It’s the kind of bureaucratic alert that rarely makes national headlines. But in a city where permafrost thaw buckles roads, homes lack air conditioning, and the high at this time of year is generally in the low 70s, the warning comes as a sign of rapidly shifting climate. Alaska is warming more than twice as fast as the global average. 

In Alaska, where hazardous cold is historically more of a concern, weather offices in Fairbanks — just 120 miles south of the Arctic circle as the raven flies — didn’t have the option of issuing heat advisories until the beginning of this month, when it was added to a list of possible public alerts. “It gives us a more direct way of communicating these kinds of hazards when they occur,” Santiago said.

The heat bearing down on Alaska isn’t entirely unprecedented, at least in meteorological terms. On the heels of a cold spring, a dome of high pressure, known as an upper-level ridge, has settled over the Interior, a fairly common pattern that traps warm air. In the state’s central valleys, that can spell high temperatures and dry conditions. Temperatures on Friday reached a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit. An updated advisory on Sunday warned the hot conditions would last until Tuesday, with “temperatures up to 87F to 89F… Isolated areas up to 90F are possible, especially in the Yukon Flats.”

“People in [the] Lower 48 might think that’s nothing, but here those temps could feel like 110,” Santiago said.

With nearly 22 hours of sunlight approaching the solstice, daytime heat accumulates and lingers — not just outside, but indoors. Unlike the Lower 48, most homes in Alaska weren’t built to keep heat out, but to keep it in during months of subzero cold. The thick insulation this requires turns houses into ovens during extended periods of hot temperatures. In Europe, where infrastructure is similarly designed for cold climates, a brutal 2003 heat wave exposed the potential risks: It killed 35,000 people.

That’s part of why the state’s new heat advisory matters. It’s not just a weather bulletin. It’s a warning for a state where most people don’t have the coping mechanisms taken for granted elsewhere — shaded porches, central air, even knowing the signs of heatstroke.

The sudden temperature jump also poses its own challenges. “I’m originally from Texas,” Santiago said. “I’m so used to hot summers that in the 50s, I start putting on a jacket. Now living in Alaska, I’m wearing dresses at that temperature.” But it’s not just a matter of clothing: When your body adapts to higher temperatures, the volume of blood expands, allowing your heart to pump more efficiently and reducing heat stress. You begin sweating earlier, and produce more sweat per gland. But it generally takes one to two weeks of exposure to adapt, making sudden swings in temperature riskier. 

The office Santiago works for, like many National Weather Service offices, have recently lost staff under Trump administration cuts. More than 560 members were laid off across the country, reducing its capacity by about a third, and leaving many stations critically understaffed. As a result, the Fairbanks office that made the state’s first heat warning must now suspend operations overnight. “We’re working to the best of our ability with what we have,” Santiago said. The early start to summer heat comes after a winter with low snow levels and early melt, raising concerns about fire season. Layoffs have also affected firefighting staff, where both technical expertise and basic manpower are in question. Concerned about federal capacity, California Gov. Newsom launched a firefighter recruitment effort this week, but in Alaska, much of the wildland firefighting force is federal, raising the question of whether those like Santiago who must prepare for threats ahead will have the resources they need.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Alaska just hit a climate milestone — its first-ever heat advisory on Jun 16, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lois Parshley.

Methane is a powerful but fast-acting greenhouse gas — it packs a big punch in the short term and weakens over time. Studies show methane is responsible for 20 to 30 percent of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. U.S. oil and gas operations are collectively responsible for emitting more than 6 million metric tons of methane every year — the equivalent of 10 percent of the country’s annual CO2 emissions, if you’re looking at a greenhouse gas’s first 20 years in the atmosphere. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which often leaks out of drilling sites, pipelines, and storage facilities.

When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he made it clear that he intended to become the first president in American history to successfully take on climate change — a goal that necessarily included targeting methane emissions. In 2022, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — legislation that offered hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, loans, and grants to households, utilities, and industries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. 

The IRA also amended the Clean Air Act to include a provision that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a methane fee for major producers of oil and gas — essentially, taxing fossil fuel companies for every ton of the greenhouse gas they emitted above a certain threshold. The legislation included subsidies to help producers who emitted methane over the legal limit to install gas-trapping technology to reduce their emissions. 

The rule the EPA finalized in November last year, technically called the Waste Emissions Charge, would have applied to facilities that produce volumes of methane that exceed the equivalent of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The fee started at $900 per ton of methane in 2024 and would have risen to $1,200 per ton in 2025 and $1,600 in 2026 and every year beyond that. Most big oil and gas companies already meet the standards laid out in Biden’s fee, which means they wouldn’t have had to pay anything. The EPA was supposed to start tallying up fees this year based on 2024 emissions data, but Republicans repealed it before the agency could start collecting penalties.

The fee, had it taken effect, would have been the first-ever federal tax directly imposed on a greenhouse gas. It would have applied to roughly a third of the methane emissions that come from oil and gas infrastructure in the U.S. and diverted 1.2 metric tons of methane through 2035 — the equivalent of taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars offline for a year. 

Shell, BP, and other oil majors supported the initiative. But other parts of the oil and gas industry, and Republicans in Congress, opposed it. 

“No one wants to do business when the federal government creates regulations that will put them out of business, which is what this natural gas tax is doing,” said Republican August Pfluger of San Angelo, Texas, the Congressman who wrote the measure that Trump signed on Friday. Pfluger’s district overlaps with the Permian Basin, the highest producing oil field in the U.S. “In reality this rule has only stifled American energy production, discouraged investment, and increased energy prices across America,” he said. 

Pfluger’s pessimistic view of the health of America’s oil and gas industry is at odds with what official reports say. America’s fossil fuel producers are on a winning streak by every measure. The U.S. is the largest exporter of natural gas in the world, and crude oil and natural gas production hit record highs in December. The Texas oil and gas industry broke new production records on Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine how a country that’s breaking records for production is being somehow constrained,” said Jon Goldstein, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund’s energy transition program. “I don’t think that argument really holds water.”

However, the tax tackled only a sliver of U.S. methane emissions. The American agricultural and waste sectors produced almost twice as much methane as fossil fuel production between 2010 and 2019. But clamping down on emissions from those sectors is challenging. Methane emissions from agriculture come from myriad decentralized sources, like cows and manure storage facilities, making them difficult to regulate. And the amount of methane agriculture produces depends in large part on consumer eating habits, which are hard for the government to control. 

Despite its limited impact, the methane fee was a step in the right direction, experts said. “There’s an order of operations in which we need to implement climate solutions,” said Daniel Jasper, the policy director for the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. “Methane is something we call an emergency brake, because we’ve got to do it now.” 

The fee is one of seven climate and environment policies Republicans in Congress are targeting using the Congressional Review Act — a law that gives lawmakers the authority to reverse recently-passed regulations with a simple majority vote. But Republicans only repealed the EPA rule establishing the methane fee — not the IRA provision permitting the application of such a fee in the first place. If that remains intact, a future presidential administration could pick up where Biden left off. However, Republicans in Congress have signaled that they intend to repeal as much of the IRA as possible in the coming months, including the portions that empower the EPA to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump repeals America’s first-ever tax on greenhouse gases before it goes into effect on Mar 17, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

The fact she was warm inside without a gas furnace while the outdoor temperature read 9 degrees Fahrenheit reaffirmed a core belief: ​“Electrification is better in almost every way you slice it.”

Mullinax is chief operating officer for Solar CrowdSource, a platform that connects groups of customers with solar panels and electric appliances. Since last spring, the company has been preparing for North Carolina’s first-ever statewide incentives for switching out gas stoves and heaters for high-efficiency electric versions.

The Energy Saver North Carolina program, launched in mid-January, includes more than $208 million dollars in federally funded rebates to help low- and moderate-income homeowners make energy-saving improvements, including converting to electric appliances.

“The electric counterpart to every single fossil-fuel technology out there does the same job better,” Mullinax said, and ​“has a lower impact on the climate, is healthier, and often saves money.”

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Solar CrowdSource, which has partnered with the city of Asheville and Buncombe County to help meet the community’s climate goals through electrification, expects the rebate program to make its task easier.

Still, questions remain about the federally funded inducements, including — perhaps most urgently — whether they can survive President Donald Trump’s unilateral assault on clean energy.

‘The largest and the first’

The state’s new incentive program stems from the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 federal climate law that unleashed nearly $400 billion in federal spending on clean energy and efficiency — and which is now embattled by a flurry of Trump edicts.

While much of the climate law directs incentives to large, utility-scale wind and solar projects, the $8.8 billion home-rebate program is designed to curb planet-warming emissions house-by-house, where there is vast potential for improving efficiency and shifting to electric appliances.

Studies estimate that roughly 35 percent of home energy use is wasted — lost to inefficient heating and cooling systems and appliances, air leaks around windows and doors, and poorly insulated walls. That’s especially true in states like North Carolina, where building energy conservation codes are woefully outdated.

While homes in North Carolina rely less on fossil fuel appliances than in other parts of the country, they still contribute to climate change. About a third are heated with fuels other than electricity, per the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the Energy Information Administration, some 15 percent use gas for cooking. In all, state officials estimate that households that burn gas, propane, and other fuels account for 5 percent of the state’s net greenhouse gas pollution.

Both energy waste and the rising cost of fossil fuels — whether burned directly in the home or in Duke Energy power plants — contribute to the state’s energy burden. Some 1.4 million North Carolinians pay a disproportionately high fraction of their income on energy bills, according to the state’s latest Clean Energy Plan.

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But though the state has long deployed federal weatherization assistance to its lowest-income households, there’s little precedent here for a widespread nudge to electrification, either through carrots or sticks.

Unlike dozens of municipalities around the country, no local government in North Carolina has moved to limit residential hookups for gas; most legal analysts say they lack the power to do so. In 2023, the state legislature made doubly sure of that with a law banning local bans on new gas appliances or connections.

Meanwhile, a decades-old state rule barring ratepayer-funded utility promotions that could influence fuel choice has prevented Duke from offering much in the way of carrots. While shareholders could pay for rebates, they have little motive to do so: Duke acquired Piedmont Natural Gas, the state’s predominant gas utility, in 2016.

For years, Duke has offered incentives, carefully calibrated not to run afoul of state rules, for builders to construct more efficient homes. The latest iteration of those ratepayer-backed inducements is under $2,000 per home. By contrast, the new statewide rebates for upgrading to electric appliances cap out at $14,000 apiece.

“This is the largest and the first program in the state that is truly incentivizing fuel switching,” said Ethan Blumenthal, regulatory counsel at the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.

A second program within Energy Saver North Carolina offers rebates of up to $16,000 to homeowners who add insulation, plug air leaks, and make other improvements, so long as an audit shows the measures will reduce energy use by at least 20 percent.

In both cases, North Carolina officials are aiming the incentives at low- and moderate-income households. Those earning less than 80 percent of the area’s median income — about $70,000, depending on the county — get projects for free, and those earning up to 150 percent of the median get a 50 percent rebate.

“That was a choice. The federal government did not require it to be a specifically low- to moderate-income program,” said Claire Williamson, energy policy advocate at the North Carolina Justice Center. Yet, she added, the administrations of former governor Roy Cooper and current governor Josh Stein have ​“made sure that these funds are going to people who need them the most.”

‘Very optimistic about this program’

Like Solar CrowdSource, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters has awaited the new rebates for months. Meech Carter, clean energy campaigns director at the group, has been handing out flyers, holding information sessions with legislators and community leaders, and setting up an online clearinghouse for homeowners to explore available incentives.

“Every time I present on the website and what resources are out there, I get so many questions on the rebate program,” Carter said, ​“especially for replacing gas appliances, propane heaters, and transitioning folks to cleaner sources and more energy-efficient sources.”

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Costs and climate concerns are factors, she said, but so is health. Just like fossil fuel–burning power plants and cars, gas stoves and furnaces emit soot and smog-forming particles. A growing body of evidence shows that these pollutants get trapped indoors and far exceed levels deemed safe.

Now that the rebate program has launched, Carter has dozens of people statewide to call back and assist, including 25 in Edgecombe County’s Princeville, the oldest town in the country chartered by Black Americans.

Edgecombe is among the state’s most impoverished counties, making it a prime candidate for the new rebates. ​“Considering North Carolina’s energy landscape,” Carter said, ​“we are very optimistic about this program.”

‘Continuous improvement’

Yet even champions for the program acknowledge they have questions about its deployment. Despite the immense need, it’s hard enough to expend weatherization assistance money due to distrust in government programs, a dearth of qualified contractors, and other hurdles. Those funds, intended for the state’s lowest-income households, total roughly $38 million per year at the moment, after a big infusion from Congress, according to state officials. The new rebates, if evenly distributed over five years, would more than double that with another $41.6 million annually.

“This is larger than the weatherization assistance program,” said Williamson. ​“There are many contractors out there, but I think there is going to be a big lift to get people trained.”

Announcing the program last month, Governor Stein stressed that new contractors and other workers would follow.

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“[The Department of Environmental Quality] estimates that the program will support over 2,000 jobs across our state,” Stein said at the launch event. ​“I’m also eager to see the workforce development opportunities that will come.”

Asked how historically disadvantaged communities could benefit from such opportunities, department spokesperson Sascha Medina said over email, ​“We have planned this program to launch and ramp up for continuous improvement. We will be focusing our marketing to contractors in high energy burden and storm impacted areas first and will expand from there.”

Still, the counties most devastated by Hurricane Helene, like Buncombe, aren’t first on the program’s outreach list. The department’s analysis of statewide energy burdens led it to choose Halifax County in the eastern part of the state along with Cleveland County, in the foothills.

“The hurricane-affected areas add a layer of complexity to the program, because the rebate programs cannot duplicate money that has been awarded to households through other recovery funding sources,” Medina said. ​“As we roll out the program, we will continue to work with our partners in the affected areas and receive guidance from the U.S. Department of Energy.”

That guidance from a Trump-led Department of Energy could imperil the success of the rebates more than any other factor. While the president rescinded his widely panned memo halting virtually all federal government spending, his first-week orders targeting Biden-era clean energy spending appear to remain in force.

The fact that the federal government signed contracts with the state in accordance with a law passed by Congress should shield North Carolina’s Energy Saver rebate program from harm, Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson said at the launch.

“This is finalized. This is done,” Wilson said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline North Carolina launches first-ever statewide electrification incentives on Feb 8, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Elizabeth Ouzts, Canary Media.

On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, released the draft text of a proposed rule on preventing heat injury and illness amongst the U.S. workers. If finalized, the proposed rule would become the nation’s first-ever federal regulation on heat stress in the workplace. The development comes at the start of a summer that’s already seen record-breaking heat, and days after OSHA announced tens of thousands of dollars in proposed penalties for a case involving a 41-year-old farmworker who died of heatstroke while working in Florida last year.

In a press briefing on Monday, a senior Biden administration official described the draft rule’s requirements as “common sense.”

“The purpose of this rule is simple,” said the official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity. “It is to significantly reduce the number of worker-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses suffered by workers who are exposed to excessive heat and exposed to these risks while simply doing their jobs.”

The draft rule requires employers to implement heat injury and prevention plans that grant workers access to drinking water, shade, rest areas, and breaks once the heat index hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Employers would also have to develop an acclimatization plan to help new employees to become accustomed to working in extreme heat, and train supervisors and employees in how to identify heat illness. (Notably, three out of four worker fatalities that stem from heat-related illness happen on the first week of the job.) Once the heat index exceeds 90 degree F, additional breaks and increased heat-illness symptom monitoring would also be required. The proposed rule includes a requirement that employers evaluate these plans for potential updates at least once a year.

These regulations would apply to all employers overseeing outdoor and indoor work where OSHA has jurisdiction, which includes most private-sector employers and workers in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., but doesn’t cover some workers at state and local government agencies, self-employed workers, or independent contractors. The draft rule also exempts workplaces where there is no reasonable expectation of exposure to the initial heat trigger, and indoor working conditions where temperatures are kept below the 80 degree F threshold. Furthermore, it excludes situations where employees are exposed to temperatures over the standard threshold for short periods of time, among other exceptions.

Advocates who have been fighting for national heat regulation for years are praising the move. Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project, a New York City worker center for low-wage, immigrant workers, said her group “applauds” the proposed rule. 

“The Biden administration is moving to protect the lives of workers,” said Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, which aims to reduce health inequities among immigrant communities. “This effort is particularly critical as states such as Texas and Florida are not only failing to protect workers from the heat but pursuing legislation that will cause undue harm to workers.” Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott passed a law that blocked cities from enacting their own heat protections for workers. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar law into effect this past spring.

OSHA first announced that the agency would begin developing a federal heat stress rule in 2021, following a summer of record-breaking temperatures. Typically, the federal rulemaking process is fairly lengthy, and experts and organizers who spoke to Grist last month worried that the Biden administration would let the proposed heat regulation linger under review for another year or longer — at which point, depending on the outcome of the presidential election in November, the rule could be nullified by a new administration or a Republican-controlled Congress. But the surprise release of the proposed rule this week appears to signal a readiness from the Biden administration to advance the regulation, potentially with the goal of finalizing it before the end of the year. 

Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, said he feels certain, following a visit from a top OSHA official to his home state in June, that finalizing a federal heat standard is the agency’s top regulatory priority. “I think it’s clear that President Biden and his administration are responding to the climate crisis, are responding to what workers are asking for, and they’re expediting this because workers just can’t wait seven or eight years,” Casar said.

Experts expect that the OSHA rule could face legal challenges. “There are always technical quibbles,” said Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, “and sometimes, some courts will pick up on those quibbles.” Gerrard pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule, which regulated smog by taking aim at smokestack emissions, as an example of a successful legal challenge based on the argument that federal officials neglected to address public comments on the draft plan. Potentially, going forward, “people who want to challenge rules will take a look at the comments on the draft rule and complain if any of the comments wasn’t thoroughly responded to.” 

The draft heat rule is now subject to a public comment period and a subsequent final review by the White House. Given the highly politicized nature of heat regulation, it is likely that OSHA will receive a considerable amount of comments on the proposed standard, which could potentially draw out the process of finalizing the regulation. A spokesperson from OSHA said the agency “cannot speculate” as to when the rule may be finalized, but that it was moving “swiftly and responsibly” to ensure workers have necessary protections.

“All workers deserve safety and an advocate for their rights,” said Guallpa. “We are heartened to see the federal government stepping up to require basic protections from extreme weather.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden admin unveils first-ever heat protections for workers. Here’s what to know. on Jul 2, 2024.

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

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

Photograph of Tree Planting – Public Domain

The state of Alabama inadvertently has chosen a Jewish holiday for its first-ever experimental gassing execution. On January 25th of this year, while many in the Jewish world mark Tu Bishvat in the Hebrew calendar, Alabama will gas a human being to death as it attempts nitrogen hypoxia as a form of state-sponsored murder. There is little doubt that the Yellowhammer State likely chose this date for administrative convenience, and not out of any spite for the Jewish world, despite the reality of the recent ~400% increase in antisemitic incidents across the USA. It also is true that within the Jewish community, Tu Bishvat is a relatively minor holiday among the pantheon of annual festive days. Still, in the long rabbinic tradition of assigning mystical meaning to this occasion, a closer examination of the customs and beliefs surrounding Tu Bishvat reveal just how horrific of a synchronicity it is that a new gas chamber – in any form – is to be first implemented on this day of all days.

Tu Bishvat (literally, the “15th of [the Hebrew month of] Shevat”), is also known as the New Year for the Trees. It is the appointed time on the Hebrew calendar that the rabbis of the Talmud used for calculating the age of trees for the Biblically-mandated tithing of the first-fruits. Since the late 19th century, a custom has developed of honoring this moment by planting trees in Israel, a practice that continues to this day. Building upon this tradition, Tu Bishvat in recent decades has come to be known as Israeli Arbor Day, and treated as a Jewish “Earth Day.” Ecological organizations in Israel and the diaspora have beautifully adopted the holiday to garner support for many meaningful environmental awareness programs. It is on this very occasion, while the Jewish world duly honors the oxygen-creating power of the Eitz Hayyim (Tree of Life), that Alabama will be doing all it can to remove that very same oxygen, replacing it with nitrogen gas in order to snuff out a human life.

To further this dark counterpoint, consider that Jewish tradition has long connected the midwinter Tu Bishvat holiday to other religious festivals in the liturgical calendar. In the Hasidic community, some Jews pickle or candy the etrog (citron) used in the previous fall holiday of Sukkot and eat it on Tu Bishvat. While Jewish tradition has linked these holidays by theme, American jurisdictions have unintentionally desecrated all of them with executions. In the past three years alone, federal and state governments have set state killings on the full gamut of Jewish festival and commemorative days: from Purim to Passover, from Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) to Kristallnacht, from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur, and from Sukkot to Hannukah. Again, the choice of these dates for execution likely were coincidental. Nonetheless, these horrific synchronicities – like Texas choosing World Day Against the Death Penaltyto kill my Jewish penpal Jedidiah Murphy just after Sukkot last year – have served as a reminder to the Jewish community that it must pay attention to what is taking place and do all it can to ensure that the killings end.

There are even more poignant parallels to keep in mind regarding this convergence of Tu Bishvat and Alabama’s gassing. To align with the holiday’s theme of the revival of nature, many of Israel’s major institutions have chosen this day for their inaugurations. For example, the cornerstone-laying of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1918, theTechnion (Israeli Institute of Technology) in 1925, and the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 1949 each took place on Tu Bishvat. Few would have imagined that an “inaugural” American gassing also would be added to this list in 2024. Relatedly, there is a popular custom of eating new fruitsfor the first time on Tu Bishvat and reciting the appropriate Shehecheyanublessing, which is offered when one experiences something new in a given season. The sentiment of this prayer will indeed ring hollow this year with the knowledge that a new system of killing also shall “bear fruit” on this day of new beginnings.

Finally, a word about tears. Many children – including my own – engage in the custom of planting parsley on Tu Bishvat. The goal of this practice is to reap this karpas (Hebrew for parsley) and use it on the seder plate for Passover, which occurs two months after Tu Bishvat. This parsley/karpas is famously dipped in saltwater and consumed at the seder so that Jews might literally taste the tears that the Israelites shed while experiencing the torture of slavery in ancient Egypt. The planting of these “seeds of tears” on this Tu Bishvat could not be more apt. Indeed, many Jewish tears should be shed over this day’s slated torture experiment. It was in facttorture that sowed the seeds of this gassing when Alabama failed to kill Kenny Smith after a three-hour botched lethal injection attempt last year. And it is this same Kenny Smith who now endures the incomprehensiblepsychological torture of counting down his final days yet again before his upcoming gassing.

To make matters worse, the stream of tears shed over the inherent human rights violation of this Tu Bishvat gassing could soon turn into a waterfall, as this execution also may very well open a Pandora’s Box of similar killing experiments elsewhere across America. Many states, such as Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi to name but a few – as well as potential federal government administrations – are eagerly waiting in the wings to observe the results of this gassing in the hope that they, too, will be able to repeat the same process for other condemned human beings.

To prevent these tears from “bearing fruit” this Tu Bishvat, the nearly 3,100 members of the international group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” have vociferously joined in the resounding chorus of international condemnation over this abject abomination. As the co-founder of L’chaim, I have publically written about why “Jews Must Speak Out Against Alabama’s Planned Nitrogen-Gassing Executions,” alongside Jewish writer, lawyer and abolitionist Stephen Cooper. In addition, Rep. Phillip Ensler, the only Jewish member of the Alabama House of Representatives, District 74, and Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Central Alabama also has issued a formal statement against this unmitigated horror.

As the Jewish world is keenly aware, not only has Alabama elected to resurrect the unmistakable Nazi legacy of gassing human beings to death on a day that corresponds to the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat, but it has chosen to do so just ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Dayon January 27th. Alabama thereby adds to its morbid history of unknowingly targeting this solemn occasion with state killings. It was only two years ago that the state “commemorated” this hallowed memorial day by selecting it to put to death Matthew Reeves, a human being with severe, documented cognitive impairment. On that occasion, Alabama used lethal injection. This means of killing also is another direct Nazi legacy that was first implemented in this world by the Third Reich as part of its infamous Aktion T4 protocol used to kill other such cognitively impaired individuals deemed “unworthy of life.” That protocol was brought to fruition by Dr. Karl Brandt, personal physician of Adolf Hitler, who personally signed off on it. It is precisely this T4 protocol that is among those monstrosities condemned on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Whether it is via lethal injection, Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia, or gas chambers in other states – such as Arizona, which uses the gas Zyklon B (as employed in Auschwitz) – any method used for the state-killing of prisoners against their will continues this Nazi legacy of the same.

To put an end to this cycle of violence, L’chaim’s thousands of members carry the torch of Holocaust survivor and staunch death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel. Of capital punishment, Wiesel famously stated, “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” He added in an interview, in 1988: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.” 

Many of the members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” including this author, are direct descendants of Holocaust victims and know better than most that capital punishment is not the same as that incomparable conflagration. And yet, like Wiesel, for many L’chaim members the shadow of the Holocaust is inextricably linked to a firm rejection of the death penalty in all cases, even for the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter. It is not by coincidence that the very same Tree of Life symbol for which that targeted Pittsburgh congregation was named forms the core of L’chaim’s logo.

As Alabama blindly plans to add Tu Bishvat to the grotesque Jewish holiday execution list in these United States, it is appropriate to review one final teaching associated with this festive day. Centuries ago, Jewish mystics called kabbalists assigned spiritual significance to Tu Bishvat beyond its agricultural roots. Students of the renowned kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) utilized this sacred day to highlight the Jewish mystical understanding that all human beings carry within them a spark of HaShechinah – the Divine Presence. This phenomenon, they taught, was reflected in how certain kinds of tree-grown fruits or nuts hide within them seeds of potential new life. Kabbalists ate certain fruits as a symbolic way of releasing these divine sparks. Today, Jews across the world remember this inspiring teaching by conducting a Tu Bishvat Seder that is replete with the partaking of such fruits.

As Jews engage in this ripe spiritual tradition this year, may they remember that Alabama will be extinguishing the Divine spark of a human being on the very same day that they consume these symbolic seeds of life. May this epiphany compel Jewish leaders and communities to recognize that 21st-century Judaism Should Reject the Death Penalty. May this knowledge motivate readers to join all of civilized humanity in signing the petition to “Say NO to the gas chamber,” as over 14,000 people already have done as of this writing. And may such collective action help further unite the peoples of the world behind a chant to which all humanity should give heed; namely, “L’chaim – to Life!”

This first appeared in the Times of Israel.

The post Alabama Marks Jewish Holiday of Tu Bishvat with First-Ever Experimental Gassing appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Michael J. Zoosman.

The World Bank’s role managing this so-called loss and damage fund was formalized on the very first day of COP28, this year’s United Nations climate conference, which just concluded in the United Arab Emirates. The fund, which provides a trove of money for relatively poor countries that have emitted little carbon yet disproportionately suffer the effects of climate change, was capitalized with more than $650 million in just a few days after the start of the conference.

But this success came after a string of furious debates, in which representatives from several coastal and low-income nations expressed vehement opposition to the World Bank’s management of the fund. When developing countries finally agreed that the Bank could host the fund on an interim basis for the next four years, they included a long list of conditions that the institution must meet. The deal was struck largely due to attrition, after weeks of negotiations in which wealthy nations, largely led by the U.S., rejected an alternative to set up a standalone fund. 

Grist spoke with former World Bank employees, COP28 negotiators, and watchdog groups to understand the opposition to the World Bank’s role in the unprecedented effort to pay out climate reparations from the new loss and damage fund. Experts unanimously agreed that developing countries have little trust in the World Bank as a result of its governing structure, which gives the U.S. outsized influence, as well as the failures of its past programs, which led to debt crises that compounded poverty in many developing nations during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the Bank’s track record as a major investor in fossil fuel projects around the world has led some critics to question its fitness for a position meant to battle climate change. 

“The structure of the international organizations [like the World Bank] reflects a global power structure that is no longer the case, no longer true,” said Paul Cadario, a 37-year veteran of the World Bank who is now a distinguished fellow at the University of Toronto. “It doesn’t give sufficient weight to the concerns of the Global South. Those concerns are inevitably going to wash over something as specific as the loss and damage fund.”

The World Bank’s primary function is that of a credit institution — a bank like any other. Given its creditworthiness, the bank borrows money at low interest rates, which it then loans to developing nations. It is in part this setup that has sounded alarms among potential loss and damage fund recipients: Grantmaking and fund management, two integral components of the loss and damage effort, are not core functions of the bank. While the exact extent to which the loss and damage funding will take the form of no-strings-attached grants versus interest-bearing loans is unclear, developing nations have argued vehemently against loans that would further trap heavily indebted nations.

The World Bank has gained some relevant experience over the last few decades, as it’s taken responsibility for the management of a handful of funds designed to provide capital to developing countries trying to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to a warming world. As the trustee of these funds, the bank is responsible for fundraising and allocating the money raised. A loss and damage fund would likely work the same way: The bank would appeal to various donor countries for funds, which it would then pass on to developing nations for specific projects. 

But the bank has historically been slow to deploy these funds. The Green Climate Fund was established by climate negotiators at COP16 in 2010 to help developing countries tackle the climate crisis. It’s the largest multilateral fund of its kind and has received about $33 billion in pledges so far. But countries in need have had difficulty accessing the money, because project approvals take several years. The Philippines, a low-lying archipelago threatened by sea-level rise and typhoons, had just one of seven projects it proposed over seven years approved in 2021. 

“The process is extremely slow and very bureaucratic,” said Rohit Khanna, a former manager of global energy programs at the World Bank who also helped set up one of the bank’s climate funds. “The Green Climate Fund Secretariat is quite risk averse. The Secretariat is just anxious that if something goes wrong, the fund will die in its infancy.” (The Secretariat is a World Bank employee who manages the day-to-day operations of the fund.)

The highly bureaucratic process is a burden for developing countries, said Michai Robertson, a negotiator for small island states like Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and Barbados. The bank often had lengthy reporting requirements to guard against fraud and corruption, and at times it made well-meaning but impractical information requests, he added. In one case, the bank asked for 30 years of weather data in conflict zones where such data did not exist. Robertson attributed the logjams to “a lack of trust in developing countries and their systems.”

“It’s very colonial in its mindset,” he added.

In exchange for running the funds, the bank charges fees that are primarily used to pay its staff, many of whom live in expensive cities like Washington, D.C., and New York. In recent years, those costs have been increasing. The bank increased its fees from 12 percent to 17 percent, calculated as a percentage of the Secretariat’s operational costs for running the Global Partnership for Education fund a few years ago. More recently, it tried to increase those costs to 24 percent before they were negotiated down to about 20 percent. 

“I don’t think the bank is transparent” about its fee structure, said Rohit Khanna, a former manager of global energy programs at the World Bank who also helped set up one of the bank’s climate funds. “The bank is not cheap, that’s for sure. The fees are high, and part of it is just the fact that you’re paying for a lot of stuff in Washington, D.C.” Khanna said costs in the low teens for the loss and damage fund would be acceptable, but anything as high as 24 percent would be “outrageous.” 

But the objection to the World Bank’s involvement in the loss and damage fund goes beyond its high fees and bureaucracy. Its critics charge more broadly that the institution has consistently pushed programs that have impoverished vast swaths of the developing world.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were set up in the aftermath of the Second World War. At a two-week conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, which was organized by the U.S. and British governments, leaders from 44 countries gathered to find ways to rebuild international currencies sunk by the war and “to promote worldwide reconstruction.” Initially, that meant promoting policies that favored substantial government intervention in the economy. In the decades after its founding, the World Bank encouraged countries in the Global South to take out millions of dollars in loans to dam rivers and erect power stations, assuring them that the new infrastructure would increase export revenue by enabling industrial production and pull their people out of poverty.

That plan did not pan out, according to University of Minnesota professor Michael Goldman, who has written one of the seminal books about the World Bank. While the bank pushed many developing countries to invest in industries that ultimately did not have longevity, rich nations’ hunger for many of the Global South’s key commodities began to dwindle. The commodities that had generated export revenue for developing countries were largely replaced by cheap synthetic alternatives: corn syrup instead of sugar, polyester instead of cotton, particle board instead of timber. As the market value of these commodities plummeted, poor nations’ foreign debt ballooned, reaching $1 trillion by 1986. 

Rather than diminishing the World Bank’s stature, however, the global debt crisis placed the bank in the position of solving the colossal problem that it had a dominant hand in creating. 

Governments in the developing world started borrowing large sums just to pay off the interest on their old loans. But these new loans came at a steep cost: The World Bank was stacked with people who believed that state-led development had failed and a free market approach would benefit indebted nations. As a result, the bank promised to bail out poor countries on the condition that they implement specific economic policies that, while on their face were intended to pull countries out of debt, ultimately served the interests of wealthy northern nations by allowing foreign companies to privatize public sectors.

These 1990s-era “structural adjustment programs,” as they were known, marked a radical departure from the World Bank’s founding ideology. Rather than push for government intervention in developing markets, the bank ordered borrowers to liberalize their economies by eliminating trade restrictions and allowing foreign companies to privatize previously public functions like electricity and mining. In the ensuing decade, people living in the borrowing countries struggled under policies that also saw the elimination of critical government subsidies and social welfare programs. 

“It was considered ‘the lost decade’ because of the austerity programs the World Bank implemented to get back its money to repay its investors,” Goldman told Grist. In Mexico, for example, the government was forced to take out structural adjustment loans after racking up $80 billion in debt to U.S. banks by 1982. Provisions in the loans “completely revamped the Mexican state and economy, eliminating food subsidies, rural public agencies, national food security systems, and state-owned food monopolies,” Goldman wrote in his book, Imperial Nature.

The ideology behind structural adjustment — which promoted market liberalization, state austerity, and public sector privatization — permeated every arm of the World Bank during the 1980s, according to Robert Wade, a professor of political economy at the London School of Economics. When Wade started working at the institution in 1984, he had already lived in Taiwan and South Korea, where government intervention in the economy had improved the prospects of millions of people. At the bank, however, he found that no one was interested in these success stories. He departed four years later, “with the sense that the World Bank was ideologically driven in a direction that I thought was inappropriate for developing countries,” Wade told Grist. 

Structural adjustment is now widely considered a resounding failure among economists and development analysts. Since the turn of the millennium, the World Bank has shifted in new directions, focusing more on promoting good governance and “sustainable development.” But Wade told Grist that, at its core, the institution is still dominated by the perspectives and interests of rich countries. He pointed to the World Bank’s power structure: It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., its president is typically an American citizen handpicked by the U.S. president, and the U.S. is the only country to have a de facto right of veto at the bank. To this day, the U.S. remains the bank’s largest shareholder, providing more capital to the bank than any other country.

According to Jason Hickel, a professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Barcelona, the average individual in the global South has one-eighth of the voting power in the World Bank as their counterpart in the global North. As a result, the bank’s hosting of the loss and damage fund would mean that the countries that have contributed the most to climate change would have the most power to administer the reparations for the harm they have caused.

“They’re playing a double game,” Wade said. “Western nations have a collective interest in pretending that they’re committed to giving money to this fund” while structuring it in a way that minimizes what they actually have to pay. That became clear at COP28 earlier this week, when delegates agreed to adopt a loss and damage fund that will start at $429 million — a small fraction of what developing countries say they will need to make up for the economic impacts of climate change. The U.S. in particular came under fire for offering up a paltry $17.5 million. (The United Arab Emirates and Germany, by comparison, each pledged $100 million). The cost of Pakistan’s devastating floods during the summer of 2022 were estimated to be around $40 billion alone.

To protect the loss and damage fund from the idiosyncrasies of the World Bank, developing nation negotiators set out some conditions that the bank has to meet. They include autonomy for the board that would oversee the fund, access to the fund for all developing countries, and fees that are “reasonable and appropriate.” 

“What we agreed to was that rather than trying to shove ourselves into existing World Bank structures, we would establish a set of conditions that the World Bank must meet if it is to be the interim host,” said Avinash Persaud, special climate envoy and negotiator for Barbados. “If the World Bank doesn’t do a good job — and I’m not saying it won’t — then sacking the World Bank,” is a possibility, he added.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The World Bank is running the first-ever climate reparations fund. Nobody is happy about it. on Dec 19, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

"Climate policies are far behind what is needed to keep global temperatures below the 1.5°C threshold, with extreme weather events and searing heat already baking our planet," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. "People are increasingly turning to courts to combat the climate crisis, holding governments and the private sector accountable, and making litigation a key mechanism for securing climate action and promoting climate justice."

A majority of cases have been filed in the United States, with plaintiffs arguing government agencies and companies are failing to comply with clean air and water laws and other regulations, taking aim at companies they say have "greenwashed" their climate records, and demanding that children have the right to a safe environment, among other litigation.

But the report finds that lawsuits in the Global South represent a "growing percentage of global climate litigation," with more than 17% of lawsuits filed in developing countries including Small Island Developing States.

A majority of cases focused on residents' right to a healthy environment and demands for national climate policies that reflect that right have been filed in the Global South, according to the report.

The Brazilian Supreme Court found in 2022 that the Paris climate agreement should be treated as a human rights treaty with "supranational status," invalidating any Brazilian law that contradicts the agreement's demand that nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C over preindustrial levels.

In Mexico in 2020, the Supreme Court invalidated a rule that would have allowed a higher ethanol content in gasoline, "concluding that the right to a healthy environment and the precautionary principle required the evaluation of the potential of increased GHG emissions and an analysis of the country's commitments under the Paris Agreement," reads the report.

In addition to federal courts in individual nations, international human rights panels have handed down landmark rulings in recent years, forcing companies and governments to change course on the climate.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee last year found that Australia had failed to adequately protect Indigenous Torres Straight Islanders from climate impacts, recognizing that "climate change was currently impacting the claimants' daily lives and that, to the extent that their rights are being violated, Australia's poor climate record was a violation of their right to family life and right to culture."

Australian officials were ordered to adopt "significant climate adaptation measures" as a result of the historic ruling.

Plaintiffs in recently filed lawsuits may benefit from "an increasingly well-defined field of law" which has begun to provide an understanding of the human right to adequate climate policy, said UNEP and the Sabin Center.

As Common Dreams reported in March, a coalition of elderly women in Switzerland argued before the European Court of Human Rights that they are uniquely affected by insufficient climate action and by continued fossil fuel extraction, as older people are vulnerable to the extreme temperatures that the climate crisis is causing.

A number of similar cases have been brought by children who have argued—in Australia, the U.S., Argentina, Haiti, and elsewhere—that their rights have been violated by their government's continued backing of fossil fuel emissions, improper waste disposal, and support for coal expansion.

Ongoing climate litigation largely centers on:

• Cases underpinned by international human rights laws;
• Challenges to domestic non-enforcement of climate-related laws and policies;
• Efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground;
• Demands for corporate climate disclosures and liability and an end to greenwashing; and
• Challenges to governments' failure to adapt to the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat and sea level rise.

"Since 2020, few courts have yet to reach the merits of these types of claims, despite the growing body of science illustrating the connections," reads the report. "The science of climate attribution continues to be central to climate litigation, and as more cases are filed and reach the merits of the plaintiffs' claims, as was anticipated in the 2020 Litigation Report, there will be increased judicial attention on the matter."

As companies and governments seek to deny responsibility for climate harms, litigation targeting climate protesters may also be part of a "backlash" against campaigners' lawsuits, said UNEP and the Sabin Center.

In some high-profile cases recently, protesters have emerged victorious when their actions have been the target of litigation.

As the Sabin Center noted, a New Zealand District Court ruled in 2020 that without direct action like that of protesters who trespassed on an oil platform, "change may be too late." The campaigners were convicted but discharged without penalty.

In 2021, activists who halted operations at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris were acquitted because a court found their actions "were taken in a 'state of necessity' to warn of future danger, namely climate change."

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

Heat waves can delay fights and melt airplane tarmac, but Amazon won’t let them hinder Prime deliveries. Extreme heat and unsafe working conditions under the merchant giant have now spurred drivers to unionize. In Southern California, 84 delivery drivers joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and negotiated the first union contract among any Amazon workers in the country. And since June 25, these workers have been on an indefinite strike.

Amazon’s requirement of drivers to make up to 400 stops per day, even when temperatures exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, can make operating one of those ubiquitous gray and blue vans a particularly hazardous occupation. Raj Singh, a driver, knows that only too well.

“Sometimes it reaches 135 degrees in the rear of the truck and there’s no cooling system,” said Singh, who has worked the job for two and half years and through the height of the pandemic. “It feels like an oven when you step back there. You instantly start feeling woozy and it’s gotten to the point where I’ve actually seen stars.”

Even on scorching days, said Singh, “Amazon sets these ridiculous paces. Some people even have to miss their guaranteed 15 minute breaks, because if we break the pace, they contact us to try and find out why we’re behind.”

“On the days that you work, it’s basically mandatory overtime,” he added. “You don’t stop until you’re done or you get reprimanded.”

Last August, after the drivers prepared a list of demands around pay, safety, and extreme temperatures, Amazon responded by offering workers two 16-ounce bottles of water a day. 

Heat exposure affects delivery drivers across companies. UPS has reported at least 143 heat related injuries on the job in recent years, and a United States Postal Service driver recently died of heat exposure. UPS, whose iconic brown-uniformed drivers are directly employed by the company, recently agreed to install air conditioners in their trucks after drivers across the country picketed work sites and threatened to strike. But Amazon’s 275,000 drivers are hired through 3,000 third-party subcontractors, with whom Amazon can cancel contracts with little explanation or warning, making it particularly difficult for workers to unionize or fight to improve conditions. 

Despite the fact that workers who deliver Amazon packages sport branded vests, shirts, and pants; drive Amazon branded trucks; have schedules and wage floors set by Amazon; receive routes from an Amazon app; and can be disciplined and fired by Amazon, the company claims they aren’t technically employees. On paper, the drivers are employed by a network of small businesses that each rents 20–40 vans and employs up to 100 people. The 84 drivers in Palmdale work for Battle Tested Strategies, one of these businesses, which operates out of an Amazon warehouse.

On April 24, the drivers announced that they had formed a union and had bargained a contract with Battle Tested Strategies to address fair pay and worker safety in the heat. They asked that Amazon respect the terms of the new contract, which guarantees $30 hourly wages, health and vehicle safety standards, and the right to refuse unsafe deliveries.

Instead, the company immediately announced that the subcontractor “had a track record of failing to perform and had been notified of its termination for poor performance well before today’s announcement.” It also said their contract would expire on June 24.On June 25, the 84 drivers awoke to no assigned routes from Amazon or Battle Tested Strategies. They are currently on an indefinite strike (in their view, from their Amazon jobs) and hope to convince the trillion-dollar company to recognize the union, respect the contract, and end what they view as retaliation against workers. Teamsters across the country are now picketing warehouses in solidarity.

The Teamsters union, which represents the 84 drivers, has argued that Amazon exerts nearly total control over these workers. In their estimate, the company must recognize these drivers as employees and bargain with them directly in order to keep them safe in the heat. 

“Fulfilling the promise of the contract will require fundamentally changing Amazon’s exploitative business model,” said Randy Korgan, head of the Teamsters’ Amazon division. “And we will keep fighting until that happens.”

Amazon maintains that the drivers don’t actually work for the company. Spokesperson Eileen Hards called the Teamsters “intentionally misleading,” adding that the strike “does not include Amazon employees and is mostly attended by outside activists.” She reiterated that Amazon had terminated its contract with Battle Tested Strategies.

But according to Daniel Ocampo, a legal fellow at the National Employment Law Project, the National Labor Relations Act defines employment status by whether companies control conditions like pay, safety, and day-to-day work. “All of those are controlled at least jointly by Amazon,” he said. “For the drivers to meaningfully bargain over their conditions of work, they need to have Amazon at the table.”

“We’re here so we can have fair pay and safe jobs,” added Singh. “And we’re trying to get this done, not just for us but for every delivery driver that works for Amazon.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme heat prompts first-ever Amazon delivery driver strike on Jul 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tushar Khurana.

Fifteen artists have been selected as the inaugural beneficiaries of NZ On Air’s New Music Pan-Asian funding.

The initiative, the first of its kind, aims to support the Asian music community in New Zealand.

The fund was established due to a lack of equitable representation of Asian musicians in the country’s music sector, says Teresa Patterson, head of music at NZ On Air.

• READ MORE: Other Blessen Tom articles

“Our Music Diversity Report clearly showed the under-representation of Pan-Asian New Zealand musicians in the Aotearoa music sector,” she said.

“This is reflected in the number of funding applications we received for this focus round.”

The funding provides musicians with up to $10,000 for recording, mixing and mastering a single, some of which can be set aside for the promotion and creation of visual content to accompany the song’s release.

“We received 107 applications for 15 grants, which is outstanding,” Patterson said.

‘Wonderful range’
“The range of genre, gender and ethnicity among the applicants was wonderful. We received applications from artists who identify as Chinese, Indian, Filipino, South Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Thai and Iraqi.

“The genres varied from alternative/indie and pop to hip-hop/RnB, dance/electro and folk/country.”

Six of the 15 songs that secured funding are bilingual, featuring Asian languages such as Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Malay and Punjabi.

Patterson believed this variety would “really help to reflect the many voices of Aotearoa New Zealand” and add to the vibrant cultural music mix experienced by local audiences.

Swap Gomez, a drummer, visual director and academic lecturer, was one of the panel members responsible for selecting the musicians for the funding. He emphasised the challenges faced by Asian musicians in New Zealand.

“What was awesome to see was so many Pan-Asian artists applying; artists we had never heard of coming out of the woodwork now that a space has been created to celebrate their work,” Gomez said.

“This is the time we can celebrate those Pan-Asian artists who have previously felt overlooked by the wider industry.

“Now there is an environment and sector where they can feel appreciated for their success in music. As a multicultural industry, developing initiatives such as this one is more crucial than ever.”

NZ On Air has announced that funding opportunities for Asian musicians will continue in the next financial year.

“The response we have had to this inaugural NZ On Air New Music Pan-Asian focus funding round has been phenomenal,” Patterson said.

“It tells us that there is a real need, so NZ On Air is excited to confirm that it will return in the new financial year.”

The full NZ On Air’s Pan-Asian New Music recipient list:

• Amol; cool asf
• Charlotte Avery; just before you go
• Crystal Chen; love letter
• hanbee; deeper
• Hans.; Porcelain
• Hugo Chan; bite
• Julius Black; After You
• LA FELIX; Waiting
• Lauren Gin; Don’t Stop
• Memory Foam; Moon Power
• Phoebe Rings; 아스라이
• RESHMA; Kuih Lapis (Layer Cake)
• tei.; sabre
• Terrible Sons; Thank You, Thank You
• Valere; Lily’s March

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.

The proposed limits would cap two common types of PFAS contamination — the chemicals PFOA and PFOS — in drinking water at just 4 parts per trillion. That’s a significant reduction from the level the EPA suggested was safe as recently as 2016, when the agency put out a health advisory that suggested 70 parts per trillion as a maximum level for those types of PFAS in drinking water. This week’s announcement signals that federal regulators’ understanding of the health impacts of exposure to these chemicals is rapidly evolving and that the EPA now appears to believe that virtually no quantity of the chemicals is safe for human consumption. 

There are more than 12,000 chemicals under the PFAS umbrella, some used more widely than others. In total, the rule would apply to six commonly used types: PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFBS, PFHxS, and GenX. Besides limiting PFOA and PFOS to 4 parts per trillion, the remaining four types of chemicals would be restricted based on their combined effects. The agency is now soliciting feedback from the public on the proposed rule and aims to finalize it by the end of the year.  

In recent years, as the EPA mulled over how strict to make its PFAS standard, some states — including Alaska, Massachusetts, and Vermont — chose to move forward without the agency and propose or set their own limits on forever chemicals. The federal rule would supersede any state limits that clock in above 4 parts per trillion. 

PFAS have been used in firefighting foam, rain jackets, pizza boxes, popcorn bags, nonstick pans, couches, and other industrial and consumer products for decades. While their water-resistant properties are convenient, the chemicals have been linked to adverse health effects in humans, such as compromised immune systems, thyroid disorders, and kidney and testicular cancers, among other issues. 

Chemical companies in the United States, which knew in the 1970s that PFAS were building up in Americans’ bloodstreams and that the chemicals could have serious health consequences in humans, manufactured PFAS for decades without alerting the public to the potential consequences. The cost of ridding the nation’s water supplies of PFAS could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Water utilities will have to spend big on new technologies that are sensitive enough to filter out the tiny chemicals. 

A number of affected utilities are taking the chemical company 3M, a major manufacturer of PFAS, to court this summer in an effort to force the company to pay for the cost of cleanup. Their lawsuit alleges that 3M and other chemical companies knew about the negative health impacts of forever chemicals decades ago and chose not to tell federal regulators about it in order to continue turning a profit. 3M announced last year that it will stop manufacturing PFAS by 2025, but the company still does not publicly admit that its products have caused or could cause harm to humans. 

Advocates celebrated the EPA’s new standards on Tuesday. “It has taken far too long to get to this point, but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups and misinformation campaigns designed to mislead the public and delay action,” Robert Bilott, the attorney who successfully sued DuPont in 1999 for poisoning communities in West Virginia with the forever chemical PFOA, said in a statement provided to Grist. In 2018, he filed a lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers on behalf of everyone in the U.S. with forever chemicals in their blood (that is, virtually all of us). The litigation is ongoing. 

“Today’s proposal is a necessary and long overdue step towards addressing the nation’s PFAS crisis,” Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz said in a statement. “EPA must resist efforts to weaken this proposal, move quickly to finalize health-protective limits on these six chemicals, and address the remaining PFAS that continue to poison drinking water supplies and harm communities across the country.”

 Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EPA proposes first-ever limits on PFAS in drinking water on Mar 14, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

A trio of advocacy groups on Thursday launched the world's first climate lawsuit against a commercial bank, alleging that the Paris-based firm BNP Paribas is violating its legal obligations by continuing to finance planet-wrecking oil and gas development on a massive scale.

BNP Paribas, Europe's largest funder of fossil fuel expansion projects, "continues to write new blank checks to the largest fossil fuel companies without setting any conditions for an oil-free, gas-free ecological transition," said Alexandre Poidatz, an advocacy officer at Oxfam France, which joined Friends of the Earth France and Notre Affaire à Tous in filing the unprecedented lawsuit.

"With this lawsuit," Poidatz continued, "we would like to reiterate that our organizations are firmly resolved to see the judge reach a verdict that forces the bank to honor its promises."

The groups specifically accuse BNP Paribas of violating France's duty of vigilance law, which—according to a summary from the European Coalition for Corporate Justice—"establishes a legally binding obligation for parent companies to identify and prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts resulting from their own activities, from activities of companies they control, and from activities of their subcontractors and suppliers, with whom they have an established commercial relationship."

In October, the three advocacy organizations formally warned BNP Paribas that they would take the company to court if it failed to bring its business practices into line with French law within three months.

The groups said Thursday that BNP Paribas has dismissed their call to immediately stop financing new fossil fuel projects, which are imperiling hopes of limiting planetary warming.

"BNP's reaction indicates that Europe's leading funder of fossil fuel development is rejecting our organizations' urgent request to stop supporting new oil and gas projects, even though this request is based on science and was recently reiterated by the United Nations secretary-general," the groups said, pointing to a press release the company issued last month.

Justine Ripoll, a campaigner with Notre Affaire à Tous, said in a statement Thursday that "the French duty of vigilance law imposes an obligation on multinationals in all sectors to take action to protect human rights and the environment, and to do so efficiently."

"The financial sector has a huge responsibility in our collective ability to comply with the Paris agreement," said Ripoll. "This first climate litigation against a commercial bank is undoubtedly the first of many around the world."

As Reutersreported Thursday, the climate coalition is modeling its legal action after a prominent 2021 case in which a Dutch court ordered Shell to slash its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030. Shell is appealing the decision.

BNP Paribas was Shell's top banker between 2016 and 2021, according to a recent report, providing the oil giant with $8 billion in fossil fuel financing during that period.

"BNP Paribas was the biggest banker of offshore oil and gas over the six-year period since the Paris agreement," the report found.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

For the first time ever, a United Nations human rights and counterterrorism expert will visit the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a U.N. office announced Wednesday.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Irish attorney and law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin—the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism—will visit Guantánamo as part of a "technical visit to the United States" from February 6-14.

In addition to visiting the prison, OHCHR said Ní Aoláin will "carry out a series of interviews with individuals in the United States and abroad, on a voluntary basis," including victims and relatives of those killed in the 9/11 attacks and former Guantánamo detainees in countries where they have been repatriated or resettled.

Human rights advocates welcomed the development.

"We commend the Biden administration for agreeing to let a U.N. human rights expert visit Guantánamo, finally ending a shameful U.S. government moratorium that sought to establish a prison outside the reach of law," Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said in a statement.

"International human rights norms and institutions are integral to preventing the torture, indefinite detention, and unfair trials that now symbolize Guantánamo globally," Shamsi added. "It should never have taken two decades, but we're encouraged to see the basic principle of U.N. rights officials' independent access to all sites of detention and detainees respected at long last by our country."

Since it was first opened in January 2002 by the George W. Bush administration in the early months of the so-called War on Terror, Guantánamo, or Gitmo in U.S. military parlance, has imprisoned 779 men and boys. Many of them were tortured, and only a handful were ever charged with any crime. According to retired U.S. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson—who served as chief of staff to Bush-era Secretary of State Colin Powell—Bush, along with Dick Cheney, his vice president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, knew that most Gitmo prisoners were innocent, but kept them locked up for political reasons.

Although then-Presdident Barack Obama—under whom President Joe Biden served as vice president—signed executive orders meant to close Guantánamo and end torture, he was blocked by Congress from implementing the former policy, while torture continued at Gitmo during his tenure.

"International human rights norms and institutions are integral to preventing the torture, indefinite detention, and unfair trials that now symbolize Guantánamo globally."

Hundreds of Guantánamo detainees were released during the Bush and Obama administrations, with a relative handful freed under Biden. Today, 35 men remain locked up at Gitmo. According to the Pentagon, 20 of them are cleared for release while nine—including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—have ongoing cases before military commissions from which numerous prosecutors have resigned amid allegations of rigging to secure convictions.

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an activist group, said in a statement that it "deeply appreciates the willingness of the special rapporteur's office and the Biden administration to work together to make her visit to Guantánamo possible."

"As 9/11 family members, we remain gravely concerned about the absence of justice within the military commission system," the group added. "We welcome the commitment of the special rapporteur to the human rights of victims of terrorism and we hope that her work can inform a path forward to judicial finality for family members, the accused, and all those affected by 9/11 and its aftermath."

Biden—whose former press secretary said closing Guantánamo is "our goal and our intention"—has been criticized for failing to do so two years into his administration and 21 years after the prison opened.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Executive Director Christina Swarns kicked off the day with a welcome address, highlighting the pivotal roles that social science and data analysis have played in some of the most important cases in our nation’s history from the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and more recently, the review of the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy and practice, which was ultimately declared unconstitutional.

The program then began with presentations from four scholars who investigated topics ranging from the fallibility of digital evidence to courtroom cross-examination to post-traumatic growth among exonerees, and more. Articles unpacking these studies will appear in a forthcoming companion issue of The Wrongful Conviction Law Review. 

A major highlight of the day was a keynote conversation featuring Ginny LeFever — a retired nurse, PTSD researcher, and exoneree — who shared her unique and powerful perspective on the experience of wrongful conviction and the role of research in the innocence movement. She offered insights from her own life and those gleaned from hundreds of others she interviewed for her research, and invited the audience to “walk a mile in my flip flops” and reminded us all that “putting somebody back together [after wrongful conviction], it takes a village.”

The program concluded with a discussion between Innocence Project colleagues about what research endeavors would most impact their daily work and what questions they would love for social scientists to investigate — a call to action for scholars planning their next projects, students looking for thesis or dissertation ideas, and those who want their work to be practically applicable to the innocence movement. Experts on related topics in the audience were also invited to reach out directly — and we have been thrilled by the responses we’ve received since the event. 

Learning that there is such a large and eager community of social scientists out there was extraordinary. With the new year underway, we are resolved to keep finding innovative ways to use the power of data to advance justice. And we look forward to continuing to nurture research partnerships and work to make criminal legal research inclusive, accessible, nuanced, and actionable.

If you would like to connect with the Innocence Project’s data science and research team and continue the conversation with like-minded academic researchers via email at science@innocenceproject.org. And if you’re interested in learning more, check out our additional research resources here.

The post Innocence Project Hosts Its First-Ever Virtual Social Science Research Conference appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by Dani Selby.

Today, the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) unveiled its 2023 agenda to be spearheaded by former Hawaii State Representative Kaniela Ing as GNDN’s first-ever National Director. Ing will build on GNDN’s major 2022 wins, including helping secure major climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA); blocking Senator Manchin’s dirty side deal, and seeing 26 out of its 31 endorsed candidates win in the general elections. Over the next year, under Ing’s leadership, the GNDN will campaign with its 24 state coalitions for the equitable implementation of federal infrastructure and climate dollars, local Green New Deal policies that build off of the IRA, and greater public support for climate justice through public education.

Ing is a founding member of the Network — a multisectoral coalition of 14 national organizations and 24 state tables— and previously acted as the Climate Justice Director for People's Action, where he led campaigns to combat climate change. While at People’s Action, Ing co-created and led mass mobilizations around the People’s Bailout and THRIVE Agenda, which largely shaped the suite of federal legislation.

As a state representative in Hawaii, Ing helped pass the nation’s first statewide 100% renewable energy goal, drove hundreds of millions of public investments into green schools and transit, and expanded democracy by passing with the nation’s most expansive elections reform effort which included online registration, same-day registration, and all-mail elections.

“The fight for a Green New Deal is at a pivotal moment where we have a slim opportunity to win community investments that can halt the climate crisis, create dignified jobs, and reverse decades-old injustices. We need community leaders and activists to rally politicians to act boldly on all levels of government and fund a cleaner, fairer, and more reliable future for generations to come. Anything short of that will put millions of lives in danger and widen the inequities that permeate our economy,” said Kaniela Ing, National Director of the Green New Deal Network. “Our network and allies have already secured tremendous victories with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. But we always knew this bill would only mark the start, not the end, of our movement’s work toward climate justice. I’m thrilled and honored to lead the charge with our allies to help make the Green New Deal a reality.”

The Green New Deal Network is uniquely positioned to win local Green New Deal legislation, support progressive candidates, and ensure federal infrastructure and climate funding goes to community-led solutions. In 2023, the Network’s 14 national and 24 state members are moving as a united front to:

• Cut climate pollution in half by 2030 by fighting for more federal and state investments in climate, jobs, and justice.
• Stop new fossil fuel infrastructure to fight pollution, high utility costs, and climate change.
• Ensure IRA and IIJA funding reaches communities that have historically been divested from through GNDN’s 24 state tables and Indigenous partners that will be campaigning for access to energy and building investments.
• Build popular support amongst voters for the Green New Deal by securing federal and local GND wins.

“Last year taught us a lot about climate advocacy and what effective campaigning and support for the communities most affected by climate change looks like,” said Bineshi Albert, Co-Executive Director of Climate Justice Alliance. “I’m confident that the Coalition’s new goals, alongside the leadership of Kaniela Ing will put climate wins on the board for the communities who most need them. Mother Earth deserves our honor and good stewardship. I trust in Kaniela’s leadership and in the vision he and the Green New Deal Network has to fight for our climate, jobs, and justice.”

“Climate change is an economic issue, but not for the reason folks most often think. By investing in a Green New Deal and creating good, clean jobs for working families, we not only address the climate change harms faced by working folks, we ensure everyone is able to financially thrive,” said Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party. “This year, the Green New Deal Network is hitting the ground running with new leadership and a realignment of our goals to mobilize and put pressure on lawmakers to make bold investments in clean energy and clean jobs for working families. I have faith in Kaniela and his vision for the future of our coalition and our planet.”

About Kaniela Ing

Kaniela Ing is a movement leader and community organizer with over 14 years of experience in legislative, electoral, and community-building campaigns. He comes from a working-class, environmental justice community and first started organizing through the movement for Native Hawaiian sovereignty.

Kaniela turned to electoral politics in response to Barack Obama's presidential win and the right-wing backlash that followed. He was elected to the Hawaii State Legislature at age 23 —as a bold progressive in a "red-leaning" district—where he co-led fights to strengthen democracy, advance justice, and pass the nation's first statewide 100% renewable energy goal. He later led the national climate work at Peoples' Action, where he helped to shape the THRIVE agenda, build up the Green New Deal Network, and pass the most consequential piece of federal climate legislation in United States history.

Kaniela is a proud Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), feminist, spouse, and parent of two young children. Kaniela serves on the advisory teams of Climate Power, Our Hawaii Action, the Hawaii Community Bail Fund, and the Indigenous Circle of Giving. In his free time, Kaniela likes to write and record music and explore the wonders of the natural world.

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

Executives from two large water districts in the Golden State, which service the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the agriculture-heavy Imperial Valley, told Grist that they’re making progress on negotiations to leave roughly 10 percent of the state’s Colorado River water allocation in reservoirs next year, or at least 100 trillion gallons. The officials indicated that they may reach a deal as soon as this month, and said they believe other states will follow suit with cuts of their own, helping the federal government achieve its goal of stabilizing the Colorado’s two drought-wracked reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

But the deal under discussion falls far short of what federal officials have demanded: Water managers who spoke to Grist indicated that states will likely be able to cut water usage by around half of the minimum conservation target set by federal officials in June. Furthermore, many of the deal’s details are still unclear, including the size of contributions from states besides California. 

Nevertheless, the agreement would be transformative for the Golden State, which has never before faced any cuts to its share of the river.If it holds, the agreement could force new water restrictions across the Los Angeles metroplex and reduce the nation’s supply of winter vegetables like lettuce and asparagus. It’s the latest sign that the climate-fueled megadrought in the West is forcing major changes to how the region uses water.

“It’s huge,” said Bill Hasencamp, who manages Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which services the Los Angeles area. “We’re now in a permanent shortage going forward, and we’re going to live with it.”

Even as the Colorado River crisis has reached a crescendo, forcing major cuts to water usage on the drought-ravaged waterway, California has remained untouched. The state uses by far the most water of any state that draws from the river — in part because it holds some of the most senior rights to river water, which has allowed it to draw a full share of water even as the federal government has slashed water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada for two years running. 

The vast majority of the state’s 4.4-million-acre-foot water allotment is used for agriculture, and almost all that agricultural water flows to the Imperial Irrigation District, a gigantic farming organization in the southeastern part of the state that produces the lion’s share of winter vegetables grown in the United States. The remaining water flows to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, or the Met, which provides water to almost 20 million people in and around Los Angeles.

Thanks to the state’s strong water rights, Imperial and the Met have largely stayed out of the crosshairs of Western water shortages so far. The two districts have instituted water-savings programs on their own turf — the Met banked unused water in Lake Mead, and Imperial helped farmers install more efficient farming equipment in their fields — but they have never had to reduce the amount of water they draw from the river. A 2019 drought response agreement exempted the state from mandatory cuts under all but the worst circumstances.

This year, though, the proverbial dam broke. Inflow into the Colorado River’s two main reservoirs fell to historic lows, threatening the reservoirs’ ability to generate hydropower, and the federal government stepped in to engineer a solution. In a sudden announcement earlier this summer, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Camimlim Touton ordered the river states to reduce their total water demand by 2 to 4 million acre feet — as much as a quarter of all usage. If the states didn’t find a way to do this by mid-August, Touton said, the federal government would step in to institute new emergency cuts of its own.

The Bureau’s emergency demands were shocking but not surprising, according to Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California. 

“The fact that there’s a structural water deficit in the basin is not new news,” she told Grist. “And it’s not like [water managers] have not been thinking about stuff they could do to reduce water usage — it’s just that people have been working on a timeline for this that turns out to have really not been fast enough.”

The states blew past the federal government’s deadline, and negotiations are now in overtime. The parties met in Denver in early August and again in Salt Lake City toward the end of the month. California has emerged from those meetings as the linchpin of a deal to meet Reclamation’s demands. Since the state is the largest water user, and since it’s never taken cuts before, other states are waiting to see what it does before they commit to their own reductions. Another meeting is scheduled later this month in Santa Fe.

While early conversations among the California districts centered around a target of 500,000 acre-feet in combined cuts from Imperial and the Met, executives from both districts told Grist that the potential range of cuts has fallen since then. Hasencamp, the Colorado River manager for the Met, said that the range could go as low as 350,000 acre-feet. (An acre-foot is equivalent to about 320,000 gallons of water.)

“The numbers continue to change, to be honest with you,” said Henry Martinez, the chief executive of the Imperial Irrigation District, who said that 500,000 acre-feet is “probably too high.” 

Hasencamp said that it’s very unlikely the river states will meet Reclamation’s demand for 2 to 4 million acre-feet in total savings. The states are now angling for a lower target and hoping it satisfies federal officials.

“I just don’t think it’s practical anymore,” he said, adding that a million acre-feet of savings between the states was a more realistic total number.

The proposed voluntary cuts would be painful for Imperial, in part because they would take effect as soon as next year. The farming district has spent the past decade helping farmers make their growing operations more efficient by buying sprinklers, drip irrigation infrastructure, and water retention systems, and there’s plenty of room for further improvement — for instance, farmers could shift away from water-intensive alfalfa, much of which gets exported overseas. But these new policies would take years to ramp up, so the only short-term option is to farm less land. 

That raises a big question about who will pay farmers who take their land out of service, and how much compensation the farmers should receive. The Inflation Reduction Act signed last month by President Biden gives Reclamation around $4 billion in drought response funding thanks to a last-minute intervention from Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Martinez wants to tap that money to compensate farmers for taking land out of service, but the details are thorny.

“It’s kind of a chicken and egg issue,” said Martinez. The district needs to figure out how much money it will get from Reclamation before it can figure out how many acre-feet of water it can cut and how much it can pay farmers to stop watering, but it can’t propose a funding amount to Reclamation without first figuring out how much to pay farmers to reduce their water usage. “We have not really arrived at a price,” Martinez added.

Previous voluntary conservation programs in Imperial have offered farmers close to $300 for every acre-foot of water they save, but this time growers in the district are asking for much more, Martinez told Grist. That’s in part because the overall drought in the West has jacked up prices for the crops that Imperial farmers tend to grow, which means it will cost more to induce them to stop farming.

“Markets have been very, very good for the farmers at this point,” he said, adding that farmers have to make “a comparison of getting paid X number of dollars not to plant when they can earn [high] market prices for the crops that they produce.”

Nevertheless, Martinez said, a basic outline is in place. The deal would establish a base price for water saved by any water district in the river states and add supplemental payments for hard-hit districts like Imperial, giving the district extra funding to account for the secondary impacts of the water reduction on the vulnerable farming communities in Imperial’s service area. These impacts include a loss of hydropower generation from the All-American Canal, which conveys water from the Colorado River to Imperial’s crop fields and produces electricity along the way.

Martinez told Grist he hoped to reach an agreement some time in the next month, before Imperial farmers start planting winter crops, lest the farmers sign contracts to deliver certain vegetables only to find they aren’t getting any water.

“We have communicated to the Bureau that we need something to put on the table to the farmers by the end of September at the latest,” Martinez told Grist.

Even if these voluntary talks fail, it’s only a matter of time before California sees mandatory water reductions. The drought response agreement from 2019 forces the state to take a haircut on its water allocation if the federal government declares a so-called “Tier 2b” shortage on the Colorado, which occurs when the water level in Lake Mead falls below a certain height. That seemed unlikely back in 2019, but now it looks almost certain. The federal government last month declared a Tier 2a shortage on the river, dealing further cuts to Arizona and Nevada. If reservoir levels had been even 5 feet lower, California would have taken cuts as well.

Even then, Imperial would be insulated from mandatory cuts. Because Imperial has the most senior water rights within California — having started using the river water before its neighbor districts — it wouldn’t have to fallow any land even if California took a mandatory cut. A district spokesperson told Grist that Imperial will account for only 3 percent of California’s mandatory reduction, even though it receives more than half of the state’s Colorado water.

The pain of these mandatory cuts would fall almost entirely on the Met, the water servicer for the greater Los Angeles area, which would absorb more than 90 percent of the reduction. The district has banked about a million acre-feet of surplus water in Lake Mead over the past few years, but it’s only a matter of time before those reserves run out and force the district to reduce water usage around Los Angeles. The voluntary cuts the district is negotiating with Imperial would make that happen a lot faster. 

“We knew that the river was out of balance, we knew that climate change was impacting the river, and we knew that there was going to be a reckoning on the river,” said Hasencamp, “but most of us thought we would have time to adapt.” All told, the district stands to lose as much as 500,000 acre-feet between the voluntary and involuntary cuts. This would remove close to half of the district’s total Colorado River withdrawals.

The problem for the Met is that the district’s other main source of water is also in crisis. The district also imports billions of gallons every year from the so-called State Water Project, a canal system that funnels water from reservoirs in the Northern California mountains down to Los Angeles, but these reservoirs are also at historic lows thanks to the regional drought. The district is caught between a rock and a hard place: Participating in a Colorado deal will make it more reliant on an alternative water source that is also getting hammered by drought.

Hasencamp told Grist the district has a few tools it can use to save water in the near term, such as offering rebates to customers who convert grass lawns to turf. He also said that in the next few months the district’s board will likely reduce cap deliveries to member agencies, placing a ceiling on how much water cities and utilities can buy from the district. This would force each individual agency to figure out how to reduce its water consumption, such as by raising the price of water or banning outdoor lawn watering.

Still, the adjustment will be difficult, said Ed Osann, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council who studies California water.*

“A major reduction like this would take maybe ten years to carry out if you’re trying to make for a soft landing,” Osann told Grist, “but a soft landing may not be attainable here.”

There’s no telling how long the present drought will last, and thus it’s not clear whether the cuts under discussion in California will be temporary or permanent measures. But research has shown that climate change can cause the long-term aridification of landscapes like the western United States, which could mean that low inflow to the Colorado River reservoirs will prove a persistent problem even if rainfall increases. This would ensure future shortages. If the past few years are any indication, these shortages will be painful for everyone on the river, including states like California, which have long managed to stay above the fray.

*Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Parched California prepares for first-ever Colorado River cuts on Sep 6, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

After months of working in what they say are unsafe weather conditions for wages that leave them struggling to afford basic necessities, more than 150 workers at Amazon's air freight hub in Southern California walked out mid-shift on Monday to demand fair treatment by the trillion-dollar company.

"We are the people sustaining our nation's supply chain and we deserve safe working conditions, livable wages, and protection from retaliation."

As The Washington Post reported, the walkout at the San Bernardino facility, KSBD, was the first-ever work stoppage in Amazon's crucial air freight division, which keeps millions of packages moving throughout the U.S. each day. Managers at the warehouse were forced to slow down operations Monday in anticipation of the action.

The employees are demanding a $5-per-hour raise, which would bring their starting wage to $22 per hour and make it easier for them to pay for housing in an area where the average rent is $1,650 per month.

They also want the company to establish effective heat safety measures, as workers have complained of heat-induced nosebleeds while working and air conditioning that doesn't work throughout KSBD.

"We are the people sustaining our nation's supply chain and we deserve safe working conditions, livable wages, and protection from retaliation," said Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, an independent labor rights group established by workers at the hub earlier this year.

About 10% of KSBD workers took part in the action, and the Athena Coalition, a grassroots coalition that fights for workers' rights at Amazon, estimated that the "vast majority" of people working during the shift walked out.

The walkout came less than two weeks after a meeting that managers held in response to a petition signed by more than 800 employees, listing their demands. At the meeting, managers offered raises of up to $2 per hour for certain shifts and suggested workers take public transit and carpool to save money.

"Amazon refused" to meet the workers' demands, the independent labor group tweeted Monday, "so today we walked out."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed solidarity with the workers, tweeting that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy earned nearly $214 million in compensation last year.

If the company can afford to pay its executives hundreds of millions of dollars, Sanders said, "it can afford to give their workers a $5 an hour raise and a safe workplace."

A work stoppage which slows down the company's ability to keep its daily profits up "is the only thing the bosses understand," said national labor rights group Fight for $15, expressing support for the walkout.

The walkout came four months after workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse stunned the company by winning a union election that was organized by a former employee who had been fired after organizing his colleagues in 2020.

Amazon fired managers at the Staten Island facility a month after the election in what critics said was a retaliatory measure.

Workers at Starbucks stores across the country, John Deere, healthcare facilities, and other workplaces have also gone on strike and voted to form unions over the past year.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

“Happiest Moments,” produced in both English and Spanish and narrated by actress Dascha Polanco, tells three remarkable stories of wrongful conviction — Rosa Jimenez, freed in 2021 after 17 years in prison; Termaine Hicks, exonerated in 2020 after 16 years in prison; and Huwe Burton, exonerated in 2019 after 20 years in prison. They are three of the 237 people exonerated and freed with the help of the Innocence Project. Together, these Innocence Project clients  have collectively spent more than 3,600 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. The video highlights the intergenerational and familial impact of wrongful incarceration, and the irreplaceable memories that were stolen from them while incarcerated. It also celebrates the joy they felt when reunited with their loved ones.

“When the Innocence Project wins, the light shines on those who have survived the grizzly carceral system and those still fighting for justice,” said Ms. Maule, who led the campaign.

“We give all the love and appreciation to Huwe Burton, Rosa Jimenez, and Termaine Hicks and their attorneys Vanessa Potkin and Susan Friedman for working with us on this project.We also want to thank our Innocence Project clients, our partners Hayden5, director Ariel Ellis, and Dascha Polanco, who was the perfect narrator to connect English and Spanish speakers to our organization. Our goal is to grow the innocence movement to new heights and ‘Happiest Moments’ helped us reach millions of people.” 

Hayden5, who lead the production efforts, has an impressive portfolio that includes Long Shot (Netflix), a documentary about a wrongfully accused man, and Revolving Doors (Tribeca) about recidivism made them an ideal partner. The team handled creative development, production, and post-production using a variety of mixed media and original music to tell the “Happiest Moments” story. 

The 26th Annual Webby Awards will be hosted by comedian Roy Wood Jr. (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Roy Wood Jr.: Imperfect Messenger). The star-studded ceremony will take place in New York City on Monday, May 16, and will celebrate the best of the Internet. Fans can follow and watch show highlights including hallmark 5-Word Speeches from the night’s big winners on May 16th at #Webbys on Instagram and Twitter, and the show at webbyawards.com.

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences members include Daniel Dae Kim (actor, producer, and activist); Ashley Judd (Author, Actor, and Social Justice Humanitarian); Mitchell Baker (CEO and chairwoman, Mozilla); Lisa Sherman (president and CEO, Ad Council), Sarah Kate Ellis (president and CEO, GLAAD); Renata Erlikhman (chief investment officer, OW Management); Shayla Tait (director of philanthropy, The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation); Russlynn Ali (CEO and co-founder, XQ Institute); Marc Ecko (chief commercial officer and board member, XQ Institute); Heidi Arthur (chief campaign development officer, Ad Council); and Alexis M. Herman (chair and chief executive officer, New Ventures, and former U.S. secretary of labor).

About The Webby Awards:

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international awards organization honoring excellence on the Internet, includingWebsites and Mobile Sites, Video, Advertising, Media & PR, Apps and Software, Social, Podcasts, Games, and Virtual & Remotes. Established in 1996, this year’s Webby Awards received nearly 14,000 entries from all 50 states and 70 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include Verizon, WP Engine, Canva, Omidyar Network, YouGov, NAACP, KPMG, Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, MediaPost, Podcast Movement, TheFutureParty and AIGA.

The post Innocence Project Wins First-Ever Webby for Public Service & Activism appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by jlucivero.

Environmental campaigners on Tuesday cautiously embraced the Biden administration's historic new blueprint to guard endangered species from pesticides as a much-needed step forward while also calling for more concrete moves to protect wildlife, people, and the planet.

Welcoming the Environmental Protection Agency's "first-ever comprehensive workplan" on the topic, Center for Biological Diversity environmental health director Lori Ann Burd said in a statement that "I'm encouraged that the EPA has finally acknowledged the massive problem it created by refusing, for decades, to consider the impacts of chemical poisons on our most vulnerable plants and animals."

"The agency's refusal to consider how pesticides affect endangered species has pushed countless species closer to extinction," Burd continued. "I'm hopeful the EPA will back up its words with concrete actions to fix these historic wrongs and move quickly to implement real, on-the-ground protections to stop species from going extinct and finally protect our incredible wildlife and plants from pesticides."

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement Tuesday that the plan "serves as the blueprint for how EPA will create an enduring path to meet its goals of protecting endangered species and providing all people with safe, affordable food and protection from pests."

"The workplan reflects EPA's collaboration with other federal agencies and commitment to listening to stakeholders about how they can work with the agency to solve this long-standing challenge," he added.

Top officials at the Department of Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and White House Council on Environmental Quality echoed the administrator's enthusiasm for collaborating on the issue.

The EPA statement acknowledged the agency "has an opportunity and an obligation to improve how it meets its duties under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when it registers pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)," noting that "for most of EPA's history, the agency has met these duties for less than 5% of its FIFRA decisions."

"This has resulted in over 20 ESA lawsuits against the agency, which have increased in frequency in recent years, creating uncertainty for farmers and other pesticide users, unnecessary expenses and inefficiencies for EPA, and delays in how EPA protects endangered species," the agency added. "EPA currently has over 50 pesticide ingredients, covering over 1,000 pesticide products, with court-enforceable deadlines to comply with the ESA or in pending litigation alleging ESA violations."

"Completing this work will take EPA past 2040, yet the work represents less than 5% of all the FIFRA decisions in the next decade for which ESA obligations exist," the statement explained. "This is an unsustainable and legally tenuous situation, in which EPA's schedule for meeting its ESA obligations has historically been determined through the courts. The workplan must provide a path for the agency to meet those obligations on its own, thus protecting endangered species while supporting responsible pesticide use."

One campaigner who spoke with E&E News highlighted that the blueprint follows various legal challenges:

Kyla Bennett, who directs science policy for the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said she appreciated EPA's honesty around not having the resources to meet its demands in a reasonable time frame. But she pointed to a number of concerns, namely the workplan's emphasis on pesticide users.

"This document is unduly concerned with flexibility for pesticide users, without giving any consideration to people adversely affected by pesticides," Bennett said.

Ultimately, she said the document was an acknowledgment of EPA's failures on pesticides policy while failing to take responsibility for the issue.

"They are doing this because they were sued," Bennett said. "They are claiming they are unable to do their job because they keep getting sued. But if they did their job correctly, they wouldn't be sued."

Ya-Wei "Jake" Li, deputy assistant administrator for pesticides programs in EPA's chemicals office, told the outlet that he is aware of concerns raised by advocacy groups and that the plan will be a "living document."

"If we succeed," Li said, "there will be a lot more we can get done."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York won their election Friday to form the retail giant's first-ever union in the United States, a landmark victory for the labor movement in the face of aggressive union-busting efforts from one of the world's most powerful companies.

According to an initial tally released by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), there were 2,654 votes in favor of recognizing a union and 2,131 against. The number of disputed ballots, 67, is not nearly enough to change the outcome.

The historic unionization drive at the JFK8 fulfillment center was spearheaded by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a worker-led group not affiliated with any established union. Christian Smalls, the president of ALU, was fired by Amazon in 2020 after he led a protest against the company's poor workplace safety standards in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

"When Covid-19 came into play, Amazon failed us," Smalls said during a press conference after the union victory was announced. "We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because when he was up there, we were signing people up."

Long-time labor journalist Steven Greenhouse wrote Friday that "the unionization victory at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island is by far the biggest, beating-the-odds, David-versus-Goliath unionization win I've seen."

"America's wealthiest, most powerful, most seemingly indispensable company has lost to a pop-up coalition of workers," Greenhouse added. "A generation, the younger generation, is stirring."

Amazon, which spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021 alone, worked hard to crush the unionization effort, forcing employees to attend hundreds of captive-audience meetings and threatening workers with pay cuts and other potential consequences.

But the company's union-busting campaign wasn't enough to overcome the upstart revolt led by ALU, which was founded just months ago.

Derrick Palmer, a co-founder of ALU and an employee at the Staten Island warehouse, said he expects Friday's victory to be one of many. The election still must be certified by the NLRB.

"This will be the first union," said Palmer, "but moving forward, that will motivate other workers to get on board with us."

In a statement, Amazon said it is "disappointed" by the results and signaled it may file formal objections claiming "inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB." Just last month, the NLRB sued Amazon in federal court, alleging the corporation unlawfully fired a Staten Island warehouse employee in retaliation for workplace organizing.

The board asked the court to force Amazon to fix its "flagrant unfair labor practices" ahead of the Staten Island union election. On Friday, Amazon pointed to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog post characterizing the NLRB's legal action as "curiously timed."

Widespread celebration followed the official announcement of the union's election win on Friday, with progressive lawmakers and activists hailing the victory as a potential watershed moment for the U.S. labor movement, which has struggled for decades amid corporate America's relentless assault. Union membership in the U.S. declined by 241,000 workers in 2021, according to Labor Department figures.

"The organizing victory at Amazon on Staten Island is a signal that American workers will no longer accept exploitation," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday. "They're tired of working longer hours for lower wages. They want an economy that works for all, not just Jeff Bezos."

The union has much difficult work ahead. As HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson noted, it must negotiate "a first collective bargaining agreement with one of the most powerful companies in the world."

"It can take years for a union to secure a first contract, and some never manage to," Jamieson wrote. "Amazon would have a strong incentive not to offer the union a decent deal, for fear it would only encourage more unionization elsewhere."

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated a quote from Christian Smalls.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.