how much climate change is contributing to these storms, what’s known as an attribution study, they can say generally how planetary warming might worsen an event like this. It’s not necessarily that climate change created this storm — it could have happened independent of all the extra carbon that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere — but there are some clear trends making rainfall worse.

“In a world without the burning of fossil fuels, this event would happen once in a lifetime — that’s kind of what the National Weather Service is saying,” said Marc Alessi, a climate science fellow at the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. “But with the burning of fossil fuels, with more heat-trapping emissions, with a warming planet, this event will become more frequent.”

Rainfall is changing because Earth sweats. When the sun evaporates water off Earth’s surface, that moisture rises into the atmosphere, condenses, and falls as rain. But greenhouse gases trap heat up there, so the planet sweats more in response. In other words, it strikes an energy balance.

A warmer atmosphere also gets “thirstier”: For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, the air can hold 6 to 7 percent more water. That means more moisture is available to fall as rain: This weekend, the slow-moving storm is forecasted to dump as much as 15 inches of rainfall in some areas. “The sponge, which is the atmosphere in this case, will become bigger, which allows the sponge to hold more water and carry it from oceans farther inland,” Alessi said. “That could be tied into this event here.” 

The body of water in question here is the Gulf of Mexico. An outbreak of tornadoes and heavy rain is typical for this time of year as warming waters send moisture into the southern and central United States. And at the moment, the Gulf of Mexico is exceptionally warm. “There’s a lot more fuel for these rain-producing storms to lead to more flooding,” Alessi said. (The influence of climate change on tornadoes in the U.S., though, isn’t as clear.)

So a warmer Gulf of Mexico is not only producing more moisture, but the atmosphere is also able to soak up more of that moisture than it could before human-caused climate change. Indeed, the U.S. government’s own climate assessments warn that precipitation is already getting more extreme across the country, as are the economic damages from the resulting flooding. That’s projected to get worse with every bit of additional warming.

The problem is that American cities aren’t built to withstand this new atmospheric reality. Urban planners designed them for a different climate of yesteryear, with gutters and sewers that whisk away rainwater as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. With ever more extreme rainfall, that infrastructure can’t keep up, so water builds up and floods. And with storms that last for days, like those tearing through Arkansas and Kentucky right now, soils get saturated until they can hold no more water, exacerbating flooding even more. On Thursday, rescue crews in Nashville, Tennessee were scrambling to save people trapped by surging water levels. 

Now scientists will have to pick through the data to figure out, for instance, how much additional rain the storm dropped because of the sponge effect and warming of the Gulf of Mexico. But the overall trend is abundantly clear: As the planet warms, it doesn’t always get drier, but wetter, too.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did climate change supercharge the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm pummeling the central U.S.? on Apr 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

Image by Eric Brehm.

The Musk and Trump cuts to government programs are part of a larger movement towards ‘free markets’ began a little over fifty years ago when we abandoned fixed exchange rates (rates set by the government) in favor of floating exchange rates (the Float). In other words, the government past the decision making for determining the rate of exchange between two currencies to the market (those buying and selling currencies).

The Float was a watershed moment. It began a shift away from government in favor of business and letting the market sort it out. This coup was a victory for the Johnny Appleseed of free markets, Milton Friedman. The Friedman Doctrine held that business had no social responsibly except to maximize profits.^[1] He felt government programs initiated by FDR to help the average American, such as the minimum wage and Social Security were wrong.^[2]

Labor who had benefitted from New Deal programs like the Wagner Act saw their power begin to wane; while business gained. Conservative and pro-business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce began advocating for market-based solutions, arguing government regulations and taxation were business impediments.^[3]

When Reagan was elected he became the voice for the market movement saying, “government is the problem.”^[4] He cut taxes and plunged America deeper into the red.^[5]

Sometime in the 1980’s monetary policy triumphed over fiscal policy. Fiscal policy (spending, tax rates,…) is the domain of elected officials. Monetary policy is conducted by the Federal Reserve (Fed) run by an unelected bureaucrat whose governing board consists of big banks. The market was now in control, money had toppled democracy.

The Fed became the bagman for the market movement. While the Fed focuses on price stability and the economy it made protecting financial markets tantamount. So when stocks crashed in 1987 the Fed came to the rescue and bailed out the stock market; a policy it continues. Stock valuations surged—measures such as the PE ratio of stocks has on average been higher since 1987.^[6] The rich, through no action of their own, got richer.

To understand this take the Price Earnings Ratio (PE) of a stock. If a stock is earning a $1 per share and has a PE of 10 its price would be $10 (10 X $1). If the PE goes to 15 its price would increase to $15 (15 X $1) Basically the Fed had the effect of levitating stock prices. Meanwhile, the Fed ignored the surge in Fringe Banking—Payday Loans, Rent-to-own…–and the poor suffered.

Rising financial asset valuations were a boon for the rich to fund think tanks, ballot initiatives, payoff politicians and more.

It can be difficult to accept that the Fed has become the power source for our country, but one need only look to how money has corrupted and taken control of politics and just about everything else. This is why I protested by the Fed in the early 2000’s.

Looking at unions as a surrogate for labor, union density in the 1950’s and 1960’s hovered around 30%.^[7] In the forty years between 1983 and 2022 union membership halved from 20.1% to 10.1% of workers.^[8]

When unions had their peak influence on the economy several felt they were abusing their power, pointing to actions such as featherbedding. In 1963 featherbedding cost railroad carriers $592 million compared to industry earnings of  $681 million.^[9] At the time light bulb jokes were popular and  unions would be ridiculed for their mischief.  For example, ‘how may union members does it take to change a light bulb?

Three, one to carry the ladder, one to carry the light bulb and one screw it in. Or four, add a ladder holder. Or…

With the market having ascended to power,^[10] has it, like labor fifty years ago, abused its power? To answer that we turn the Financial Services Industry, or what is classified as Finance and Insurance (FI). So, how many stockbrokers does it take to change a lightbulb?

FI serves a unique role. It channels money from savers to borrowers to facilitate the economy; savers are paid for providing capital for businesses to grow. It also acts as conduit for the Fed to conduct its open market operations, a key component of monetary policy. Meaning the Fed buys and sells government bonds through FI; in a way giving FI first dibs on the money it puts in the economy—

or takes out. Technically the Fed acts through banks, but the separation of banking from other financial services ended long ago and was formalized with the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 that allowed for the merging of banking, brokerage and insurance.

While FI is not directly responsible for the economy it is intimately tied to it because of its responsibilities; to facilitate the Fed’s policies and act as a financial intermediary. Arguably, its end product is the economy, or GDP (Gross Domestic Product, the dollar value of the overall economy). So, how much are we paying FI to generate economic growth?

By looking at the GDP contribution of FI relative to GDP, FI/GDP, over time we can get an approximation of FI’s efficiency. In 1972 the year before the Float began FI accounted for 4.2% of GDP^[11], by 2023 it accounted for 7.2 % of GDP.^[12] Meaning it took an additional 3% (7.2 % – 4.2%) of GDP in 2023 to get the same relative economic output (GDP) we had in 1972. There was a financial featherbedding of sorts.

The value of 3% of GDP in 2023 was $831B (.03% X ($27,720.7T). Let’s not forget this has been going on for over fifty years since the Float began in 1973, to the tune of trillions of dollars.

What makes this take even more egregious is that productivity for the economy overall improved 43% since 1972.^[13] Had FI performed commensurately its GDP contribution would have fallen to 2.9% (4.2%/1.143%) for a savings of $360B ((4.2%-2.9 %)X ($27,720.7T) in 2023. Combining the lost productivity gains with the 3% increase in FI since 1972, arguably 4.3% of our economy was redundant in 2023.

The surge in transactions was because of financialization—the process of converting business, government and even personal assets into financial instruments. Through securitization existing securities were churned into new securities, loans were bundled and turned into tradeable securities…Privatization saw government assets turned into tradeable financial assets. New financial markets such as currency trading and derivatives opened up. Derivative securities (leveraged securities whose value is based on another security), almost nonexistent prior to the Float, had an estimated notional value (the face value of the underlying instrument it is derived from) globally of $715 Trillion (6/23 BIS).^[14] This is for OTC derivatives and does not include exchange traded ones.

Look at it this way, the Spanish needed large galleons to haul all their ill-gotten booty from the Americas back home—today we have privatization, securitization…and electronic transfer.

There is more. The Fed’s easy money and deregulation has made financial engineering a profitable business strategy. Private Equity (Leveraged Buyouts) accounted for 6.% of GDP in 2022^[15]. PE restructures and does not make anything new; and does so painfully as Oliver Stone showed us in Wall Street. Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner in their book, They Are the Plunderers, exposed the behavior of PE, calling it a money spinning machine…that created little value for society and thinned our country’s social fabric.^[16]

Share buybacks by corporations used to be illegal because it was considered price manipulation. Thanks to the magic of deregulation it became legal in 1982. By 2021 share buybacks were valued at about 2.9% of GDP.^[17]

Quantifying the extent of corporate financial engineering is next to impossible. We can however gauge the portfolio income(investments) of corporations. In 2021 it was about 1.1% of GDP. ^[18] Undoubtedly, this understates the extent of corporate financial engineering. We need only to look to General Electric (GE Finance), General Motors (Ally Finance) and Sears (Discover) to see how significant financial engineering can be to a company’s profitability.

Adding it all together 14.8% (4.3% + 6.5% +2.9% + 1.1%) ($4.1T in 2023) of our economy consists of some form of financial engineering, much of it a paper mirage.

The market, the flagship of capitalism, is predicated on a lie—it is not the best arbiter for decision-making, nor is it efficient. So when you hear the bellyaching and demonizing of welfare queens, the evils of regulation, how bloated and inefficient the government is, or the bogeyman of socialism…don’t take the bait, the speaker is trying to divert your attention from something; usually the looting of government—a tax cut, corporate perks…

Musk and Trump’s crying about government inefficiency means something else is afoot.

Realize the market has a face that reaches into many of our country’s cities and towns. It includes: financial advisors, stockbrokers, hedge funds, bankers, private bankers, money managers, traders, CTAs, CFA`s, private equity firms, investment bankers, institutional salespeople, investment consultants and more. They need to be told the market is a fraud and to stop ripping us off.

So, how many stockbrokers does it take to change a lightbulb?

It has to be in the hundreds, if not thousands, or more. We are talking trillions of dollars in 2023. All those markets, each with their own fiefdom. All those grubby hands, each taking a cut of the action creating one humongous inefficient and self-serving bureaucracy, we call ‘the market.’

Consider. One to screw the light bulb in, another to underwrite a stock on the endeavor, a team to do the due diligence necessary to issue the stock, someone to trade the stock, a retail stockbroker and an institutional salesperson to promote the stock, a fund manager to buy the stock, someone to separate the stock dividend from the stock and sell them as separate securities, …Then there is compliance, legal, the back office…

Cannot forgot all those other financial products—bonds, futures, options, currencies, swaps, ETF’s, commodities…

Madis Senner is a former global bond manager. His latest book is Everything Has Karma. https://motherearthprayers.blogspot.com

1. ‘A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,’ Milton Friedman, NY Sept. 13, 1970 ↑

2. Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman, Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Page 35. ↑

3. Heather Cox Richardson, Democracy Awakening, Pages 45-46. ↑

4. 1981 Inaugural address. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/inaugural-address-1981 ↑

5. https://www.ushistory.org/us/59b.asp?srsltid=AfmBOorcvHhm4gjYX4Jp88aB7HCzx-U59hRer5iAsVW7gU3eo8bmK06d ↑

6. A historical chart of PE’s going back to 1950 shows a surge beginning around 1987. The PE rarely exceeded 20 before 1987 and has consistently traded above 20 since. https://www.stockmarketperatio.com/#google_vignette ↑

7. US Treasury, ‘Labor Unions and the U.S. Economy,’ Exhibit 1. https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-and-the-us-economy ↑

8. Here’s why the US labor movement is so popular but union membership is dwindling,’USA Today, sept 7, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2023/09/04/us-union-membership-shrinking/70740125007/ ↑

9. Featherbedding on the Railroads: by law and by Agreement.” J. A Lipowski, Transportation Law Journal, – 8 Transp. L.J. 163 1976 https://www.law.du.edu/documents/transportation-law-journal/past-issues/v08/featherbedding.pdf ↑

10. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/ ↑

11. FI’ GDP contribution/Total GDP, $51.5B/$1238.3B=4.158%. Per Table 1. Value Added by Industry Group for Selected Yea, Gross Domestic Product by Industry for 1947–86 https://apps.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2005/12December/1205_GDP-NAICS.pdf ↑

12. $1,988.2B/$27,720.7= 7.172%. ‘Table 14. Gross Domestic Product by Industry Group: Level and Change from Preceding Period, Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits (Revised Estimate), and GDP by Industry, Third Quarter 2024, BEA. https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/gdp3q24-3rd.pdf ↑

13. Total Factor Productivity for the economy was 72.796 in 1972 and 104.107 in 2023. 72.796/104.107=1.4301. ↑

14. https://www.bis.org/publ/otc_hy2311.htm ↑

15. Statixta. https://www.statista.com/statistics/469719/private-equity-sector-economic-impact-usa/#statisticContainer ↑

16. Page 17. ↑

17. Share buybacks were valued at $795.5B in 2023 795.5B/$27,720B =2.87%.

18. Buybacks stats–https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sp-500-q4-2023-buybacks-increase-18-0-compared-to-q3–full-year-2023-shows-decline-of-13-8-from-2022-levels-earnings-per-share-impact-continues-to-decline-buybacks-tax-reduced-q4-operating-earnings-by-0-44-and-2023-by-0-40-302091498.html ↑

19. Portfolio Income in 2021 was $248,8 While GDP was $22,997.5B. 248.8/

22,997.5 = 1.08 or 1.1%

Portfolio Income from Table 8: Returns of Active Corporations, Form 1120S, Form 8825, Rental Real Estate Income and Expenses of an S Corporation.’ https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-corporation-income-tax-returns-complete-report-publication-16 ↑

The post How Many Stockbrokers Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Madis Senner.

Black angus, Sauvie Island, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The year was 1975. Actress Sally Struthers had charmed her way into America’s living rooms as Gloria Stivic Archie Bunker’s daughter on the hit sitcom All In the Family, married to “meathead.” But Struthers was known for something else. More prevalent than her appearances on All in the Family were her cloying pitches for the Christian Children’s Fund for which she was trying to use her “Family” fame.

Finally a glib SNL-writer wannabe came out and said what many were thinking when they saw her entreating, eternally earnest face: people were more interested in paying money for Struthers to shut up than helping the hungry children. Ouch.

The same phenomenon happened later with another charity: people began to dislike Jerry Lewis more than the muscular dystrophy telethons he ran.

Struthers’ and Lewis’ charities are not the only ones in which compassion turned against itself and people began to dislike the messenger. Animal exposes can also produce compassion backlash:

Yeah, yeah—we know veal calves are taken from their mothers at birth and allowed to freeze to death. We know chickens miss the knife and get boiled alive. We know newborn male chicks are ground up alive at hatcheries. What else is new? The problem is they still taste good and the cruelty videos ruin your appetite!

No one wants to be called bad and feel bad for their diet—and as long as there is more than one channel on peoples’ devices, they will tune out upsetting images.

 If farm practices are so cruel, why do restaurants, grocers and the government allow them people think. Aren’t there laws?

Animal Decimations

There is another backlash in addition to ridiculing empathy appeals—commercial interests.

If ever there were an appropriate use of the term “countless,” it is for the millions of farmed birds killed recently to prevent further spread of bird flu and profits.

Notice how big food and news outlets funded by big food have avoided displaying landfills of depopulated animals and terminated chickens? It might ruin people’s appetites… and sales!  (Of course, some of the terminated animals were fed to other animals—why waste good “protein”? Is that how bird flu got in cows’ milk, Big Food? Economies of scale?)

Like Covid, the current avian flu that is morphing to cows, pigs, pets and zoo animals before our very eyes was abetted—if not begun—by animal mistreatment. Most scientific studies attribute the first Covid—SARS—to practice of eating civet cats and raccoon dogs and slaughter-while-you-wait wet markets.

How does a virus mutating in the US spread so quickly to birds, pigs, cows and other animals? The oppressive incarceration of factory farming.

New York Times’ Columnist Nick Kristof Was Moved By Images

New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristof was no wild-eyed vegan but this is what he wrote after video of chickens legally boiled alive was released.

“Workers grab the birds and shove their legs upside down into metal shackles on a conveyor belt. The chickens are then carried upside down to an electrified bath that is meant to knock them unconscious. The conveyor belt then carries them–at a pace of more than two chickens per second–to a circular saw that cuts open their necks so that they bleed to death before they are scalded in hot water and their feathers plucked. Even when the system works as intended, the birds sometimes have legs or wings broken as they are shackled, the investigator said. And when it doesn’t work correctly, the birds’ end can be horrifying.”

Since Kristof wrote this, the slaughter line speeds have increased over the vehement objections of 26 groups of poultry worker representatives, worker rights advocates, occupational safety experts, animal right advocates, consumer rights advocates and public and community health organizations.

Upsetting Photos Can Work

Yes, a gory and emotional photo can make a difference if not censored by commercial interests or ridiculed. Who remembers “The Vulture and the Little Girl,” a 1993 photograph by Kevin Carter of a collapsed, famine-stricken child in Sudan with a vulture ready to pounce a few feet away?  Papers and magazines around the world published the photo and it was critical to fund raising efforts and famine relief that followed.

The post Can Photos Change Our Eating and Buying Habits and Politics?  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Martha Rosenberg.

The last few months have been a tumultuous time for National Park Service employees. After President Donald Trump took office, the federal agency laid off roughly 1,000 employees in a purge dubbed the Valentine’s Day massacre. Then, after two judges ruled that the layoffs were unlawful, they were rehired. Now, as the Department of Government Efficiency begins executing an official and much larger plan to slash the federal workforce, many employees are anxiously awaiting the next round of cuts. The White House has reportedly directed the agency to reduce its workforce by as much as 30 percent in the coming months. 

Despite the agency’s murky future, some changes are clear: As the days get warmer, the numbers of visitors to the parks will begin to tick up. As spring gives way to summer, the Western landscape will begin to dry out, and the risk of drought and wildfires will also increase. The stakes for the climate — and for the parks in the face of climate-fueled disasters — couldn’t be higher.

“Cities and places that are more developed are more resistant to changes in climate, but in these wild areas, we can see more warning signs, more indicators if the patterns start changing dramatically,” said one National Park Service employee. “With all of these positions lost, there will be no one on watch anymore.”

The employee, who works at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California, was among those laid off in February and rehired. He returned to work on Saturday and requested anonymity to speak freely without fear of reprisal. The February layoffs targeted probationary employees who had been hired or promoted within the last year. 

National parks are on the frontlines of climate change. Temperatures in the parks have increased at double the rate of the country as a whole in part due to the fact that they are located in extreme environments, including at high elevations and in especially arid places. Many parks are now drying out faster than they ever have, resulting in larger wildfires, while others are facing unprecedented flooding. In Sequoia National Park, for instance, the giant sequoia trees, which have evolved with fires, have been unable to withstand the wildfires of recent years and are dying at unprecedented rates. Meanwhile, parts of the park had to be closed in 2023 because severe flooding washed away roadways.  

Grist spoke with five former and current park employees about the role staff play in protecting the parks and the climate implications of the Trump administration’s policies for the National Park Service. Aside from the interpreters and rangers who work directly with the public, the agency employs biologists, hydrologists, geologists, and conservation managers who track, study, and actively protect the ecosystems they work with. Crews also remove invasive species in an effort to preserve native species and make the landscape less flammable. Some employees are also working to move species at risk of extinction due to climate change, such as the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, to other parts of the park in a process called managed relocation. Many of the staff who study burn areas and the impacts of fire on native species also serve as a secondary fire-fighting force when needed. If the agency’s workforce is reduced dramatically, it’s unclear how much of this work can continue, they said.

“Most of those positions have the least protections to begin with, so they’re the first ones on the chopping block,” the Sequoia and Kings Canyon employee said. 

In addition to potential staff losses, a portion of the funding from two landmark federal laws — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — remains frozen, further jeopardizing the agency’s work. A spokesperson for the agency did not respond to questions about the firings or frozen funding. 

The National Park Service has been working to prepare for a warming world. It has had an ecosystem inventory and monitoring program in place since 1998 and a climate change response program since 2010. In recent years, it invested in building out both programs to detect and respond to the rapid changes in ecosystems and the growing number of disasters taking place in the parks. It also trained thousands of rangers, educated the public about the impacts of climate change on the parks, and adopted a national framework to help park staff decide which ecosystems to prioritize saving. In 2023, the agency developed a plan to electrify park vehicle fleets and buildings to reduce the parks’ overall greenhouse gas emissions.  

The Biden Administration provided funding for a number of these initiatives through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Congress passed in 2022 and 2021, respectively. The agency used the funding for landscape restoration, invasive species removal, and integrating Indigenous knowledge with scientific research and restoration work. Funds from the Inflation Reduction Act alone directed $700 million toward hiring more staff and better preparing the parks’ natural, cultural, and historic resources to withstand a changing climate. Since the parks also serve as carbon sinks by storing planet-warming gases in soil, wetlands, and forests, thirty five parks received funding to restore grasslands and the seedbanks that support them. But as funding for such initiatives remains frozen and the potential for mass layoffs looms large, the future of these projects is now uncertain. 

Terri Thomas, a retired natural resources manager who worked in Crater Lake, Yosemite, and Everglades National Parks, said she is particularly concerned about the potential impact of weakening the inventory and monitoring program, which collects scientific information about how a park’s native plants, animals, and birds are evolving.

“Parks are increasingly considering measures such as managed relocation to protect at-risk species by moving them beyond their historical range to locations with more favorable biotic or climatic conditions,” said Thomas. “Without the staff and their scientific and institutional knowledge, these actions may not occur, and species could be lost.”

The agency’s restoration work, some of which is dependent on federal funding, is also on the chopping block. In 2016, Yosemite National Park’s Ackerson Meadow, a 400-acre parcel of formerly privately-owned land, was gifted to the National Park Service. The park and several conservation nonprofits are working to restore the land, which is home to multiple endangered plants and animals, a large meadow, and a vast network of wetlands.

“It’s an ongoing process of improving the hydrology and function of a meadow system, and one of the benefits is carbon sequestration,” said Jesse Chakrin, executive director of The Fund for People in Parks and a former park ranger. “Not only does it provide clean water, but the peat and the soils there are incredible carbon sinks.”

The number of visitors to the national parks has been increasing steadily since the pandemic and reached a new record of nearly 34 million people last year. But a recent internal park memo forbade employees from publicizing the number, in part because public awareness of this growth might spur more concern about the cuts to staff and funding. In years past, Chakrin, said that kind of bump would have likely resulted in more resources for the agency. Now, he said, “we’re in a totally new arena of operations at this point, and [parks are] trying to meet this increased demand with potentially a lot less staff down the road.”

The agency will be allowed to hire 5,000 seasonal employees this summer, but Chakrin and others worry about the lack of institutional knowledge moving forward. “It’s a real problem when you don’t have continuity of leadership because these [climate resiliency] projects require effort and dedication over long periods of time. The damage being done under this administration will have an impact for decades.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump takes aim at the people who protect national parks from climate change on Apr 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Twilight Greenaway.

The leviathan has been heard many times since, but never seen. Some suspect it might have some deformation that alters its voice. Others think it might simply exhibit a highly unusual vocalization — a tenor among baritones. But Marine biologist John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research Collective suggests another possibility: “The loneliest whale,” so named because there may be no one to respond to its unique call, may not be an anomaly, but a clue.

Calambokidis, who has spent more than 50 years studying cetaceans, suspects Whale 52 may be a hybrid: Part blue whale, part fin whale.

Such a creature, often called a flue whale, is growing more common as warming seas push blues into new breeding grounds, where they are increasingly likely to mate with their fin relatives. A survey of north Atlantic blues published last year found that fin whale DNA comprised as much as 3.5 percent of their genome, a striking figure given the two species diverged 8.35 million years ago. If Whale 52 is indeed a hybrid, its presence suggests genetic intermingling among Balaenoptera musculus, as blues are known among scientists, and Balaenoptera physalus has been occurring for decades, if not longer. The North Atlantic findings suggest it is accelerating.

Cetacean interbreeding has been documented before, notably among narwhals and belugas and between two species of pilot whales, combinations attributed largely to warming seas pushing these animals into new territory and closer proximity. But hybridization has been more closely studied among terrestrial creatures like the pizzly bears born of grizzlies and polar bears. It is scarcely understood in marine mammals, and little is known about what intermingling will mean for the genetics, behavior, and survival of the largest animal to have ever lived.

“Blue whales are still struggling to recover from centuries of whaling, with some populations remaining at less than 5 percent of their historical numbers,” Calambokidis said. While the number of confirmed hybrids remains low, continued habitat disruption could make them more common, eroding their genetic diversity and reducing the resilience of struggling populations.

Before the arrival of genomics 30 years ago, marine biologists identified hybrids primarily through morphology, or the study of physical traits. If an animal displayed the features of two species — the dappled skin of a narwhal and stout body of a beluga, for example — it might be labeled a hybrid based on external characteristics or skeletal measurements. Anecdotal evidence might also play a role: Historical whaling logs suggest blues and fins occasionally interbred, though such pairings went largely unconfirmed. But morphology can, at best, only reveal the first-generation offspring of two distinct species.

By analyzing DNA, marine biologists like Aimee Lang can now identify intermingling that occurred generations ago, uncovering a far more complex history than was previously understood. This new level of detail complicates the picture: Are flues becoming more common, or are researchers simply better equipped to find them? As scientists probe the genetic signatures of whales worldwide, they hope to distinguish whether hybridization is an emerging trend driven by climate change, or a long-standing, overlooked facet of cetacean evolution.

In any case, some marine biologists find the phenomenon worrisome because flues are largely incapable of reproducing. Although some females are fertile, males tend to be sterile. These hybrids represent a small fraction of the world’s blue whales — of which no more than 25,000 remain — but the lopsided population of the two species suggests they will increase. There are four times as many fins as blues worldwide, and an estimate of the waters around Iceland found 37,000 fins to 3,000 blues. 

“Three thousand is not a very high density of animals,” said Lang, who studies marine mammal genetics at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So you can imagine if a female blue is looking for a mate and she can’t find a blue whale but there’s fin whales all over the place, she’ll choose one of them.”

This has profound implications for conservation. If hybrids are not easily identifiable, it could lead to inaccurate estimates of the blue whale population and difficulty assessing the efficacy of conservation programs. More troubling, sterile animals cannot contribute to the survival of their species. Simply put, hybridization presents a threat to their long-term viability.

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“If it becomes frequent enough, hybrid genomes could eventually swamp out the true blue whale genomes,” Lang said. “It could be that hybrids are not as well adapted to the environment as a purebred blue or fin, meaning that whatever offspring are produced are evolutionary dead ends.”

This could have consequences for entire ecosystems. Each whale species plays a specific role in ensuring marine ecosystem health by, say, managing krill populations or providing essential nutrients like iron. Hybrids that don’t play the role evolution has assigned to them undermine this symbiotic relationship with the sea. “Those individuals and their offspring aren’t fully filling the ecological niche of either parent species,” Calambokidis said.

All of this adds to the uncertainty wrought by the upheavals already underway. Many marine ecosystems are experiencing regime shifts — abrupt and often irreversible changes in structure and function — driven by warming waters, acidification, and shifting prey distributions. These alterations are pushing some cetacean species into smaller, more isolated breeding pools.

There is reason for concern beyond blue whales. Rampant interbreeding among the 76 orcas of the genetically distinct and critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale population of the Pacific Northwest is cutting their lifespans nearly in half, by placing them at greater risk of harmful genetic traits, weakened immune systems, reduced fertility, and higher calf mortality. Tahlequah, the southern resident orca who became known around the world in 2018 for carrying her dead calf for 17 days, lost another one in January. The 370 or so North Atlantic right whales that still remain may face similar challenges.

Some level of cetacean interbreeding and hybridization may be inevitable as species adapt to climate change. Some of it may prove beneficial. The real concern is whether these changes will outpace whales’ ability to survive. Flue whales may be an anomaly, but their existence is a symptom of broader, anthropogenic disruptions. 

“There are examples of populations that are doing well, even though they have low genetic diversity, and there are examples where they aren’t doing well,” said Vania Rivera Leon, who researches population genetics at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts. “They might be all right under current conditions, but if and when the conditions shift more, that could flip.”

“The effect could be what we call a bottleneck,” she added. “A complete loss of genetic diversity.”

These changes often unfold too gradually for humans to perceive quickly. Unlike fish, which have rapid life cycles and clear population booms or crashes, whales live for decades, with overlapping generations that obscure immediate trends. There have only been about 30 whale generations since whaling largely ceased. To truly grasp how these pressures are shaping whale populations, researchers may need twice that long to uncover what is happening beneath the waves and what, if anything, Whale 52 might be saying about it.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What ‘the world’s loneliest whale’ may be telling us about climate change on Apr 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Avery Schuyler Nunn.

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

Lawmakers and advocates have slammed New York City Mayor Eric Adams and called for changes in the wake of ProPublica’s investigation into a secretive, problematic police unit led by allies of the mayor.

ProPublica found that the mayor championed the New York City Police Department’s Community Response Team despite a pattern of aggressive and often abusive policing flagged by department officials. An officer in the unit killed a motorcyclist after swerving his police car into him. A team commander punched and kicked a driver in the head. And another commander shoved a man into a car window after the man complained about being stopped for no apparent reason.

Two of the unit’s founders, who are close to the mayor, have their own problematic records.

One, Chief of Department John Chell, once shot a man in the back, killing him. While Chell argued he fired by accident, a jury in a civil suit determined the shooting was intentional. The jury awarded the man’s family $2.5 million dollars. Chell did not respond to requests for comment.

The other CRT leader, Kaz Daughtry, has been repeatedly found by the city’s police oversight agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, to have engaged in misconduct, including pointing a gun at a motorcyclist and threatening to kill him. Daughtry was docked 10 vacation days for that. Daughtry did not respond to requests for comment. Adams recently made him deputy mayor for public safety.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos told ProPublica that Adams’ “reliance on cronyism makes New York City less safe.” She added, “People like Chell and Daughtry should have never been trusted with the authority they were given — and wouldn’t have been by a serious mayor. If we’re going to have a professional police department and real community policing, the rot needs to be cut out.”

Local civil rights organizations, meanwhile, demanded that the Community Response Team be shuttered. “It’s time to dismantle this unit,” said the New York Civil Liberties Union in a statement.

“The CRT is a dangerous unit, and ProPublica’s reporting shows it operates without accountability under the protection of a corrupt and compromised mayor,” said civil rights group LatinoJustice. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “should disband this unit.”

The Community Response Team was started in the early days of Adams’ administration. It focused on so-called quality-of-life issues, such as unlicensed motorcyclists joyriding in groups, which Adams had identified as a priority. “Our mayor has given us the mandate to start playing offense out here,” Chell told a local TV station in 2023.

But Tisch may be reducing the role of the CRT. At a recent City Council hearing — held on the day ProPublica’s story published — the commissioner described how she is changing the NYPD’s approach to the quality-of-life issues that have long been the CRT’s focus.

Tisch said the department is shifting away from using centralized units such as CRT for these problems and moving instead to rely on local officers at precinct houses.

“Over the past several years, quality-of-life enforcement at the NYPD has been led by a unit called CRT,” Tisch said. “We are proposing to create a quality-of-life division at the NYPD so that we can make precinct commanders and the resources that they control responsible for quality-of-life complaints.”

Asked about the unit and the commissioner’s comments at a recent mayoral press conference, Adams offered support for the team.

“CRT is here,” the mayor said. “I support all my units. And if they don’t all stand up and do the job the way they’re supposed to do, those who don’t will be held accountable.”

Over the past two years, New Yorkers have filed at least 200 complaints alleging improper use of force by CRT members, according to Civilian Complaint Review Board records obtained by ProPublica. Another NYPD team with a similar size and mandate has had about half as many complaints.

The scrutiny of the CRT will almost certainly continue. One of the police department’s oversight agencies, the office of the inspector general for the NYPD, has been digging into the unit. The watchdog put out a report last fall criticizing the CRT’s “lack of public transparency” and “absence of clear rules.” A spokesperson said that the unit is still under investigation.

The role of the CRT was not the only reform related to ProPublica’s reporting that Tisch discussed in her recent testimony. The commissioner also said the NYPD has stopped its policy of throwing out misconduct cases without looking at the evidence. ProPublica investigated that practice last fall and found that the department ended hundreds of cases of alleged misconduct simply because it had received the referrals from civilian investigators within three months of a deadline for discipline.

The cases had already been investigated and substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board and were sent to the NYPD for disciplinary action. In one case, an officer punched a man in the groin, the oversight agency found. In another, officers tackled a young man and then wrongly stopped and searched him.

An NYPD spokesperson said the department has already begun processing such cases again.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Eric Umansky.

This will touch on something that is unusual about how I use programming languages in general. The common practice in the industry is one that involves very slow feedback loops, these things we call compile-test cycles: edit, compile, test. I tend to use programming languages that are much more interactive. This is the family of programming languages that come down to us from the communities of LISP and SmallTalk, primarily. In these languages, you’re engaged in a conversation with the computer — your program is running the whole time, you’re modifying it while it’s running, and you can inspect the state within the program to see what’s happening.

This is particularly good for exploratory programming, but also for art making. I can have a sketch running that is using a generative system I’ve created to produce some kind of visual effect. I could think, “What if this parameter were slightly different?” and instead of building a bespoke control panel to do that, I can execute a tiny snippet of code inside my editor that changes what’s happening in the program, so I’m still working in the same medium and I don’t need to switch to a different tool.

I might start with a blank canvas with a loop running that is redrawing something, but it doesn’t know what it’s redrawing yet. Then I will gradually add elements, and those elements may have some innate structure. They may be drawn from nature in some way. Often, in my work, I will start with some natural system I found intriguing, and I’ll think, “What would have to happen geometrically to create a thing that has a form like that?” Then I’ll try to build a system where I’m planting the seed, but the growth happens within the simulation.

I also do a lot of work that is inspired by different periods of art. Maybe there will be something Bauhaus-inspired; I’ll look at a pattern Kandinsky drew by hand and think, “What if I wanted an infinite number of those that were all as good as the one he did by hand? What would I need to tell the computer for it to know [how to do that]?” In that sense, my artwork is often at that meta level. I’m less interested in the single-object output than I am interested in the underlying system that makes things of that nature possible.

Your background is traditionally technical. How has that influenced your identity or your sense of aesthetics as an artist?

I don’t regard scientists and artists as fundamentally different kinds of people. In fact, I regard them as more alike than they are different.

The sort of division you see among people in modern American culture is, to me, a cultural artifact; it’s just an accident of education. I would say the same thing about athletics. The jocks versus geeks division is an entirely synthetic thing that arose in post-1950s America and spread in a diseased way to other parts of the world. There’s nothing about being good at using your nervous system to move your body through space that would make you bad at using your nervous system to reason about geometry.

Based on some early tests that show an aptitude or a proficiency, we’ve narrowly focused people into what we think is going to be the box in which they will perform, when we should be spending more time cultivating what people are innately and immediately good at but also filling in the rest of the profile. So if you’re somebody who finds mathematics easy but is intimidated by the idea of drawing classes, then you should be doing that. These things are all aspects of humanity, and it’s a mistake to leave any of them behind.

In your 2019 ClojuTRE talk on computational creativity, you gave a brief survey of historical definitions of creativity. After absorbing all of those, where do you net out? What grand unified theory of creativity do you subscribe to?

I think it’s the fundamental aspect that makes us human beings. Creative problem-solving is the thing that we do better [than any other species]. Communication is the other thing that we do better, which allows us to do creative problem-solving in groups. If you want to know why we’ve spread over the entire world and lived in every kind of ecosystem successfully, it’s because we’ve been able to creatively solve problems along the way. Without that, I don’t think we’re really people. Leaving aside your creative drives as an individual is a mistake, because it’s leaving aside your birthright as a human.

A question in the AI discourse right now is whether AI will ever be able to create the way a human does. Large language models can create reasonable facsimiles of mediocre writing and drawing, but that sort of path-breaking creative synthesis still seems to be uniquely human. As someone who has been in this field for a long time, what do you think is coming in terms of the influence of AI?

To touch on the first part of what you said, about mediocrity: when you have a big statistical model that is essentially taking the sum and then the average of the internet, whether it’s in words or pictures, then you can expect the output to be [average] by definition. Now, you can steer these models to get you somewhat surprising outputs, and that’s cool. I have some friends who train their own models and build complex workflows to come up with things that are very nice in terms of the outputs they achieve. For me, mostly, if I’m using a prompt to an LLM to generate an image, I can get an output that looks okay to good, because I word good and I have enough taste to pick the images that I think are okay. But after I’ve done that, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything, because I don’t feel like there’s any of me in the output.

I think a lot of where our good stuff comes from is actually from how the act of making the art changes us as individuals. Ages ago, I went to art school at night while I was doing a startup in Silicon Valley. I’d been a lifelong musician, and playing music my whole life meant that I heard everything differently. When I hear the leaves rustling, I hear the rhythm of the leaves rolling along the ground. When I hear the whistle on my kettle, I know what pitch it is. So I thought, “I’ll go to art school, and maybe it will change the way I see.” And of course it did. There’s no way you can learn to draw in charcoal and capture light and shadow without it changing the way you see everything for the rest of your life.

What if we take away the need to do any of those things to produce those outputs? Then we get an entire generation of people who do not transform themselves into having a higher level of perception. What does that do for our ability to discriminate between what is just AI slop and what is actually something amazing and beautiful? It’s leaving behind part of our birthright as humans, to outsource some of the best stuff we have going to the machines, even if the machines can do it.

Also, the more stuff there is, the more sifting has to be done to find the good stuff. Making a machine for the unlimited production of mediocre junk means that the signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse all the time, and I dislike this vigorously.

On the other hand, I think these technologies can become the components of amazing engineering solutions later on. An example of this, not in the artistic context, is that I took some LLMs and I attached them to a query apparatus for WikiData, the database version of Wikipedia. I was able to use the LLM to get the data into the system from natural language. Then I do a query against this fact database, and then I take the series of dry facts that it returns and have it reformatted as nice, flowing prose. So I get something that you can get into and out of with human language that doesn’t hallucinate any details, and this is actually immediately useful.

I think many things of that nature are coming. Artistic tools where the trained model is more like a paintbrush and less like an outsourced cheap artist are going to be extremely powerful. In cinema, I think we’ll see the cost of making movies drop to one-one-hundredth of the time and one-one-hundredth of the cost using these kinds of tools, because CGI is such an important part of film production already. In this sense, when the good tools come out of it, you will see actual artists be able to do more and better.

Have you been able to find a balance between the things you do to pay the bills and the things you do to satisfy an artistic impulse? Do you find the same amount of creativity and joy in your work at Applied Sciences as you do in the art you make?

Here, I have to start by saying that I’m in a position of ridiculous privilege. I came of age at a time when the things I liked to do for fun were among the most lucrative things you could do for a living.

Throughout my career, I have been able to work on only things I’m interested in and be paid very well for them, both on the science and programming side and also on the art side. Obviously, I make more money from the tech stuff than the art stuff. But in years when I’m more active, like in 2020, I made enough that I could have made a living in Berlin just from the art side. This is possible. It’s difficult and it requires a lot of luck, but it is possible. So I’m in the weird position where I don’t have to choose between the things I love and the things that pay the bills because everything I get paid for is also something I love. And I recognize the tremendous privilege of that statement.

What do you think it takes to do that, beyond luck? Are there things a person can do to be more likely to have that kind of outcome?

Having a very active daily practice, and never letting it get away from you, is incredibly important. Björk has a fantastic quote about not letting yourself get gummed up and only releasing something every seven years because it puts you out of the flow of creating: “Don’t hold your breath for five or seven years and not release anything, and then you’ve just got clogged up with way too much stuff… You lose contact to the part of you, your subconscious, that’s writing songs all the time, and the part of you that’s showing it to the world… That’s more important, to sustain that flow, than to wait until things are perfect.”

Whatever it is that you do, you have to really do it. If you have a choice between doing it for three hours on Sunday or doing it for 15 minutes a day for the rest of the week, do it 15 minutes a day, because what you do every day is what your brain is working on when you’re not paying attention. Your subconscious is making progress on the things you do constantly. There’s a bowdlerization of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that gets quoted a lot, which is that excellence is just a function of habit. It’s what you do repeatedly. Lean into it. Do the work.

And — this is the bad news, because many programmers or artists are not necessarily interested in standing up on a chair and shouting about themselves in public—if you do beautiful work and nobody sees it, you’re not going to have a good career. You have to find a way to surface what you’re doing.

If it were five to 10 years ago, I would say to get a Twitter account, communicate with the kinds of people who are interested in the kind of thing you do, post all of this work that you’re doing as your daily practice, and you will be noticed. Today, it’s a more complicated situation. Some arsonists have set fire to Twitter and it’s now full of smoke and dead bodies, so very few people you would want to find your work will go to that place. I think we’re in an interregnum where there isn’t a good public space to demonstrate excellence for most arts. But it is important that you find a way to do that, or you will likely go unnoticed.

I also wanted to ask you about your time AT&T Research, formerly Bell Labs. Bell Labs has a mythical place in tech lore. It was a hotbed of innovation and a Schelling point for practically every computer science pioneer you’ve ever heard of. Did that still penetrate the company’s DNA when you were there?

It was definitely a unique environment. First, as in any such situation, it was the people. You had a large concentration of brilliant people all in one place. That’s always a good thing.

The facility where I worked, the Claude Shannon Lab, was in a leafy suburb in New Jersey. We would go down to eat in the cafeteria, and there were floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and we would see deer outside. In my wing, the people in the other offices were Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++, and David Korn, who created KornShell. I used to ride in his minivan from downtown Manhattan, because there were a bunch of us who preferred to live in the city. So the vibe had mostly to do with the people, and then the facility itself being the perfect leafy campus environment, but tuned for grown-ups — well, eternally Peter Pan grown-ups.

We did some great work there, even though when I worked there it was after the heyday. Unix was invented around the time I was born, so I missed out on all those great things. But I know most of those people because I was very young when I got started in the industry, and they weren’t dead yet. Some of them are still walking around. So I have all the stories, I’m happy to report. The vibe, I think, was still similar, but obviously the level of work, while good, wasn’t as world-shaking as it was earlier in the 20th century.

Why do you think that was? Was it a function of something changing in the way the work was supported?

There were a couple of things. One is that the way research was supported changed. Here we come back to that idea of patronage. Both artists and scientists have in common that they do their best work when they are left alone and allowed to chase their own curiosity and their own aesthetics and their own feelings. The appetite and the surplus to allow that has decreased year on year since the middle of the 20th century.

There was a period where this was really celebrated, and it was considered a good use of funds to have people do things that may pay you back nothing but also may give you a whole different world. You would fund it with some faith in the fact that if the people are talented enough, something good will come out of it.

After the Reagan–Thatcher revolution, that became less of a thing. Ideologically, everything shifted to this idea that you should have a return-on-investment angle on what happens. And because you can’t predict the outcome of research, it is effectively impossible to have a return on investment attitude towards it.

A great example of this is the iPhone. The capacitive touch display was invented 25 years before that at Bell Labs by somebody who was just chasing their own interest. If that person hadn’t had the opportunity to plant those seeds, then Apple could not have reaped the benefits later. Right now, I feel like we’ve really shifted towards reaping, and left sowing to be somebody else’s problem. This will continue to harm us in the future, because if we keep doing basically the same things over and over again, we won’t have any new seed corn.

There are certainly little pockets where that focus on something other than ROI still exists. But I agree. It feels like everyone recognizes the value of something like Bell Labs, yet very few people have the risk appetite or long-term thinking to fund that anymore.

It’s not just the absence of a Bell Labs sort of thing. There are other social opportunities available that are not followed. For example, I was talking to some people who will remain nameless but who are very high in an organization that makes a popular search engine and browser. I wanted them to fund some improvements to a text editor called Emacs that I’ve been using for nearly 40 years. With a good team working on it and with some actual financial support, a lot could be improved. Around half of their employees use Emacs, so it seemed like it would even pay them back, in some sense. But they told me that the most their enormous, many-billions-a-year company could possibly [contribute] was funding for some student [project].

This kind of thing is insane. These are public goods that they consume, but they don’t see it as their responsibility to help support that commons. This is a problem with open-source software in general — it is insufficiently supported. It’s shared infrastructure, and shared infrastructure requires shared support.

If you could reshape the way the internet has evolved, where would you start?

I would try to prioritize [changing] some of the infantilizing drives of current products. It is very fashionable at the moment to believe that if a person can’t use something immediately on first seeing it, then it should be thrown away, because people are stupid and have no patience. This is a prevalent way of thinking about user interfaces. But if you look at the user interface of the violin, it’s terrible for quite a while. You have to put in some effort before you can do anything useful with the violin. But then you can do something that you simply cannot do with a tiny children’s xylophone. There are effects you can achieve if you’re willing to put in the work.

I feel like there’s a large area to explore of slightly more difficult things that have a higher ceiling. I believe you should raise the floor as much as you can, but you shouldn’t do it by lowering the ceiling.

I would like to make it more possible for people to, for example, automate things on their own; end user programming is the technical term for this. In a system like HyperCard, this was very effective. People could build systems to run their entire business inside of this very cool piece of software that you ran on a Macintosh. I don’t see a modern thing that is as good. There’s more we can do to democratize the programmatic aspects of owning a computer so that people have more power as individuals.

There have to be these open-box systems where you can play with the parts. Otherwise, you’re strictly a consumer. On Instagram, that’s exactly how I feel. I post my artwork there, but that’s the limit of what I can do. Someone else has decided the limits of my world. And I resent that.

At the end of your talk on creative computation, you give some recommendations for programmers who want to get in touch with their creative side: take an art course, meditate, take psychedelic mushrooms. I assume those recommendations still hold, but what else would you recommend to anybody who wants to connect with their creativity?

The important thing, and I tried to stress it in that talk, is that you can approach things as a reasoning and reasonable agent who is putting one fact in front of another and trying to be very orderly and systematic. That is an important way of being. But there’s another way of approaching things, which is to open yourself up to your own intuition and to feel your way through things. That’s no less important a way of being. You have to have both to be a complete human being. So whether a person is a programmer who isn’t as in touch with their intuition, or they’re an artist who is not as in touch with their ability to be analytical, I feel that whichever side you’re coming from, you should be trying to fill in the part at which you are the weakest so that you can be a more complete person.

For a lot of people, getting in touch with the intuitive side also has to do with the body itself, because many people are very disembodied. So, going to a yoga class, taking up meditation, doing things that allow you to realize that you are an embodied creature, and then starting to listen to how your body is feeling. Having a daily practice of checking in with yourself can automatically and immediately start to open you up to being able to do creative things. If you combine that with the daily practice of journaling or drawing or something else that allows you to focus those feelings and externalize them in some way, very quickly you’ll discover you have an artistic side you never knew was there.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Rebecca Hiscott.

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The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.

The guidance, which was distributed to several staffers last week, comes on the back of multiple new directives to cut off NIH funding to grants that are focused on subjects that are viewed as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities, such as gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, vaccine hesitancy, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change.

“This is an administration where industry voices rule and prevail,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director of The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, a coalition of medical professionals that raises awareness about the health effects of climate change. “This is an agenda item for the fossil fuel industry, and this administration is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants.”

She called the new guidance “catastrophic” and said it would have a “devastating” impact on much-needed research.

As extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and floods, continue to intensify and become more frequent, researchers are increasingly examining the impact climate change has on public health. The NIH, which provides billions of dollars annually for biomedical research across the country, has funded hundreds of grants and programs in recent years devoted to researching this issue.

In 2021, under President Joe Biden, the agency launched the Climate Change and Health Initiative to further coordinate and encourage greater research and training. The initiative received $40 million in congressional appropriations for research in both 2023 and 2024. However, last month, the initiative and two other similar NIH programs devoted to climate change and health were dismantled, according to reporting from Mother Jones.

The latest directive cuts all future climate change and health funding across the agency, regardless of its connection to the previously canceled initiative.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about the directive, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said the agency “is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities.”

“At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,” the spokesperson said. “As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans. We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.”

Climate and health researchers faced hostility during President Donald Trump’s first administration but were able to continue their work, according to Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who served as a federal scientist for four decades.

“Under Trump One, we scratched the word ‘change’ from our work and talked about ‘climate’ and ‘health,’ and that was acceptable,” she said. “If NIH doesn’t study the health impacts of climate, we are not going to be able to prevent some of those health impacts, and we aren’t going to be able to find ways to deal with them.”

In a report from December, the NIH listed numerous ongoing climate change and health projects that it was funding, including research to examine the health impacts of the Maui wildfires in Hawaii, develop models to predict dengue virus transmission by mosquitos, and study the effect of heat on fertility and reproductive functions. The Trump administration has since pulled the report offline.

“We can see with our own eyes how extreme heat and extreme weather are harming people’s health,” said Veena Singla, an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The new NIH directive follows the Trump administration’s broader agenda to gut efforts to document and address climate change. Trump has paused billions of dollars of spending on climate-related causes. He has also issued executive orders aimed at increasing the production of fossil fuels and scaling back the government’s efforts to address climate change.

His administration is also considering a plan to eliminate the scientific research office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which could result in the firing of more than 1,000 scientists, according to The New York Times. Some scientists in that office have also been researching the health effects of climate change, investigating such questions as how rising temperatures might change the body’s response to air pollution and how climate change impacts the amount of toxic chemicals in air and water.

The NIH and White House did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. The EPA did not answer questions about whether research on climate change and health will continue at the agency. In an emailed response to questions from ProPublica, the EPA press office wrote that “The Trump EPA is dedicated to being led by our commitment to the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, unlike Biden EPA appointees with major ethical issues that were beholden to radical stakeholder groups.”

Trump’s perspective on climate change appears to be at odds with that of his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent decades as an environmental attorney. “I believe the climate crisis is real, that humans are causing it, that it’s existential,” he said in an interview last year. HHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions on the secretary’s views.

However, Patel told ProPublica that she did not expect the new health secretary, whose mandate oversees the NIH, to support views that were at odds with the administration’s agenda.

“What we can readily see, from the things that RFK Jr. is allowing to happen and unwilling to weigh in on, he is not going to be an anti-industry voice,” she said. “He is not there to follow the best science.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Annie Waldman and Sharon Lerner.

Image by Nina Zeynep Güle.

“We need clean air, not another billionaire!”

The words slip naturally from my lips, repeated by the crowd outside the Tesla showroom in Manhattan. It’s a go-to chant for Planet Over Profit, the climate justice group I organize with. We want clean air, not wealth inequality, and the two are incompatible.

The action we co-organized on March 8 – in which 6 were arrested for chanting inside the store while over 300 rallied outside – is part of the national #TeslaTakedown campaign, aiming to disrupt Elon Musk’s profits while he guts the federal government in his unelected role leading the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Our action quickly went viral across social media platforms and particularly on X, where dozens of right-wing accounts had a field day with the fact that environmental groups were protesting an electric vehicle company. Many of these comments reaffirmed Musk’s own proclamation that he is doing “more for the environment than any single human on Earth.”

Scrolling through these comments, I was reminded of my family’s own history with Tesla. My father was one of the first thousand people to buy a Model S in the “signature red” exclusive to early buyers. I remember my parents bringing my three siblings and me to a test drive: my mother gasped when my father slammed the gas – no, pedal – and the car shot from 0 to 60 in less than two seconds. The interior was sleek and modern. It was electric.

Like my own family, many wealthy American liberals jumped at the opportunity to buy Teslas and become visible proponents of the clean energy transition. Musk was a darling in Big Tech – after selling PayPal in 2002, he didn’t sit back and enjoy his profits. He kept going, determined to innovate, boasting about his 120-hour work weeks. He seemed like a billionaire who truly cared, who was going to lead us into a green future.

And then, slowly but surely, the great Musk went “crazy,” as so many bumper stickers on Teslas now claim. His biographers debate whether it was stress, mental illness, or rampant drug use driving him mad. Nevertheless, when Musk cozied up to Trump’s side, he was clearly no longer the generous billionaire who would save the planet.

“It was capitalism after all,” Kara Swisher wrote in a March 9 essay for The Atlantic, adapted from her epilogue in Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. She says that Musk and other tech leaders “revealed themselves” in their support of Trump during the 2024 presidential election to want to “reign like kings not just over tech, but over everything everywhere, and all at once.”

But did Musk really “reveal” himself when he came out in support of Trump? The billionaire has behaved like a billionaire for decades: indulging in an environmentally disastrous lifestyle, skirting the law, and clawing for more power. Musk may have been the face of the first electric vehicle company, but he’s done so for profit and power – not our planet.

Musk did not start Tesla; he seized it with money and strong-arm tactics. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning started Tesla in 2003, and invented the technology behind it – they just needed money. Musk was a risk-taking investor who caught their interest, and subsequently became Tesla’s chairman. But Musk quickly stacked the board with people who shared his belief that innovation should take priority over labor and environmental regulations. In 2007, they voted CEO Eberhard out, who said his ousting felt like “a brick to the side of my head.”

Over the years, Tesla has been fined for violating dozens of labor and environmental regulations, according to a comprehensive report from the Revolving Door Project. From 2014-2018, Tesla accumulated ten times more OSHA violations than its top ten competitors combined, and infamously forced factory employees to return to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tesla has settled many lawsuits from employees for severe racial harassment, and Musk is an outspoken critic of workplace unionization.

For a supposedly green company, Tesla’s environmental record is abysmal. Tesla ranks fifth among companies producing the most toxic air pollution nationally. The company’s factory in Fremont, CA, was fined in 2019 for multiple hazardous waste violations and air pollution, and the Austin, TX factory is under criminal investigation for dumping toxic chemicals into the city’s sewers and the nearby Colorado River. Furthermore, the rare minerals required for electric vehicle batteries, including cobalt and lithium, are tied to severe environmental and human rights violations globally.

Musk was never going to save the planet – and neither will any other billionaire. While Musk encourages Americans to buy Teslas, he jets around the world on a private plane. He has claimed climate change alarm is “exaggerated.” He partnered with a coal mining billionaire to elect Trump, and is now working with the latter to gut federal environmental regulations.

Like other billionaires, Musk’s fortune has come at the expense of everyday people, from abusing his employees to calling his opponents criminals. His billions could fund public transportation, housing, healthcare, and education. Instead, he’s taking a chainsaw to all of the government departments which provide those essential services.

That’s why environmentalists are protesting at Tesla – and will continue to do so.

The post Take Telsa Down: A Billionaire Was Never Going to Stop Climate Change appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sophie Shepherd.

North Korea has ordered that parents give their children names that reflect the country’s revolutionary spirit -- and in some cases has even told people to change their names if they sound too South Korean, residents told Radio Free Asia.

It’s another example of pushback against what authorities in Pyongyang view as an infiltration of South Korean capitalist culture.

But it also reinforces recent declarations that South Korea is no longer considered part of the same country, and that in fact South Koreans are no longer part of the same race of people, residents said.

Almost every Korean name has a specific meaning, and in the South, parents have the freedom to choose any name without much interference from the state.

But in the North, the government prefers that children be given names that convey loyalty to the state, sound militaristic or express personal virtues.

Recently, it’s become trendy in North Korea to give children names that have good meanings and are easy to pronounce, a resident from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

For girls, they include Su Bin (outstanding brilliance), Da On (all good things coming), A Ri (noble and precious), or Si A (righteous and pure character).

For boys, there’s Do Yun (inner strength), Ha Yul (the word of God), Ji U (close, similar-minded, friend), and Min So (good citizen).

But these have now somewhat fallen out of favor according to the order -- and residents think it might be because the government is implying they sound kind of South Korean.

Instead, the government has suggested names that convey the party’s eternal love for the people, like Eun Hye (grace), Eun Dok (benevolence), and Haeng Bok (happiness). Or names that reflect loyalty to the party, like Chung Song (loyalty), Chung Sil (Sincerity) and Chung Bok (Devotion).

The resident said that if names sounded too South Korean, people would be required to change them, but didn’t provide any examples of that happening.

Commitment to the revolution

The new naming rules are meant to reinforce commitment to the revolution, the resident said.

“The party’s directive is to name children in a way that preserves Juche ideology and national identity,” she said, referring to the country’s founding ideology of self-reliance.

“This essentially means that children’s names should never be given in a way that could allow the South Korean puppets to be considered as fellow compatriots.”

(The North Korean government often uses the derogatory term “puppets” to refer to South Koreans, implying that the South is a U.S. puppet state.)

The government hopes that if North Koreans have patriotic names, then fewer will share names with South Koreans, the resident said.

Ordinary people are not happy with the order, she said.

“Some people are expressing discontent, saying, that naming a child should be the parents’ decision, not the party’s,” she said. “The authorities are forcing this revolutionary name changes, controlling every aspect of our lives.”

‘Not Loyal’

In some cases, people with a perfectly acceptable given name are made to change it because of their family name, a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA.

“One resident named their child Chung Song (loyalty), but had to change it because their surname is An,” he said.

“An” means peace, but it has the same pronunciation as the word that means “not.”

“The name An Chung Song therefore means ‘not loyal,’ so the authorities ordered the name to be changed,” the second resident said.

When people heard this, they sarcastically started suggesting negative names for people with the name An, he said.

“Maybe Chung Song should change his name to Byon Jol (treacherous), so he’d be An Byon Jol (not treacherous),” the second resident said. “They are laughing at the authorities' behavior.”

He said that most residents consider the order baffling, because the parents chose these names with hopes for their children’s success, and shouldn’t have to change simply because the government thinks they are South Korean.

“If socialism can be shaken by just a name, where is the so-called invincibility of the North Korean system?”

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.

Papua New Guinea being declared a Christian nation may offer the impression that the country will improve, but it is only “an illusion”, according to a Catholic priest in the country.

Last week, the PNG Parliament amended the nation’s constitution, introducing a declaration in its preamble: “(We) acknowledge and declare God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and Holy Spirit, as our Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and the source of our powers and authorities, delegated to the people and all persons within the geographical jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.”

In addition, Christianity will now be reflected in the Fifth Goal of the Constitution, and the Bible will be recognised as a national symbol.

• READ MORE: Other PNG Christianity reports

Father Giorgio Licini of Caritas PNG said that the Catholic Church would have preferred no constitutional change.

“To create, nowadays, in the 21st century a Christian confessional state seems a little bit anachronistic,” Father Licini said.

He believes it is a “cosmetic” change that “will not have a real impact” on the lives of the people.

“PNG society will remain basically what it is,” he said.

An ‘illusion that things will improve’
“This manoeuvre may offer the impression or the illusion that things will improve for the country, that the way of behaving, the economic situation, the culture may become more solid. But that is an illusion.”

He said the preamble of the 1975 Constitution already acknowledged the Christian heritage.

Father Licini said secular cultures and values were scaring many in PNG, including the recognition and increasing acceptance of the rainbow community.

“They see themselves as next to Indonesia, which is Muslim, they see themselves next to Australia and New Zealand, which are increasingly secular countries, the Pacific heritage is fading, so the question is, who are we?” he said.

“It looks like a Christian heritage and tradition and values and the churches, they offer an opportunity to ground on them a cultural identity.”

Prime Minister James Marape, a vocal advocate for the amendment, is happy about the outcome.

He said it “reflects, in the highest form” the role Christian churches had played in the development of the country.

Not an operational law
RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said that Marape had maintained it was not an operational law.

“It is something that is rather symbolic and something that will hopefully unite Papua New Guinea under a common goal of sorts. That’s been the narrative that’s come out from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Waide said.

He said the vast majority of people in the country had identified as Christian, but it was not written into the constitution.

Waide said the founding fathers were aware of the negative implications of declaring the nation a Christian state during the decolonisation period.

“I think in their wisdom they chose to very carefully state that Papua New Guineans are spiritual people but stopped short of actually declaring Papua New Guinea a Christian country.”

He said that, unlike Fiji, which has had a 200-year experience with different religions, the first mosque in PNG opened in the 1980s.

“It is not as diverse as you would see in other countries. Personally, I have seen instances of religious violence largely based on ignorance.

“Not because they are politically driven, but because people are not educated enough to understand the differences in religions and the need to coexist.”

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Noora Ali, 14, was oblivious to the temperature shifts because she had grown up in Turbat, a city around 180 kilometres Southwest of Gwadar, the center of CPEC( China-Pakistan Economic Corridor)–a bilateral project to would facilitate trade between China and Pakistan valued at $46 billion. There was frequent flooding during the monsoon season and blazing heatwaves during the summer, with temperatures rising above 51 centigrade. Compared to other cities in Balochistan, Turbat experiences horrible summers and typical winters. As a result, the majority of wealthy families in the city travel to Gwadar, Quetta, or Karachi during the sweltering summers and return to Turbat during the winters. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) moved Noora’s father, who works there, to the neighboring Coastal city of Gwadar in 2022.

In February of 2022, the sea seemed calmed while boats of the fishermen busily dotted the waters of the Padi Zir (Gwadar’s West bay). It was a typical Thursday morning when rain started pouring down. The rain was so intense that the sea became wild. The roads were washed away, bridges collapsed, streets were inundated with flood water, and the port city became completely disconnected from the rest of the country. Back in Turbat, her ancestral hometown was also submerged under flood water.

Noora had also heard from her schoolmates that Gwadar and Turbat had never experienced such heavy and intense rainfall before. She knew and felt that the temperature of her native city was rising and that Gwadar beneath flood water didn’t seem normal. “This is due to climate change,” her elder brother tells her. At the age of 14, most youth in Pakistan’s Balochistan have no idea what climate change and global warming are, but they are already feeling it impacts.

Like Noora, thousands of children in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Afghanistan are at the risk of climate related disasters, as per the UNICEF 2021 Children’s Climate Risk Index. The report further reiterates that children in these countries have vigorously been exposed to devastating air pollution and aggressive heatwaves, with 6 million children confronting implacable floods that lashed across these countries in the July of 2024.

On November 11 and 22, 2024, over 20 youths urged the world leaders to come up with plans to mitigate the impacts of climate change on children at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among those 20 resolute children was 14-years-old Zunaira Qayyum Baloch, representing the 241.5 million children and women of Pakistan.

Dressed in her traditional Balochi attire, with a radiant smile and resolute in her commitment, Zunaira Qayyum Baloch has startled everyone. Hailing from the far-flung district of Hub in the Southwest of the Pakistan’s Balochistan, Mrs. Baloch went to represent the children of a country whose carbon footprint is next to zero, yet suffering some of the worst climate-related disasters. Her message to world leaders was clear: step up and combat climate-induced inequalities, particularly those affecting women and children.

She had always remained conscious about the changing climate in her city, observing the floods of 2022 that had wrecked havoc in Hub Chowki, initiating awareness programmes and youth advocacy guide training in her home city to advocate for girls right to education and climate change.

“After my father passed away, my mother became the sole breadwinner. She helped us get an education and met all our requirements,” Zunaira explains. “During the catastrophic rains of 2022, an incident changed my perspective on climate change. Rain water had accumulated in the roof of our home and streets were flooded with water. The destruction was so overwhelming, and I realised that such events were no longer rare but increasing constantly.”

Zunaira Baloch basically hails from the Zehri town of the Khuzdar district. With her journey starting from the Zehri town of Balochistan, she became completely determined to make a difference–initiating awareness drives in her community and educating the people particularly children about climate resilience.

During the COP29, she expressed her concerns with the experts about how Pakistan, particularly Balochistan has been detrimentally affected by climate disasters like frequent floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and droughts. Lamenting that climate change was a child-rights crisis, she told the world how changes in the climate had jeopardised the lives of millions of women and children throughout the world.

Asking the world leaders to join determined children like her to combat climate change, she addressed them in the COP29: “Climate change matters to me, and it should matter to you too.”

Both Noora and Zunaira are children’s of a backward region of the world, grappling with the harrowing reality of climate change. Given that Noora represents those children unaware of the technicalities of climate change, Zunaira is a resolute hope for Balochistan, leading children like Noora to recognize and combat the stark reality of climate crisis.

Stark Reality of the Past

Bibi Dureen, 80, is a witness of how climate is continuously transforming. With wrinkles on her face and a pointed nose, she hails from the outskirts of the Kech district in a town called Nasirabad.

“The seasons are changing,” she says, her voice laced with sorrow. “The heatwaves have become more aggressive and floods are common. It all started in 1998 in Turbat. Then in 2007, a devastating flood destroyed our homes, date palm trees, livestock–and worst of all, it took lives.” She pauses, her wrinkled hands trembling.

As she talks to me in front of her thatched cottage, through which sunlight streams in, tears well up in her eyes as she recalls a haunting childhood memory. “I was a small child at that time. It was a pitch-black night and the rain was pouring down mercilessly when a man came shouting that the flood water had reached the fields.” She exclaims, “My mother, desperate to save what little we had, sent her only son, Habib, 16–our family’s only breadwinner–to find the only cow we had in the fields. Neither the cow nor Habib came back. Later some men found his dead body in the jungle.”

In June 2007, when the Cyclone Yemyin hit the coast of Balochistan, it wrought unprecedented damage to the province, particularly Turbat, Pasni and Ormara. It rendered 50,000 homeless within 24 hours, including children. According to reports 800,000 were affected and 24 went missing.

The 2022 floods had a devastating impact across Pakistan, Balochistan being one of the hardest-hit. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) reported that 528 children had died nationwide, 336 from Balochistan.

Tragedy struck again in 2024 when torrential rains engulfed 32 districts of Balochistan, particularly the port city of Gwadar and Kech district. The PDMA put the death toll at 170, 55 of which were children.

These statistics highlight how urgently appropriate plans and proper strategies for disaster preparedness and loss mitigation in Balochistan must be developed. While extreme weather events such as floods become more common, the need to fight climate change has never been greater.

The Double Crisis Facing Girls: Heatwaves, period poverty

Regions in Balochistan have seen severe heatwaves in the past few decades. In May 2017, the mercury rose to a record breaking 53.5 centigrade in Turbat, making the district the second hottest locale in 2017 after Mitribah, Kuwait. During heatwaves, cases of fainting and health-related illness among residents, particularly among children are common. According to a 2023 report by the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Balochistan has seen a 1.8°C rise in average temperature over the past three decades, leading to longer and harsher heatwaves.

Dr Sammi Parvaz, a gynaecologist at the teaching hospital in Turbat, relates that rising temperatures in the district not only contribute to higher dropout rates among school-age girls, but their menstrual cycle is also affected.

“According to the recent research of the National Institute of Health (NIH), menstruation … is severely affected in countries which are vulnerable to climate change and Pakistan is one them,” she explains. “The menstruation in girl children living in extreme heat, such as in Turbat and Karachi, becomes very intense, painful and with cramps.”

Dr Sammi further elaborates that this phenomenon is linked to the increased release of cortisol and estrogen, the hormones which regulate the female reproductive cycle. “Girl children exposed to harsher environments such as severe heat or cold, experience hormonal imbalances leading to irregular periods and severe menstrual cramps. The hospitals in Turbat are frequented by patients suffering from intense cramps or irregular periods.”

Hygiene becomes another pressing issue during floods, especially for young girls. Research published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health states that floodwater contains lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other chemicals which are cited as causes of irregular periods.

Overcoming the stigma around periods is a daunting task, particularly in small towns in Balochistan where cultural norms and practices have a strong hold on communities. During floods, thousands of girls struggle with menstruation amid the disasters and lack of menstruation products. For instance, after the 2022 floods, 650,000 pregnant women and girls in Pakistan were without essential maternal care, with a significant proportion from Balochistan.

Amid all this chaos, climate activists like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch helped raise awareness while women like Maryam Jamali work directly on the ground to ensure that every women has rations in her household and had access to feminine hygiene products during catastrophes.

Madat Balochistan–a non-profit organisation–has supported 31,000+ people across 34 districts in Sindh and Balochistan. With its major work concentrated in and around Quetta, Dera Bugti, Jaffarabad, Jhal Magsi, Sohbatpur, and Khuzdar, the proudly women-led NGO prioritizes women and girls in its work because even on the frontlines, they are bearing most of the cost of climate change, according to its co-founder, Maryam Jamali.

“Our conversations on climate change vulnerability often treat everyone as ‘equal’ in terms of impact, when that is far from the truth. Vulnerability is a multi-dimensional concept and in a country like Pakistan where most of the women and girls are pushed to the margins of society in every way possible–we cannot just overlook their struggles,” says Jamali.

Take the 2022 floods, for example–the most recent catastrophes etched in our memories. Women and girls were responsible for most of the labour when it came to evacuating to safer places. As soon as they did, their needs when it came to menstruation or pregnancy care were completely ignored by aid agencies as they sent out packages or set up medical camps. Most of our work at Madat was compensating for things like this. We worked with midwives to ensure that women who could not stand in lines for ration received it regardless or women who did not want to interact with male doctors didn’t have to. In our housing projects, we prioritize women especially those who don’t have a patriarch in the household because that severely limits their access to resources for rehabilitation.

Floods, heatwaves, and other natural calamities are gender-neutral. However, girls are more likely to be negatively affected. According to the UN Assistant Secretary-General Asako Okai, when disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men. In Pakistan, 80% of people displaced by climate disasters are women and children, and the province of Balochistan is a stark reflection of this statistic.

In patriarchal societies, women and girls are the primary caregivers of the family, and they are the only ones growing crops, doing household chores, and fetching firewood and water. With little or no potable water nearby, girls have to travel far to help their parents, making them vulnerable.

These household responsibilities create an educational gap, and girls are taken out of schools in Balochistan during floods. With Pakistan’s lowest girl literacy rate at just 27 per cent , the International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that the province of Sindh and Balochistan have seen greater educational disruptions due to heatwaves and floods, with the 2022 flood causing more educational institutions closure than the combined two year COVID-19 pandemic.

With 47 percent of it’s child population out of school, extreme heatwaves and recurrent flooding in Balochistan have further compounded this absenteeism. For instance, the 2022 flood damaged or destroyed 7,439 schools in the province, affecting the education of over 386,600 students, 17,660 teachers, and staff members. Reports also mention that most of the government schools were used as flood shelters in the province. In the 2024 floods, 464 schools were again damaged.

The destruction of educational infrastructure has forced many children out of school, contributing to the province’s high out-of-school rate.

Monsoon Brides during floods

Though floodwater is no longer accumulating in the Mulla Band Ward of Gwadar district in Balochistan, the damage it has wrought will stay with the people for a long time for many years. For 16-year-old Gul Naz–a pseudonym–the loss has been devastating.

She was only 16 years when flood water entered their home in 2022. Her father, being a fisherman, struggled to make ends meet, as the sea was completely closed for fishing, cutting off the family’s only source of income.

“I was in the Jannat Market and when I returned home, I was told by my mother that my marriage has been fixed to a man twice my age in exchange for money.” She discloses that her parents were given Rs.50,000 ($178.50) which is a whooping sum for a poor family who survive on around one dollar a day.

“I have two kids now, and I am a child raising a child.”

The sadness in Gul Naz’s voice is palpable, and she isn’t alone in her predicament. During floods and emergency situations, families in Balochistan resort to desperate means for survival. The first and most obvious way is to give their daughters away in marriage for financial relief–a practice that usually surges during monsoon season, earning the name monsoon brides.

In Pakistan’s Sindh province this trend is more prevalent, with a spike in the number of monsoon brides during the last flash floods of 2022. In the Khan Mohammad Mallah Village, Dadu district, approximately 45 were married off in that year, according to an NGO Sujag Sansar which works to reduce child marriages in the region.

Pakistan stands sixth in the world in marriages below age 18. While there has been a reduction in child marriages in Pakistan in recent years, UNICEF warns that extreme weather patterns put the girl children at risk.

Madat Balochistan has also been in the forefront in reducing child marriages in Balochistan. “It’s not intuitive to think of girls’ education or loan relief or housing provision as measures to build climate change resilience, but in our contexts these are the very things that drive vulnerability to climate change,” says Maryam Jamali. “We have been working on supporting farmers with loan relief so that young girls aren’t married off to compensate for the financial burden of loans after a lost harvest. We are also working on initiatives for sustainable livelihoods for women as well as ensuring that young girls in all the communities we work in have access to education despite geographic or financial limitations.”

Maryam Jamali thinks that gender inequality is one of the biggest aspects here which makes it absolutely necessary for a region like Balochistan, where physical vulnerability and socio-economic vulnerability is high, to have young girls at the decision-making table.

“Activists like Zunaira can ensure that when we come up with solutions for climate change, we contextualize them through a gender lens and make sure that this does not become another instance of taking away women’s agency, but becomes an opportunity to involve them in climate change policy decision-making,” Maryam discloses. “ It is rewarding to see the girls we support do great things. One of our girls from Musakhel is studying at Cadet College Quetta, the first in her family to be able to pursue education beyond 8th grade.”

The Way forward

“Extreme weather can fuel conflict and be a threat multiplier,” says Advocate Siraj Gul, a lawyer at the Balochistan High Court, Quetta, citing the recent research published in the journal Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.

Hailing from the Makran division , he stresses that the decades long running insurgency in Balochistan stems from human rights violations, inequality and government negligence. “Climate related catastrophes further destabilise the region’s development. For instance, there was a surge in the number of protests during the 2022 floods in Gwadar, Lasbela and Turbat, reflecting the deep frustration and despair of the people.”

According to Mr. Gul, if children like Zunaira are given a platform to speak and work for Balochistan, they are not merely advocating for the environment; they are working for a more peaceful and tranquil region.

In the impoverished regions of the world where climate change fuels droughts, flood and heatwaves, children are the ones to bear. Some are taken out of school, pushed into labor or given away in marriage but if empowered, can become advocates for change like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch. The world needs to provide climate resilient infrastructure and child-oriented disaster relief programs while the global leaders at COP30 had better ensure that climate-torn regions like Balochistan receive the technical and financial support they desperately need.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Zeeshan Nasir.

A Fijian academic believes Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s failed attempt to garner enough parliamentary support to change the country’s 2013 Constitution “is only the beginning”.

Last week, Rabuka fell short in his efforts to secure the support of three-quarters of the members of Parliament to amend sections 159 and 160 of the constitution.

The prime minister’s proposed amendments also sought to remove the need for a national referendum altogether. While the bill passed its first reading with support from several opposition MPs, it failed narrowly at the second reading.

• READ MORE: Fiji government fails to secure support to make changes to constitution
• Other Fiji politics reports

Video: RNZ Pacific

While the bill passed its first reading with support from several opposition MPs, it failed narrowly at the second reading.

Jope Tarai, an indigenous Fijian PhD scholar and researcher at the Australian National University, told RNZ Pacific Waves that “it is quite obvious that it is not going to be the end” of Rabuka’s plans to amend the constitution.

However, he said that it was “something that might take a while” with less than a year before the 2026 elections.

“So, the repositioning towards the people’s priorities will be more important than constitutional review,” he said.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: Ank Kumar – CC BY-SA 4.0

The time has come for arguably the sporting world’s most famous mafia organisation to select its new chief.  The various turf-conscious representatives of the International Olympic Committee will be busy with the task of finding a replacement for Thomas Bach when ballots are cast at Costa Navarino, Greece on March 20.

Seven candidates have made the list.  They show little risk of cleaning the body’s spotty image.  Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.’s candidacy is a lovely reminder of his father, who was himself made IOC president in 1980.  That Samaranch was not shy about his fascist sympathies, defending, not infrequently, the rule and legacy of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.  “I was with many, many Spaniards with Franco,” he stated at a news conference in 1999.  While the father’s sins should not be visited upon the son, the very fact that a bid is being made for the IOC presidency suggests that this apple did not fall so far from the tree.

In a flawed effort to influence the candidates and what might be called their vision for the games, over 400 athletes from 90 countries have added their names to a letter urging the candidates to prioritise climate change in their policies.  That they think their views make the slightest difference is almost charming.  That they pick climate change as the issue suggests they have slumbered in a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

The IOC has certainly shown interest in easily gulled athletes in recent years.  At points, it has been rather cunning and ruthless in using these unsuspecting sorts to spruce an unrecoverably tarnished brand. The organisation, most notably, trumpeted the role played by some 6,000 sporting individuals in laughable anti-corruption education campaigns during the Paris Olympic Games last year, and the Youth Olympic Games held at Gangwon.

The letter itself has also been pushed by athletes who are already in the employ of the IOC apparatus.  Sailor and British Olympian Hannah Mills, one of the document’s key proponents, is called, without any sense of irony, an IOC sustainability ambassador.  With a sense of wonder, she reflects on the devastation caused by the LA wildfires and how it proved something of an epiphany: “the time is now to set a course for a safe, bright future.”

The letter asks the incoming president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.”  The rise in temperatures and extreme weather were “already disrupting competition schedules, putting iconic venues at risk and affecting the health of athletes and fans.”  Rising heat levels had also raised “real concerns about whether the Summer Games can be held safely in future years, and Winter Games are becoming harder to organise with reliable snow and ice conditions diminishing annually.”

A few of the IOC candidates, mindful of the letter’s publicity, reacted on cue.  Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan professed being impressed by the “powerful message from Olympians around the world”.  World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe expressed his willingness to meet the signatories to “share ideas and initiatives”.

The letter itself is an exercise in mushy contradiction.  The Olympics, pushed by an organisation that runs on the blood of corruption, must count as an environmental and social welfare calamity.  Staging them entails disruptive construction, the depletion of resources, the alteration of landscape.  Their purpose, far from encouraging good will and the stirrings of the social conscience, lies in a promotion of the relevant city and government often at the expense of the disadvantaged citizenry, a naked, propagandistic display of the regime of the day.

The IOC has unashamedly claimed to be a promoter of green policies.  In 2021, it committed to reducing its direct and indirect emissions in the order of 30 per cent, and 50 per cent by 2030.  It puts much stock in the Olympics Forest project, a shiny enterprise that conceals what has come to be described as “carbon colonialism”, which involves the use of misleading carbon offsets and the exploitation of states in the Global South.  Little wonder that this cynical body has been identified as a greenwashing culprit par excellence, a point utterly missed by the letter’s signatories.

The 2024 Paris Olympics, described by organisers as “historic for climate” and “revolutionary” in nature, proved nothing of the sort.  Jules Boykoff, well versed on the politics of the Olympics, preferred a different view, calling the games a “recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability.”

If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals.  At the very least, the games should be dramatically shrunk.  Iconic avenues would be spared.  The safety of athletes and fans would not be an issue.  Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games altogether?  Dear incoming IOC president, you can end the whole charade once and for all.

The post Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics and Climate Change appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Seven candidates have made the list. They show little risk of cleaning the body’s spotty image. Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.’s candidacy is a lovely reminder of his father, who was himself made IOC president in 1980. That Samaranch was not shy about his fascist sympathies, defending, not infrequently, the rule and legacy of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco. “I was with many, many Spaniards with Franco,” he stated at a news conference in 1999. While the father’s sins should not be visited upon the son, the very fact that a bid is being made for the IOC presidency suggests that this apple did not fall so far from the tree.

In a flawed effort to influence the candidates and what might be called their vision for the games, over 400 athletes from 90 countries have added their names to a letter urging the candidates to prioritise climate change in their policies. That they think their views make the slightest difference is almost charming. That they pick climate change as the issue suggests they have slumbered in a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

The IOC has certainly shown interest in easily gulled athletes in recent years. At points, it has been rather cunning and ruthless in using these unsuspecting sorts to spruce an unrecoverably tarnished brand. The organisation, most notably, trumpeted the role played by some 6,000 sporting individuals in laughable anti-corruption education campaigns during the Paris Olympic Games last year, and the Youth Olympic Games held at Gangwon.

The letter itself has also been pushed by athletes who are already in the employ of the IOC apparatus. Sailor and British Olympian Hannah Mills, one of the document’s key proponents, is called, without any sense of irony, an IOC sustainability ambassador. With a sense of wonder, she reflects on the devastation caused by the LA wildfires and how it proved something of an epiphany: “the time is now to set a course for a safe, bright future.”

The letter asks the incoming president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.” The rise in temperatures and extreme weather were “already disrupting competition schedules, putting iconic venues at risk and affecting the health of athletes and fans.” Rising heat levels had also raised “real concerns about whether the Summer Games can be held safely in future years, and Winter Games are becoming harder to organise with reliable snow and ice conditions diminishing annually.”

A few of the IOC candidates, mindful of the letter’s publicity, reacted on cue. Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan professed being impressed by the “powerful message from Olympians around the world”. World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe expressed his willingness to meet the signatories to “share ideas and initiatives”.

The letter itself is an exercise in mushy contradiction. The Olympics, pushed by an organisation that runs on the blood of corruption, must count as an environmental and social welfare calamity. Staging them entails disruptive construction, the depletion of resources, the alteration of landscape. Their purpose, far from encouraging good will and the stirrings of the social conscience, lies in a promotion of the relevant city and government often at the expense of the disadvantaged citizenry, a naked, propagandistic display of the regime of the day.

The IOC has unashamedly claimed to be a promoter of green policies. In 2021, it committed to reducing its direct and indirect emissions in the order of 30 per cent, and 50 per cent by 2030. It puts much stock in the Olympics Forest project, a shiny enterprise that conceals what has come to be described as “carbon colonialism”, which involves the use of misleading carbon offsets and the exploitation of states in the Global South. Little wonder that this cynical body has been identified as a greenwashing culprit par excellence, a point utterly missed by the letter’s signatories.

The 2024 Paris Olympics, described by organisers as “historic for climate” and “revolutionary” in nature, proved nothing of the sort. Jules Boykoff, well versed on the politics of the Olympics, preferred a different view, calling the games a “recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability.”

If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals. At the very least, the games should be dramatically shrunk. Iconic avenues would be spared. The safety of athletes and fans would not be an issue. Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games altogether? Dear incoming IOC president, you can end the whole charade once and for all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Image by Planet Volumes.

Global conflict and uncertainty are nothing new, but since the 2008/09 economic crash, they have worsened exponentially. The arrival of President Trump has dramatically exacerbated the situation, turning turbulence into chaos and anxiety into fear.

Governments and institutions are reeling after just seven weeks of Trump, his vice president J.D. Vance, and Elon “Chainsaw” Musk—figures so extreme they make Trump seem moderate by comparison.

It is impossible to keep track of the carnage (executive orders alone – 73 signed in the first 30 days). The strategy appears to be to overwhelm everyone – the Democrats (who appear shell shocked), foreign governments, the media, and the public, so nobody will notice the details. Since 20 January, a barrage of barbaric policy decisions and executive lunacy has flowed from the Oval Office, often involving actions that shatter tradition, flout the law, and violate the Constitution.

A new world order and shifting alliances are in the air. Could the storm being unleashed by Trump and Co. inadvertently lead to positive structural and systemic change?

Global Disruption

The dominant global structure since the Second World War has been one of U.S. unipolarity, marked by global domination in which America has faced no significant competition or threat from other states. It is from this position—one that, in the American context, has bred increasing levels of paranoia—that Trump speaks when he says the U.S. will “have” Gaza, based on American authority.

Trump appears intent on breaking everything, destabilizing global institutions, and shattering long-held ideals like global unity, shared prosperity, and a “one world” vision. Such concepts are being abandoned as international bodies are attacked and long-standing rules of global exchange are dismantled.

At the stroke of a chunky black pen, the U.S. was formally withdrawn from several United Nations bodies, including the World Health Organization (its largest donor), the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinians. The World Trade Organization (WTO) also faces threats due to Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.

A review of U.S. involvement in UNESCO (the UN’s educational, scientific, and cultural agency) and U.S. funding for the United Nations itself has been ordered. Citing ‘the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries,’ White House staff secretary Will Scharf explained that the decision was also a protest against ‘anti-American bias’ within UN agencies, though no specific examples of such prejudice were provided.

Old alliances are hanging by a thread; the Palestinians’ right to a homeland has been swept aside, with ethnic cleansing of Gaza openly touted, and Israel given free rein to be even more barbaric—if such a thing is even possible. Aid organizations have been decimated, Europe and Ukraine are criticized, and Russia and Putin receive accolades. Canada and Greenland are eyed as potential U.S. states, and Trump wants to reclaim the Panama Canal and transform Gaza into a Palestinian-free Mediterranean resort under ‘American authority.

Whatever disruptive actions Trump takes, others can—and potentially will—mimic, particularly other far-right leaders. This is especially troubling in relation to the Paris Agreement and global support for United Nations agencies. The UN is entirely reliant on member states for funding to carry out its life-saving work. Should nations begin to argue over their contributions and withhold payments, the valuable work the UN is doing around the world would be threatened

The Trump Storm has thrown governments and organizations worldwide into turmoil, and after 70 years of U.S. hegemony, during which Western geopolitics and global affairs have overwhelmingly been designed and administered from Washington—often with disastrous consequences—there is talk of a new world order.

It is not, however, a visionary, hopeful new world based on unifying principles and the oneness of humanity. Instead, it’s yet another divisive model rooted in power, ideology, and global dominance: Will China take over? Will Russia seek to expand its territory? What role will Europe play? Is the Trans-Atlantic Alliance shattered? And so on.

The conversation centers around uncertainty, security, and defense capabilities. It’s more of the same unimaginative, duplicitous rhetoric we’ve heard for decades—a shocking reflection of the appalling quality of leaders currently in office, the corrupt nature of politics, and the extent to which the military-industrial complex and the corporate world hold sway.

A Vision for Fundamental Change

What is needed is not a new old world order, but a creative reimagining of civilization—a shift in values and ideals that shapes new and just systems and cultivates principles of goodness—cooperation, sharing, tolerance, and understanding.

Gradual yet fundamental change that moves beyond manipulating existing patterns to establish a global order based on social justice and freedom; only this will lead to peace.

While far-reaching reforms designed to bring about such change could, in principle, be introduced without the total destruction of existing systems, those in power—both political and corporate—having benefited the most, are determined to maintain the status quo, regardless of the consequences for society and the natural world. This leads to the rather depressing conclusion that only a seismic downfall will enable the changes billions of people around the world long for.

Canada and Greenland are targeted as potential U.S. states

“Perhaps Trump’s unpredictable assault on existing institutions and geopolitical norms will inadvertently accelerate the positive change (already underway in various forms), fostering new alliances and relationships (e.g., in Europe) that could shift the world toward a more unified and just future

The post End of Unipolarity: A Chance for Change appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Graham Peebles.

When Vietnam’s National Assembly meets in May, parliamentarians will be asked to study, review and amend the 2013 constitution at the request of the politically powerful Politburo.

According to Article 120 of the constitution, the president, the National Assembly standing committee, or at least a third of National Assembly deputies, have the right to propose amendments.

If two thirds of parliamentarians vote in favor of the changes, the National Assembly will set up a constitutional drafting committee.

The committee will organize public consultations, then submit a draft to the assembly. Again, two thirds of members need to support the changes for them to be incorporated into the constitution.

Deliberations on any proposed changes could reveal differences between the ruling Communist Party, which is usually intent on consolidating its powers, and reformers seeking a more open society.

Is amending the constitution constitutional?

Vietnamese lawyers have very different views on the planned changes.

One human rights lawyer said the Politburo’s plan is in line with the current political environment.

”The party holds leadership through Article 4 of the constitution and most members of the National Assembly are party members, so their call for the national assembly to vote on the amendment is appropriate," said the lawyer, who didn’t want to be named because he practices in Vietnam

Not so, said Germany-based lawyer Nguyen Van Dai.

“The [state-controlled] press should have said that the president or the National Assembly standing committee, at the request of the Politburo, had proposed to amend the constitution, which would have been more consistent with the provisions of the constitution.

“But they only bluntly said that the Politburo requested to amend the constitution, so clearly they have pushed the highest authority of the party of the communist regime of Vietnam into an unconstitutional state.”

What will be amended?

Officials have not specified which articles of the constitution are under consideration according to Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. However, he said the planned abolition of district-level government and the reorganization of the nationalities council suggest that Article 110 and Articles 75-77 will be amended.

Article 110 states that provinces are divided into counties, and centrally governed cities are divided into urban and rural counties. These references will be deleted, he said.

Articles 75-77 set out the structure, organization and tasks of the nationalities council. The council was reorganized in February and it is likely that the wording of these articles will be revised.

“If the constitutional amendment is limited to amending the Articles to reflect the dissolution of district-level governments and the reorganization of the ethnic council, there will be no major impact on Vietnam’s political system beyond the institutional restructuring that is underway,” Thayer said.

(Nghia Duc/AP)

“General Secretary To Lam’s institutional restructuring will only strengthen the party’s role in Vietnam’s political system. It is unlikely that Article 4 will be amended, and so far, no Vietnamese official or legislator has mentioned this possibility” added Thayer.

“This does not rule out the possibility that reform-minded citizens could try to use this process to push for broader political change by amending Article 4, as happened in 2013.”

What is Article 4?

Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 there have been several amendments of the constitution. It was changed in 1980 and again in 1992. It was amended and supplemented in 2001 and most recently amended in 2013.

Many rights groups and political activists want Article 4 removed from the constitution when it is next amended. The article outlines the Communist Party’s leadership role in the state and society.

According to Human Rights Watch, Article 4, which stipulates the Communist Party as “the vanguard of the working class [and] the Vietnamese people,” restricts the right to participate in freely held multi-party elections.

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Lawyer Nguyen Van Dai said many believe the next time the constitution is amended Article 4 needs changing or removing.

“When To Lam said he wanted to bring Vietnam into the ‘era of rising up’ and declared that ‘the institution is the bottleneck of bottlenecks,’ the word institution referred to the political institution, Dai said, referring to the Communist Party.

Although Article 4 does not prohibit people from forming other political parties, Dai discovered to his own cost that people who threaten the one-party system face long prison sentences.

Dai founded the Brotherhood for Democracy in 2013 to defend human rights and promote democratic ideals in Vietnam.

He was sentenced to four years in prison for “propaganda against the state” in 2007, and 15 years in prison in 2018 for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government.” He was released in 2018 and exiled to Germany.

Dai said the constitution needs radical amendments with the phrase “according to the provisions of law” removed, because this allows the party to crack down on any attempts to introduce a democratic political system.

He said there should also be a constitutional court which could annul laws and documents that are issued unconstitutionally or contain unconstitutional provisions.

Germany-based democracy activist Nguyen Tien Trung agrees, saying the court could ensure that no law contradicts the constitution.

Which laws are unconstitutional?

Trung cited the example of the Cyber ​​Security Law which he said violates the right to freedom of speech enshrined in Article 25 of the constitution.

“To ensure the people’s right to be masters, the new constitution needs to remove Article 4 to avoid conflict with Articles 2 and 3 of the constitution: Every citizen has the right to form a party to run for election, and only the winning party has the legitimacy to lead the state. Communists and non-communists are equal. That is also the principle clearly stated in Article 16 of the constitution.

“Finally, the constitution is only valid when it is approved by the people. The one-party National Assembly has no right to pass the constitution because the people have never given that right to the National Assembly through a referendum.

“The Communist Party needs to hold a referendum and let the people approve the new constitution as they have always claimed that ‘the people are the masters’.”

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.

“Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO who essentially purchased his Cabinet position through $450,000 in Trump campaign contributions,[1] personifies the deadly alliance between the Trump administration and the fossil fuel industry. His speech made clear that he and the rest of the Trump administration are ready to sacrifice our communities and climate for the profits of the fossil fuel industry – which spent $445 million in total to influence Trump and Congress last election cycle. His performative extension of Delfin LNG’s export authorization during his speech represents just how deeply intertwined the Trump administration is with the fossil fuel CEOs at CERAWeek.

“As Wright speaks to industry insiders, members of impacted communities, faith leaders, youth, and others are assembling for a ‘March for Future Generations,’ where they’re demanding an end to new fossil fuel projects and government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The movement for a just transition away from fossil fuels, and towards a clean energy economy that works for all of us, is continuing to fight – regardless of how many fracking CEOs Trump puts in his Cabinet.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Scientists rallied nationwide last Friday in opposition to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts for scientific research and mass layoffs impacting numerous agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. Thousands gathered at Stand Up for Science protests in over two dozen other cities. We air remarks from speakers in Washington, D.C., including former USAID official Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health.

“I study women’s health, and right now you’re not able to really put into proposals that you are studying women,” says Emma Courtney, Ph.D. candidate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and co-organizer of Stand Up for Science. She tells Democracy Now! it’s critical for federal policy to be “informed by science and rooted in evidence.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Image by Valeriia Miller.

Reading all the news in my temporary flat at Cambridtge University, where my wife is on a year’s sabbatical leave, I’m able to view all the slaughter in the world and the chaos, increasingly blatant presidential power-grabbing and corporate influence in the US with a certain degree of detachment. That has made me think that it is time for a reassessment of the whole international political situation we’ve been mired in since the end of World War II.

These days seem so reminiscent of 1938, or even 1913, those years leading up to the two World Wars, when there was a grim, seemingly inevitable slog towards war in Europe and, in the case of WWII, also in the western Pacific. During both those antebellum times there were interlocking webs of mutual assistance treaties that had been created as bulwarks against a war, premised on the notion that if attacking a weak country would mean going to war against a number of countries bound by treaty to come to that country’s assistance, such an initial attack would not happen.

In the end, that idea failed catastrophically and in fairly short succession. Instead of preventing war, such treaties instead assured that any first attack would spread like the spark of a prairie fire that under dry climate conditions, or, in a political context, an environment of mutual distrust and paranoia, spreads out of control. In a span of just 31 years during the first half of the 20th Century, that resulted in a total of 85-107 million civilian and military deaths — 70-85 million of these occurring in WWII, and 15-22 million in WWi.

With the benefit of hindsight, I have to say it looks like the tired trope that WWII happened because British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler, has it wrong. Chamberlain was mindful of the incredible destructive power of the modern military war machines of the major powers in the late ‘30s and was trying to prevent a war from happening. He failed not because he was naive but because the network of treaties obliged Britain and France to go to war against Germany once Hitler and Stalin attacked Poland which then meant a war across virtually all of Europe and in its colonial possessions. Similarly, in 1914, a massive war was assured by the interlocking mutual assistance treaties among the European powers, who ended up having to go to war over a single anarchist’s assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne since not responding would have besmirched the honor of those bound by the treaties.

But surely both those wars could have been avoided and over 100 million lives saved — 100 million men, women and children!. As war clouds began to loom on the horizon both times, the governments of the various potential combatants should have held a grand meeting and worked out a rational solution to their disagreements, grievances, fears and perceived threats. Doing so would not have been seen by the populations of the nations as appeasement but as cause for relief.

In today’s world, where we have incomparably more destructive weapons that would make a global conflict vastly more lethal, with death tolls numbered in the billions, not millions, and could potentially wipe out what passes for “civilization,” quite possibly humanity, and even potentially life on Earth. (The total tonnage of explosives used in all of WWII, including the two atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was 3 megatons. Since the largest thermonuclear bomb in the US nuclear arsenal at present, the B83 is 1.2 megatons, that means just three of these bombs, each designed to be delivered by a low-flying B-1 bomber moving at supersonic speed, would alone significantly exceed the destructive power of all weapons used by all sides in WWII. And there would be hundreds or even thousands of nuclear bombs used in a global nuclear war, or even in a war between two of the larger nuclear nations. )

Back in the most scary days of the Cold War and nuclear arms race, British philosopher and Nobel Peace Laureate Bertrand Russell, in calling for nuclear disarmament, was widely linked to the protest chant “Better Red than Dead!” Though he insisted it wasn’t his phrase, he said he agreed with its rationality. Certainly in the era of nuclear weapons its opposite, “Better dead than Red,” makes no sense at all, since opposing launching a nuclear war is not an act of individual courage, but rather of mass murder/suicide. Meanwhile, the problem with mutual assistance treaties is that they automate the decision to go to war once one country attacks another that is protected by such a pact. No matter the reason for the invasion, the signers all are bound to join the fray. That is unacceptable madness where nuclear weapons are involved.

Given this reality, and the numbers of human beings who would die in even a limited war between two nuclear nations, it is time for the nations of Europe and the Asia-Pacific and the United States, to come together in a global conference to de-escalate the rhetoric, the threats, and the paranoia and to work out a way to get along. The starting point is a global ceasefire in all conflicts and the calling of a global peace conference. The people of the world need to demand this of their leaders.

There is, we know, a crisis facing humanity that is much bigger than any crisis faced by individual nations. A crisis of survival that while it may not be felt yet or acknowledged by many, is inexorably approaching. That is the climate catastrophe of global heating which will make the world unlivable at worst, and certainly incapable of supporting even the current population of 8.31 billion people alive today.

That crisis is daunting already and will become increasingly daunting as the years slip by with no concerted global action to address it. Humanity has thus far done little and in many cases has been slipping backwards, particularly in the US. In fact quite the opposite, the nations of the world together spent $2.1 trillion on war and preparation for war in 2024 and are on track to spend more this year even if a major war doesn’t break out.

The US, by conservative estimates, spent $811 billion that year, almost three times China, the second biggest arms spender at $298 billion. America’s arms spending also exceeds the spending of the next nine biggest military spenders, including China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea.

it is thus incumbent on the US, the country with the largest and most powerful military the world has ever known—one which enjoys the most geographically protected location, bounded as it is by thousands of miles of ocean separating it from countries that could even contemplate attacking it—to take the first step in moving towards a world without war.

How such a winding down of the threat of war can be worked out at the United Nations remains to be seen. But the first task, which would set things moving in the right direction, would be to end the very dangerous war between Ukraine and Russia, and the Israeli war on Gaza. and the West Bank.

Both these conflicts should be resolvable. In the case of Ukraine, it is clear that Russia invaded Ukraine, but it is also clear that the invasion of Ukraine was driven by a legitimate fear Russia — a nation repeatedly attacked over its history by powerful nations to its west — had of the US-promoted drive to sign up nations that were formerly under the control of the Soviet Union or were part of the old Soviet Union, bringing them under the protection of NATO and even placing US military equipment and nuclear weapons and delivery systems at bases in those countries near to or even bordering Russia, and was pushing to do the same with Ukraine, a former soviet (state) of the USSR.

There had been a golden opportunity, with the 1991 collapse of the Communist government of the USSR and its dissolution into the Russian Federation and a group of smaller new independent states. At that point Russia, whose economy was in collapse, would have welcomed being brought into the European Union and NATO (the military pact created expressly to “contain” the USSR), but the US was not interested in doing that, so it didn’t happen.

Even Henry Kissinger, the hardline Secretary of State and national security advisor to Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, a committed anti-Communist and no soft-hearted peacenik, at that historical inflection point in world history, had argued against the US “taking advantage” of Russian weakness to expand NATO and against continuing with the “containment strategy” of the Cold War. Instead of listening to him, a series of US presidents beginning with Bill Clinton and on through Joe Biden did just that, with the result that Russia recovered economically and rearmed in response to the threat posed by NATO and turned towards a increasingly powerful ally, China, leading to the situation we have today.

“Stupid’ is the only word to apply to US policy since the Reagan-Gorbachev summit that brought an end to the Cold War and the only major nuclear disarmament agreement of that frightening era.

With Russia having invaded and conquered 20% of Ukraine and with the US and a number of major NATO allies having provided Ukraine with over a billion dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry to combat Russian troops and even to launch missiles and drones deep into Russian territory, it will be difficult now to get back to a condition of mutual trust, but it must be done. And again, it has to be the US that takes the lead. It is not the US that is threatened, it is the European countries that remember being attacked by Germany (and in Poland’s case, the Germany and the Soviet Union) in 1939, and it is Russia, attacked by France in 1812 and by Germany in 1941-45 ad that the we were threatening with nuclear missiles and in nuclear-capable bombers and supersonic fighter bombers placed in NATO countries throughout the Cold War, and that was having NATO bases placed in countries right on its borders in the more recent 1991-2022 period.

So let’s, as citizens of the US, start letting our government — Senators, Representatives and President Trump and the mass media — know that we want an honest peace in Europe. The US and the European nations of NATO need to offer an end to all the sanctions that have been plaguing Russia in return for an immediate ceasefire, a neutral an independent Ukraine, recognition of the majority Russian regions of eastern Ukraine as either an autonomous state or as part of Russia, following an internationally supervised plebiscite, and a dismantling of the anachronistic NATO, with the proviso that NATO could be revived if Russia were to return to hostilities against Ukraine. In return, Russia would be invited to become part of the European Economic Community.

Turning to the Gaza war, the solution is relatively simple: That festering sore of a captive and subjugated Palestinian population under the thumb of the Israeli state has been allowed to go on for way too long. Again its roots go back to the Cold War that followed World War II, which saw the US adopt and bankroll the new state of Israel founded in 1948 as a reliable ally in the strategically important oil-rich Middle East and North Africa at a time that the Arab nations and the Persian nation of Iran were trying to rid themselves of the colonial bonds and legacy of France and the UK. So important to the US was Israel during that era of US-USSR global rivalry that Washington allowed Israel to establish a theocratic apartheid and specifically Jewish state, with Palestinians suffering political exclusion, second-class status, pogroms, property expropriation, and expulsions.

All that abuse of a captive people has to end in order for peace to come to that powder-keg region. The US alone has the power to stop it. Israel’s genocidal leveling of Gaza over the last two years had been perpetrated largely using the planes, howitzers, tanks, rockets, bombs and diplomatic cover provided by the United States. If the Trump administration and Congress were to cut off those weapons and the spare parts needed to keep American planes flying, Israel would have to back off. The US could demand that Jewish Israeli settlers who been allowed to expropriate and move into territory in the conquered and Israeli-occupied West Bank must be compelled to return stolen lands, IDF forces would have to leave Palestinian territory, and a major redevelopment program to enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state would have to be undertaken.

After those two conflicts are resolved, the world can move on to solving other smaller conflicts, and proceed with a phased reduction by all countries of their outsized military forces, beginning with the US, which should offer an immediate unilateral 25% reduction in its military budget, including offering to a negotiate major reduction in its and Russias’s still absurdly huge nuclear stockpiles. (Russia has 5977 nuclear weapons and the US has 5428 — numbers so large that if even a significant percent of them were used by only one country in a successful first-strike, would destroy both countries and much of the world.)

The time for such action to move towards global peace is now!

President Trump claims he wants peace, both in Ukraine and in Gaza, but he’s going about it wrong. It’s not “Peace through American strength” that the world needs; it’s leadership towards global peace through example by the world’s most powerful nation“ that is called for at this historic time. And that will only happen if the American people, many of whom are fed up with massive military spending of needed funds, demand it.

Then we can really start to confront the real enemy of mankind: climate apocalypse.

The post We Urgently Need a Global Peace Movement to Combat Climate Change and Avoid Nuclear Apocalypse appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dave Lindorff.

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

A new Illinois bill aims to add some oversight of families who homeschool their children, a response to concerns that the state does little to ensure these students receive an education and are protected from harm.

The measure, known as the Homeschool Act, comes after an investigation by Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica last year found that Illinois is among a small number of states that place virtually no rules on parents who homeschool their children. Parents don’t have to register with any state agency or school district, and authorities cannot compel them to track attendance, demonstrate their teaching methods or show student progress.

Under the new bill, families would be required to tell their school districts when they decide to homeschool their children, and the parents or guardians would need to have a high school diploma or equivalent. If education authorities have concerns that children are receiving inadequate schooling, they could require parents to share evidence of teaching materials and student work.

Illinois Rep. Terra Costa Howard, a Democrat from a Chicago suburb who is sponsoring the legislation, said she began meeting with education and child welfare officials in response to the news organizations’ investigation, which detailed how some parents claimed to be removing their children from school to homeschool but then failed to educate them.

The investigation documented the case of L.J., a 9-year-old whose parents decided to homeschool him after he missed so much school that he faced the prospect of repeating third grade. He told child welfare authorities that he was beaten and denied food for several years while out of public school and that he received almost no education. In December 2022, on L.J.’s 11th birthday, the state took custody of him and his younger siblings; soon after, he was enrolled in public school.

“We need to know that children exist,” said Costa Howard, vice chair of the Illinois House’s child welfare committee. The legislation is more urgent because the number of homeschooled children has grown since the pandemic began, she said. “Illinois has zero regulations regarding homeschooling — we are not the norm at all.”

The most recent numbers available at the time of the news organizations’ investigation showed nearly 4,500 children were recorded as withdrawn from public school for homeschooling in 2022 — a number that had doubled over a decade. But there is no way to determine the precise number of students who are homeschooled in Illinois, because the state doesn’t require parents to register.

The bill would require the state to collect data on homeschooling families. Regional Offices of Education would gather the information, and the state board would compile an annual report with details on the number, grade level and gender of homeschooled students within each region.

Homeschool families and advocates said they will fight the measure, which they argue would infringe on parental rights. Past proposals to increase oversight also have met swift resistance. The sponsor of a 2011 bill that would have required homeschool registration withdrew it after hundreds of people protested at the Illinois State Capitol. In 2019, a different lawmaker abandoned her bill after similar opposition to rules that would have required curriculum reviews and inspections by child welfare officials.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, which describes itself as a Christian organization that advocates for homeschool freedom, said it plans to host virtual meetings to educate families on the bill and ways they can lobby against it.

Kathy Wentz of the Illinois Homeschool Association, which is against homeschool regulations, said she is concerned about the provision that would allow the state to review education materials, called a “portfolio review” in the legislation. She said visits from education officials could be disruptive to teaching.

“There is nothing in this bill to protect a family’s time so they can actually homeschool without interruptions,” Wentz said. She pointed to a 1950 Illinois Supreme Court ruling establishing that homeschooling qualified as a form of private education and that the schools were not required to register students with the state.

The bill would require all private schools to register with the state.

The Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica investigation found that it’s all but impossible for education officials to intervene when parents claim they are homeschooling. The state’s child welfare agency, the Department of Children and Family Services, doesn’t investigate schooling matters.

Under the proposed law, if the department has concerns about a family that says it is homeschooling, the agency could request that education officials conduct a more thorough investigation of the child’s schooling. The new law would then allow education officials to check whether the family notified its district about its decision to homeschool and compel parents to turn over homeschool materials for review.

The increased oversight also aims to help reduce truancy and protect homeschooled students who lose daily contact with teachers and others who are mandated to report abuse and neglect, Costa Howard said. Some truancy officials said that under existing law they have no recourse to compel attendance or review what students are learning at home when a family says they are homeschooling.

Jonah Stewart, research director for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a national organization of homeschool alumni that advocates for homeschooling regulation, said the lack of oversight in Illinois puts children at risk. “This bill is a commonsense measure and is critical not only to address educational neglect but also child safety,” Stewart said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Molly Parker and Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois.

“Coruption has always existed and probably always will exist unfortunately,” said Brice Böhmer, a researcher with Transparency International. “But at the same time, we have tools to stop corruption like proper consultation and oversight.”  

Böhmer said the spillover to Indigenous peoples happens when governments adopt weak policies to address climate change, exposing communities to extreme weather events, first, and later, exploiting those communities through fraud, or political manipulation of policies and funds. 

“This is impacting those groups more than other groups,” said Böhmer.

According to the report, countries that support democratic principles, like freedom of expression and assembly, are better protected from corruption. Access to information is important too. For instance, last year, the Dominican Republic’s score improved from previous reports after the country implemented data and collaboration practices to address corruption. Russia has also shown increased corruption as of late with the report showing that the invasion of Ukraine has deepened authoritarianism that suppresses “criticism of the government.”

Indigenous communities have long been stewards of biodiversity, defending vast territories from exploitation — despite that globally, only 35 percent of Indigenous lands are legally protected. Those without protection frequently fall victim to illegal logging, mining and animal trafficking, leading to frequent clashes between land defenders and settlers. In Indonesia, officials look the other way as the production of palm oil destroys Indigenous land. And in Brazil, corruption contributes to the fraudulent sale of protected Indigenous territories, leaving communities vulnerable to displacement and violence.

“You can think of corruption as a tax on everyone. So it’s an additional cost to the services provided by the government,” said Oguzhan Dincer, the director of the Institute for Corruption Studies at Illinois State University. He added that corruption is using public office for private gain and this affects anyone sending their kids to public schools, using public health care systems, or who wants clean air and water. “It takes a long, long time to get rid of corruption. It’s like a virus,” he said. 

According to reports from Global Witness, environmental land defenders are at a high risk of intimidation and violence. Last year, nearly 200 people, half of whom were Indigenous or of Afrodescent, were killed for their environmental activism. Since 2012, an estimated 800 Indigenous people have been killed for protecting their lands and territories.  According to Transparency International, most killings have occurred in countries who rank high in corruption. 

But researchers also found that low levels of corruption did not always correspond with respect for Indigenous peoples. Finland, for instance, is one of the world’s least-corrupt countries according to Transparency International. However, in 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council urged Finland to undertake justice measures that would address “the legacy of human rights violations endured by the Sámi people. That same year, the United Nations also recommended the country “initiate the process of legal recognition of the rights of Indigenous people to their traditional lands,” because they do not have the protected legal ability to make decisions regarding their homelands. Finnish officials did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

“People should demand anti-corruption policies and see the damage that corruption causes and be notified of the corrupt acts of the representatives,” Dincer said. “I’m portraying an awful picture here, but unfortunately this is really the case.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Like a virus’: Corruption has infected the fight against climate change on Mar 3, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

[This article titled The History of Regime Change in Ukraine and the IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine” by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]

Author’s Introduction

We must understand the history of the U.S.-sponsored February 2014 Coup d’Etat which paved the wave for the adoption of IMF-World Bank shock treatment, namely the imposition of devastating macro-economic reforms coupled with conditionalities. This process –imposed by the Washington Consensus– was applied in developing countries since the 1980s, and in Eastern Europe and in the countries of the Soviet Union starting in the early 1990s.

Below is an the article describing the IMF reforms which I wrote in early March 2014, in the immediate wake of the Euromaidan Coup d’Etat which was led by the two major Nazi “parties”: Right Sektor and Svoboda, with the financial support of Washington.

What Is the End Game

The World Bank and the IMF reforms –while establishing the ground work– are no longer the main actors, representing the country’s creditors.

The traditional IMF-World Bank reforms are in many regards obsolete.

The Neoliberal Endgame for Ukraine –resulting from unsurmountable debts– largely attributable to military aid is the outright privatization of an entire country by BlackRock which is a giant portfolio company controlled by powerful financial interests with extensive leverage.

BlackRock signed an agreement with President Zelensky in November 2022.

The Privatization of Ukraine was launched in liaison with BlackRock’s consulting company McKinsey, a public relations firm which has largely been responsible for co-opting corrupt politicians and officials worldwide, not to mention scientists and intellectuals on behalf of powerful financial interests.

The Kyiv government engaged BlackRock’s consulting arm in November to determine how best to attract that kind of capital, and then added JPMorgan in February. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced last month that the country was working with the two financial groups and consultants at McKinsey.

BlackRock and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2022. In late December 2022, president Zelensky and BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink agreed on an investment strategy.

—Michel Chossudovsky, April 27, 2024

The February 23, 2014 Coup d’Etat

In the days following the Ukraine coup d’Etat of February 23, 2014 leading to the ousting of a duly elected president, Wall Street and the IMF –in liaison with the US Treasury and the European Commission in Brussels– had already set the stage for the outright takeover of Ukraine’s monetary system.

The EuroMaidan protests leading up to “regime change” and the formation of an interim government were followed by purges within key ministries and government bodies.

The Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Ihor Sorkin was fired on February 25th and replaced by a new governor Stepan Kubiv.

Stepan Kubiv is a member of Parliament of the Rightist Batkivshchyna “Fatherland” faction in the Rada led by the acting Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (founded by Yulia Tymoshenko in March 1999). He previously headed Kredbank, a Ukrainian financial institution largely owned by EU capital, with some 130 branches throughout Ukraine. (Ukraine Central Bank Promises Liquidity To Local Banks, With One Condition, Zero Hedge, February 27, 2014)

Kubiv is no ordinary bank executive. He was one of the first field “commandants” of the EuroMaidan riots alongside Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda), and Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector Brown Shirts (centre in image below), which now has the status of a political party.

Kubiv was in the Maidan square addressing protesters on February 18, at the very moment when armed Right Sector thugs under the helm of Dmitry Yarosh (image above, centre) were raiding the parliament building.

The Establishment of an Interim Government

A few days later, upon the establishment of the interim government, Stepan Kubiv was put in charge of negotiations with Wall Street and the IMF.

The new Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak (image below) is a political crony of Viktor Yushchenko –a long-time protegé of the IMF who was spearheaded into the presidency following the 2004 “Colored Revolution”. Shlapak held key positions in the office of the presidency under Yushchenko as well as at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). In 2010, upon Yushchenko’s defeat, Aleksandr Shlapak joined a shadowy Bermuda based offshore financial outfit IMG International Ltd (IMG), holding the position of Vice President. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, IMG specialises in “captive insurance management”, reinsurance and “risk transfer.”

Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak works in close liaison with Pavlo Sheremeto, the newly appointed Minister of Economic Development and Trade, who upon his appointment called for “deregulation, fully fledged and across the board”, requiring –as demanded in previous negotiations by the IMF– the outright elimination of subsidies on fuel, energy and basic food staples.

Another key appointment is that of Ihor Shvaika (image below), a member of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, to the position of Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food. Headed by an avowed follower of World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, this ministry not only oversees the agricultural sector, it also decides on issues pertaining to subsidies and the prices of basic food staples.

The new Cabinet has stated that the country is prepared for socially “painful” but necessary reforms. In December 2013, a $ 20 billion deal with the IMF had already been contemplated alongside the controversial EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Yanukovych decided to turn it down.

One of the requirements of the IMF was that “household subsidies for gas be reduced once again by 50%.”

“Other onerous IMF requirements included cuts to pensions, government employment, and the privatization (read: let western corporations purchase) of government assets and property. It is therefore likely that the most recent IMF deal currently in negotiation, will include once again major reductions in gas subsidies, cuts in pensions, immediate government job cuts, as well as other reductions in social spending programs in the Ukraine.” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014)

Economic Surrender: Unconditional Acceptance of IMF Demands by a Puppet Government

Shortly after his instatement, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF. Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.

(Image: Neo Nazi Svoboda Party glorify World War II Nazi Collaborator Stepan Bandera)

Yatsenyuk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014).

In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.

The actual timeframe for the implementation of the IMF’s “shock therapy” has not yet been firmly established. In all likelihood, the regime will attempt to delay the more ruthless social impacts of the macroeconomic reforms until after the May 25 presidential elections (assuming that these elections will take place).

The text of the IMF agreement is likely to be detailed and specific, particularly with regard to State assets earmarked for privatization.

Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, according to Bloomberg, are among key individuals in the US who are acting (in a non-official capacity) in tandem with the IMF, the Kiev government, in consultation with the White House and the US Congress.

The IMF Mission to Kiev

Immediately upon the instatement of the new Finance Minister and NBU governor, a request was submitted to the IMF’s Managing director. An IMF fact-finding mission headed by the Director of the IMF’s European Department Rez Moghadam was rushed to Kiev:

“I am positively impressed with the authorities’ determination, sense of responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform and transparency. The IMF stands ready to help the people of Ukraine and support the authorities’ economic program.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF European Department Director Reza Moghadam on his Visit to Ukraine)

A week later, on March 12, 2014, Christine Lagarde met the interim Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk at IMF headquarters in Washington. Lagarde reaffirmed the IMF’s commitment:

“[to putting Ukraine back] on the path of sound economic governance and sustainable growth, while protecting the vulnerable in society. … We are keen to help Ukraine on its path to economic stability and prosperity.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Ukraine)

The above statement is wrought with hypocrisy. In practice, the IMF does not wield “sound economic governance” nor does it protect the vulnerable. It impoverishes entire populations while providing “prosperity” to a small corrupt and subservient political and economic elite.

IMF “economic medicine” while contributing to the enrichment of a social minority, invariably triggers economic instability and mass poverty, while providing a “social safety net” to the external creditors. To sell its reform package, the IMF relies on media propaganda as well as persistent statements by “economic experts” and financial analysts which provide authority to the IMF’s macroeconomic reforms.

The unspoken objective behind IMF interventionism is to destabilize sovereign governments and literally break up entire national economies. This is achieved through the manipulation of key macroeconomic policy instruments as well as the outright rigging of financial markets, including the foreign exchange market.

To reach its unspoken goals, the IMF-World Bank –often in consultation with the US Treasury and the State Department– will exert control over key appointments including the Minister of Finance, the Central Bank governor as well as senior officials in charge of the country’s privatization program. These key appointments will require the (unofficial) approval of the “Washington Consensus” prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a multibillion IMF bailout agreement.

Beneath the rhetoric, in the real world of money and credit, the IMF has several related operational objectives:

1) to facilitate the collection of debt servicing obligations, while ensuring that the country remains indebted and under the control of its external creditors.

2) to exert on behalf of the country’s external creditors full control over the country’s monetary policy, its fiscal and budgetary structures,

3) to revamp social programs, labor laws, minimum wage legislation, in accordance with the interests of Western capital,

4) to deregulate foreign trade and investment policies, including financial services and intellectual property rights,

5) to implement the privatization of key sectors of the economy through the sale of public assets to foreign corporations,

6) to facilitate the takeover by foreign capital (including mergers and acquisitions) of selected privately owned Ukrainian corporations, and

7) to ensure the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.

While the privatization program ensures the transfer of State assets into the hands of foreign investors, the IMF program also includes provisions geared towards the destabilization of the country’s privately-owned business conglomerates. A concurrent “break up” plan entitled “spin-off” as well as a “bankruptcy program” are often implemented with a view to triggering the liquidation, closing down or restructuring of a large number of nationally-owned private and public enterprises.

The “spin off” procedure –which was imposed on South Korea under the December 1997 IMF bailout agreement– required the break up of several of Korea’s powerful chaebols (business conglomerates) into smaller corporations, many of which were then taken over by US, EU and Japanese capital. Sizeable banking interests as well highly profitable components of Korea’s high tech industrial base were transferred or sold off at rock bottom prices to Western capital. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 22).

These staged bankruptcy programs ultimately seek to destroy national capitalism. In the case of Ukraine, they would selectively target the business interests of the oligarchs, opening the door for the takeover of a sizeable portion of Ukraine’s private sector by EU and US corporations. The conditionalities contained in the IMF agreement would be coordinated with those contained in the controversial EU-Ukraine Association agreement, which the Yanukovych government refused to sign.

Ukraine’s Spiraling External Debt

Ukraine’s external debt is of the order of $140 billion.

In consultations with the US Treasury and the EU, the IMF aid package is to be of the order of $15 billion dollars. Ukraine’s outstanding short-term debt is of the order of $65 billion, more than four times the amount promised by the IMF.

The Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves have literally dried up. In February, according to the NUB, Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves were of the order of a meagre $13.7 billion, its Special Drawing Rights with the IMF were of the order of $16.1 million, its gold reserves $1.81 billion. There were unconfirmed reports that Ukraine’s gold had been confiscated and airlifted to New York, for “safe-keeping” under the custody of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

Under the bailout, the IMF –acting on behalf of Ukraine’s US and EU creditors– lends money to Ukraine which is already earmarked for debt repayment. The money is transferred to the creditors. The loan is “fictitious money.” Not one dollar of this money will enter Ukraine.

The package is not intended to support economic growth. Quite the opposite: Its main purpose is to collect the outstanding short-term debt, while precipitating the destabilization of Ukraine’s economy and financial system.

The fundamental principle of usury is that the creditor comes to the rescue of the debtor: “I cannot pay my debts, no problem my son, I will lend you the money and with the money I lend you, you will pay me back”.

The rescue rope thrown to Kiev by the IMF and the European Union is in reality a ball and chain. Ukraine’s external debt, as documented by the World Bank, increased tenfold in ten years and exceeds 135 billion dollars. In interests alone, Ukraine must pay about 4.5 billion dollars a year. The new loans will only serve to increase the external debt thus obliging Kiev to “liberalize” its economy even more, by selling to corporations what remains to be privatized. (Ukraine, IMF “Shock Treatment” and Economic Warfare by Manlio Dinucci, Global Research, March 21, 2014)

Under the IMF loan agreement, the money will not enter the country, it will be used to trigger the repayment of outstanding debt servicing obligations to EU and US creditors. In this regard, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) “European banks have more than $23 billion in outstanding loans in Ukraine.” (Ukraine Facing Financial Instability But IMF May Help Soon – Spiegel Online, February 28, 2014)

What Are the “Benefits” of an IMF Package to Ukraine?

According to IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde, the bailout is intended to address the issue of poverty and social inequality. In actuality what it does is to increase the levels of indebtedness while essentially handing over the reins of macro-economic reform and monetary policy to the Bretton Woods Institutions, acting on behalf of Wall Street.

The bailout agreement will include the imposition of drastic austerity measures which in all likelihood will trigger further social chaos and economic dislocation. It’s called “policy based lending”, namely the granting of money earmarked to reimburse the creditors, in exchange for the IMF’s “bitter economic medicine” in the form of a menu of neoliberal policy reforms. “Short-term pain for long-term gain” is the motto of the Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions.

Loan “conditionalities” will be imposed –including drastic austerity measures– which will serve to impoverish the Ukrainian population beyond bounds in a country which has been under IMF ministrations for more than 20 years. While the Maidan movement was manipulated, tens of thousands of people protested they wanted a new life because their standard of living had collapsed as a result of the neoliberal policies applied by successive governments, including that of president Yanukovych. Little did they realize that the protest movement supported by Wall Street, the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was meant to usher in a new phase of economic and social destruction.

History of IMF Ministrations in Ukraine

In 1994 under the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, an IMF package was imposed on Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko –who later became president following the 2004 Colored Revolution– had been appointed head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Yushchenko was praised by the Western financial media as a “daring reformer”; he was among the main architects of the IMF’s 1994 reforms which served to destabilize Ukraine’s national economy. When he ran in the 2004 elections against Yanukovych, he was supported by various foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He was Wall Street’s preferred candidate.

Ukraine’s 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid 50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required the Ukrainian government to abandon State controls over the exchange rate leading to a massive collapse of the currency. Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating and implementing the 1994 agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages:

Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 “shock treatment”:

• The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
• electricity prices by 600 percent,
• public transportation by 900 percent.
• the standard of living tumbled

According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, quoted by the IMF, real wages in 1998 had fallen by more than 75 percent in relation to their 1991 level. (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft /scr/2003/cr03174.pdf )

Ironically, the IMF sponsored program was intended to alleviate inflationary pressures: it consisted in imposing “dollarised” prices on an impoverished population with earnings below ten dollars a month.

Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting of subsidies and the freeze on credit contributed to destroying industry (both public and private) and undermining Ukraine’s breadbasket economy.

In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were sent in to examine the overhaul of Ukraine’s agriculture. With trade liberalization (which was part of the economic package), US grain surpluses and “food aid” were dumped on the domestic market, contributing to destabilizing one of the World’s largest and most productive wheat economies, (e.g. comparable to that of the American Mid West). (Michel Chossudovsky IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine, Global Research, November 28, 2004, emphasis added)

The IMF-World Bank had destroyed Ukraine’s “bread basket.”

By 1998, the deregulation of the grain market, the hikes in the price of fuel and the liberalisation of trade resulted in a decline in the production of grain by 45 percent in relation to its 1986-90 level. The collapse in livestock production, poultry and dairy products was even more dramatic (see this). The cumulative decline in GDP resulting from the IMF-sponsored reforms was in excess of 60 percent from 1992 to 1995.

The World Bank: Fake Poverty Alleviation

The World Bank has recently acknowledged that Ukraine is a poor country. (World Bank, Ukraine Overview, Washington DC, updated February 17, 2014):

“Evidence shows Ukraine is facing a health crisis, and the country needs to make urgent and extensive measures to its health system to reverse the progressive deterioration of citizens’ health. Crude adult death rates in Ukraine are higher than its immediate neighbors, Moldova and Belarus, and among the highest not only in Europe, but also in the world.”

What the report fails to mention is that the Bretton Woods institutions –through a process of economic engineering– played a central role in precipitating the post-Soviet collapse of the Ukrainian economy. The dramatic breakdown of Ukraine’s social programs bears the fingerprints of the IMF-World Bank austerity measures which included the deliberate underfunding and dismantling of the Soviet era health care system.

With regard to agriculture, the World Bank points to Ukraine’s “tremendous agricultural potential” while failing to acknowledge that the Ukraine bread-basket was destroyed as part of a US-IMF-World Bank package. According to the World Bank:

“This potential has not been fully exploited due to depressed farm incomes and a lack of modernization within the sector.”

“Depressed farm incomes” are not “the cause,” they are the “consequence” of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program. In 1994, farm incomes had declined by the order of 80% in relation to 1991, following the October 1994 IMF program engineered by then NUB governor Viktor Yushchenko. Immediately following the 1994 IMF reform package, the World Bank implemented (in 1995) a private sector “seed project” based on “the liberalization of seed pricing, marketing, and trade.” The prices of farm inputs increased dramatically leading to a string of agricultural bankruptcies. (Projects: Agricultural Seed Development Project | The World Bank, Washington DC, 1995)

The IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” Economic Bailout

While the conditions prevailing in Ukraine today are markedly different to those applied in the 1990s, it should be understood that the imposition of a new wave of macro-economic reforms (under strict IMF policy conditionalities) will serve to impoverish a population which has already been impoverished.

In other words, the IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” constitutes the “final blow” in a sequence of IMF interventions spreading over a period of more than 20 years, which have contributed to destabilizing the national economy and impoverishing Ukraine’s population. We are not dealing with a Greece Model Austerity Package as some analysts have suggested. The reforms slated for Ukraine will be far more devastating.

Preliminary information suggests that IMF bailout will provide an advance of $2 billion in the form of a grant to be followed by a subsequent loan of $11 billion. The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide another $2 billion, for a total package of around $15 billion. (See Voice of Russia, March 21, 2014)

Drastic Austerity Measures

The Kiev government has announced that the IMF requires a 20% cut in Ukraine’s national budget, implying drastic cuts in social programs, coupled with reductions in the wages of public employees, privatisation and the sale of state assets. The IMF has also called for a “phase out” of energy subsidies, and the deregulation of the foreign exchange markets. With unmanageable debts, the IMF will also impose the sell off and privatisation of major public assets as well as the takeover of the national banking sector.

The new government pressured by the IMF and World Bank have already announced that old-aged pensions are to be curtailed by 50%. In a timely February 21 release, the World Bank had set the guidelines for old-age pension reform in the countries of “Emerging Europe and Central Asia” including Ukraine. In an utterly twisted logic, “Protecting the elderly” is carried out by slashing their pension benefits, according to the World Bank. (World Bank, Significant Pension Reforms Urged in Emerging Europe and Central Asia, Washington Dc, February 21, 2014)

Given the absence of a real government in Kiev, Ukraine’s political handlers in the Ministry of Finance and the NUB will obey the diktats of Wall Street: The IMF structural adjustment loan agreement for Ukraine will be devastating in its social and economic impacts.

Elimination of Subsidies

Pointing to “market-distorted energy subsidies”, price deregulation has been a longstanding demand from both IMF-World Bank. The price of energy had been kept relatively low during the Yanukovych government largely as a result of the bilateral agreement with Russia, which provided Ukraine with low-cost gas in exchange for Naval base lease in Sebastopol. That agreement is now null and void. It is also worth noting that the government of Crimea has announced that it would take over ownership of all Ukrainian state companies in Crimea, including the Black Sea natural gas fields.

The Kiev interim government has intimated that Ukraine’s retail gas prices would have to rise by 40% “as part of economic reforms needed to unlock loans from the International Monetary Fund.” This announcement fails to address the mechanics of full-fledged deregulation which under present circumstances could lead to increases in energy prices in excess of 100 percent.

It is worth recalling, in this regard, that Peru in August 1991 had set the stage for “shock treatment” increases in energy prices when gasoline prices in Lima shot up overnight by 2978% (a 30-fold increase). In 1994 as part of the agreement between the IMF and Leonid Kuchma, the price of electricity flew up over night by 900 percent.

“Enhanced Exchange Rate Flexibility”

One of the central components of IMF intervention is the deregulation of the foreign exchange market. In addition to massive expenditure cuts, the IMF program requires “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” namely the removal of all foreign exchange controls. (Ukraine: Staff Report for the 2012 Article IV Consultation, See also http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2012/cr12315.pdf)

Since the outset of the Maidan protest movement in December 2013, foreign exchange controls were instated with a view to supporting the hryvnia and stemming the massive outflow of capital.

The IMF-sponsored bailout will literally ransack the foreign currency reserves held by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Enhanced exchange rate flexibility under IMF guidance has been endorsed by the new NBU governor Stepan Kubiv. Without virtually no forex reserves, exchange rate flexibility is financial suicide: it opens the door to speculative short-selling transactions (modelled on the 1997 Asian crisis) directed against the Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia.

Institutional speculators, which include major Wall Street and European Banks as well as hedge funds, have already positioned themselves. Manipulation in the forex markets is undertaken through derivative trade. Major financial institutions will have detailed inside information with regard to Central Bank policies which will enable them to rig the forex market.

Under a flexible exchange rate system, the Central Bank does not impose restrictions on forex transactions. The Central Bank can however decide –under advice from the IMF– to counter the speculative onslaught in the forex market, with a view to maintaining the parity of the Ukrainian hryvnia. Without the use of exchange controls, this line of action requires Ukraine’s central bank (in the absence of forex reserves) to prop up an ailing currency with borrowed money, thereby contributing to exacerbating the debt crisis.

The graph below indicates a decline of the hryvnia against the US $ of more than 20% over a six-month period.

(Source: themoneyconverter.com)

It is worth recalling in this regard that Brazil in November 1998 had received a precautionary bailout loan from the IMF of the order of $40 billion. One of the conditions of the loan agreement, however, was the complete deregulation of the forex market. This loan was intended to assist the Central Banking in maintaining the parity of the Brazilian real. In practice it spearheaded Brazil into a financial crash in February 1999.

The Brazilian government had accepted the conditionalities. Marred by capital flight of the order of $400 million a day, the money granted under the IMF loan –which was intended to prop up Brazil’s central banks reserves– was plundered in a matter of months. The IMF loan agreement to Brasilia enabled the institutional speculators to buy time. Most of the money under the IMF loan was appropriated in the form of speculative gains accruing to major financial institutions.

With regard to Ukraine, enhanced exchange flexibility spells disaster. Contrary to Brazil, the Central Bank has no forex reserves which would enable it to defend its currency. Where would the NBU get the borrowed forex reserves? Most of the funds under the proposed IMF-EU rescue package are already earmarked and could be used to effectively defend the hryvnia against “short-selling” speculative attacks in the currency markets. The most likely scenario is that the hryvnia will experience a major decline leading to significant hikes in the prices of essential commodities, including food, fuel and transportation.

Were the Central Bank able to use borrowed reserves to prop up the hryvnia, this borrowed money would be swiftly reappropriated, handed over to currency speculators on a silver platter. This scenario of propping up the national currency using borrowed forex reserves (i.e. Brazil in 1998-99) would, however, contribute in the short-term to staving off an immediate collapse of the standard.

This procedure provides “extra time” to the speculators, who are busy plundering the Central Bank’s (borrowed) currency reserves. It also enables the interim government to postpone the worst impacts of the IMF’s “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” to a later date.

When the borrowed hard currency reserves of the Central Bank run out –i.e. in the immediate aftermath of the May 25 presidential elections– the value of hryvnia will plunge on the forex market, which in turn will trigger a dramatic collapse in the standard of living. Coupled with the demise of bilateral economic relations with Russia pertaining to the supply of natural gas to Ukraine, energy prices are also slated to increase dramatically.

Neoliberalism and Neo-Nazi Ideology Join Hands: Repressing the Protest Movement Against the IMF

With Svoboda and Right Sector political appointees in charge of national security and the armed forces, a real grassroots protest movement directed against the IMF’s deadly macroeconomic reforms will, in all likelihood, be brutally repressed by the Right Sector’s “brown shirts” and the National Guard paramilitary led by Dmitry Yarosh on behalf of Wall Street and the Washington consensus.

In recent developments, Right Sector Dmitry Yarosh has declared his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. (Popular support for the Yarosh is less than 2%)

“Russia put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. The ultra-nationalist leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory.” (RT, March 22, 2014)

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State prosecutor, who also belongs to the Neo-Nazi faction, has implemented procedures which prevent the holding of public rallies and protests directed against the interim government.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michel Chossudovsky.

The move comes as more and more climate-fueled disasters are harming people and communities across the nation. In just the last year, catastrophic fires wiped out whole neighborhoods in Los Angeles; temperatures in Phoenix were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a record 143 days; and Hurricane Helene’s torrential rainfall devastated western North Carolina.

The following is a statement from David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for Climate & Energy at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):

“In the face of catastrophic and deadly climate disasters all across America—wildfires, heat waves, hurricanes, and more—the Trump administration is telling the country’s oil, gas, and coal magnates that they are free to keep spewing dangerous pollution into the atmosphere.

“This decision ignores science and the law. Fifteen years ago, the EPA determined that climate pollution endangers our health and well-being. The Denali-sized mountain of scientific evidence behind that decision has only grown to Mount Everest–size since then. The courts have repeatedly upheld the EPA’s legal authority and its scientific conclusions.

“Abdicating the EPA’s clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions. This is the clearest example of the Trump administration putting polluters over people, and that’s saying a lot.

“If the Trump EPA proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare, it will mean more polluted air and more catastrophic extreme weather for Americans. We will see them in court.”

Background

For more information on the legal issues around the endangerment finding, please see this blog by David Doniger.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is legally required to limit the emissions of any “air pollutant” that the agency determines “causes or contributes to air pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” In 2007, the Supreme Court held in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases unambiguously are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court then ordered the EPA to decide, based on the science, whether greenhouse gases endanger health or welfare. In 2009, the EPA established, based on detailed scientific data, that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health and welfare. Based on that determination, it established emissions standards for vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations over the ensuing years.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The spotlight

Two weeks ago, we wrote about the EXPLORE Act — an expansive piece of legislation aimed at expanding and improving outdoor access, which passed Congress unanimously in 2024. What the EXPLORE Act’s success seemed to show was that a love of nature transcends party lines, even in our current climate where just about everything feels politicized. That can translate into climate solutions everybody can get behind. In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at this on a community level, exploring how investing in neighborhood parks has transformed climate resilience in some at-risk areas — just one example of how a focus on parks, green spaces, and public amenities can lead to popular climate action. In a few weeks, we’ll take it all the way down to the personal level, with a look at how to proactively cultivate this connection to nature in (or rather, outside of) your own home.

“Climate change has become politically divisive,” Mike Bybee, senior director of federal relations at the Trust for Public Land, told me when we spoke a few weeks ago. “What’s not divisive are those impacts of things like flooding and fires and drought and heat.” Everyone agrees that the weather is changing, Bybee said — they can see that with their own eyes, in their own communities, whether it’s stronger and more frequent storms, floods, heat, or wildfires.

And, he said, the popularity of creating and preserving parks and outdoor spaces creates an opening for doing something about it. In the 2024 election, state and local ballot initiatives passed across the country, in both red and blue states, that supported building parks or restoring natural areas. In some cases, those initiatives even specifically mentioned climate resilience. “The work of protecting open space, creating parks and playgrounds that provide stormwater mitigation and rainwater runoff in the face of these storms — everyone agrees on that,” Bybee said.

Bybee and others at Trust for Public Land see that message in the success of these ballot measures, as well as national legislation like the EXPLORE Act and even the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which included funding for park and restoration projects with a climate resilience aspect to them.

You might not think of parks as connected to mitigating the risks of extreme weather. Of course, green spaces have a broad positive effect when it comes to climate: Plant life sequesters carbon, helps clean the air, and reduces the urban heat island effect.

But parks can contribute to much more than that when they’re built as green infrastructure with climate resilience in mind. Green infrastructure is a general term for systems that either use or mimic nature to maximize natural benefits and minimize the effects of things like flooding, erosion, and pollution. It can include rain gardens, green roofs, living shorelines — even urban street trees may be considered part of green infrastructure.

Public parks, from large nature preserves down to neighborhood playgrounds, can include many different types of green infrastructure in their designs, tailored to the unique needs of specific locations and communities.

In the city of Atlanta, that has had a lot to do with water. In one example, a new park helped to make the city more drought resilient — Shirley Clarke Franklin Park, Atlanta’s largest green space, is a former quarry that was transformed into a 35-acre reservoir, shoring up the city’s water supply. In other areas, it’s an overabundance of water that’s the problem.

Vine City, a historically Black neighborhood in Atlanta, has long had problems with flooding. In 2002, heavy rains brought a flood combining stormwater and sewage that was so severe, it rendered 60 homes unlivable.

“There were houses where the first floor was completely submerged under the water,” said George Dusenbury, who at the time was leading the district office for Georgia Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. “People were out there in boats.”

Faced with the near certainty of continued flooding in the area, the city offered to purchase the most damaged homes, and residents accepted the deal to relocate. The city demolished those homes, and the 16-acre parcel of land — about seven city blocks — sat vacant for several years. “In the meantime, the community around the park continued to flood. We did not solve the problem,” Dusenbury said.

And residents wanted to see something done with the space that would benefit the surrounding community. “If you look at five city blocks of grass, people started saying, ‘We need a park here,’” Dusenbury recalled. In 2010, an Atlanta organization called Park Pride put forth a “green infrastructure vision” for the watershed that includes Vine City and two adjacent neighborhoods, informed by a yearlong public outreach process. The vision was to address recurring flooding in the area through a series of connected green spaces, and the empty lot — what would later become Rodney Cook Sr. Park — was one of them.

“I wouldn’t refer to it as a common city planning activity, but fortunately some really innovative leaders in the city and nonprofits saw the value in that,” said Jay Wozniak, a landscape architect and director of Trust for Public Land’s urban parks program in Georgia, who became the project manager for the site.

In 2016, the city of Atlanta brought in the Trust for Public Land to help raise funds for, design, and build a park on the vacant Vine City lot that would not only provide a recreation space for the community, but also mitigate its flooding. The organization, along with local partners and residents, broke ground a year later.

Designed in collaboration with the community, Rodney Cook Sr. Park features walking trails and bridges, a playground, a splash pad, climbing boulders, restrooms, and a public performance space. But what’s underneath is just as vital.

“When I talk about the park, I talk about it being like a layer cake — and the bottom layer is this green infrastructure,” said Dusenbury, who is now the Trust for Public Land’s Georgia state director. The core of that green infrastructure is a pond with an adjoining field, which sits at the park’s lowest point — a low point for the entire Vine City neighborhood — and doubles as a stormwater retention basin, able to hold around 9 million gallons of water and then slowly release it through specially engineered soil that helps to filter out pollutants as the water drains after a heavy rain.

Cook Park opened in 2021, and in recent years it has faced down extreme weather events.

“We got two 100-year floods in two years,” Dusenbury said.

The second of those floods was caused by Hurricane Helene, the deadly Category 4 storm that brought destruction across its path from Florida to Tennessee, and broke a record for rainfall in Atlanta. When those rains came, Cook Park went underwater — exactly as it was designed to.

Top to bottom: Cook Park on September 27, 2024, the day after Hurricane Helene arrived in Georgia, and the park three days later, on September 30. Jay Wozniak

“It was supposed to flood,” Dusenbury said. “Those walkways were supposed to be underwater. We have trees and vegetation that are planted to be flooded. We even have mulch that stays in place better when it gets flooded.” Within just a few days, the park had returned to its unsubmerged state, as the collected water slowly seeped through the specially engineered soil and made its way into the city’s stormwater system. Although it’s difficult to pinpoint just how much the park reduced flooding in the surrounding area during a specific event like this, local reports noted that there was very little flooding in the park’s immediate vicinity.

In another part of the city, Historic Fourth Ward Park, which was completed in 2012, boasts a 2-acre lake that also doubles as a stormwater retention basin. It, too, helped to protect surrounding communities from the worst impacts of Helene.

Atlanta isn’t alone in these types of efforts. Trust for Public Land integrates green infrastructure into almost all of its park projects, Dusenbury said, and other organizations and governments are doing the same. The city of Seattle, no stranger to rain, has considered green infrastructure a critical part of its stormwater management plans for over a decade, installing rain gardens in parks and medians and offering rebates for homeowners to put them in their yards. Boston, which appointed its first director of green infrastructure in 2022, recently broke ground on a park renovation project that will include both flood-resilient infrastructure as well as shade trees and water features that will help protect residents from the impacts of extreme heat.

“That being said, I still think we’re at the early stages of this becoming an overall best practice,” Dusenbury added.

One thing he would like more cities to recognize is that green infrastructure, in addition to being widely desirable, can also be incredibly cost-effective. “Too often, cities default to what they know, which is building a big pipe or building a cistern underground,” he said. Those types of targeted solutions can be costly — and they don’t offer the same benefits to the community that green spaces do. Dusenbury pointed to Historic Fourth Ward Park as an example: “The estimated cost of building the park was about $16 million. And the estimated cost of building a giant underground pipe to hold all the water and prevent the flooding was more than $20 million,” he said. The city was able to actually save money by choosing green infrastructure. “And then it has this wonderful 16-acre amenity that people can use.”

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: more about Rodney Cook Sr. Park and its success during Hurricane Helene (Saporta Report)
• Read: more about the benefits of green infrastructure, and how these projects are often led by frontline communities (Grist)
• Read: about Babcock Ranch, a town in Florida that was designed with hurricane resilience in mind — including a large area of preserved wetland — and housed evacuees after Hurricanes Helene and Milton (The New York Times)
• Watch: an interview with landscape architect Sara Zewde, discussing how the field needs to shift to help prepare landscapes for climate change, while also honoring history and culture (Bloomberg Live)

A parting shot

An example of green infrastructure in a totally different setting — the San Diego Bay Native Oyster Living Shoreline Project is an effort to restore oyster reefs to a bay where they once flourished, using “reef balls” made out of a mixture of cement, rock, and oyster shells. The artificial reef, shown below, aims to reproduce a habitat that should act as a natural buffer against increasingly powerful waves that cause coastal erosion. The project is an alternative to conventional forms of “gray infrastructure,” like seawalls, that have in many cases exacerbated problems of habitat loss and erosion.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Mia Torres / Grist

Spotlight: Jay Wozniak

Parting shot: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change is politically divisive. Public parks? Not so much. on Feb 26, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

Across Maryland’s prison system, incarcerated workers assemble furniture, sew clothing, and even manufacture cleaning chemicals. In spite of making the state more than $50 million annually in revenue, these workers are compensated below the minimum wage in a system akin to slavery. But how does the system of forced prison labor really work, and how do state laws keep  this industry running? Rattling the Bars investigates how Maryland law requires government institutions to purchase prison-made products, and how legislators like State Senator Antonio Hayes are working to change that.

Producer: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to Rattling The Bars. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to State Senator Antonio Hayes from the 40th district of Baltimore City about a bill he sponsored around prison labor in Maryland. The bill was designed to regulate Maryland Correctional Enterprise, which is the prison industry in Maryland, around their preferential treatment they receive for contracts, be it furniture, tags, clothing, or any chemicals that’s used for cleaning. The purpose of the bill was to regulate how much money they were getting from free prison labor.

Antonio Hayes:

They bring in anywhere in a high $50 million a year in business that they’re generating. So they perform everything from furniture making to license plates, to, in some cases, even on the Eastern shore, they have inmates working on poultry farms and agriculture. So the variety of services that they offered have expanded dramatically since its inception.

So here’s the thing, it’s not just state universities. All state universities are using it. The General Assembly is using it. The Maryland Department of Labor is using it. The Maryland Department of Education is using it. Maryland State Police is using it. Maryland DHS is using it. If you are a state agency, you are required by state procurement law to purchase from MCE as long as they have the product. So that’s why they’re able to bring in that type of revenue. Like I said, if you look at their annual reports, it’s somewhere around $58 million a year.

Mansa Musa:

Later, you will hear a conversation I had with former prisoner Lonnell Sligh, who was sentenced in Maryland, but was sent out of state to Kansas. And while in Kansas, he worked in prison industry. I was surprised to hear how Kansas is treating this prison labor force versus how prisoners are being treated throughout the United States of America. But first, you’ll hear this conversation with Senator Antonio Hayes.

I want you to talk a little bit about why you felt the need to get in this particular space, because this is not a space that people get in. You hear stuff about prison, okay, the conditions in prison, the medical in prison, the lack of food, parole, probation. But very rarely do you hear someone say, “Well, let me look at the industry or the job that’s being provided to prisoners.” Why’d you look at this particular direction?

Antonio Hayes:

Yeah. So interesting enough, I’ve been supporting a gentleman back home in Baltimore that has an organization called Emage, E-M-A-G-E, Entrepreneurs Making And Growing Enterprises. So the brother had reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’m manufacturing clothing, but I hear the correctional system is teaching brothers and sisters behind the wall these skills. I’d like to connect with them. So when brothers and sisters return into the community, I’d like to hire them.” Muslim brother, real good, very active member of the community. So I said, “Excellent. Let me reach out to Corrections.”

So I found the organization, MCE-

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Maryland Correctional Enterprises.

Antonio Hayes:

Maryland Correctional Enterprises. And I asked them to come out and do a site visit with me so we could build a pipeline of individuals returning back to West Baltimore, Baltimore City period, especially if they’re already learning these skills so they could get jobs. And I’ll never forget the CEO at the time responding to me, pretty much saying, “Look, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. How dare you invite us to come into the community?” So I was taken aback by the thought that they would clap back in such a way. But if you look at my legislative agenda, it’s really focused around economics. A lot of the things that I push is around economics.

When my mom showed me how to shoot dice in West Baltimore-

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… one of the things she used to always say, “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Antonio Hayes:

So when I looked at this, like why MCE existed and the fact that they had a procurement law in the state, a preferred provider status, there’s three organizations that have a preferred provider status. It’s America Works, who hire individuals that have disabilities to have employment. Because if they didn’t do it, these individuals would probably be getting state resources from some other pot. But it takes people who have disabilities, so people who are somehow impaired. There’s another organization called Blind Industries.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Antonio Hayes:

They supply janitorial products to the state of Maryland, and these people are blind or visually impaired. And then you had MCE, which were people who were incarcerated for whatever reason. And it didn’t seem to really fit with the other two that were serving populations of individuals with disabilities. So then I began to research even more the existence and how much money they were generating. And I found out, here in the state of Maryland, they were generating revenue of upwards of fifty-something million dollars a year. Whereas, the individuals who are incarcerated, the individuals that were doing the work, were getting paid no more than a $1.16 a day. So that alarmed me, one, the fact that they had a monopoly, because they were eliminating opportunities for other individuals to participate in the economy. Right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Antonio Hayes:

So they had a monopoly over. And then two, they had an unfair advantage, because they were essentially paying wages that were subordinate to any other wage anyone could afford. So their overhead was so much cheaper, because they were taking advantage of the status of people who are incarcerated and paying them far less than anyone else could even think of competing against.

Mansa Musa:

And you know, it’s ironic, because as we’re sitting there, we’re talking, and we’re at this table, these chairs, all this furniture was made at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. But on back, I worked in the cash shop at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. And prior to becoming Maryland Correctional Enterprise, it was State Use-

Antonio Hayes:

State Use Industries, correct.

Mansa Musa:

… which is my next lead to my next question. So this particular, going back to your point, it’s three people, or it’s three organizations, three industries that get preferential treatment, but they created… In your research, did you find out that they created this entity solely to be able to get that preferential treatment procurement, or was it a bid more on who is going to get the third slot? Because the first two slots, I can understand, they [inaudible 00:07:45] the Maryland Penitentiary. Some guys had brought in. And they were networking with the Library of Congress to try to bring all the books in the Library of Congress into Braille. And they were getting minimum wage, and they were paying it to the social security. All that was being done in that entity.

But from your research, was this particular… Maryland Correctional Enterprise, was this created as an institution by the private sector for the sole reason to have access to the label?

Antonio Hayes:

Right. So what I found was, actually, the federal government at some point had made it against the law to transfer prison-made goods across state lines. So in order for the industry to… So also, there’s some tie to this. This has really evolved as a result of the abolition of the 13th Amendment.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Antonio Hayes:

So when you had the abolition of slavery, and individuals… They lost a workforce that they would’ve had.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Antonio Hayes:

So there was a need to supplement that workforce, and the way they did that was through the, what is it called? The loophole in the constitution-

Mansa Musa:

The constitution, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… that said that slavery was illegal except for those who were being incarcerated-

Mansa Musa:

Convicted of a crime, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… due to convicted of a crime. But in Maryland and another state, I think they needed a way to create an artificial audience, because they didn’t necessarily have an audience to make the purchases in order to make it sustainable. So what they did was they put this preferred provider label on it through the state procurement so they could create an audience and customer base to support the work that they were doing.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And now I can see. I can see it now, because, like you say, it’s all about exploitation of labor on the 13th amendment, giving them the right to use convicted convicts. So they saw that loophole, they saw the opportunity.

Antonio Hayes:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

This is continuing black hole. They saw the opportunity. Okay. As we wrap up on this particular segment of this thing, you spoke on the economics, that’s your focus. And we know that, coming out of prison, a person having job, the likelihood of coming back to prison is slim to none. Because if you got an income… This is just my philosophy, and I’m a returning citizen, I came out of prison. Once I got an income, it allowed me to be able to get my own place. It allowed me to be able to create a savings. It allowed me to get my credit score.

In terms of, from your perspective, what would it look like if, and this is something that you might want to look at from your office level, as opposed to the opposition of them having that right, wouldn’t it be more feasible if they gave minimum wage? If the advocacy from policy would be, “Okay, you get this preferential treatment, but in order to get it, you have to provide minimum wage and you got to let them pay into their social security.” Is that something that you could see happening?

Antonio Hayes:

I think something that shows that isn’t as unbalanced as the current system is, is definitely where we want to be. Remember, a lot of the stuff that I do is around economics. I would’ve never looked at the criminal justice system or this system as something that I would want to focus on. I just wanted to make sure that individuals that were returning back to the communities that I grew up in, West Baltimore, had an opportunity to be successful. And this current system, the way it’s structured, it doesn’t give individuals an opportunity to transition back into the community, to have a greater chance of success. It’s literally setting them up for failure.

And my last visit to Jessa, I met three individuals, if you combine their sentences together, they had a hundred years. Some of them were life, some of them were never coming back to the community, ever. And I know to some degree, you need something for these individuals to do. But what I’m told anecdotally is the people that most likely will have these opportunities are people who have very long sentences. Because from a labor perspective, going back to the whole 13th Amendment thing, it’s more predictable that they will be around for a long time, as opposed to just the opposite, using this as a training opportunity. So when they reintegrate back into society, they will have a better chance of being successful and a productive member of society.

I think this current system, the way it’s working, even if you look at the suppliers, where are they getting the equipment from? We’re subsidizing MCE, and the supplies we’re getting from, from somewhere out of state. Right?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Antonio Hayes:

We’re not even doing business. This wood is being procured from some out of state company. We’re not supporting Maryland jobs. So I think we need to just reevaluate and deconstruct piece by piece, how could we better get a better return on its investment, not just for the state, but also for the individuals who are producing these products that we enjoy?

Mansa Musa:

That was Senator Antonio Hayes, who, as you could see, sponsored a bill to try to get the labor force, prison labor force in Maryland regulated. We’ll keep you updated on the developments of that bill.

Now, my conversation with Lonnell Sligh. Lonnell Sligh told me about his experience in working with the prison industry in Kansas. He told me that the average prisoner in Kansas has saved up to $75,000 while working in prison industry. That it doesn’t matter how much time you’re serving, if you have a life sentence or not, most of the prisoners that’s working in the industry have long term. But because of them being able to work in the prison industry, they’re able to save money, to assist their families, pay taxes, buying to social security, and more importantly, live with some kind of dignity while they’re incarcerated.

Lonnell Sligh:

The blessing of me going to Kansas, I saw the other side of that slave industry that we called and we thought about for so many years. Now, going to Kansas, I saw an opportunity where they afforded guys to work a minimum wage job. And in that, guys were making living wages. I met guys that had 60, 70 or a hundred thousand dollars in their account.

Mansa Musa:

From working in the prison industry?

Lonnell Sligh:

From working in the prison industry. So when I saw that, that kind of changed my mindset. Because at first, I thought it was a joke. Because they asked me say, “Hey, Mr. Sligh, you want to work in the minimum wage shop? Because you’re doing a lot of good things.” And I said, “Man, get out of here.”

So going back to what I was saying, when I found out that it was true and I was afforded to get a job there, it changed my whole outlook on it. Because now, my wheels started turning on, how can we make this better?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

You know what I mean? How can we change the narrative?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Okay. In every regard, okay, how did you change the narrative? Because, okay, now, reality being reality, Kansas might be an anomaly, and by that, I mean that might be in and of itself something that they doing. But overall, when you look at the prison industry throughout the United States of America, and it’s massive, they don’t have that narrative. So what would you say? How would you address that? What would you say about the Kansas model and the need to adapt it to other states’ prison industries?

Lonnell Sligh:

Well, you know firsthand that when I first came back to Maryland, my whole mindset was bringing some of the things from Kansas back to Maryland and taking some of the things that was progressive and good for Kansas back to Kansas. Now, the prison industry, we are in process now trying to bring that to Maryland. And one of the things that I’m advocating for, and I’m sure, because in the process when I got the job and I saw how we can, it’s an opportunity to make some changes and make it better for the people that’s inside, I crafted a set of guidelines and things that I presented to the administration.

So one of the things was allowing people with long-term sentences to be afforded that opportunity. So when they gave it to me, and I showed them through example that… Because I was never supposed to get out of prison.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So I was never supposed to have that job. But the blessing in that, I showed them two sides of promise, and that was that now the companies that were coming in there had a long-term person that can be there that they can depend on, because they had a high turnover rate.

Then secondly, I crafted a thing as far as giving dudes the opportunity to learn financial literacy, things of that nature. Because one of the things that I know for sure, a lot of guys that’s getting those jobs, that was getting those jobs were leaving out of the prison with a lot of money, but they were just as ignorant as when they came in.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So if you got a hundred thousand dollars in your account and you don’t know how to pay bills or you don’t know any financial literacy, the first thing you’re going to do is go out and buy a Cadillac, a bunch of flashy clothes.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, yeah.

Lonnell Sligh:

So you’re going to end up broke or back in prison. So that’s one of the things that we are working to craft, bringing this to Maryland, having it upfront, having a criteria, a curriculum that’s designated the design for success. And one of the things that, like I said, in Kansas, the politicians, the prison industry, the corporate industry, if y’all want to help with this cause, you say you want to give people a second chance, what better way than bringing in private industry jobs, but making it something for the better, not as a slave camp?

Mansa Musa:

In terms of, how did you come out? And were you able to come out, after being in the industry, to be able to feel some sense of security financially? Or were you in need of getting support from family members to make sure that you had what you needed? Or were you able to save some money, bottom line?

Lonnell Sligh:

Absolutely.

Mansa Musa:

Not going into how much.

Lonnell Sligh:

Yeah.

Mansa Musa:

But what did your savings allow you to do in terms of adjust, readjust back into society? That’s really what it’s all about. If you’re coming out and you can’t adjust in society with the money that you made out of the industry, if you don’t have no sense of security with the money that you’re making out of industry, then likely your chances of survival is slim to nothing.

Lonnell Sligh:

Yeah. But I’m going to take it back even before, because remember, I was never supposed to get out of prison.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So having that job really took a burden off of my family.

Mansa Musa:

Okay.

Lonnell Sligh:

And it took a burden off of me, because now I didn’t have to reach out and ask for money, somebody to send me money to make commissary. So my whole strategy when I first got the job, because remember, I wasn’t ever thinking about getting out of prison, so my thing was helping my family, saving as much money as I can, building a bank account, like some of them guys that I knew had 60, 70, a hundred thousand dollars in their account.

So then I transitioned over to finding out that now I may have an opportunity to get out of prison. So that really changed the whole narrative and outlook that I had, because now I got in my mind that if I’m able to get out, not only can I afford to pay for a lawyer to help this cause, but now when I get out, I don’t have to come out in a desperate situation not knowing where I’m going to live at, not knowing if I can put a roof over my head or get a car.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right, right. So then in that regard, the model that Kansas had in terms of giving the minimum wage, allowing you to pay into your social security, and allowing you to save, in that model, it allowed for you to transition back in society. But more importantly, while you were incarcerated, it allowed for you to be able to feel a sense of self-sufficiency in terms of taking care of your family, or providing for your children, not having to rely on them to put money on your phone or put money in your books. So that Kansas model is really a model that you think that… Well, then let’s just ask this, why do you think that other states haven’t adapted this model?

Lonnell Sligh:

Because one of the things we know is that it’s an old mindset. It’s an old way of thinking, that’s not progressive. And it’s not beneficial for a lot of states to transition or to try to do something better. They don’t want to help us. They don’t want to help the incarcerated person or the person that’s serving their times, even though they say their Division of Corrections. And they need to change that name from the Division of Corrections, because they’re not helping correct anything.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

But Kansas most definitely afforded the opportunity for… But their mindset when this first started was in the seventies, so they were about making a dollar themselves.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So it evolved, and just like I said, it was still a hundred years behind the timing, by me being afforded to get in that space, it was a blessing because I was able to help bring a different light to it. But other states, just like I say, it’s about their bottom line and their control and old way of thinking. But my thing is, and what I’m advocating for is, is that you have to think outside the box. Because if you don’t think outside the box, then you’re going to get the same results, the same thing.

Mansa Musa:

Well, how do you address this part of the conversation? That long-term imprisonment people, that most people in those situations, those jobs after you spoke on this and have long-term, and so therefore, the benefits for them is not in comparison to the benefits of people that got short-term that can get the skill and get the money and come out. How do you… Can you have it both ways, or either/or?

Lonnell Sligh:

I think, for me, you can have it both ways. But one of the things that we mess up so much on in our way of thinking in society and in the department, we’re stuck on a certain way of thinking. So my thing is that, if you want to breed a successful person, no matter what kind of time you have… That’s my focus and my mindset, because I took a stance knowing I was never getting out of prison, but I took a stance that I was going to better myself and I was going to walk every day and do the things that I needed to make myself successful and act like I was getting out of prison tomorrow, even though I knew I was never getting out of prison. So for me, it was about me better than myself.

So having a minimum wage job or allowing a person to have a job that they can create wages, it makes a better person. It gives you a better product, whether you’re getting out or not. But you have to instill those things in people so that they can understand that it’s a different way. If not, you’re going to think that old way of thinking. Nothing is going to change.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. Two conversations about prison labor. The prison industry. I worked in MCE. I earned 90 cents a day, a dollar and something with bonuses, approximately $2.10. The bonuses came from how much labor we produced.

On the other hand, you had the conversation I had with Lonnell about Kansas. In Maryland, I didn’t pay taxes, I wasn’t allowed to pay into the social security. I didn’t pay medical, and I didn’t pay rent. In Kansas, a person is allowed to pay into social security. That means when he get released, he had his quarters to retire. Pay the medical. That means, if he is released, he’ll be able to afford medical. Pay taxes. That means that he’s also making a contribution to society in that form. But more importantly, they’re allowed to save money. And in saving money, they will become less of a burden on the state upon their release.

What would you prefer? A person that earns slave wages and don’t pay back into society, or a system where the person is paying into society in the form of taxes, social security, medical, and also becoming economically sufficient upon their release? Tell me what you think.

Speaker 4:

Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. We need your help to keep doing this work, so please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Mansa Musa.

President Donald Trump ran his reelection campaign on, among other things, a promise to bring down the cost of groceries. But in the first two months of 2025, egg prices have continued to climb, sending government officials in search of answers and interventions. 

Jay Rosen, a Democratic senator from Nevada, urged Trump’s agriculture secretary this month to investigate whether egg producers are price-gouging. Administration officials, like Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, have pinned the problem on Biden-era policies and pointed the finger at inflation. But the rise of egg prices is both more and less complicated than that. Most inflation over the past few years has been caused by a mix of supply chain disruptions, rising demand, labor shortages, climate change, and fiscal policy. But the record-high cost of eggs today has been driven, primarily, by the spread of avian influenza on U.S. farms.

The current outbreak of bird flu in the U.S. was first registered by U.S. officials in 2022. Various strains of avian influenza are naturally found in the wild, and when ducks, geese, sparrows, robins, and other birds carrying the disease migrate around the country, they bring the virus with them and spread it to other birds — including poultry. The highly lethal strain currently infecting birds on U.S. farms — H5N1 — has been found in all 50 states and led to a precipitous decline in the population of egg-laying hens, sharply reducing the supply of eggs nationwide. 

“Since 2021, we’re down 7 percent of our supply” of egg-laying hens, said Jada Thompson, an associate professor of agribusiness at the University of Arkansas with a focus on poultry economics. “That’s a huge amount of supply being down — and growing — right now.”

Over 160 million farmed and wild birds have gotten sick, died, or been slaughtered after exposure to the H5 strains of avian influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The number of wild birds that have succumbed to the disease are likely severely undercounted, since birds in the wild are monitored far less closely than birds raised for profit. The last six months of the spread of the disease have been particularly brutal for farmers. In just the first two months of 2025, 22 million egg-laying hens have been impacted, said Thompson, already more than the number affected in the last quarter of 2024. 

In fact, egg-laying hen populations in the U.S. are likely the lowest they’ve been in the last decade, said Maurice Pitesky, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, who has studied how avian influenza has spread from wild to domestic bird populations. 

This — along with seasonal factors like the rise in demand for eggs over the holidays — has caused wholesale and retail prices of eggs to spike. “I think there’s a very strong relationship between egg prices and highly pathogenic avian influenza,” said Pitesky, using another name for H5 strains of the disease.

Climate change is also playing a role in rising egg prices — albeit differently from how it’s increased the price of other kinds of food. In recent years, extreme weather events like drought and flooding have disrupted food supply chains and sent shock waves through the economy that end up hitting grocery shoppers. In 2022, the Mississippi River entered a period of such extreme drought that ships transporting crops for cattle feed couldn’t navigate its channels. Meanwhile, in California, flooding and extreme heat hit some of the nation’s biggest suppliers of lettuce. As a result, the price of salad greens and some dairy and meat products rose. A study published last year projected that extreme heat driven by climate change will exacerbate overall inflation in nearly every country in the world by 2035. 

When it comes to eggs, climate change is affecting supply more indirectly — by changing the migratory patterns and nesting habits of birds that carry avian influenza. As global average temperatures rise and extreme weather events scramble animal migration patterns and force some species north toward increasingly temperate climes, animals are crossing paths in entirely new configurations, making it easier for them to swap diseases. 

Because bird flu evolves quickly and mostly in the wild, it’s hard for researchers to pinpoint exactly where and how climate change may be affecting its spread. What the handful of scientists who work on this topic can say for certain is that warming temperatures and rising sea levels are changing when and how birds move across continents, which may be influencing the unusually fast-paced and large outbreaks of bird flu that have been occurring for the past half decade or so. 

On average, birds are embarking on their migratory journeys from south to north earlier each season due to warmer spring temperatures in the northern hemisphere, extending the season for bird flu. Sea birds are building their nests further from the coastline as sea level inch higher, forcing these birds into closer contact with other species. The fact that these outbreaks are affecting not just birds but also grizzly bears, seals, sea lions, dolphins, foxes, and ferrets — not to mention dairy cows, household pets, and humans — is also an indication that the virus is getting better at hopping between different types of animals. 

“Climate change clearly affected patterns of migrations, and there are many references for this,” Marius Gilbert, a spatial epidemiologist at the National Fund for Scientific Research in Brussels, told Grist via email in 2023. “Demonstrating how this may have affected transmission patterns is far more complicated to establish scientifically.” Gilbert coauthored a study published in 2008 that projected that the most tangible effect of climate change on avian influenza would be to shift transmission among wild birds. 

Other factors also contribute to the spread of bird flu. Pitesky argued that land management — for example, how closely farms are built to wetlands and other waterfowl habitats — can contribute to higher rates of H5N1 among domestic bird populations. So in order to curb the spread of avian influenza, which he said is endemic and never going to fully go away, policymakers could pay closer attention to where farms are located.

For shoppers wondering when egg prices will drop, relief may not arrive for some time. “I would expect prices to come back down at some point,” said Thompson, adding that egg prices are not “sticky” — they don’t jump up and stay high. Over time, they recover. 

When that happens depends on future outbreaks and how quickly the egg industry can restore its flocks of hens. Farmers can take stricter biosecurity measures to keep their flocks safe, like making sure wild birds can’t get into chicken coops or feeding bins and limiting outside visitors. The federal government also seems to be considering vaccinating poultry, but industry groups say it would negatively impact overseas sales. If, hypothetically, there were no more avian influenza cases starting tomorrow, it might take the egg industry about six months to recover, said Thompson. But that’s unlikely — and with Easter just a couple of months away, consumers can expect to see another increase in demand for eggs. 

“Just how deep that recovery will happen and how soon that will happen is the question on everybody’s mind,” said Thompson. “I don’t think anybody can tell you with accuracy” when it will happen.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What climate change means for bird flu — and the soaring price of eggs on Feb 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

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One of President Donald Trump’s most damaging strikes at the foundation of U.S. climate policy is buried deep in a sweeping Inauguration Day executive order focused on “Unleashing American Energy.” Half way through the lengthy document is a directive that would obliterate an obscure but critically important calculation the government uses to gauge the real-world costs that climate change is imposing on the U.S. economy.

Getting rid of the measure, called the “social cost of carbon,” would upend energy and environmental regulations meant to address climate change and could have the long-term effect of shifting costs from polluting industries directly onto Americans as the expenses of climate change rise.

The measure essentially establishes a price for each ton of carbon emitted, based on the long-term damages it is expected to cause in the future. It has become the government’s primary tool to weigh the economic costs of climate change — such as disaster cleanup or health impacts from warming — against the burden of regulations.

The executive order disbanded the working group, which included the treasury secretary, energy secretary and director of national economic policy, that set the social cost of carbon and advised how it should be implemented. It revoked that group’s previous decisions. And it directed the Environmental Protection Agency, which calculates the figure and bases regulatory proposals on it, to reconsider using the social cost of carbon altogether with the goal of eradicating “abuse” that stands in the way of affordable energy production.

The order stems directly from language in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy playbook and is based on work by the conservative think tank, which has consistently opposed climate policy and worked to defend the businesses of fossil fuel industries.