“What Will Chris Smalls Do Next?” asked New York (7/16/22). Apparently it didn’t like the answer.

US media know who Chris Smalls is.

• The New York Times (4/6/22) ran a profile: “Christian Smalls Is Leading a Labor Movement in Sweats and Sneakers.”
• New York (7/18/22) put him on its cover, saying, “Chris Smalls Did the Impossible: Organize an Amazon Warehouse.”
• “He Was Fired by Amazon Two Years Ago,” an NPR report (4/2/22) declared. “Now He’s the Force Behind the Company’s First Union.”
• “He Came Out of Nowhere and Humbled Amazon,” read a Time headline (4/25/22). “Is Chris Smalls the Future of Labor?”

Last week, Smalls took on another Goliath. As part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, he tried to deliver life-saving aid—including food and baby formula—to the people of Gaza, who are suffering from a severe famine deliberately engineered by the Israeli government.

The Handala, the ship carrying the aid, was illegally seized in international waters by Israel’s military, and Smalls was singled out for violence, choked and kicked by Israeli soldiers, apparently because he’s Black. Past attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been dealt with even more harshly by Israel: In 2010, 57 activists aboard the aid ship Mavi Marmara were shot—nine of them killed—on their way to Gaza (Guardian, 6/4/10).

A near-complete blackout

The IDF targeting the one Black man on the aid ship is sadly unsurprising,” noted the New Republic (7/29/25), “as is the lack of uproar from US politicians and large media outlets.”

A popular political figure dramatically assaulted trying to save lives: Sounds like a newsworthy story, doesn’t it? But Smalls’ mission, his brutal detention and his subsequent release got next to no coverage in US corporate media.

He was covered in the British Guardian (“US Labor Activist Chris Smalls Assaulted by IDF During Gaza Aid Trip, Group Says,” 7/31/25). He was covered in progressive US outlets like Common Dreams (6/26/25), the New Republic (7/29/25) and Democracy Now! (7/31/25).

He was covered by outlets with a Black or Mideastern focus (Grio, 7/29/25; Black Enterprise, 7/30/25; Ebony, 7/31/25; Middle East Eye, 7/29/25; Middle East Monitor, 7/30/25).

But as independent labor reporter Mike Elk (Payday Report, 7/29/25) pointed out:

Despite Smalls having been profiled by every major media outlet in the US when he successfully led the union drive at Amazon, not a single major media outlet has covered his violent detention by the IDF.

In fact, the only news report we could find in a general-interest US news outlet was from Smalls’ hometown paper, the Staten Island Advance (7/29/25), which reported that a “Staten Island Labor Leader Was Reportedly Detained in Israel After Gaza-Bound Aid Vessel Was Intercepted.”

Regular readers may recall a similar news blackout, not quite as absolute, when Greta Thunberg, probably the most famous climate activist in the world, was blocked by Israel from delivering aid to Gaza on another Freedom Flotilla ship (FAIR.org, 6/5/25).

Characters that corporate media once found fascinating, risking their lives to save innocents: It would be hard to make up a story with more dramatic potential. Yet corporate media knew that these were stories to steer clear of—almost unanimously, in Smalls’ case.

The only thing worse than war crimes

“The government…recently accused Harvard of civil rights violations,” the New York Times (7/28/25) reported—without explaining that this mean allowing anti-genocide protests to make pro-Israel students feel uncomfortable.

The reason, of course, is the corporate media’s longstanding bias toward Israel—something FAIR (e.g., 8/22/23; Extra!, 11–12/93, 1–2/01, 9/14) has been documenting for decades. But it’s still puzzling; obviously, not every negative story about Israel gets killed. US media have even begun to gingerly acknowledge that Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation—with varying degrees of admission of Israel’s responsibility for this (FAIR.org, 7/29/25).

But even as media admit that Palestinian children are dying for lack of food, people who risk their lives to try to feed them aren’t treated as heroes—or even as curiosities. It’s as if, however bad Israel’s actions are, trying to stop or counteract them is somehow worse—even shameful, something to avert one’s eyes from.

It’s the only way to make sense of the continuing debate over academia’s response to the pro-Palestine protests that roiled campuses in 2024. The New York Times (7/28/25) recently reported:

Harvard University has signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration’s demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House…more than twice as much as the $200 million fine that Columbia University said it would pay when it settled antisemitism claims with the White House last week.

The “antisemitism claims” referred to here amount to accusations that these and other colleges did not do enough to squelch the protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza—which has since been identified as a genocide by prominent human rights groups like Amnesty International (12/5/24), Human Rights Watch (12/19/24) and B’Tselem (7/28/25).

Where is the debate over whether universities went too far in suppressing the free speech rights of students who were opposed to genocide? That seems like a discussion we’re never going to have. Apparently the only thing worse than crimes against humanity is trying to stop them.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Jim Naureckas.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Instead, as Declassified UK has reported, Britain’s ‘obedient’ defence correspondents, including BBC journalists, are covering up British spy flights for Israel. The RAF has carried out more than 500 surveillance flights over Gaza since December 2023. The Ministry of Defence insists that the flights, undertaken by aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, are solely to assist in providing information about Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023. But the British ‘mainstream’ media, which largely serves state-corporate interests, not the public interest, have not carried out a single investigation into the extent, impact, or legal status of these flights.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity that records, investigates, and disseminates evidence of armed violence against civilians worldwide, has analysed flight-tracking data over or close to Gaza. They found that between 3 December 2023 and 27 March 2025, the RAF carried out at least 518 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights in or near Gaza’s airspace.

AOAV found that the RAF conducted 24 flights in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of Israel’s deadly attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp on 8 June 2024, which reportedly killed 274 Palestinians and injured over 700. Four Israeli hostages were rescued in the operation.

Iain Overton, the Executive Director of AOAV, noted that:

‘This is not the only instance where UK ISR flights have coincided with major Israeli military assaults. In the two weeks leading up to Israel’s attack on Rafah on 12 February 2024, which killed at least 67 Palestinians, the RAF flew 15 ISR missions over Gaza. Flights continued even during the so-called “limited ceasefire” in early 2025, with six flights recorded in February alone.’

He added:

‘With no parliamentary oversight or public scrutiny, it remains unclear how much British intelligence gathered from these flights has been shared with Israel.’

This is surely a significant question that responsible journalists should be raising, particularly the national broadcaster. But, as Declassified UK has observed, the BBC has essentially remained ‘silent’ on whether these flights are contributing to the UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

In an article jointly published by Declassified UK and The National newspaper in Scotland, Des Freedman, Professor of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote:

‘thanks to dogged work by campaigners, independent journalists and pro-Palestine MPs, we know both that the flights are continuing to operate (as they did even throughout the ceasefire) and that spikes in the number of flights have coincided with especially deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza.

‘The lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream media is perhaps not surprising but it is deeply troubling.’

He added:

‘It’s hard to reconcile this silence with the energy with which mainstream media have investigated Russian spy planes flying over Ukraine and other military manoeuvres related to Putin’s invasion.’

On 7 July, we challenged Jonathan Beale, the BBC’s defence correspondent, via X, linking to Freedman’s article:

‘Hello @bealejonathan,

‘As @BBCNews defence correspondent, why are you covering up British spy flights for Israel?’

Beale was clearly irked and posted this reply:

‘Why are you claiming “cover-up” – without a shred of evidence of what’s supposed to have been covered up? I’m curious as to how a media lecturer at Goldsmiths seems to have knowledge of “intelligence” that no other journalist has seen?’

A few minutes later, having now been alerted to the Declassified UK article, he confronted Freedman:

‘Please tell us Des as to how we can get the classified intelligence only you seem to know about. Why teach media studies when you can clearly scoop us all?’

Freedman responded reasonably:

‘As you know Jonathan, I don’t have access to classified files but to open news databases. Is any of the story incorrect? Instead of a snippy response, surely it would be better to use your contacts to investigate a story that’s in the public interest?’

As Declassified UK said in a follow-up post on X:

‘In a bizarre admission he [Beale] suggests that open source information on military flights is “classified”, raising the question – how do BBC journalists investigate the British military?’

The answer, of course, is that BBC journalists, along with other state stenographers, have learned not to investigate too deeply if they are to retain their privileged position.

When Declassified UK challenged Richard Burgess, the BBC’s director of news content, he gave this response befitting a senior news apparatchik:

‘I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel.’

Why did Burgess say, ‘in Israel’? Did he just erase Palestine? Is he actually unaware that Gaza is an occupied Palestinian territory?

As if that was not already a bizarre and misleading form of words, consider this. Nobody is asking the BBC to ‘overplay’ what the UK is doing; but simply to report it, rather than bury it to the point of invisibility. Whitewashing genocide as ‘what’s happening in Israel’ is wretched BBC newspeak.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour Party leader, has called for a public inquiry to determine what the UK government is hiding about its role in Israel’s genocide, including RAF flights from Cyprus. In an article for the Morning Star, he wrote:

‘We have also repeatedly asked for the truth regarding the role of British military bases in Cyprus, concerning the transfer of arms and the supply of military intelligence.

‘When the Prime Minister visited RAF Akrotiri in December 2024, he was filmed telling troops: “The whole world and everyone back at home is relying on you.” He added: “Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time. We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing.” What does the government have to hide?’

Corbyn continued:

‘Over the past 18 months, our questions have been met with evasion, obstruction and silence, leaving the public in the dark over the ways in which the responsibilities of government have been discharged. Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of democracy. The British public deserves to know the full scale of Britain’s complicity in crimes against humanity.’

And the British public-service broadcaster, along with the UK’s other major news outlets, should have been reporting this since October 2023. As Mark Curtis, co-director of Declassified UK, commented:

‘Britain’s national media are doing a wonderful job covering up the extent of British support for Israel during a genocide. It’s their most impressive performance since destroying the prospects of a decent government under Jeremy Corbyn in 2015-19.’

A Devastating Indictment Of BBC ‘Impartiality’

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

Instead, as Declassified UK has reported, Britain’s ‘obedient’ defence correspondents, including BBC journalists, are covering up British spy flights for Israel. The RAF has carried out more than 500 surveillance flights over Gaza since December 2023. The Ministry of Defence insists that the flights, undertaken by aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, are solely to assist in providing information about Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023. But the British ‘mainstream’ media, which largely serves state-corporate interests, not the public interest, have not carried out a single investigation into the extent, impact, or legal status of these flights.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity that records, investigates, and disseminates evidence of armed violence against civilians worldwide, has analysed flight-tracking data over or close to Gaza. They found that between 3 December 2023 and 27 March 2025, the RAF carried out at least 518 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights in or near Gaza’s airspace.

AOAV found that the RAF conducted 24 flights in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of Israel’s deadly attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp on 8 June 2024, which reportedly killed 274 Palestinians and injured over 700. Four Israeli hostages were rescued in the operation.

Iain Overton, the Executive Director of AOAV, noted that:

‘This is not the only instance where UK ISR flights have coincided with major Israeli military assaults. In the two weeks leading up to Israel’s attack on Rafah on 12 February 2024, which killed at least 67 Palestinians, the RAF flew 15 ISR missions over Gaza. Flights continued even during the so-called “limited ceasefire” in early 2025, with six flights recorded in February alone.’

He added:

‘With no parliamentary oversight or public scrutiny, it remains unclear how much British intelligence gathered from these flights has been shared with Israel.’

This is surely a significant question that responsible journalists should be raising, particularly the national broadcaster. But, as Declassified UK has observed, the BBC has essentially remained ‘silent’ on whether these flights are contributing to the UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

In an article jointly published by Declassified UK and The National newspaper in Scotland, Des Freedman, Professor of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote:

‘thanks to dogged work by campaigners, independent journalists and pro-Palestine MPs, we know both that the flights are continuing to operate (as they did even throughout the ceasefire) and that spikes in the number of flights have coincided with especially deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza.

‘The lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream media is perhaps not surprising but it is deeply troubling.’

He added:

‘It’s hard to reconcile this silence with the energy with which mainstream media have investigated Russian spy planes flying over Ukraine and other military manoeuvres related to Putin’s invasion.’

On 7 July, we challenged Jonathan Beale, the BBC’s defence correspondent, via X, linking to Freedman’s article:

‘Hello @bealejonathan,

‘As @BBCNews defence correspondent, why are you covering up British spy flights for Israel?’

Beale was clearly irked and posted this reply:

‘Why are you claiming “cover-up” – without a shred of evidence of what’s supposed to have been covered up? I’m curious as to how a media lecturer at Goldsmiths seems to have knowledge of “intelligence” that no other journalist has seen?’

A few minutes later, having now been alerted to the Declassified UK article, he confronted Freedman:

‘Please tell us Des as to how we can get the classified intelligence only you seem to know about. Why teach media studies when you can clearly scoop us all?’

Freedman responded reasonably:

‘As you know Jonathan, I don’t have access to classified files but to open news databases. Is any of the story incorrect? Instead of a snippy response, surely it would be better to use your contacts to investigate a story that’s in the public interest?’

As Declassified UK said in a follow-up post on X:

‘In a bizarre admission he [Beale] suggests that open source information on military flights is “classified”, raising the question – how do BBC journalists investigate the British military?’

The answer, of course, is that BBC journalists, along with other state stenographers, have learned not to investigate too deeply if they are to retain their privileged position.

When Declassified UK challenged Richard Burgess, the BBC’s director of news content, he gave this response befitting a senior news apparatchik:

‘I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel.’

Why did Burgess say, ‘in Israel’? Did he just erase Palestine? Is he actually unaware that Gaza is an occupied Palestinian territory?

As if that was not already a bizarre and misleading form of words, consider this. Nobody is asking the BBC to ‘overplay’ what the UK is doing; but simply to report it, rather than bury it to the point of invisibility. Whitewashing genocide as ‘what’s happening in Israel’ is wretched BBC newspeak.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour Party leader, has called for a public inquiry to determine what the UK government is hiding about its role in Israel’s genocide, including RAF flights from Cyprus. In an article for the Morning Star, he wrote:

‘We have also repeatedly asked for the truth regarding the role of British military bases in Cyprus, concerning the transfer of arms and the supply of military intelligence.

‘When the Prime Minister visited RAF Akrotiri in December 2024, he was filmed telling troops: “The whole world and everyone back at home is relying on you.” He added: “Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time. We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing.” What does the government have to hide?’

Corbyn continued:

‘Over the past 18 months, our questions have been met with evasion, obstruction and silence, leaving the public in the dark over the ways in which the responsibilities of government have been discharged. Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of democracy. The British public deserves to know the full scale of Britain’s complicity in crimes against humanity.’

And the British public-service broadcaster, along with the UK’s other major news outlets, should have been reporting this since October 2023. As Mark Curtis, co-director of Declassified UK, commented:

‘Britain’s national media are doing a wonderful job covering up the extent of British support for Israel during a genocide. It’s their most impressive performance since destroying the prospects of a decent government under Jeremy Corbyn in 2015-19.’

A Devastating Indictment Of BBC ‘Impartiality’

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

We’re joined by award-winning investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who in 2018 exposed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and is now taking on what she terms the “broligarchy,” the billionaire Silicon Valley businessmen who now wield major influence in U.S. government and society. “This is a new type of power, and the world hasn’t seen this before, in which you have state power now with this enormous surveillance engine machine,” says Cadwalladr. She warns that the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration is being facilitated by unregulated surveillance technology. “People should be freaked out. … They want as much information about the population as possible, so that they can surveil them, they can control them, they can search out their enemies, they can target them, and they can punish them, and they can silence them.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Georgia’s populist ruling Georgian Dream party has pushed through its new Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—called an “exact copy” of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act— granting the state authority to criminally prosecute media outlets, NGOs, and individuals for failing to register as a “foreign agent.”

Yet the way the law is written, “they can use it against anyone,” warned Mariam Nikuradze, executive director of the independent Georgia-based regional news outlet OC Media. Nikuradze said the increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream party has weaponized uncertainty over how the law will be enforced to “create this environment [of fear]” and force compliance from outlets that refused to register under the country’s 2024 foreign agent law.

“They may arrest some people, as an example, to terrorize,” Nikuradze said.

Taking effect May 31, Georgia’s second ‘foreign agent’ law comes amid two separate bills passed in April that would restrict foreign funding crucial to large swathes of the country’s independent newsrooms. Nikuradze said that with these laws Georgian Dream is making it “almost impossible to exist as a media or rights group.”“Everything that is happening right now is leading towards the final goal of making these organizations disappear,” Nikuradze said, “just like it happened in Azerbaijan, Russia or Belarus, where there are no organizations on the ground, they go into exile or just shut down.”

An intensifying crackdown on Western influence

A Georgian parliament stripped of its opposition passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) on April 1, as well as a bill banning foreign funding of broadcasters. Georgian Dream deputies hastily approved drafted amendments requiring government approval for foreign grants on April 16, which many believe will be used to block grants to critical Georgian media. In each case, Georgian Dream loyalist President Mikheil Kavelashvili, ratified each of the bills on the same day they were passed.

While Georgia’s existing 2024 foreign agent law remains unimplemented amid widespread refusal by media and nonprofits to register, legal experts argue that the criminal sanctions and “catch-all” provisions in Georgia Dream’s FARA law will likely be applied punitively because they are not subject to the same legal safeguards as in the U.S. Registration under the law offers little safety since FARA can penalize not only non-registration but also registrants’ alleged omissions and false statements with up to five years in prison.

Ignoring the new law is a risk many media workers will not take, said Lia Chakhunashvili, executive director of independent trade group Georgian Charter for Journalistic Ethics. 

“If we don’t want to register—and none of us want to register—our understanding is that we should stop all donor-funded activities before May 31,” she told CPJ. “We will work as volunteers as long as we can. That I can do. But I cannot take any money from any donor past May 30, because I don’t want to go to jail.”

Over the past year, the Georgia Dream party has steadily escalated rhetorical attacks against the West and international donors, as well as donor-funded civil society groups and media, accusing them of attempting to overthrow the government. The party has faced months of protests over alleged fraud in October 2024 elections and its apparent reversal of the country’s bid to join the European Union. 

FARA also comes as the Trump administration’s USAID cuts have left regional media facing what Georgia-based journalists have called an “extinction-level event.” 

“Georgian media was highly reliant on support from USAID for many years,” via the global development and education organization IREX, which was the country’s most substantial media donor, Chakhunashvili said. She added that although the EU has promised to step in, “nothing can replace USAID funding.”

‘Locking all the doors’

Georgian Dream has enthusiastically embraced the Trump administration claims that USAID serves to “destabilize” nations, citing this as a reason to restrict foreign funding. 

“The worldwide USAID scandal … has made it obvious that we should fully reclaim our country,” said Georgia Dream parliamentary leader Mamuka Mdinaradze as he unveiled the bills restricting foreign funding in February.To be “on the safe side,” Georgia Dream passed amendments giving the government explicit control over grants Chakhunashvili said. Similarly, she said the party moved quickly to prohibit broadcasters from receiving foreign funding after the EU pledged to redirect government aid to civil society and the media, fearing that European donors might start to fund oppositional broadcasters who are increasingly struggling financially.

“They are trying to put as many locks on the doors as possible. Even if it’s not necessary, they are readying the locks,” Chakhunashvili said.

Amid the new restrictions, the Georgian Charter for Journalistic Ethics expects some donors will “leave the country altogether,” Chakhunashvili said, explaining that applying for government approval for each grant adds a layer of difficulty amid increased government hostility towards donors and security fears for grantees under the new foreign agent law.

“Already now, money is not enough for our needs, and I expect that this will shrink even further what is available,” Chakhunashvili said.

Fighting for survival 

Following the passage of Georgia’s 2024 foreign agent law, some media moved their financial operations abroad to sidestep the law’s restrictions. But many argue that under FARA’s more restrictive clauses, any payments from abroad to journalists inside Georgia would fall under the new law; however, it remains unclear how it will be applied. 

Some Georgian media outlets are preparing for a “tectonic shift” in their operating model, said Nata Koridze, managing editor for independent news site Civil.ge.

“We have to change and become profit organizations, instead of nonprofit,” said Koridze, adding that independent media will have to “cut in many directions and not be able to maintain the same number of staff.”

Digital advertising in Georgia is limited by a small market and readers are not accustomed to paying for online news, said Koridze, who announced her departure from Civil.ge May 27, following the arrest of her husband, a prominent opposition leader.

Meanwhile, OC Media, Nikuradze’s outlet, has pioneered efforts in crowdfunding and now covers around 10 percent of its operating costs through membership. “Everybody is still trying to find ways to survive,” Nikuradze told CPJ, adding that her outlet is also experimenting with other options such as advertising and sponsored content. Other media, including major oppositional broadcasters TV Pirveli and Formula TV, are seeking donations via a unified platform, with varying results.

Ultimately, not all of Georgia’s media outlets will be able to endure with fewer resources to go around, Nikuradze said. 

“There will probably only be a few organizations who will survive this, due to different reasons,” she said. “Unfortunately, there will be some that will be shutting down.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Nick Lewis.

Last summer, ExxonMobil sponsored week-long camps to teach grade school students from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi about the virtues of these aquifers, specifically their ability to serve as carbon capture and sequestration wells, where oil, gas, and heavy industry can bury harmful emissions deep underground. In one exercise, students were given 20 minutes to build a model reservoir out of vegetable oil, Play-Doh, pasta, and uncooked beans. Whoever could keep the most vegetable oil (meant to represent liquified carbon dioxide) in their aquifer, won. 

This kind of down-home carbon capture boosterism is a relatively new development for the oil and gas giant. Over recent years, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies have spent millions lobbying for government support of what they see as industry-friendly green technology, most prominently carbon capture and storage, which many scientists and environmental activists have argued is ineffective and distracts from eliminating fossil fuel operations in the first place. According to Exxon’s website, it’s evidence that they are leading “the biggest energy transition in history.” 

Now that Congress has turned its attention to rolling back government spending on renewable energy, it appears that most of the climate “solutions” being left off the chopping block are the ones favored by carbon-intensive companies like Exxon. Corporate tax breaks for carbon capture and storage, for instance, were one of the few things left untouched when House Republicans passed a budget bill on May 22 that effectively gutted the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation. What remained of the IRA’s clean energy tax credits were incentives for nuclear, so-called clean fuels like ethanol, and carbon capture. When the IRA was passed in 2022, there was immediate backlash against the provisions for carbon capture. 

“Essentially, we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing a private sewer system for oil and gas,” said Sandra Steingraber, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health Network.

The tax credits for nuclear power plants, which produce energy without emitting greenhouse gases, are meant to spur what President Donald Trump hopes will be an “energy renaissance,” bolstered by a flurry of pro-nuclear executive orders he issued a day after the budget bill cleared the House. Projects will be able to use the tax credits if they begin construction by 2031; wind and solar companies, however, will lose access to tax credits unless they begin construction within 60 days of Trump signing the bill, and are fully up and running by 2028.

That the carbon capture tax credit was never in danger of being revoked is a testament to its importance to the oil and gas industry, said Jim Walsh, the policy director at the nonprofit Food and Water Watch. “The major beneficiaries of these tax credits are oil and gas companies and big agricultural interests.” 

The carbon capture tax credit was first established in 2008, but the subsidies were more than doubled when it was tacked on to the IRA in order to get former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia’s vote. Companies now receive $60 for every ton of CO2 captured and used to drive oil out of the ground (a process known as “enhanced oil recovery”) and up to $85 for a ton of CO2 that is permanently stored. As roughly 60 percent of captured C02 in the United States is used for enhanced oil recovery, detractors see the tax credit as something of a devil’s bargain, a provision that props up an industry at taxpayer expense. 

How much carbon is actually captured by these projects is also a matter of debate. The tax credit requires companies that claim it to self-report how much CO2 they inject to the Internal Revenue Service. The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is in charge of tracking leaks. There are tax penalties if captured carbon ends up leaking, but those penalties only apply if the leaks occur in the first 3 years after injection. Holding companies accountable is made more complicated by the fact that tax returns are confidential, and Walsh cautions that there is very little communication between the EPA and the IRS. Oversight is “very, very minimal,” added Anika Juhn, an energy data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research firm.

“You can keep some really played out oil fields going for a long time, and you can get the public to pay for it,” said Carolyn Raffensberger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, explaining the potential impact of the budget bill. “So the argument is, ‘This is a win for the climate, it’s a win for energy dominance.’ [But] it’s really a budget buster with no guardrails at all.” 

Existing carbon-capture facilities have been plagued by technical and financial issues. The country’s first commercial carbon capture plant in Decatur, Illinois, sprung two leaks last year directly under Lake Decatur, which is the town’s main source of drinking water. When concentrated CO2 hits water it turns into carbonic acid, which then leaches heavy metals from rocks within the aquifer and poisons the water. Although a certain level of public health concerns come with many emerging technologies, critics point out that all of this risk is being taken for a technology that has not been proven to work at scale, and may actually increase emissions by incentivizing more oil and gas production. It could also strain the existing electrical grid — outfitting a natural gas or coal plant with carbon capture equipment can suck up about 15 to 25 percent of the plant’s power. 

The tax credits exist “to pollute and confuse people,” said Mark Jacobsen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, who has argued that there is essentially no reasonable use for carbon capture. They “increase people’s [energy] costs and do nothing for the climate.”

But the technology does have its defenders among scientists. The 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called an increase in carbon capture technology “unavoidable” if countries  want to reach net-zero emissions. Jessie Stolark, the executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, an umbrella organization of fossil fuel companies, unions, and environmental groups, contends that arguments like Jacobsen’s unnecessarily set the technology against renewables. “We need all the solutions in the toolkit,” she said. “We’re not saying don’t deploy these other technologies. We see this very much as a complementary and supportive piece in the broader decarbonization toolkit.” 

Stolark said that carbon capture didn’t make it out of the budget process entirely unscathed, as the bill specified that companies could no longer sell carbon capture tax credits. So-called “transferability” — the ability to sell these tax credits on the open market — has been invaluable to small energy startups that have struggled to secure financing in their early stages, according to Stolark. The Carbon Capture Coalition is urging lawmakers to restore transferability now that the bill has moved from the House to the Senate.

Still, the kinds of companies likely to claim carbon capture tax credits — often major players in oil and gas, ammonia, steel, and other heavy industries — are less likely to rely on transferability than more modest companies (often providers of renewable energy), whose smaller tax bills makes it harder for them to realize the value of their respective tax credits. 

“A lot of the factories, the power plants, the industrial facilities deploying within the next ten years or so, are expected to be these really big [facilities] with the big tax burdens,” said Dan O’Brien, a senior modeling analyst at Energy Innovations, a clean energy think tank based in San Francisco. “They’re not the type of smaller producers — like small solar companies — that are reliant on transferability in order to monetize the tax credit.” 

To some observers, keeping the carbon capture credit looks like a flagrant giveaway to the oil and gas industry. Juhn estimated that the credit could end up costing taxpayers more than $800 billion by 2040. Given the House bill’s aggressive cuts to social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Juhn finds the carbon capture credit offensive. “When we look at these other programs, where we’re nickel and diming benefits to folks that could really use them, what does that mean? It’s gross.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What’s likely to survive from Biden’s climate law? The controversial stuff. on May 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Rebecca Egan McCarthy.

On the May 6 episode of The Jim Bakker Show, Bakker warned his viewers that unless they sent him one million dollars, he could lose his ministry. Never shy about fleecing his followers, Bakker once again played the “we’re in the End Times” card as he has many times before.

Bakker, an avid supporter of Donald Trump, bemoaned the fact that contributions to his ministry have dropped, saying “A lot of people have not been giving any more because it’s perilous times.”

“I believe if everyone who watches this program will give a thousand dollars, we’ll be able to pay our bills and stay on the air,” said Bakker. “… Otherwise, we’ve got about another month, I don’t know, to stay on the air. We’re at the end. God doesn’t have an end, He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Bakker, 85, claimed that he doesn’t have any money saying that “For 40 years, I have not made a salary, … What we need is a miracle, and it’s gonna happen if a thousand people give a thousand dollars.” If he doesn’t get the money he could lose his house and be forced out into the street.

“It is hard to prove or disprove Bakker’s assertions, as his organization operates under Morningside Church in Branson, Missouri. Churches do not need to declare their financials or file a 990 tax form,” Liz Lykins pointed out at The Roys Report.

According to Lykins, Bakker’s “$125 million media empire was comprised of the PTL Network, which he ran with his then-spouse Tammy Faye Bakker, and the Christian theme park Heritage USA. …the third most-visited theme park in 1986 with six million visitors, according to the History TV network. It followed behind Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in terms of attendance.

His empire came crashing down amidst a sex scandal and the fraud convictions.”

The Christian Post noted that “Bakker’s appeal comes against the backdrop of a televangelist career marked by both prominence and controversy. In the 1980s, he built a media empire with the PTL Ministry, including a TV network and the Heritage USA resort. He was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. According to the New York Times, government prosecutors argued that Bakker bilked followers of his PTL Ministry out of $158 million by offering promises of lifetime vacations he could not provide).

“He was also accused of diverting about $3.7 million to support a lavish lifestyle, including an air-conditioned dog house and a fleet of luxury vehicles.

“He was found guilty on all 24 counts on Oct. 5, 1989, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He was ordered to pay a $500,000 fine. Bakker later filed an appeal. In 1991, an appellate court upheld his conviction. But he was granted a sentence-reduction hearing, during which his sentence was reduced to eight years. He served almost five years before he received parole in 1994.

In 2020, Bakker sold a health supplement dubbed “Silver Solution” that he claimed would cure Covid-19. “A year later,” Liz Lykins noted, “the Missouri attorney general ordered Bakker to pay restitution of $156,000 to settle a false advertising lawsuit.”

Bakker has also been hawking a bevy of survival products, including long-term food buckets, while preaching about the End Times.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

In part one of their discussion, Andrea and Adrian explore how Europe and the free world can survive the chaos of Trump’s America First isolationism and Russia’s weaponized corruption and election interference. In part two, they discuss the PayPal Mafia’s war on Ukraine as part of a broader global assault on "wokeism" (a.k.a. empathy and democracy), Adrian’s impressions of meeting Curtis Yarvin, and how the war in Ukraine can ultimately end.

A big thank you to everyone who joined the Gaslit Nation Salon hosted by our Security Committee, which shared valuable insights on protecting our digital worlds in these dystopian times. The recording will be available soon on Patreon. Our next salon is Monday, April 14 at 4pm ET, featuring Patrick Guarasci, chief political strategist for Judge Susan Crawford, discussing their campaign’s victory against Elon Musk in the pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The Zoom link will be available on Patreon Monday morning.

Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation–we could not make the show without you! 

EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:

• April 14 4pm ET – Live-taping with Patrick Guarasci, chief political strategist for Judge Susan Crawford, discussing their campaign’s victory against Elon Musk in the pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race!

• April 28 4pm ET – Book club discussion of Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower  

• Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon.

• Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon.

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• Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community 

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Show Notes:

Battleground Ukraine by Adrian Karatnycky https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300269468/battleground-ukraine/

Exclusive: Russia could concede $300 billion in frozen assets as part of Ukraine war settlement, sources say https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-could-concede-300-bln-frozen-assets-part-ukraine-war-settlement-sources-2025-02-21/

Who is Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's Trump-whisperer: Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, has become a key figure in the Kremlin's outreach to the Trump administration. https://kyivindependent.com/whos-kirill-dmitriev-putins-trump-whisperer/

Nerd Reich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jiju_ky55EI

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

In Gaza, where the threads of life and death intertwine, and where moments of worship intersect with the horrors of war, people live their daily lives with unyielding resilience. During the holy month of Ramadan, which is supposed to be a time of peace and tranquility, the people of Gaza found themselves surrounded by unending, unimaginable death and destruction.

Preparing maftoul for the displaced

Preparing Iftar — the meal at the end of the day when we break our daily Ramadan fast — was a daily struggle, especially for women who bear the primary responsibility of caring for their families. Amid scarce resources, prolonged power outages, and the collapse of essential services, the women of Gaza fought an uphill battle to provide a meal for their families under nearly impossible living conditions.

Despite the difficulties, we held onto our Ramadan traditions — and as we did, we made sure that we supported each other. Just a few weeks ago, as part of my regular work in a local soup kitchen, I went to the markets to see how I could feed the many displaced people who were forced to flee from the north to central Gaza. For months now, there has been a serious shortage of meat and vegetables.

All Gazans love maftoul, a Palestinian couscous dish. So together with many other Palestinian women, with minimal ingredients, and with only firewood for fuel, we worked all day to prepare this wonderful dish for the Iftar meal. Making the maftoul is a labor of love that involves moistening the bulgur wheat, coating it with flour, then rolling the grains between your palms to form larger, irregular shapes.

The maftoul is then cooked with spices, and when available, other vegetables and meat, to create the dish we all love and look forward to eating when we break our fast. On this day, feeling both exhausted and fulfilled, we were able to feed more than 1,000 fasting people.

Sadly, the Israeli blockade forced the soup kitchen to close and we were no longer able to provide Iftar.

Only bread and tea for Iftar

Mid-Ramadan, Israel renewed its active genocide of the Palestinian people, conducting airstrikes that resulted in daily massacres of hundreds of people. Once again death and injury were ever-present and inexorable — every single day — for every single Palestinian. There was no escape. Half of the dead were children. The injured were almost less fortunate, forced to endure amputations without the help of anesthesia. We are all hungry, we are all thirsty and exhausted.

In addition to the scarcity of food, women faced a severe shortage of fuel and firewood. With electricity often cut off for hours or even days, cooking was an exhausting and dangerous task. Many women resorted to burning old clothes, broken furniture, or even plastic to light a fire for cooking. This exposed them to the risk of burns and forced them to inhale toxic fumes that threatened their health and that of their children.

The cold nights added to our suffering, with freezing winds seeping through the tents. At least eight children, and probably many more, died from hypothermia in the past month. There was also a serious lack of clean water and many children suffered from diarrhea and dehydration. Many families survived only on bread and tea. For some, the Iftar meal consisted of only water. With Israel’s ongoing blockade of all humanitarian aid and the ceaseless, merciless bombing, families’ chances of getting food are shrinking.

As I walked through the refugee camp where I worked to distribute what little food there was, I saw a different kind of hunger — a hunger for safety, for peace, for an end to this nightmare. People were not waiting for Iftar with excitement; they were waiting for the bombs to stop, for the gunfire to cease.

Every family in Gaza is living in a constant state of fear, uncertainty, and unimaginable sorrow.

No food, no shelter

My Aunt Hanin and her family, which includes two children with special needs, were left with nothing after their home was completely destroyed. With nowhere else to go, they built a makeshift tent in the Al-Aqsa camp in the northern part of Gaza and have been living without even the most basic necessities of life: no water, no sanitation, and very little food.

I visited her on the first day of Ramadan and was struck by the deep sadness and exhaustion etched into her features. “I don’t know what to cook for my children,” she told me. “There are no vegetables, no food of any kind. My children have diarrhea and struggle to eat anything solid — they need soup because of their condition.” Her voice began to break, and tears welled up in her eyes.

I have not seen my Aunt Hanin and her family since the bombing started again. We don’t know where they are and can’t communicate with them since electricity is very scarce and internet is extremely intermittent. I pray that they are safe.

With thousands of families again forced to flee their homes, and with no schools, mosques, or other shelters left to offer refuge, many families are living in the streets among piles of garbage. Among the women who have sought shelter in garbage dumps is Farah. Displaced from Beit Hanoun, and four months pregnant, she walked barefoot to the center of the Gaza Strip on the twenty-third day of Ramadan, where she has been living in a makeshift tent in a garbage dump. The garbage is toxic and the stench is overwhelming and sickening. Farah miscarried earlier this week.

The crushing psychological toll

Beyond food shortages, there is an emotional and psychological weight that is crushing our spirits. We are always afraid, always on the verge of despair. Every mother setting a meager table for Iftar did so with a heart full of grief, knowing that someone was missing. Every father trying to provide for his family struggled against impossible odds. Children who should be excited for Eid were instead traumatized by the horrors they have witnessed.

We mourned Hossam Shabat, the 23-year-old brave and talented journalist who Israel targeted and succeeded in murdering during Ramadan. In his beautiful last letter to the people of Gaza he implored us “do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting,keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.” So selfless and courageous.

Today, we weep for his mother and the thousands of other mothers of Gaza whose children have been martyred. Despite their despair, and conscious of God, they did their best to provide Iftar.

Our thoughts of past Ramadans, some filled with laughter and prayers, were this year drowned out by the cries of mourning mothers and the deafening silence of absence. War darkened our days and stolen the warmth and spirituality of Ramadan. Our memories of past celebrations was bittersweet, as this was not our first Ramadan marred by violence and grief. In 2014, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes; 250 in 2021; last year 2,300; and this year, more than 1,000 so far.

But before the genocide, no matter how difficult our circumstances, we had at least some food and enough peace for the whole family to gather for the breaking of the fast. Our Iftar meal would start with dates and water, followed by dishes like maqluba, grilled fish, and soup, along with salads and appetizers. The smell of freshly baked bread would fill the houses, and the warmth of family conversations would create an indescribable sense of closeness.

After Iftar, families would gather to perform Taraweeh prayers at the mosque, while the streets would be filled with worshippers and the beautiful sounds of Qur’an recitation. Children would play in the alleys lit with lanterns, while families exchanged visits, offering traditional sweets like qatayef and knafeh. Though our lives have always been difficult, Ramadan in Gaza is not just about fasting from food — it is about fasting from pain and trying to hold onto hope despite the harsh realities.

We are just trying to stay alive. Violence and death, pain, hunger, thirst, cold. Despite our depleted bodies and minds, we still work to strengthen our Taqwa; we remained conscious of God. This year during Ramadan we continued to hang lanterns and paint murals on the remains of our demolished walls, in our attempt to create hope amid the devastation. Our fragile existence left us with few choices, but we remained steadfast in our beliefs and our devotion to Ramadan. Insha’Alla we would have some food each day for Iftar.

First published at we are not numbers.

The post Struggling to Provide and Survive during the Ramadan Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Farida Algoul.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/struggling-to-provide-and-survive-during-the-ramadan-genocide/feed/ 0 522784 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/a-university-a-rural-town-and-their-fight-to-survive-trumps-war-on-higher-education/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/a-university-a-rural-town-and-their-fight-to-survive-trumps-war-on-higher-education/#respond Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/regional-public-universities-trump-funding-dei by Molly Parker, Capitol News Illinois

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

CARBONDALE, Ill. — I grew up off a gravel road near a town of 60 people, a place where cows outnumber people.

Southern Illinois University, just 40 miles north, opened up my world. I saw my first concerts here, debated big ideas in giant lecture halls and shared dorms with people who looked like no one I’d ever met. Two of my most influential professors came from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

SIU was the only four-year college within reach when I enrolled here in the fall of 2000 — both in miles and cost. And it set me on the path to who I would become. That’s why I accepted a job here teaching journalism two years ago. It is still a place of opportunity, but I was struck by how fragile it had become — a fraction of its former size, grappling with relentless enrollment and budget concerns.

Now, it faces new threats. The Trump administration has proposed cuts to research and labs across the country; targeted certain schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and signed an executive order to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, which manages student loans. State officials estimate that proposed funding reductions from the National Institutes of Health alone would cost SIU about $4.5 million.

In addition, conservative activists are on the lookout for what they deem “woke” depravity at universities. This is true at SIU as well, where students received emails from at least one conservative group offering to pay them to act as informants or write articles to help “expose the liberal bias that occurs on college campuses across the nation.”

Schools like SIU, located in a region that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump, may not be the primary targets of his threatened funding cuts, but they — along with the communities they serve — stand to lose the most.

There are nearly 500 regional public universities across the U.S., serving around 5 million students — about half of all undergraduates enrolled in public universities, according to the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University. These institutions of higher learning span nearly every state, with many rooted in rural areas and communities facing high unemployment, childhood poverty and limited access to medical care. They play a vital role in lifting up struggling individuals — and in some cases, entire communities that could very easily die out without them.

While Trump’s actions have primarily targeted high-profile institutions like Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, some regional schools are also under investigation for alleged racial discrimination tied to DEI programs. (So far, SIU hasn’t been named in any federal probes.)

“This is definitely one of those baby-in-the-bathwater moments,” said Cecilia Orphan, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver, who is a lead researcher with the regional colleges alliance. While the administration has “a bone to pick with a particular type of institution,” she said, “there are all these other institutions that serve your community, your constituents.”

Students walk across the campus of SIU in Carbondale. Long challenged by declining enrollment and budget woes, SIU now faces the threat of deeper federal cuts. (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

Regional schools like SIU tend to operate with fewer resources than their counterparts, relying on federal and state money to support both the students and the school. Greater shares of students rely on need-based federal financial aid like Pell Grants, low-cost student loans and subsidized student work programs.

And in terms of research, while attention goes to large, elite schools, hundreds of the schools spending at least $2.5 million on scientific studies — the threshold for qualifying as a research school — are regional public universities. SIU pumps $60 million annually into research. About a quarter of that money comes from the federal government.

At SIU, as at other regional universities, many research projects focus on overlooked issues in their own backyards. Here that means studying ways to help farmers yield stronger crops, to deal with invasive species in the waterways, and to deliver mental health care to remote schools.

“We are at a crossroads and facing a national crisis. It is going to have far-reaching consequences for higher education,” said Mary Louise Cashel, a clinical psychology professor at SIU whose research, which focuses on youth violence prevention among diverse populations, relies on federal funding.

Supporters of Trump’s proposed research funding cuts say schools should dip into their endowment funds to offset the recent cuts. But SIU’s $210 million endowment, almost all of it earmarked for specific purposes, is pocket change compared with Ivy League schools like Yale, which has a similar student population size but a roughly $41 billion endowment. At present, SIU faces a $9.4 million deficit, the result of declining enrollments and years of state budget cuts; there is no cushion for it to fall back on.

A mix of empty businesses and city buildings seen in a window reflection in downtown Carbondale. The university is the largest employer in the region. (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

Intertwined with SIU’s fate is that of Carbondale, a town of 21,500 about 50 miles from the borders of Kentucky and Missouri. Since its founding in 1869, the university has turned Carbondale into a tiny cultural mecca and a powerful economic engine in an otherwise vast, rural region that has been battered by the decline of manufacturing and coal mining. Three decades ago, SIU and Carbondale felt electric: Lecture halls overflowed; local businesses thrived on the fall surge of students; The Strip, a longstanding student hangout, spilled over every weekend, music rattling windows into the early morning hours.

The “Dirty Dale,” as the town is affectionately known, still carries traces of its college-town energy, and SIU remains the largest employer in the region. But there’s an undeniable fade as the student population is now half the size it was in the 1990s. Some of the local anchor establishments along The Strip have vanished. Now, more cuts threaten to push the university, and the town that depends on it, to a breaking point.

Jeff Vaughn, a retired police officer who has owned Tres Hombres restaurant and bar in the heart of town for the past 10 years, says the school, though smaller, still has a huge impact on businesses’ bottom lines.

First image: Jeff Vaughn, center, has a drink with friends at Tres Hombres, his restaurant in Carbondale. Second image: Edwin Linson performs to a multigenerational crowd at Tres Hombres. (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

“It’s dollar bills coming into the city” that wouldn’t be here otherwise, he said. “It’s the people who work there, the people going to school there — every part of it brings money into the city. A basketball game happens, people come into town and they usually go out to eat before the game.”

Even before the Trump administration began its cuts in academia, it was clear to regional leaders that the school and the community needed to do more. A 2020 report by a regional economic development agency issued a warning: “The region can no longer sit idle and let SIU tackle these issues on their own.”

DEI, a Survival Strategy?

The Rev. Joseph A. Brown at his home in Carbondale (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

The Rev. Joseph A. Brown, a professor of Africana studies at Southern Illinois University, calls federal orders on higher education “epistolary drones.”

“Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb,” Brown said, “and everybody’s running and ducking.”

Brown spoke by phone in late February, his oxygen tank humming in the background after a bout of pneumonia. While he was in the hospital, his inbox and phone were blowing up with panicked messages about the federal directive that schools eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

That’s because diversity also means something more in regional public universities: Many students at SIU come from families that are poor, or barely middle class, and depend on scholarships and mentorship to succeed. Paul Frazier, SIU’s vice chancellor for anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion, said the way DEI has been politicized ignores what it actually does: “Poor doesn’t have a color.”

But beyond helping students, DEI is also about the school’s survival.

In 2021, SIU Chancellor Austin Lane rolled out Imagine 2030 — an ambitious blueprint for rebuilding SIU Carbondale. It called for doubling down on research, expanding student success programs and, at its core, embedding diversity into how the university operates, including in the recruitment of students, hiring and training of faculty and staff, and creation of programs that offer extra help to students struggling to keep up in their classes. It also called for growing SIU’s enrollment to 15,000.

Paul Frazier, vice chancellor for anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion at SIU (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

SIU won’t reach that goal without targeted recruitment. “You can’t do that without bringing more of the largest-growing population, which is Latinx and Hispanic students,” Frazier said. “It’ll be like an old Western,” Frazier said of the risks of further eroding SIU. “It’ll be a ghost town.

SIU is offering marketing materials in Spanish for the first time in years. Similar efforts are going into reigniting passion for SIU throughout Cook County, home to Chicago; near St. Louis, and in high schools close by.

While the plan was new, the desire to bring in students from a wide range of backgrounds was not. From the start, SIU grew against the grain by embracing diversity in a region that often didn’t.

In 1874, two Black women enrolled in the school’s first class. A few years later, Alexander Lane became SIU’s first Black male student and then its first Black graduate, according to research by an SIU history professor. Born to an enslaved mother in Mississippi, Lane graduated and became a teacher, then a doctor, then a lawmaker in the state Capitol. Today, a scholarship in his name helps students gain internships in state government.

Plywood covers a vacant business on The Strip in downtown Carbondale. Businesses have struggled as the student population declined. (Julia Rendleman for ProPublica)

During World War II, SIU expanded to accommodate returning soldiers on the GI Bill. It designed parts of campus with accessibility in mind for wounded veterans in hopes of drawing students and boosting enrollment.

By 1991, the student body peaked at nearly 25,000. And even amid significant changes that hurt enrollment, by 2010 it still had 20,000.

Alexander Lane, born to an enslaved mother in Mississippi, graduated from SIU and went on to become a teacher, physician and lawmaker in the state Capitol. (The Broad Ax newspaper)

In the decade that followed, SIU lost nearly 9,000 students—a nearly 45% drop. A lot happened, but one decision proved fateful: Concerns had surfaced that SIU was enrolling underprepared Black students from inner-city Chicago and failing to support them. At the same time, the university wanted to reshape its image, positioning itself as a world-class research institution. Officials targeted a different type of student and stopped recruiting as heavily in Cook County.

This era also saw a state budget crisis, and high-level leadership churned amid constant drama. (The university had seven chancellors between 2010 and 2020.) Eventually, it wasn’t about pulling away from Cook County — it was about having no direction at all. And by the end of the decade, SIU had fewer than 12,000 students. By the time the chancellor unfurled Imagine 2030, it was clear that diversity — in all its forms — was the only path forward.

Clawing Its Way Back

It’s easy to destabilize a school. But restoring it? That’s a much harder challenge.

Still, recently, it has felt like SIU has been clawing its way back. There have been two straight years of enrollment gains, driven in part by an influx of students coming from Southern Illinois and again from Cook County, as well as by growing online programs. And in late February, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which ranks universities by research spending, elevated SIU to its “very high” Research 1 status. In academic circles, it’s a big deal — putting SIU on the academic research map and bestowing it a status symbol that helps recruit top faculty and students.

“It’s a great day to be a Saluki,” SIU President Dan Mahony said, referencing SIU’s canine mascot, at a February celebration of that promotion. Then there was a pop, and confetti rained down.

But the federal financial directives and cultural wars roiling higher education are, once again, unsettling the campus and wider community. Things escalated earlier this month when SIU became a new target for the right: A social media account known for targeting LGBTQ+ people and DEI initiatives, Libs of TikTok, posted about an SIU professor who had uploaded explicit photos of himself online. The post, about an openly gay School of Medicine professor who has been publicly critical of Trump, took off, racking up more than 3 million views and hundreds of shares and comments.

“LoTT INVESTIGATION: LGBTQ professor at a Public University posts extreme p*rnographic videos of himself m*sturbating ON CAMPUS,” it read.

His employee profile quickly disappeared from the school’s website, and within days, SIU officials announced he was no longer employed by the university; he was subsequently charged with two misdemeanor counts of public indecency, and an arraignment hearing is scheduled for late April. But the controversy made SIU, not just the professor, a target. The post also took SIU to task for promoting itself on a hiring website as an “anti-racist” community. “SIU receives tens of millions of dollars from the federal government. SIU is violating Trump’s EO and should be stripped of their federal funding,” it read, tagging Elon Musk’s cost-cutting federal Department of Government Efficiency.

The irony is high: While Carbondale, where the school is located, is a solidly blue island, it is surrounded by a conservative rural region hanging in the balance.

Across the nation, universities are eliminating or rebranding DEI offices to avoid federal scrutiny. SIU isn’t backing down.

“As a university, we need to stay the course,” Phil Gilbert, chair of SIU’s Board of Trustees and a longtime federal judge appointed by George H.W. Bush, said at a recent board meeting.“I can’t think of an institution more important to diversity, equity and inclusion than an educational institution, because education is the bridge to tomorrow for everyone.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Molly Parker, Capitol News Illinois.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/a-university-a-rural-town-and-their-fight-to-survive-trumps-war-on-higher-education/feed/ 0 521853 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/in-pulling-the-gaza-documentary-the-bbc-is-failing-palestinian-children/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/in-pulling-the-gaza-documentary-the-bbc-is-failing-palestinian-children/#respond Thu, 20 Mar 2025 09:52:49 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=156770 Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is a harrowing account of life in Gaza as seen through the eyes of Palestinian children. It provides a rare window into young lives devastated by months of relentless bombings, displacements, and unspeakable horrors. It aired on 17 February on BBC Two, but was swiftly removed from iPlayer four days […]

The post In Pulling the Gaza Documentary, the BBC is Failing Palestinian Children first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is a harrowing account of life in Gaza as seen through the eyes of Palestinian children. It provides a rare window into young lives devastated by months of relentless bombings, displacements, and unspeakable horrors.

It aired on 17 February on BBC Two, but was swiftly removed from iPlayer four days later, following fierce lobbying from pro-Israel voices. The reasons given for its removal? Well, they simply don’t add up.

The main objection was that the father of Abdullah, the 13-year-old narrator, is the deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s Hamas-run government. But like it or not, it’s a fact of life in Gaza that almost anyone living there will have some connection to Hamas. Hamas runs the government, so anyone working in an official capacity must also work with Hamas. Not only that, but Abdullah’s father is hardly a “terrorist leader” as was claimed. He is a technocrat, in a role concerned with agriculture, not politics or military, who even studied at UK universities.

Other objections included the risk of payments potentially funding Hamas. But as Hoyo Films and now the boy himself have confirmed, Abdullah was paid a very small sum via his sister’s bank account which was used to cover basic living expenses. And the complaints around the use of antisemitic language have been rebuffed by many – including Jewish Voice for Labour. The word ‘“Yehudi” is simply Arabic for “Israeli,” and is used by Jewish Israeli journalist Yuval Abrahamto to describe himself in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land.

Crucially, absolutely nothing in the film has been found to be factually inaccurate.

The film received five stars in the Guardian and the Times, which described it as “exceptional”. It’s an outstanding, powerful film and a crucial piece of journalism. Since international journalists are banned from Gaza, there are scant opportunities to witness Gazan children’s stories. This film gave us a small insight and humanised Palestinian children.

Why then, is an innocent child, the victim of unimaginable suffering, put under such intense scrutiny as to whether or not they should be allowed to tell their story?

Consider the source

When you consider the source of the complaints, you can’t help but feel like the humanisation of Palestinians was precisely the problem.

Spearheading the campaign to have the documentary removed from public view was Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. Throughout her political career, Hotovely has gone out of her way to dehumanise Palestinians, accusing them of being “thieves of history” who have no heritage, and calling the Nakba – the violent mass displacement of Palestinians – “an Arab lie.” More recently, she claimed there was “no humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.

Despite strong counterprotests from a far greater number of people wanting the documentary to stay put – including over 1,000 industry professionals and more than 600 British Jews – the BBC bowed to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby, and dutifully took the documentary down.

That’s why I decided to start a petition, calling on the BBC to reconsider its decision, and allow Palestinian children their right to be heard. The petition quickly gained lots of support and now has over 25,000 signatures.

Failing Palestinian children

Not long after I started the petition, it emerged that Abdullah, the film’s 13-year-old narrator, has experienced harassment as a result of the kickback against the film, and now fears for his life. “I did not agree to the risk of me being targeted in any way”, he said. And “[if] anything happens to me, the BBC is responsible for it.”

Putting children’s safety and mental wellbeing at risk is not only blatantly wrong, but is in breach of the BBC’s own guidelines on safeguarding young people. Sadly, Abdullah’s was not an isolated case.

In a recent interview with the Independent, former BBC newsreader Karishma Patel explained her reason for quitting the BBC: its longstanding refusal to show the full extent to which Irael is harming Palestinian children. She recalls how she begged the BBC to cover five-year-old Hind Rajab’s story while she was still alive, trapped inside a car with her murdered relatives. The BBC chose not to, only naming her after she was killed, and not even making clear in the headline who had done it. “The BBC failed Hind,” says Patel. “And it has failed Palestinian children again in pulling the [Gaza] documentary.”

I’ve just written to Tim Davie, Controller-General of the BBC, to draw his attention to the huge number of people who want the documentary to be reinstated, and why the reasons put forward to justify its removal simply do not add up. I told him, “Anyone who is offended by a child sharing their lived experiences of survival can choose not to watch it. But do not deny innocent children – who have experienced unimaginable grief and loss – the right to tell their stories.”  You can read my full letter here.

Let’s see if he responds. The BBC didn’t bother reaching out to Abdullah to apologise to him after they pulled the film. So I’m not holding out too much hope.

The post In Pulling the Gaza Documentary, the BBC is Failing Palestinian Children first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sylvia Monkhouse.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/in-pulling-the-gaza-documentary-the-bbc-is-failing-palestinian-children/feed/ 0 520297 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/activist-dean-spade-people-are-going-to-need-to-break-a-lot-of-rules-laws-to-survive-excerpt/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/activist-dean-spade-people-are-going-to-need-to-break-a-lot-of-rules-laws-to-survive-excerpt/#respond Fri, 14 Mar 2025 21:00:38 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=20db0a1865c849399f2eab7e578c2f25
This content originally appeared on Laura Flanders & Friends and was authored by Laura Flanders & Friends.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/activist-dean-spade-people-are-going-to-need-to-break-a-lot-of-rules-laws-to-survive-excerpt/feed/ 0 519192 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/in-a-world-run-by-fascists-can-humans-survive/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/in-a-world-run-by-fascists-can-humans-survive/#respond Mon, 10 Mar 2025 05:56:34 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=356842 On March 9, 1970, editors of The Intercontinental Press, Joseph Hansen, Pierre Frank, Livio Maitan, Ernest Mandel, and George Novack wrote an article called, “In a World Run by Idiots Can Man Survive?” The Intercontinental Press specialized in political analysis, labor rights, socialism, postcolonial independence, and black liberation. In the article, the authors referenced well to do biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a Hungarian-Jewish biochemist who was More

The post In a World Run by Fascists Can Humans Survive? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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Image by Michael Dziedzic.

On March 9, 1970, editors of The Intercontinental Press, Joseph Hansen, Pierre Frank, Livio Maitan, Ernest Mandel, and George Novack wrote an article called, “In a World Run by Idiots Can Man Survive?” The Intercontinental Press specialized in political analysis, labor rights, socialism, postcolonial independence, and black liberation. In the article, the authors referenced well to do biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a Hungarian-Jewish biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937 for isolating and discovering vitamin C. After he won the award, he donated all the prize money to Finland to ward off Russia’s 1939 aggression. Szent-Gyorgyi joined the Hungarian resistance movement during the second world war and later became an unyielding opponent to the Vietnam War. War disgusted Szent-Gyorgyi so much in fact that in WWI he intentionally shot himself in the arm to end his tour of duty according to journalist Chris Gaylord of the Christian Science Monitor.

By 1970, Szent-Gyorgyi was filled with pessimism. He remarked after writing his 1970 book, The Crazy Ape, in a conversation with Robert Reinhold in the New York Times that humankind’s days were numbered. “Man is a very strange animal,” he stated. “In much of the world half the children go to bed hungry and we spend a trillion on rubbish ­— steel, iron, tanks. We are all criminals.” IP also included his explanation of the “terrible strain of idiots who govern the world,” leading to ultimate doom. Szent-Gyorgyi made clear that “the force of our arm was exchanged for forces of the atom…which course will man take, toward a bright future or toward exterminating himself?” He emphasized that not all hope was lost and that younger generations (“the human brain freezes up for new ideas by age 40”) would need to survive and engage in new beginnings for civilization to continue. On top of that, Szent-Gyorgyi remarked that “American society is death oriented.” This marked a moment in history when people interested in science, economics and politics regularly joined together in the resistance of state violence and the horrors of fascism and war.

We are very likely in yet another moment of confronting post-fascist forces. The CUNY Graduate Center has started a series of lectures and teach-ins that have been sponsored by both the English and Chemistry Departments. Fascism is not just a topic for the Social Sciences in a world run by idiots, Szent-Gyorgyi might argue. CUNY titled the theme of the talks, “Emergency Brakes: A Discussion Series on Fascism, organized by Daniel Horowitz, Souli Boutis, and Yagiz Ay.” The series was described as:

The call of the hour is emergency. What Walter Benjamin once described as the responsibility of the human race in the face of an eternal wrestling match between progress and doom forces us today to rescue the task of critique. “To activate the emergency brake” is the guiding theme of this series of meetings on texts, ancient and modern, concerning the resurgent problematic of fascism. This will be the second meeting, but it is certainly not a requirement that you have attended the first. Following our discussion of Adorno’s 1967 lecture on the new aspects of right-wing extremism, we turn now to Felix Guattari’s 1973 lecture-turned-essay “Everybody Wants to be a Fascist,” where he responds to fascism as “a real political problem, and not as a purely theoretical consideration” especially through the analytic of desire.

In the Trump era, the scientific community, including medicine, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and NASA, have all faced threats to severe budgetary cuts while the administration pushes for national and global “defense systems,” militarily speaking.  As Trump undermines climate science research and sought to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, The Musk-Trump alliance has linked the privatized commercial space industry with increased state subsidized militarization. A vicious and new national priority of fascism along with every deleterious “ism” imaginable has brought on a heightened intention to eradicate institutional control (and mere existence) of public education, public health, and basic scientific research, at lightning speed.

On the one hand, Trump and Musk are not idiots by any measure. Both are fully aware of how to employ their fame, wealth, and notoriety to navigate and exploit the cultural politics of fear, frustration, skepticism, hatred, and anxiety ­— all to test the limits of political power while using vulnerable sectors of the population to embrace state capitalism and imperialism at their own peril. As the famed reporter Seymour Hersh once noted, Trump’s long standing ability to perform well on television, since his days on the Golf Channel, reveal his savvy for absorbing the benefits of today’s US agitprop and keen abilities to drive the major media’s news cycle in the rallying of a cult. And Musk certainly knows the benefit of inspiring the next generation of impressionistic youth with expensive toys and futuristic cars all the while extolling the end of art, poetry, literature, and drudgery of a secular humanist education.

Even Trump’s ignorance regarding topics such as Ukraine (where he destroyed world order according to Chris Hayes), Lesotho, a place obviously heard of — and his lack of knowledge regarding the military, tariffs, “trans mice,” and World War II, don’t make him stupid. They make him, along with surviving an assassination attempt, both a transcendent figure historically and a proverbial everyman, according to the hard right. As Newt Gingrich once said, “Trump is not a student of history,” rather, he’s an entrepreneurial sage who negotiates with facts in the present, not with that pesky and speculative past stuff. (Of course, Gingrich expects Democrats to notice history and nuance as he sees fit).

But where Szent-Gyorgyi would find Trump and Musk dangerous fools is in the pursuit of annihilation and unbridled capital that threatens the survival of the human species. Noam Chomsky famously asserted and warned of the contemporary threats to human existence in the 1992 documentary version of Manufacturing Consent:

Now, it’s long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it’s possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.

As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass-communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority (Chomsky does not however agree that the majority is stupid) and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.

The warnings presented by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi in 1970 resonate with striking relevance today, as we face a world increasingly dominated by lethal and fascistic forces that threaten not only our democracy but also our very survival. The rise of figures like Trump and Musk, whose manipulation of power and resources fosters division and deepens the destruction of public goods, mirrors the dangers Szent-Gyorgyi warned against, the unchecked pursuit of capital and militarization at the expense of humanity. As Chomsky rightly argues, the future of our species depends on a collective shift toward solidarity, rational social planning, and a commitment to values of democracy and freedom. Whether we can rise above the forces of destruction and ensure a future grounded in justice, equity, and compassion remains the crucial question for our generation — and the one Szent-Gyorgyi might have hoped would drive younger minds toward the survival of civilization.

The post In a World Run by Fascists Can Humans Survive? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Daniel Falcone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/in-a-world-run-by-fascists-can-humans-survive/feed/ 0 517705 https://grist.org/culture/flow-oscars-golden-globes-climate-cat-movie-review/ https://grist.org/culture/flow-oscars-golden-globes-climate-cat-movie-review/#respond Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:15:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=659211 Virtually anywhere on Earth, disaster is just a random collision of weather patterns away from your doorstep. A hurricane could tear off your roof, a wildfire might burn through your neighborhood, or a storm could flood your town, sweeping away cars, buildings, and utility poles alike. When the worst happens, how will you respond?

The animated feature Flow asks its viewers to reflect on such distressing questions in the subtle way that narrative films are so well suited for. The movie follows a black cat and the small menagerie of animals it meets as they sail over a drowned landscape, encountering survivors amid abandoned cities. And while each animal relies on instinct to pull through, the story follows a few that are able to overcome their me-first instinct to stick together. 

The film pairs the charm of authentically animal-like characters with a simplistic 3D animation style — an unusual combo for feature-length films. It’s no wonder the Latvian film, made by the director Gints Zilbalodis on a modest $3.7 million budget, managed to shift a Hollywood paradigm: In January, Flow nabbed a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, beating out movies from Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks, and the Wallace and Gromit franchise. Now the film is nominated for two Academy Awards on March 2: Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature. No Latvian film has ever been nominated for either award before — let alone won.

It’s rare for independent animation to break into the mainstream. Even films by award-nominated artists, such as It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2011) by Don Hertzfeldt and Anomalisa (2015) by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, languish in festival circuits and are often too short on manpower, budget, and time. Laika, a small stop-motion animation house responsible for better-known features like Coraline (2009) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), each made on a $60 million budget, didn’t manage to win a Golden Globe in the animation category until 2019, with Missing Link. Foreign films face even more barriers: Studio Ghibli, the acclaimed Japanese animation studio behind Totoro (1988), has won an Academy Award for best animated feature only once, for Spirited Away in 2003. Two decades later, the studio’s most recent film, The Boy and the Heron (2023), received its only Golden Globe nomination and award for best animated feature.

In spite of all this, Flow takes up the space of a feature film with confidence and introduces the cat’s daily routine in an indulgent 15-minute sequence before floodwaters begin driving the action, allowing the viewer to delight in the cat’s charming, realistic mannerisms, and get a sense of what will soon be lost. (Be warned: spoilers ahead.)

While humans are no longer found in the world of Flow, the setting of familiar-yet-fantastic ruins suggests that a flood has happened before, that there was a calamity before the one that’s about to swallow what remains. The cat lives in a house that was seemingly once the home of a human who either worshiped or obsessed over cats, replete with charcoal drawings and sculptures of them. The rising water soon submerges the house, its artifacts, and eventually everything. It’s a mirror to the equalizing power of natural disasters: Nothing is safe, not even our idols.

The nature of the flood seems to straddle the line between biblical fable and real-world climate disaster. Within a day or so after the first powerful wave, the cat is forced to climb to the tallest point in the landscape, which happens to be a giant cat statue. Just as our protagonist’s paws start to get wet, a boat passes by with a capybara onboard. Eventually, the pair pick up a self-sacrificing secretary bird, a trinket-obsessed lemur, and an eager-to-please labrador.

Flow isn’t necessarily compelling because of its depiction of disaster, but because of its portrayal of how these animals respond to it. In interviews, Zilbalodis has said the inspiration came from a short film he made while in high school about cats’ fear of water. “I really wanted to focus on the relationship between the animals, about the fear of others,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “The water is basically a way to communicate those other fears.”

As the water rises, the animals’ interactions change — but not how you might expect. Flow’s cast of characters don’t adopt the usual human habits and personalities, exaggerated features, and over-the-top movements that come with the animation territory — from the dancing cabaret in The Lion King (1994) to the career bunny-cop star of Zootopia (2016). It’s been the go-to move as long as animated films have been around, starting in the early 20th century with Mickey Mouse’s debut in Steamboat Willy (1928) and the noodly “rubberhose” style of the time. Ladislas Starevich, a naturalist (and arguably the first stop-motion animator) who puppeted exoskeletons of beetles for his films, depicted his subjects dining at restaurants, writing letters, and carrying briefcases in a story about a martial dispute in 1912.

Flow takes a different approach. The animals communicate with each other through meows, chitters, woofs, and grunts as animals really do. Each moves with striking realism and personalities largely true to their expected biological nature. (Cat owners are likely to think, “Oh, that’s exactly how my Miss Mittens acts!”) By keeping the animals so endearingly like their real-life counterparts, Zilbalodis is able to highlight the differences in their instincts.

And it’s the moments when these dispositions clash that drive the story forward. When the cat eventually overcomes its fear of water to provide fish for its companions, the good faith is quickly shattered when a self-interested dog devours most of the supply. Worse, the dog was only on board because of the other animals’ kindness: Minutes before, they had saved the dog and its unruly pack from rising waters. 

“I didn’t want to have this didactic message of: Working together is good and being independent is bad,” Zilbalodis told the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted to show the good and the bad of both of these extremes.”

Even in an industry where 3D animation has become the norm, Flow visually stands out. Most animation studios, like Pixar and Dreamworks, use proprietary, cutting-edge software designed for feature film animation. Flow, however, was animated in Blender, a free 3D modeling engine popular with video game developers. The low-budget option doesn’t detract from the experience. Rather, its resemblance to a video game cut scene keeps you in anticipation, as if a moment of decision-making might be around the corner. It’s an impulse that clashes with the helplessness that disaster brings: Each time the cat nearly drowns, you just want to reach out and pluck it from the water. 

The flood miraculously retreats and reveals a lush landscape for the animals to return to. It’s a comfort afforded to a fantasy world: When Earth’s seas reclaim the shorelines, the land won’t return in a matter of days, or even lifetimes. At the end of the film, the animals are met with another test of their comradery. They all survive, but the atmosphere becomes quickly subdued. The boat that has kept them safe plunges into the bottom of a ravine, while the receding waters leave a whale-like creature that protected the crew throughout the film beached and struggling to breathe. It’s a reminder that even in the best possible climate outcome, there will be plenty to mourn. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How do you survive the end of the world? Oscar-nominated ‘Flow’ offers an answer—through the eyes of a cat on Feb 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sachi Kitajima Mulkey.

]]> https://grist.org/culture/flow-oscars-golden-globes-climate-cat-movie-review/feed/ 0 514948 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/22/critics-condemn-cowardly-bbc-for-pulling-gaza-warzone-youth-survival-documentary/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/22/critics-condemn-cowardly-bbc-for-pulling-gaza-warzone-youth-survival-documentary/#respond Sat, 22 Feb 2025 06:19:44 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=111164 By Gizem Nisa Cebi

The BBC has removed its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from iPlayer after it was revealed that its teenage narrator is the son of a Hamas official.

The broadcaster stated that it was conducting “further due diligence” following mounting scrutiny.

The film, which aired on BBC Two last Monday, follows 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri as he describes life in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Can we trust the BBC on Israel-Gaza? These media experts don’t think so
• Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone
• ‘No safe place’: the BBC documentary showing Gaza through a child’s eyes
• Other Gaza ceasefire reports

However, it later emerged that his father, Ayman Al-Yazouri, serves as the Hamas Deputy Minister of Agriculture in Gaza.

In a statement yesterday, the BBC defended the documentary’s value but acknowledged concerns.

“There have been continuing questions raised about the programme, and in light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company,” the statement said.

The revelation sparked a backlash from figures including Friday Night Dinner actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, literary agent Neil Blair, and former BBC One boss Danny Cohen, who called it “a shocking failure by the BBC and a major crisis for its reputation”.

On Thursday, the BBC admitted that it had not disclosed the family connection but insisted it followed compliance procedures. It has since added a disclaimer acknowledging Abdullah’s ties to Hamas.

UK’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said that she would discuss the issue with the BBC, particularly regarding its vetting process.

However, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians urged the broadcaster to “stand firm against attempts to prevent firsthand accounts of life in Gaza from reaching audiences”.

Others also defended the importance of the documentary made last year before the sheer scale of devastation by the Israeli military forces was exposed — and many months before the ceasefire came into force on January 19.

‘This documentary humanised Palestinian children’
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), criticised the BBC’s decision.

“It’s very regrettable that this documentary has been pulled following pressure from anti-Palestinian activists who have largely shown no sympathy for persons in Gaza suffering from massive bombardment, starvation, and disease,” Middle East Eye quoted him as saying.

Doyle also praised the film’s impact, saying, “This documentary humanised Palestinian children in Gaza and gave valuable insights into life in this horrific war zone.”

Journalist Richard Sanders, who has produced multiple documentaries on Gaza, called the controversy a “huge test” for the BBC and condemned its response as a “cowardly decision”.

Earlier this week, 45 Jewish journalists and media figures, including former BBC governor Ruth Deech, urged the broadcaster to pull the film, calling Ayman Al-Yazouri a “terrorist leader”.

The controversy underscores wider tensions over media coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, with critics accusing the BBC of a vetting failure, while others argue the documentary sheds crucial light on Palestinian children’s suffering.

Pacific Media Watch comments: The BBC has long been accused of an Israeli-bias in its coverage of Palestinian affairs, especially the 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, and this documentary is one of the rare programmes that has restored some balance.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/22/critics-condemn-cowardly-bbc-for-pulling-gaza-warzone-youth-survival-documentary/feed/ 0 514755 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/30/can-the-icc-survive-2025/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/30/can-the-icc-survive-2025/#respond Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:53:49 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=28c408f2b99021cc8e1085ce9dce5d43
This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/30/can-the-icc-survive-2025/feed/ 0 511595 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/rights-wrongs-can-the-icc-survive-2025/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/rights-wrongs-can-the-icc-survive-2025/#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:00:25 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=93140e9bbf71396a09b6f69ef9feaca7
This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/rights-wrongs-can-the-icc-survive-2025/feed/ 0 511190 https://grist.org/extreme-weather/this-florida-neighborhood-recovered-from-flood-after-flood-will-it-survive-helene/ https://grist.org/extreme-weather/this-florida-neighborhood-recovered-from-flood-after-flood-will-it-survive-helene/#respond Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:01:37 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=649493 Domonique Tomlinson didn’t know much about the Shore Acres neighborhood of St. Petersburg, Florida, when she bought a house here four years ago, but she learned fast. Just a few weeks after she moved into her single-story teal home, a high tide overwhelmed her street’s drainage system and pushed water into her house. The same thing happened again during Hurricane Idalia in 2023; she lost furniture and belongings worth thousands of dollars. Then there was just the everyday flooding to contend with. It happened more times than she could count, when she had to wade through calf-high water on her street to get to her teaching job, wiping herself with Lysol when she got to work.

Tomlinson and her husband were racing to install plywood flood panels and sandbags on Wednesday as Shore Acres prepared for a historic storm surge from Category 4 Hurricane Helene. As she loaded a Peloton into her car, she said she was fed up with flooding over and over again.

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The following night, Helene delivered the largest storm surge on record to Shore Acres, pushing water not only into Tomlinson’s house, but into the houses of neighbors who had never flooded. Waiting out the storm on higher ground in downtown St. Petersburg, she kept up with reports from her neighbors who had stayed behind: The entire streetscape vanished as saltwater seeped in through sandbags and flood panels, filling up kitchens and living rooms.

“It’s just a really sad situation,” she told Grist. “We won’t rebuild, it’s not worth it.” 

Even before Helene, Shore Acres looked like a casualty of sea level rise and faulty development. The waterfront neighborhood had begun to flood multiple times a month, even when it wasn’t raining, and residents were paying some of the highest flood insurance rates in the country, with the median annual premium in the neighborhood set to reach around $5,000. The city was racing to mitigate the flooding, but almost every street in the neighborhood had at least one “For Sale” or “For Rent” sign on it. 

But Helene may turn out to be the neighborhood’s coup de grace: The hurricane pushed well over 6 feet of storm surge into Shore Acres on Thursday, the highest on record for the community. Based on early reports, the wall of water flooded hundreds of homes with 4 feet of water or more, dealing another hit to its already shaky real estate market. And as sea levels and flood insurance rates continue to rise throughout the eastern United States, from Florida to New England, Shore Acres may turn out to be not an outlier but a bellwether for future fragility in the real estate market and coastal economies more broadly. 

Shore Acres is one of numerous areas in the coastal United States that were built for a different climate than that of today: The area expanded in the 1950s on what one developer called “a pretty sorry piece of land” made up of pine forest and marsh, and much of it sits just a few feet above sea level. The area has always seen occasional flooding during the highest tides, but now parts of it go underwater several times a year as autumn tides slosh over bulwarks and gurgle up through storm drains. 

Even on sunny days, standing water is now a frequent occurrence in the neighborhood. When cars drive too fast through flooded streets, they create wakes that can splash up into driveways and damage other vehicles, or even rush into homes.

Tracy Stockwell, who moved to the neighborhood last year from Atlanta, has erected a series of signs and barriers in front of his house that read “Wake Stop” and “Slow Down, Watch Your Wake.” He said drivers have splashed through standing water multiple times and flooded his house — something he had no idea was possible when he bought it.

“The realtors did not disclose that,” he said, while preparing to ride out the storm on his second floor. “We knew that the street flooded, but we had no idea the history of the house.” Earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that required home sellers to disclose past flood insurance claims, but the law doesn’t go into effect until next month.

As the flooding in the neighborhood gets worse, residents have seen their flood insurance rates skyrocket under a new federal policy. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which administers the national flood insurance program that serves around 5 million U.S. households, began to roll out this policy in 2022. The median cost of flood insurance in the neighborhood is around $2,000 per year, more than double the national rate, and may double again to around $5,000 as FEMA raises rates to phase in the new program. Many residents already pay far more than that.

Some neighbors have been able to save money on insurance costs by elevating their homes on stilts above flood level. Federal regulations require a homeowner to do this if their house suffers damage equivalent to more than half its value. But elevating a home requires a lengthy permitting process and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; moreover, FEMA’s new insurance pricing system offers a lower discount for doing this work than the old system did.

For people who can’t afford to elevate or can’t keep up with rising insurance rates, the only option is to leave, and as of Wednesday there were at least two dozen “For Sale” signs in the neighborhood. 

Even so, some local boosters are projecting confidence in the real estate market.

“I think people understand now that flooding is going to occur,” said Kevin Batdorf, a real estate agent and the head of the Shore Acres Civic Association. “Flooding in Shore Acres is well known. It’s not something that is a secret. Some people have sold, and the houses are selling, because we live in a great neighborhood.” He went on to say that the neighborhood has seen small selloffs in the past after flood events, but that the market always calms down after a few months as new people move in. 

But as Helene bore down, even those with deep connections to Shore Acres weren’t sure about their long-term future there. Tomlinson has said she won’t rebuild, and Stockwell said he planned to at least consider selling his home. They imagined their neighbors would be contemplating the same.

“That guy left, and that person left, and that person’s selling,” said David Witt, a furniture store manager, as he pointed at the houses on his street. He and his wife moved a few years ago into his wife’s childhood home, which is raised a few feet off the ground, and they’ve come within an inch of flooding several times. They are both attached to the home, Witt said as he lined his door with sandbags, but they aren’t sure if they want to stay for good.

There have been at least three other large floods in Shore Acres in the past 13 months, beginning with last year’s Hurricane Idalia and continuing this year with a no-name winter storm and Hurricane Debbie in August. The flood from Idalia damaged more than 1,200 homes in the neighborhood — close to half of all its structures. The neighborhood accounted for more than 80 percent of the damage St. Petersburg suffered during that storm. Helene traced a similar path to Idalia, scraping up the Gulf Coast and making landfall in the Florida Panhandle, but brought a storm surge several feet higher.

The city of St. Petersburg has invested millions of dollars over the past year to mitigate its flooding issue, installing backflow preventers that stop storm drains from overflowing onto streets when tides are high. It will soon begin construction on a $16 million pump station on the area’s lowest-lying street, Connecticut Avenue, replicating a strategy used in Miami Beach and New Orleans with money from the state government.

Batdorf, the civic association leader, said residents are working with the city to speed up these improvements and speed up grant programs that help residents elevate their homes.

“There’s so much more the city could do,” he said, “and there are other communities that have solved the issue of flooding.” He said that despite the city’s progress on installing backflow preventers, the sunny-day flooding issue hasn’t gotten better. Furthermore, there’s nothing the city of St. Petersburg could have done on its own to stop a storm the size of Helene. To mitigate such a surge would likely require a multibillion-dollar barrier of the kind the Army Corps of Engineers has contemplated building in Miami and New York City. 

“They’ve always had flooding here,” Witt said, “but it’s never been this bad.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Florida neighborhood recovered from flood after flood. Will it survive Helene? on Sep 27, 2024.

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

]]> https://grist.org/extreme-weather/this-florida-neighborhood-recovered-from-flood-after-flood-will-it-survive-helene/feed/ 0 495402 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/16/can-the-olympics-survive-climate-change-edge-of-sports/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/16/can-the-olympics-survive-climate-change-edge-of-sports/#respond Fri, 16 Aug 2024 17:36:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=170d382f68c466c41266ca3ac9577c57
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/16/can-the-olympics-survive-climate-change-edge-of-sports/feed/ 0 489053 https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/can-floridas-orange-growers-survive-another-hurricane-season/ https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/can-floridas-orange-growers-survive-another-hurricane-season/#respond Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=644222 Oranges are synonymous with Florida. The zesty fruit can be spotted adorning everything from license plates to kitschy memorabilia. Ask any Floridian and they’ll tell you that the crop is a hallmark of the Sunshine State. 

Jay Clark would be quick to agree. He’s 80 and a third-generation grower working land his family has owned in Wauchula since the 1950s. But he’s not sure how much longer he can keep at it. Two years ago, Hurricane Ian pummeled trees already weakened by a virulent and incurable disease called citrus greening. It took more than a year to recover after the “whole crop was basically blown off” by 150 mph winds. “It’s a struggle,” said Clark. “I guess we’re too hard-headed just to quit totally, but it’s not a profitable business right now.”

His family once owned almost 500 acres in west central Florida, where they grew oranges and raised beef. They’ve sold much of that land in recent years, and have scaled back their citrus groves. “We’re concentrating more on the cattle,” he said. “Everybody’s looking for an alternative crop or solution.”

The state, which grows roughly 17 percent of the nation’s oranges, grapefruit, and other tangy fruit, produced just 18.1 million boxes  during the 2022 to 2023 growing season, the smallest harvest in almost a century. That’s a 60 percent decrease from the season before, a decline driven largely by the compounding impacts of mysterious pathogens and hurricanes. This year, the USDA’s just-released final forecasts for the season reveal an 11.4 percent spike in production over last year, but that’s still not even half of what was produced during the 2021 to 2022 season.

Consumers across the country have felt the squeeze from these declines, which have been compounded by floods throttling harvests in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of orange juice. All of this has pushed the cost of the beverage to record highs. 

As climate change makes storms increasingly likely, diseases kill more trees, and water grows harder to come by, Florida’s nearly $7 billion citrus industry faces an existential threat. The Sunshine State, which was once among the world’s leading citrus producers and until 2014 produced almost three-quarters of the nation’s oranges, has weathered such challenges before. Its citrus growers are nothing if not resilient. Some have faith that ongoing research will find a cure for citrus greening, which would go a long way toward recovery. But others are less optimistic about the path ahead, as the dangers they face now are harbingers of the future.

“We’re still here, but it’s not a good situation. We’re here, but that’s about it,” said Clark. “It’s bigger than just our family as citrus growers. If a solution isn’t found, there will be no citrus industry.” 

Citrus greening, an incurable disease spread by insects that ruins crops before eventually killing trees, has imperiled Florida’s citrus industry since the ailment took hold in a grove in Miami nearly two decades ago. It appeared a few years after an outbreak of citrus canker disease, which renders crops unsellable, and led to the loss of millions of trees statewide. Although greening has appeared in other citrus powerhouses like California and Texas, it hasn’t widely affected commercial groves in either state. The scope of the blight in Florida is by far the largest, and most costly — since 2005, it has cut production by 75 percent. The Sunshine State’s year-round subtropical climate allows the infestation to spread at a higher clip. But as warming continues to increase global temperatures, the disease is expected to advance northward. 

“You see so many abandoned citrus groves on the highways, all of the roads,” said Amir Rezazadeh, of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Most of those trees are just dead now.” 

Rezazadeh acts as a liaison between university scientists scrambling to solve the problem and citrus growers in St. Lucie County, one of the state’s top producing areas. “We have so many meetings, visits with growers every month, and there are so many researchers working to develop resistance varieties,” he said. “And it’s just really making these citrus growers nervous. [Everyone] is waiting for the new research results.” 

The greatest promise lies in antibiotics created to lessen the effects of greening. Despite encouraging early results at reducing symptoms, therapies like oxytetracycline are still in preliminary stages and require growers to inject the treatment into every infected tree. More importantly, it is not a cure, merely a stopgap — a way to keep afflicted trees alive while researchers race to figure out how to beat this mysterious disease. 

“We need more time,” said Rezazadeh. Growers in St. Lucie County started using the antibiotic last year. “There are some hopes that we keep them alive until we find a cure.” 

The state’s total citrus acreage suffered a massive blow in the 1990s when an eradication program for canker disease, then the industry’s biggest foe, resulted in the culling of hundreds of thousands of trees on private properties. In the years since citrus greening took hold, the ripple effects of the blight have compounded with an ever-present barrage of hurricanes, floods, and drought threatening growers. 

Hurricanes do more than uproot trees, scatter fruit, and shake trees so violently it can take them years to recover. Torrential rain and flooding can inundate groves and deplete the soil of oxygen. Diseased trees face particular risk because illness often impacts their roots, weakening them. Ray Royce, executive director of Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, likens it to a pre-existing medical condition.

“I’m an old guy. I get a cold, or I get sick, it’s harder for me to recover at 66 than it was at 33. If I had some underlying health issues, it’s even harder,” he said. “Greening is kind of this negative underlying health condition that makes anything else that happens to the tree, that stresses that tree, just further magnified.”

It doesn’t help that climate change is bringing insufficient rainfall, higher temperatures, and record-setting dry seasons, leaving soils with less water. A lack of precipitation has also dried up wells and canals in some of the state’s most productive regions. All of this can reduce yields and cause fruit to drop prematurely. 

Of course, healthy trees have a higher chance of withstanding such threats. But the tenacity of strong groves is being tested, and once-minor events like a short freeze can be enough to end any already on the verge of demise. 

“We all of a sudden had a little bit of a run of bad luck. We had a hurricane. Then after the hurricane, we had a freeze,” said Royce. “Now we’ve just gone through a drought which will no doubt negatively impact the crop for next year. And so we, in a way, need to catch a couple of good breaks and have a few good years where we’re getting the right amount of moisture, where we don’t have hurricanes, or freezes, that are negatively impacting trees.”

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Human-induced climate change means that the respite Royce desperately hopes for is improbable. In fact, forecasters expect this to be the most active hurricane season in recorded history. Researchers have also found that warming will increase the pressures of plant diseases, like greening, in crops worldwide.

Although “almost every tree in Florida” is afflicted with the disease, and the reality of warming temperatures spreading pathogens is a growing concern, the state’s citrus producing days are far from over, said Tim Widmer, a plant pathologist who specializes in crop diseases and plant health. “We don’t have the solution yet,” he said. “But there are things that look very, very promising.” A windfall of funding has been devoted to the hunt for answers to a befuddling problem. Florida’s legislature earmarked $65 million in the 2023-2024 budget to support the industry, while the 2018 federal farm bill included $25 million annually, for the length of the bill, toward combating the disease.

Widmer is a contractor at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, which is devising an automated system (known as “symbiont technology”) that would “pump” therapies like antimicrobial peptides that destroy pathogens in a host tree, which allows growers to no longer have to manually administer injections. Think of it “kind of like a biofactory that produces the compounds of interest and delivers them directly into the tree,” said Widmer. But they’ve only just begun testing it in a 40-acre grove this spring. Other solutions scientists are pursuing include breeding new varieties of citrus that could be more blight-tolerant. “It takes anywhere from 8 to 10 to 12 years to develop a long-term solution for [greening], and also for some of the climate change factors that will impact citrus production,” said Widmer. 

Time is something many family-owned operations can’t afford. In the last couple of years, a mounting number of Florida citrus groves, grower associations, and related businesses have closed for good. Ian was the breaking point for Sun Groves, a family business in Oldsmar that opened in 1933. 

“We definitely suffered from freezes, hurricanes … and tried for as long as we could to stay in business in spite of all the challenges,” said Michelle Urbanski, who was the general manager. “When Hurricane Ian struck, that was really the final blow where we knew we had to close the business.” 

The financial loss was too much, putting an end to the family’s almost century-long contribution to Florida’s enduring, now embattled, citrus legacy. “It was heartbreaking for my family to close Sun Groves,” she said. Amid a torrent of crippling infestations and calamitous storms, it’s a feeling many others may soon come to know.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can Florida’s orange growers survive another hurricane season? on Jul 26, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

]]> https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/can-floridas-orange-growers-survive-another-hurricane-season/feed/ 0 485797 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/14/did-joe-biden-survive-his-big-boy-presser/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/14/did-joe-biden-survive-his-big-boy-presser/#respond Sun, 14 Jul 2024 04:35:03 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=4dfe6def490f27c4e2721c695384d779
This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/14/did-joe-biden-survive-his-big-boy-presser/feed/ 0 483779 https://grist.org/extreme-heat/how-to-survive-a-heat-wave-on-a-fixed-income/ https://grist.org/extreme-heat/how-to-survive-a-heat-wave-on-a-fixed-income/#respond Fri, 28 Jun 2024 08:15:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=641846 Mone Choy is 68 and lives in the New York City neighborhood of Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan, on a fixed disability income of $1,901 per month. Her rent is frozen at $1,928. She lives with chronic health issues that render her unable to work. In addition to a few other intermittent gigs, Choy covers the rest of her expenses by collecting bottles from her building’s recycling and taking them to a nearby redemption center.

One luxury her budget doesn’t leave room for, even during a heat wave like the one that scorched the city last week — and remains ongoing around the world — is air conditioning. She has several AC units in her apartment (gifts from friends concerned about Choy’s health) but because she can’t afford to turn them on, they sit uninstalled.

“When I experience heat, my blood pressure shoots up and I get dizzy,” Choy said. To keep cool on hot days, Choy has to find air-conditioned spaces elsewhere in the city. To do so, she relies on a resource that the city government has touted as central to its response to extreme heat: the several hundred “cooling centers” that open across the city when a heat advisory is issued.  These are listed on a city website, with a map of accessible sites. Almost all of the cooling centers are in libraries and senior and community centers. The list also includes museums, Salvation Army locations, and Petco stores.

Last Friday, Choy woke up at 4:30 a.m., three hours before the heat would make her apartment unbearable, to pack everything she would need for her day’s journey into a shopping cart. She assembled her lunch, snacks, incontinence supplies, and an extra change of clothes in case of an unexpected lack of bathroom access. “I don’t have extra money to … buy something I forgot,” she said.

Next, she checked the weather report and transit system service alerts, and planned her route. “I take the cooling center information and put that together with my own personal knowledge of senior centers and the ones I think are better funded and less liable to have broken toilets — that happens because a lot of senior centers are located in NYCHA [public housing] buildings.”

She makes her choice of senior center based on its proximity to one of the city’s publicly listed Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS. These are spaces inside private buildings like corporate offices, and they are usually made accessible to the public by the site’s developer as part of a deal with the city, in exchange for zoning concessions. Choy says the cooling centers located at senior centers tend to close early for cleaning — “you’re pushed out by 4:00, 4:30 — 5:00 if you’re lucky, the hottest part of the day.” The privately owned centers generally stay open until 9:00 or 10:00. After she’d packed her bags on Friday, Choy left home at 6:00 to catch the bus to St. Peter’s Church in Midtown, where she planned to stay until it closed.

There were about five other people using the senior center as a respite from the heat, but more seniors came in at lunchtime for the free meal it offered. Normally, Choy is a very sociable person and likes to chat with the other visitors, but on Friday she didn’t feel up to conversation. She said she was “fatigued and resentful and just in a place of general low grade dread. I’m going, ‘It shouldn’t be like this in June, so I’m dreading what July and August will be like.’” At the cooling center, she passed her time reading the news on her phone and feeling increasingly dispirited.

One place she’d love to be on a hot day is a library — she loves to read, and it’s an environment where “you don’t have to put up with people giving off crazy energy you don’t wanna be around.” But in her neighborhood, Choy said, the library was closed to make way for a new apartment building. It’s been replaced with a temporary library that lacks a public bathroom.

Heat waves have put a spotlight on the waning fortunes of New York City libraries, which have become a cultural battlefront in municipal politics under the administration of the city’s mayor, Eric Adams. In November, Adams announced budget cuts to the library system that ended Sunday services at libraries citywide. His most recently announced proposal for next year’s budget, currently in negotiations in the City Council, would make further cuts to the library system and would have the likely effect of closing most libraries’ doors on Saturdays as well. Adams’s budget proposes to cut an additional $125 million from the libraries’ capital budget — the source of funding for repairs to library HVAC systems.

The library cuts have been the source of protests and opposition from the City Council — and the intense backlash may be on the verge of persuading the mayor to reverse track. Yesterday, the news outlet Gothamist reported that a forthcoming deal between Adams and the City Council will restore funding to the library system, likely allowing Sunday service to resume at libraries citywide.

In a press conference before the heat wave, Adams said, “Global warming is real and we want to make sure that climate change and the heat that it brings with intensity, that people are aware of how to deal with it during a heat wave.” He touted the online map of cooling centers and mentioned that the sites included “many of our public libraries.” 

In a landmark 2002 book, “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,” about the 1995 heat wave that killed more than 700 people and prompted the formation of New York’s cooling centers, the sociologist Eric Klinenberg established that access to social infrastructure and public space helped determine which neighborhoods had the most deaths. He later served on a New York City climate planning commission called PlanYC, where, he told Grist, he “advocated for the city to supercharge its branch libraries … so that they could be updated with heat and air conditioning systems that worked reliably and converted into emergency relief centers during extreme weather.”

In his view, the city’s current approach is a far cry from that vision. “Mayor Adams has consistently shown that the library is not a priority when it comes to city services. And so as I see it, it’s hypocritical for his administration to tell New Yorkers they can rely on the library during a dangerous heat wave, when they’ve essentially made it impossible for New Yorkers to rely on the library in their daily lives,” Klinenberg said.

But the Adams administration has reacted touchily to criticisms that it’s undermining its own heat relief efforts with the library budget cuts. Last week, Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, noted that, on the first day of the heat wave last week, all the city’s libraries — 41 percent of the cooling centers — were closed because Juneteenth was a federal holiday. Zachary Iscol, the commissioner of emergency management, who oversees the cooling centers, took to social media to call the comptroller’s comments “a pretty significant misrepresentation.”

Lander told Grist the figure came directly from the city’s data on its cooling centers, which his office analyzed in a 2022 report. That report also found that fully half of the cooling centers were listed as closed on Saturdays, and 83 percent were closed on Sundays. 

“We are not currently investing in the civic infrastructure that we need to keep people safe in the climate crisis anywhere near as much as we know we need to. The libraries are the biggest example of that,” Lander said.

Last Friday afternoon, Choy decided to leave the senior center to buy a bag of ice. As soon as she stepped outdoors, she said, “I just remember getting instantly sweaty. It was hard to breathe and I was so grateful that the little drugstore was right across the corner and I didnt have far to walk. I stayed in the store for 15 minutes before I made my purchase. I felt my heart starting to beat really fast; I didn’t want that to move into a lightheaded situation.”

She went back to the senior center and stayed there until 3:30, when the cleaning staff began spraying down the tables and she felt unwelcome. It was 94 degrees out, but because she had already bought the bag of ice to cool her down for the trip back to Inwood, Choy decided to ride the bus back uptown instead of walking to the nearby POPS. When she got there, she sat in the air-conditioned Manhattan Mini Storage locker she rents for around a dollar a day and stocks with books and bottled water.

Some 350 people die annually of heat-related causes in New York City. Only a handful of these cases are heat-stress deaths, or those directly caused by heat. In most cases, the heat exacerbates people’s existing illnesses and comorbidities. Among the most important risk factors, according to city data, is access to home air conditioning — and the funds to turn it on.

“Given that extreme heat is by far the deadliest impact of climate change already — and, sadly, very likely to be much more so in the years to come — we are nowhere near where we need to be in getting ready for it,” said Lander.

In what should ostensibly be a straightforward policy solution, the state offers low-income residents help with heating and cooling their homes through its Home Energy Assistance Program — but the assistance offered through this program heavily skews toward heating. The limited funds available for cooling assistance can only be used to buy an air conditioner, not to pay for running it — and what’s more, these funds tend to run out early every summer. Choy carefully monitors her power usage to ensure she doesn’t spend more than the low-income subsidy she receives from her power company, Con Edison. “If I go over, then I have to carry a balance, and then now you have to deal with the rules of ConEd. Do they want to do a payment arrangement? How long do they let you go with arrears,” she said.

Choy’s apartment takes a while to cool down, even after temperatures outside have subsided. So at around 8:30, once it had cooled down enough for Choy to feel comfortable outdoors, she left the storage center and sat on a bench in her neighborhood. At 11:30, she headed home and went to sleep, prepared to repeat the day’s journey in the morning.

New York City is only at the beginning of what is expected to be an unusually hot summer. Temperatures usually climb in July and August, and could also be increased by a La Niña weather cycle. For Choy, this means more trekking between cooling centers, and in her experience, she sees a signal of what’s in store for many more people — particularly the indigent, elderly, and disabled — as global temperatures rise.

“I don’t think a lot of people make this connection, but I’m purposefully claiming myself to be a climate refugee,” Choy said. “I feel like I’m a canary in the mine. The way I live every summer, it’s how a lot of people are going to have to live.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to survive a heat wave on a fixed income on Jun 28, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gautama Mehta.

]]> https://grist.org/extreme-heat/how-to-survive-a-heat-wave-on-a-fixed-income/feed/ 0 481562 https://grist.org/energy/taft-california-kern-county-carbon-capture/ https://grist.org/energy/taft-california-kern-county-carbon-capture/#respond Wed, 15 May 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=637831 Les Clark III took charge of the West Side Recreation and Park District in 2018, just as the bottom was falling out in Taft, California. The oil pumps that surrounded the town of 9,000 had been nodding up and down for decades, but all at once they froze in place, beams hovering in the air like hammers about to fall. The drilling rigs and service trucks vanished from the winding roads around the town, blanketing it with an unfamiliar silence.

For as long as Clark could remember, the oil fields around Taft had swarmed with motion. At the time that he took over the rec center, Kern County drilled over 140 million barrels every year, more oil than almost any other county in the U.S. That oil flowed out of the ground and through a network of pipelines to nearby refineries for conversion into diesel. Above the pipelines, workers in hard hats and jumpsuits circled the fields in pickup trucks to monitor production; others manned towering drill rigs that rattled as they bored into the ground.

All this motion made money, and the companies that ran the oil fields shared some of that money with Taft, showering the town with millions of dollars in tax revenue and making philanthropic donations to fund schools, scholarships, and community events. While Taft is home to just 1 percent of Kern County’s population, the town’s plight is emblematic of that facing the entire county, a sprawling metropolitan area of nearly a million people whose middle class and tax base are firmly anchored by oil.

As the heart of Kern County’s oil industry, Taft enjoyed a prosperity that neighboring areas did not; the town sits at the southern end of California’s Central Valley, an agricultural region that struggles by almost every metric of health and social welfare. Many Central Valley towns don’t have grocery stores or parks, let alone an athletic complex like the one run by Clark.

Indeed, Clark’s recreation center campus, which stretches across four buildings, encapsulates the town’s unique prosperity. It boasts a virtual empire of sports and leisure activities — not just the usual youth football and softball but also bingo, jazz dance, bunco, jiujitsu, and bowling, plus a weekly potluck dinner. More than half its budget comes from oil industry contributions, and individual companies have endowed some of the biggest expansions: the Aera Energy gymnasium, the Berry Petroleum movie theater, the Chevron science room for kids. Clark, who just turned 49, proudly dons a black ball cap adorned with the park district’s logo, an oil rig rising up from green fields on a sunny day.

But starting about a decade ago, Taft began to lose its grip on middle-class prosperity. The world oil market took a nosedive in 2014, leading local companies to lay off workers and idle wells in the fields around Taft. Even after oil prices bounced back, a new wave of environmental lawsuits and an oil permitting pause instituted by Governor Gavin Newsom stopped local oil companies from drilling new wells. Meanwhile, the rise of fracking diverted industry investment to untapped shale deposits in states like North Dakota and Texas.

As drilling slowed in Kern County, oil company contributions to the parks district disappeared as well, forcing Clark to lay off 10 of his 14 employees and scale back sports when he couldn’t find volunteers. Then the families of laid-off oil workers started telling him they couldn’t afford to enroll in youth sports — except for the baseball and softball leagues, where Chevron continued to cover all the costs.

Clark’s father and grandfather both worked in the oil fields, but he had never wanted to follow them there. His passion was for sports, and when pro football didn’t work out he figured that coaching at the town’s rec center was the next best thing. But the oil crash hit him just as hard as it hit his neighbors who worked for Chevron; when the industry sank, it took the rec center and the rest of the town with it. Clark is a large man, with a voice that travels even without the aid of the basketball gym’s acoustics, but his speech gets clipped when he talks about the impact of the oil crash on the kids who played on his softball teams, and the adults who took his fitness classes.

“It’s a tough deal,” he said. “We’re at a point where we can’t afford to spend in the red anymore.” 

In recent years, as governments around the world have begun to shift away from fossil fuels and commit to stemming climate change, scholars and activists have promoted the idea of a “just transition” for communities that rely on carbon-intensive industries. The promise of a just transition is that the government will step in to support displaced workers and abandoned communities, offering subsidies and direct financial support to help build new industries and stave off economic collapse.

So far, this has not happened. The collapse of coal in Appalachia has helped slow climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it has also eliminated tens of thousands of jobs and emptied out towns across Kentucky and West Virginia. Efforts to stoke new growth with corporate tax breaks, relocation stipends, and broadband investment have so far borne little fruit — though a recent wave of industrial policy legislation from Congress hopes to change that. The growth of renewable energy and the rise of electric vehicles now threaten to condemn oil communities to the same fate. Multiple large California refineries have closed in recent years, pushing hundreds of workers into lower-paying jobs or long-term unemployment. 

Kern County hopes to take a very different path, transforming its fossil fuel industry into an industry that will help reduce carbon emissions. In 2021, the oil company California Resources Corporation, or CRC, unveiled a first-of-its-kind plan to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide and stash it in depleted wells near town, preventing the greenhouse gases from wreaking havoc on the atmosphere.

Both CRC and Kern County officials promise that the project will deliver thousands of new manufacturing jobs, many of them perfect for former oil workers. They also say it will refill local tax coffers and restore institutions like Clark’s rec center. In theory, a carbon storage boom would help Kern County leap over the abyss created by the decline of oil, allowing the county to fashion its own “just transition” without a government bailout. To Clark, it all sounds like a godsend.

The plan’s ambitious promise has created a curious spectacle: an oil town rallying around a pivot to climate action by the state’s largest oil company. Leaders from the high school, the community college, and its chamber of commerce have all joined Clark in endorsing the project. It even landed an endorsement from Taft’s mayor, an ardent critic of renewable energy. 

“There’s some kind of window of opportunity, because the industry is trying to evolve,” said Clark.

The consensus view of the “just transition” is that governments will have to make big investments in places like Taft to fill the void left by fossil fuel companies. Kern County is attempting something altogether different by trying to build a new boom industry out of the ashes of an old one, allowing oil companies like CRC to pass the torch to themselves as the county’s economic leaders. If the scheme pans out, the carbon management industry will act as a pacemaker for an ailing economy, replacing a carbon-spewing business with a carbon-saving one, all while protecting the fragile middle class created by oil. 

The audacious initiative is not without its critics. Many residents of the Latino communities near Elk Hills, the massive oil field where the carbon will be stored, are concerned about the safety of stashing such huge volumes of the greenhouse gas underground a few miles from their homes. Some California climate activists are skeptical that the potential benefits of carbon capture are worth extending a lifeline to the oil fields near Taft, and they question if an effort designed to revive the oil industry can help the Kern County communities that never benefited from it in the first place. (Taft is about 60 percent white, but Kern County overall is about 60 percent Hispanic.)

From Clark’s vantage point at the rec center, there isn’t much of an alternative. As he sees it, Taft’s relationship with companies like CRC is the reason his hometown has so much more to offer residents than the towns around it. In fact, CRC representatives reached out to Clark directly to talk about how the company’s carbon capture plan could benefit the parks district. Next week, the rec center will unveil a new sports complex with a soccer field, volleyball court, and bonfire area — all thanks to CRC. If carbon capture can renew Taft’s prosperity, Clark is all for it.

“They made a point to come to us, because they know we’re hurting,” said Clark. “They wanted to make sure that we’re OK.”

Most booms begin with the sudden discovery of a new resource: Think of the gold strike at Sutter’s Mill that drew hundreds of thousands of people to California’s mountain mines, or the Spindletop oil gusher in Texas that gave birth to an American petroleum boom almost overnight. The carbon boom in Kern County, if it comes to pass, will be very different. It will have been reverse engineered, built not around a new resource but around the loss of an existing one.

Oil production in Kern County has been falling for decades, but the industry’s rapid decline over the last 10 years has thrust the county of almost a million people into a crisis. In 2014, when crude prices started to slump, oil and gas facilities accounted for almost a third of all assessed property tax value in the county. Within two years, the value of the county’s wells had fallen by half, dealing a $61 million hit to the county’s budget and wiping out more than 4,000 of the county’s approximately 12,400 oil jobs. Those jobs were some of the highest-paying in the area, with many salaries more than triple the average county salary of around $50,000.

The crisis fell into the hands of Lorelei Oviatt, the county’s director of planning and natural resources, a powerful and divisive public official with an astonishingly intricate grasp of economics and environmental law. When Oviatt attended college in Ohio in the 1970s, she watched the Rust Belt economies around her collapse as manufacturing jobs fled overseas. She was determined not to let the same thing happen in Kern County, where she took over the planning department in 2010.

Oviatt’s strategy for economic revival could be summarized as “all of the above.” While she has tried to speed up permits for new oil drilling, she also hedged her bets by simultaneously permitting several large solar and wind farms in the county. In doing so, she helped make Kern County a national leader in renewable energy and filled the landscape around her home in the county’s eastern mountains with thousands of rotating wind turbines. But neither solar farms, which require very little labor after construction and are exempt from local property taxes in California, nor wind, whose footprint is limited by the county’s geography and transmission constraints, could match the economic windfall of oil.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” said Oviatt. “The state of California’s energy policies are pushing us at an accelerated rate, because climate change is an urgent issue, but they are not providing us any assurances that we can keep our libraries open, or that we can keep Meals on Wheels. So we’re kind of under the perspective here that Kern County needs to design our own future.”

Lorelei Oviatt, Kern County’s director of planning and natural resources, has promoted both oil and renewable energy in the county. Brian L. Frank / Grist

Oviatt has permitted almost 20,000 megawatts of solar and wind energy in Kern County, making the county one of the nation’s leading producers of renewable power. Brian L. Frank / Grist

The oil companies themselves approached Oviatt in 2021 with a potential solution. If Newsom and the courts wouldn’t let them drill more in Kern’s oil fields, maybe they could use those same fields to store carbon dioxide. Studies suggested that depleted oil wells and the underground formations that stretch out beneath them were an ideal place to store captured gas: The wells stretched more than a mile into the earth, they sat in remote fields that were miles away from any residential area, and the companies already had the expertise to move gas around underground. California was betting on carbon sequestration to help it achieve its climate goals, and a provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act nearly doubled the tax credits available to companies capturing carbon. Even conservative estimates suggest that the Central Valley could store at least 17 billion metric tons of carbon in perpetuity, which theoretically is far more than enough to get California to net-zero emissions.

There are two types of carbon capture: “point-source” capture, which involves sucking up carbon-filled air directly from pipes and smokestacks before they release it into the atmosphere, and “direct air capture,” a newer process that uses high-energy fans to extract carbon dioxide from ambient air. Kern County’s oil industry has thrown its weight behind both. CRC, Chevron, and Aera have all announced plans to pursue point-source capture at pipelines and power plants on their existing oil fields, and they also all won federal grants to build direct air capture facilities near Taft. 

No company was more devoted to this idea than California Resources Corporation. After exiting a debt-driven bankruptcy in 2020, the company began an aggressive pivot toward carbon capture, planning a slew of carbon storage projects in the Central Valley and pitching itself as a “different kind of energy company” to new investors. CRC later bought Aera in a transaction that the company said would double its “premium CO2 pore space.” 

“In our efforts to mitigate climate change, we are … laser-focused on investing in and growing our carbon management business,” said Francisco Leon, the company’s CEO, in an open letter to investors last year.

It was easy to see the business case: CRC’s inaugural project at Elk Hills, which it calls “Carbon TerraVault I,” will capture gas from the oil field’s infrastructure and its onsite power plant, reducing the carbon emissions tied to the company’s traditional oil production and streamlining its compliance with California climate regulators.

Even more important, though, is the revenue CRC hopes to generate by selling space in its carbon wells. If other factories or companies want to reduce their emissions, they can pay CRC to bury captured gas underground. The company has already signed deals to store carbon for a hydrogen plant, a dimethyl ether plant, and a “renewable gasoline” plant, all in the works near Elk Hills. All told, Carbon TerraVault could store more than 46 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas, enough to theoretically negate the annual emissions of a million passenger cars.

Oviatt saw something even bigger in CRC’s strategy, something that she thought could reverse the county’s economic tailspin. She drafted a proposal for what she called a “carbon management business park,” an interlinked complex of new factories that would produce hydrogen or steel — and store the carbon they emitted doing so in nearby oil fields. CRC, Chevron, and Aera had all expressed their interest in such projects, and Oviatt wanted them to know the county was open for business. She also invented what she termed a “cumulative impact oil and gas reservoir pore space charge” — basically a county tax on the space used for carbon capture.

When the county commissioned a third-party study to estimate the economic benefits of all this new industry, the results told Oviatt all she needed to know: A full-size carbon park would generate up to $56 million in tax revenue, about three-quarters of what the oil industry contributed in 2019. Even more importantly, it promised to provide a destination for former oil workers. The report was light on precise details, but it claimed that “at full buildout, the [business park] and related off-site activities would directly and indirectly support 13,500 to 22,000 permanent jobs.”

Despite the rosy projections, the scope of the challenge was not lost on Oviatt. CRC and the county were proposing to engineer the kind of industrial boom that typically happens by accident, and to do so in the span of a single decade. Success would require buy-in from almost every civic pillar of the county — not just its elected officials, industry advocacy groups, and three chambers of commerce, but also the institutions that support its residents from cradle to grave.

Kern County’s colleges and workforce development programs have already begun to pivot. After California Resources Corporation donated $2 million to the Kern Community College District in 2022, the district established the “CRC Carbon Management Institute” to create “customized workforce development opportunities” in the new industry. Bakersfield College debuted a new course on the subject, “ENER B52NC, Carbon Capture and Storage,” which included “discussion about the upcoming career opportunities in this field.” Even high schools are buying in; a handful of area teachers have been trained to teach carbon capture by experts from the world-famous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley. At a recent high school career day in Taft, CRC passed out handheld signs that allowed students to announce they were “future leaders in carbon management.”

Labor unions also endorsed the plan. Most oil field jobs in the county are nonunion, but construction trade unions like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers could benefit from hundreds of temporary construction jobs that such a buildout would create. Plus, the business park promises to bring thousands of new manufacturing jobs to a county that has historically had very few, given that any new factory would theoretically have instant access to a system that could neutralize its carbon emissions. It helped that CRC already had a cozy relationship with the trade unions; the company agreed in 2016 to hire union contractors for all its maintenance work, and the unions are now negotiating a new agreement with CRC that would cover the company’s carbon projects.

It’s easy to understand the reasoning behind these endorsements: Carbon capture promises to solve one of the most vexing problems of the just transition, the question of how to replace a high-paying and labor-intensive industry. A high school graduate in Kern County can make six figures working for Chevron or CRC without attending a day of college, and thousands of families in the area have attained middle-class prosperity thanks to oil field work. Many workers who’ve lost jobs with these companies have left Taft for states like Texas and North Dakota rather than transition to a new industry. They have taken their sales taxes and property taxes with them, exacerbating the area’s economic pain. 

Still, Kern County is better off than many other coal- and oil-producing regions, because it is still growing: The county has recently secured new investments in hydrogen, biodiesel, and warehousing, and its solar and wind farms have created hundreds of temporary construction jobs. The county has done its best to help laid-off oil workers transition into these new fields. Its workforce development department holds “rapid response” orientations at oil fields where companies are about to announce layoffs and pays for laid-off workers to take construction or electrician training courses. Kern Community College District also runs a “21st Century Energy Center” that designs certificate programs for energy workers, allowing them to train in electric vehicle charger maintenance and solar panel installation. 

But none of these industries has reached anything like the scale of the oil industry, and many of them are either too temporary or too low-paying to be more attractive than oil field work, which requires far more operational and safety expertise than working in an Amazon warehouse or building a solar panel — and thus tends to pay much better. Until a few years ago, the Kern Community College District’s renewable energy center still offered a rudimentary oil safety training called the “oil field passport.” 

“To be honest, if our people get jobs out working in the oil field, that’s not a negative, because the ultimate measure is that they got a family-sustaining job,” said Dave Teasdale, the director of the 21st Century Energy Center. “But we do have the concern about, how much longer are they going to be working there?” 

The manufacturing complex at Oviatt’s new carbon business park promises to marry the best of both worlds: the labor intensity and remuneration of oil field work with the sustainability and growth potential of renewable energy. Plus, the skills needed to put carbon dioxide into an oil well are not that different from those required to take oil out of it, so many oil workers could transition to the new work with minimal retraining. 

But the avalanche of jobs is hardly guaranteed. The state permit for CRC’s first cluster of carbon wells says that they will create 80 temporary construction jobs but only five permanent positions. The county won’t see the full benefit of carbon capture unless steel manufacturers and hydrogen startups flock to the county for CRC’s carbon storage space, and that depends on factors that are outside the county’s control. If companies find other ways to cut their emissions — or if the EPA halts the process of carbon storage out of safety concerns — the market for the carbon business park might vanish.

That hasn’t stopped most of the county’s civic leaders from pinning their hopes on the project. Earlier this year, when the EPA hosted a public hearing to discuss the carbon storage project’s potential impact on underground aquifers, representatives from almost every major county institution attended to praise carbon capture as an economic boon. The EPA had already given provisional approval to CRC’s carbon storage effort, but everyone from union leaders to community college administrators showed up to stress their support for it. 

The hearing was held in the farmworker community of Buttonwillow, which is almost 90 percent Hispanic, and a number of residents and environmental justice advocates showed up to voice their fears that the stored carbon dioxide would leak into the surrounding air. This has happened at least once before when a pipeline in Mississippi ruptured and hospitalized 49 people, but the EPA views such a calamity as unlikely in Kern.

Meanwhile, the boosters kept beating the drum of economic development. One oil company owner declared that the project would help “hundreds or thousands of young men and women to launch their careers,” while another former oil worker who taught at Taft High School said the project would help “those people who are being transitioned out of the petroleum industry” to keep working in the county. Les Clark and his rec center employees were there, too, and Clark took a turn at the microphone to celebrate the economic revival CRC promised to bring to Taft.

The EPA officials at the hearing only had the legal authority to consider the project’s effects on water quality, and many of them were only present because of their geological expertise. As dozens of locals stood up one by one to thank CRC for saving Kern from economic ruin, the regulators could only smile and nod.

Danny Gracia, 45, grew up in Buttonwillow, near the Elk Hills oil field and about 20 miles from Taft. At that time Buttonwillow was a hub for the American cotton industry, and the work was grueling. Gracia’s mother and father worked long shifts at the town’s massive cotton gin to provide for him and his three older brothers. As soon as Danny’s brothers reached adolescence they joined their parents at the gin to help support the family, making only $8 an hour each.

This was the status quo for tens of thousands of people in Kern County in the 1990s — and it still is today — but Gracia managed to escape it. He was still in high school when one of his brothers heard about a job opportunity on a drilling rig; soon he was making far more money than the rest of his family. When Gracia graduated high school, he joined his brother in the field for a summer job, then quickly took a permanent position expanding old wells. His company paid for him to rack up trainings and certificates, and within a few years he got a promotion to rig supervisor, which allowed him to buy a house at the age of 21. His mother was able to quit working at the gin and stay at home cooking for Danny and his brothers, who paid her for feeding them between shifts.

“My intention coming into the oil fields was to provide a good life for my families like my brothers and friends,” he told me. “I did more than that. I made a career out of it. I gave my family more than I ever thought possible.”

Gracia’s story shows why so many of Kern’s institutions have rallied around carbon capture as a successor to the oil industry. But it also shows why many environmental and economic justice organizations are critical of the county’s plans: Carbon capture might help oil workers like Gracia, but it doesn’t do much for other people in towns like Buttonwillow who have never benefited from the oil industry — and who may have suffered harmful health effects from living near oil infrastructure. Agriculture employs around 30,000 people in Kern County, more than twice as many as the oil industry, but most of those workers make around $20,000 a year, and there are nowhere enough training programs or job openings in the oil industry for these workers to ascend the economic ladder. As some activists see it, the county is missing out on the opportunity for broader economic reform with its focus on mitigating the decline of oil.

“We talk a lot about oil workers, and I respect that, but at the same time, there are a lot of agricultural workers that are sustaining a lot of the economic health of the region,” said Daniel Rodela, a community organizer who grew up in an agricultural community near Taft and now works at a nonprofit called Faith in the Valley. “But obviously, in our community, there’s going to be folks that are going to be advocating for things remaining the way that they are.”

The Biden administration has sought to alter this dynamic as it plows money into clean energy projects in fossil fuel communities. The federal grant that CRC received for its direct air capture facility requires the company to create a “community benefits agreement” for its carbon projects, including commitments to disadvantaged areas around Taft. As it applied for permits to store carbon underground, the company also had to build social consensus across the county, including in agricultural communities like Buttonwillow. 

CRC did not shrink from this task. As the company pushed Carbon TerraVault, it erected billboards near highways and oil fields in Bakersfield, announcing that the company was “committed to our net-zero future.” It held dozens of meetings with city leaders, environmental organizations, unions, and the family members of the activist Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in Kern County in 1962. CRC employees knocked on doors in Buttonwillow and the other communities around Elk Hills, taking selfies to document the effort, and sent out mailers in English and Spanish. They held a meeting at a movie theater in Taft that Clark’s rec center runs, playing a teaser video for carbon capture before screening the action movie Expendables 4. The company even dreamed up a partnership with Grandma Whoople Enterprises, an “anti-bullying entertainer” in nearby Bakersfield who agreed to conduct “elementary field trips for frontline community children.”

But these efforts don’t seem to have succeeded in building popular support for carbon capture, despite the wave of institutional endorsements for Carbon TerraVault. When the social justice nonprofit Dolores Huerta Foundation partnered with the University of California, Merced, to survey hundreds of disadvantaged Kern residents last year, asking them where they wanted to see more jobs, the top answers included solar, wind, and oil well abandonment. Carbon capture placed a distant seventh, with only 1 in 3 respondents endorsing it.

California Resources Corporation declined interview and comment requests for this story. A spokesperson for the company said it was in a “media quiet period” as it sought carbon capture permits. A representative for Chevron did not respond to questions about the company’s projects in Kern County. 

There are alternative visions for Kern County’s revival, ones that don’t involve a project sponsored by oil. Many environmental organizations have given particular attention to proposals that would employ workers to seal defunct oil wells and clean up the land and water around abandoned oil fields. A report published by the Sierra Club last year found that there are more than 40,000 idle or orphaned wells in the state, and CRC and Chevron own more than two-thirds of them. Plugging all these wells could create at least 13,000 jobs in Kern County alone, the report found — almost as many as the carbon business park, though the former would by nature be short-term. Hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law could help kickstart the effort. These jobs wouldn’t last forever, but they could allow much of Kern’s aging oil workforce to reach retirement without retraining. Temporary solar construction jobs could help fill the gap.

This remediation industry is at the center of a recent economic development proposal by the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, or CRPE, a decades-old environmental justice organization based in Kern County. Drawing a contrast with the county government’s embrace of carbon capture, the proposal lays out a vision for a new workforce that would seal old wells, remediate oil land, and build public infrastructure, supplemented by a state program that would replace the wages of laid-off workers as they seek new employment. It’s a vision where government rather than industrial initiative is the driving force.

Juan Flores, a lead organizer at CRPE and one of the authors of this plan, said that many people in disadvantaged parts of the county are wary of the oil industry because they’ve suffered the health impacts of oil production, like cancer and preterm births.

“I think on that rubric of [a] ‘just transition,’ the county has failed,” he said. “They continue to think, ‘how can we keep the oil industry alive?’” 

Others argue that carbon storage in Kern County could function as a public good rather than a private business. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is proposing a “community-centered direct air capture hub” that would run like a public utility. Whereas CRC’s carbon complex could pitch in a share of its revenue to the county through property taxes, the Berkeley proposal could see locals elect a governing board that would manage the carbon facility directly and route its revenue toward impoverished areas.

These alternatives might not be that much more ambitious than Oviatt’s carbon business park, but realizing them would require a herculean amount of coordination between local governments, employers, schools, labor unions, and advocacy groups. 

Kern County has shown that this coordination is possible, but only in service of certain ends. As the region’s largest taxpayers and most sought-after employers, oil companies have had an outsize influence over how the county navigates the energy transition. These companies have plowed millions of dollars into education and capital projects in the region even as oil itself declines, a stark contrast with the fate of Appalachian communities that saw their biggest employers cut and run during the collapse of coal. But the condition of this investment is that the county has to pursue economic development on the industry’s terms, and its transition to a low-carbon future will happen in a manner that benefits the industry rather than dismantling it.

The risks of this dynamic became apparent in the weeks after the carbon capture hearing, when a state appellate court dealt Kern County’s oil industry another defeat. A panel of judges voted to throw out Oviatt’s attempt to permit thousands of new oil wells, ordering the county to draw up a third environmental review for the drilling plan. This effort could take the county as long as a year to complete, and even then it would be subject to new legal challenges. But Oviatt was undeterred, and she got right back to work revising the permits.

“There’s no oil drilling, there’s no more money — those companies can roll up and leave and decimate our community,” she said. “These companies have to have money in order to evolve.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside a California oil town’s divisive plan to survive the energy transition on May 15, 2024.

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

]]> https://grist.org/energy/taft-california-kern-county-carbon-capture/feed/ 0 474641 https://grist.org/agriculture/climate-change-tree-urban-city-arborists-heat-drought-native-species/ https://grist.org/agriculture/climate-change-tree-urban-city-arborists-heat-drought-native-species/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=635819 Last fall, I invited a stranger into my yard. 

Manzanita, with its peeling red bark and delicate pitcher-shaped blossoms, thrives on the dry, rocky ridges of Northern California. The small, evergreen tree or shrub is famously drought-tolerant, with some varieties capable of enduring more than 200 days between waterings. And yet here I was, gently lowering an 18-inch variety named for botanist Howard McMinn into the damp soil of Tacoma, a city in Washington known for its towering Douglas firs, bigleaf maples, and an average of 152 rainy days per year.

It’s not that I’m a thoughtless gardener. Some studies suggest that the Seattle area’s climate will more closely resemble Northern California’s by 2050, so I’m planting that region’s trees, too.

Climate change is scrambling the seasons, wreaking havoc on trees. Some temperate and high-altitude regions will grow more humid, which can lead to lethal rot. In other temperate zones, drier springs and hotter summers are disrupting annual cycles of growth, damaging root systems, and rendering any survivors more vulnerable to pests.

The victims of these shifts include treasured species from around the globe, including certain varietials of the Texas pecan, the towering baobabs found in Senegal, and the expansive fig trees native to Sydney. In the Pacific Northwest, I’ve seen summer heat domes turn our region’s beloved conifers into skeletons and prolonged dry spells wither the crowns of maples until the leaves die off in chunks.

The world is warming too quickly for arboreal adaptation, said Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, an ecologist at Western Sydney University who researches the impact of climate change on trees. That’s especially true of native trees. “They are the first ones to suffer,” he said.

Urban arborists say planting for the future is urgently needed and could prevent a decline in leafy cover just when the world needs it most. Trees play a crucial role in keeping cities cool. A study published in 2022 found that a roughly 30 percent increase in the metropolitan canopy could prevent nearly 40 percent of heat-related deaths in Europe. The need is particularly acute in marginalized communities, where residents — often people of color — live among treeless expanses where temperatures can go much higher than in more affluent neighborhoods.

While the best solution would be to stop emitting greenhouse gases, the world is locked into some degree of warming, and many regional governments have begun focusing on building resilience into the places we live. Urban botanists and other experts warn that cities are well behind where they should be to avoid overall tree loss. The full impact of climate change may be decades away, but oaks, maples, and other popular species can take 10 or more years to mature (and show they can tolerate a new climate), making the search for the right varieties for each region a frantic race against time. 

In response, scientists and urban foresters are trying to speed up the process, thinking strategically about where to source new trees and using experiments to predict the hardiness of new species. Beyond that, many places are moving past the idea that native species are the most sustainable choice by default. 

“Everybody is looking for the magic tree,” said Mac Martin, who leads the urban and community forestry program at Texas A&M’s Forest Service. He went on to say that one kind of tree isn’t enough. We need “a high number of diverse trees that can survive.”

In other words, a whole new urban forest.

In late 2023, that quest took Kevin Martin, no relation to Mac, to the arid forests of Romania. As the head of tree collections at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, he spent a week hiking through pine-scented forests to gather beech acorns. He brought seeds from seven species back to the U.K. and planted them in individual pots at the botanical garden’s nursery. Now, he waits.

He hopes the trees will thrive in London’s drier springtime soils, which are making it hard for old standbys like the English oak to survive the hotter summers that follow. The research is part of a bigger change for the botanical garden, Martin said, which historically focused on collecting rare plant specimens. “We’re flipping that on its head and looking at what we want to grow,” he said. “We want a good outcome for humanity.”

Under normal conditions, trees are among the best defenses against heat, and not just because they provide a shady place to rest. As their leaves transform sunlight into energy, trees give off water vapor through tiny holes called stomata, cooling the air around them with “nature’s own air conditioning,” Martin said. 

But increasingly hot temperatures can shut down this process. In extreme dry heat, the cells slacken and the stomata close, stopping water from escaping. The point at which this happens is called the turgor loss point, and it’s like the leaves on a houseplant wilting. If a stressed tree doesn’t get water, its leaves will overheat and die before the fall, sometimes across entire sections of the crown. In highly humid conditions, the air holds too much water vapor to absorb any more, leaving leaves waterlogged and beckoning rot. Even if a tree in this condition looks healthy, it can’t cool cities as well as it used to. Making matters worse, distressed plants are more vulnerable to pests like the borer beetle.

Native trees are particularly at risk for climate stress, and in many cities, they make up a significant chunk of urban tree cover. Eighty-seven percent of the trees in Plano, Texas, are native species, for example. That number is 66 percent in Santa Rosa, California, and 30 percent in Providence, Rhode Island. 

To be sure, non-native trees have been a part of human settlements for a long time. Plants often spread with human migration, and European colonists brought many species to other continents. Many of these newcomers grow faster than the indigenous varieties, and some have proven better suited to urban areas. 

However, flora introduced from far away can also experience climate shock. Currently, non-native trees typically come from climates similar to those trees they now stand alongside. Until the seasons started going haywire, this made them well-suited to their adopted homes. For example, the London plane, a cross between an American sycamore and a plane tree from western Asia, lines streets in temperate zones around the world. Now, scientists are worried about the tree’s future in its namesake city as dry springs and hot summers leave them weak and susceptible to pests. 

To find solutions, researchers are studying which trees could do better than those currently struggling in rapidly warming cities, with an eye toward species that have already adapted to drier regions hundreds or even thousands of miles away. In Canada, for example, scientists have matched trees from the northern United States with the expected climates in cities including Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Ottawa. Urban foresters in Sydney are considering the trees in Grafton, an Australian city about 290 miles closer to the equator. 

Thinking of a future U.K., Kevin Martin started evaluating trees from the steppes of Romania more than 1,000 miles away. To find the right places to collect acorns, Martin looked at both temperature and the amount of water available in the soils of Romanian forests, explaining that trees in moist soils in tropical rainforests or near rivers will keep going even in hot conditions.

He will have to wait two years for the acorns to sprout and grow into saplings. Only then can he begin stress-testing the specimens to see if the trees are a good fit for the growing conditions of London in 2050 and beyond. Martin plans to study at what point the trees’ leaves hit turgor loss in dry, hot conditions. But crucially, the trees must also be able to adapt to London’s cold winters, which are expected to stay freezing even as drought and heat waves increase. 

Examining leaf turgor loss can’t be used to assess trees for every neighborhood in a city. Parts of Sydney are facing increasingly humid summers in an otherwise temperate climate. With this in mind, the municipal forestry department used a database that matches a far-off location’s current humidity with what experts expect for the city in 2050. In addition to considering temperature, officials hope to increase tree canopy to cover 27 percent of the city in the next quarter century. They are also mindful that the climate will change gradually and have laid out a phased planting plan. Trees that thrive in the Sydney of 2060 may struggle in 2100. 

Such factors are on Mac Martin’s mind as his department updates Texas A&M’s online tree selector, a statewide database that recommends species, to include varieties that are likely to flourish in the future.

Texas is slated to experience a triple climate whammy of hotter summers, colder winters, and changing humidity, with some places becoming intolerably dry and others getting more muggy. It’s a complex weather pattern to plant for — and that’s assuming cities are prepared to adapt once the right species are identified.

As risky as it may seem to hold on to endemic species in the face of climate change, some governments continue to create policies that favor native trees over non-natives. Canada, for example, has funded the planting of thousands of native trees in urban areas through its 2 Billion Trees project.

Botanists like Henrik Sjöman, who oversees collections at the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens in Sweden, say native-only thinking can leave cities unprepared to adapt to climate change. But he doesn’t believe cities must completely abandon native species. He hopes that some species can be saved with a process he calls “upgrading.” The idea is to find trees from the same species that are already growing in harsher conditions, and propagate seeds from those plants. To grow more resilient English oaks in the U.K., for example, scientists could grow them from acorns sourced from western Asia, where the tree also grows. These acorns would come from trees thriving in a more arid region, so they could potentially yield hardier varietals that will one day thrive in a drier London.

Additionally, locale-adapted native species might continue thriving in woodlands like large city parks or green spaces. Sjöman said it’s possible that trees in undeveloped areas will have more time to adapt to climate change, because rainfall more easily soaks into the ground and fills the water table. That’s not the case in highly paved and built-up neighborhoods, where decreasing rainfall hurts trees more.

“Everything’s pushed to its limit in urban environments,” Sjöman said.

That reality has many locales taking a “block-by-block” approach to planting guidelines. Toronto, for example, plants trees from the region’s ecosystem whenever possible, said Kristjan Vitols, the city’s supervisor of forest health care and management. That’s especially true of its iconic ravines, where newly planted trees must be endemic — and raised from locally sourced seeds when possible. But the city is also open to non-native species where plants face harsh conditions along streets.

The rules for Toronto’s ravines are based on the idea that a species will develop traits specific to a location as they grow over many generations. As a result, trees grown from seeds gathered in Toronto may be more likely to blossom when native pollinators are active than seeds from the same species grown at a lower latitude.

Foresters say there’s another valid argument for trying to keep as many native trees as possible. For some First Nations and Indigenous people with deep ties to particular varieties, phasing them out could add to the long history of cultural and physical dispossession. 

In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the Western redcedar (written as one word because it’s not a true cedar) is central to Native American cultural practices for many local tribes. Some groups refer to themselves as the “people of the cedar tree,” using the logs for canoes, basketry, and medicine.

But drying soils mean the tree is no longer thriving in many parts of Portland, Oregon, said Jenn Cairo, the city’s urban forestry manager. The city has faced deadly heat domes and drier conditions in recent years. As a result, Portland only recommends planting the species in optimal conditions in its list of approved street trees. “We’re not eliminating them,” she said, “but we’re being careful about where we’re planting them.”

A similar tactic is being used in Sydney, where the Port Jackson fig tree is struggling, but a close relative, the Moreton Bay fig, is thriving. Head of urban forestry Karen Sweeney said the city is looking at irrigated parklands as potential homes for native species that are dying elsewhere in the city. “We often say we’re happy to do it where we can find a location,” she said.

When introducing new tree species to supplement the urban canopy, they must be sure any newcomers won’t spread invasively — dominating their new habitats and causing damage to native species.  

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In America’s cities, inequality is engrained in the trees

Adam Mahoney

There are plenty of examples of what to avoid. The Norway maple, native to Europe and western Asia, has escaped the bounds of North American cities, creating excessive shade and crowding out understory plants — they’re one of the invasive species pushing out natives in the ravines of Toronto. Tree of heaven, native to China, deposits chemicals into the soil that damage nearby plants, letting it establish dense thickets and drive out native species; it is illegal to plant in parts of the U.S., including Indiana, where residents are urged to pull it up wherever they see it. The highly flammable eucalyptus, native to Australia, has put down roots all over the world, bringing increased wildfire danger along with it. 

Urban tree experts don’t expect introduced species to cause major disruptions to native wildlife. Done right, adding some variety to cities dominated by one kind of tree could reduce the problems caused by waves of pests or disease. A patchwork of species could create a buffer against tree-to-tree infection among the same species. While it’s possible that new plant species displace plants used by animals that depend on one kind of plant to survive, those cases are the exception, Esperon-Rodriguez, the ecologist at Western Sydney University, said. 

Some native animals do surprisingly well alongside their new plant neighbors. Introducing trees that are closely related to what’s already there could provide additional food and shelter for the local fauna. Animals might already be eating fruit from a new tree that grows somewhere else in their range.

If it thrives, my Howard McMinn manzanita could attract Anna’s hummingbird with its pale blossoms in the Pacific Northwest, just as it would in its native California hills. 

For now, my manzanita is a small bush. (Manzanita straddles the line between shrub and tree, which is not clear-cut distinction. The definition of a tree is something that ornithologist David Allen Sibley said “one could quibble endlessly over.”) The plant made it through a cold snap this winter, and I was happy to see the bright green new leaves growing at the tips of its little branches after temperatures warmed.

Eager for a sign of spring, I leaned in close and found what I was looking for: clusters of tiny, unopened flower buds.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the climate changes, cities scramble to find trees that will survive on Apr 24, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Laura Hautala.

]]> https://grist.org/agriculture/climate-change-tree-urban-city-arborists-heat-drought-native-species/feed/ 0 471339 https://grist.org/politics/washington-cap-and-invest-law-repeal-oil-companies/ https://grist.org/politics/washington-cap-and-invest-law-repeal-oil-companies/#respond Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=629770 It took Washington state more than a decade to put a price on carbon pollution. The effort to make corporations pay for the greenhouse gases they produce started in 2009 with a string of failed bills in the legislature. Frustrated, climate advocates in Washington took the idea directly to voters, putting initiatives on the ballot in 2016 and again in 2018, but both ballot measures flopped — the first defeated by infighting among environmentalists, the second by a $30 million publicity campaign paid for by oil money.

So it was a surprise when the state legislature finally managed to pass a cap-and-trade program in 2021, requiring that Washington slash its carbon emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as the baseline. Even more surprising, perhaps, was that the law was supported by BP, the same oil giant that had spent $13 million to kill one of the ballot initiatives three years earlier. Now the landmark law, the Climate Commitment Act, is under attack, threatened by a repeal effort bankrolled by a hedge-fund manager, and representatives for oil companies say they have nothing to do with it. In fact, oil giants want to keep it alive.   

“We have never been against the Climate Commitment Act,” said Kevin Slagle, vice president of communications for the Western States Petroleum Association, a lobbying group that represents oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell. 

In 2023, its first year in operation, the state’s program generated more than $2 billion for projects to clean up transportation, shift to clean energy, and help communities adapt to the effects of a changing climate. But this fall, voters will get a chance to shut it all down. A ballot initiative started by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager exasperated with Washington state’s taxes and liberal politics, would kill the law and block the state from ever instituting a cap-and-trade program again. 

The existing legislation requires companies to buy pollution “permits” at quarterly auctions, a way to encourage emissions reductions and generate money for climate solutions. Heywood argues that the program has helped give the state some of the highest gas prices in the country and says that Governor Jay Inslee and other officials weren’t upfront about its potential effects on consumers. Last month, the state certified that the measure had gathered enough signatures to head to the ballot this fall.

Heywood’s campaign, called “Let’s Go Washington,” raised $7 million last year to qualify a total of six initiatives for the ballot. The proposals would repeal the state’s capital gains tax and reverse policing restrictions, among other things. Some $6 million of that money came from Heywood, but other donors include the state Republican Party and the Washington Bankers Association. The closest it gets to oil money is a $25,000 contribution from Five Point Capital, a private investment firm in Houston with a focus on oil, natural gas, and water infrastructure. The newly formed “No on 2117” committee opposing Heywood’s initiative has raised $1 million so far this year from the co-founder of Tableau Software, Chris Stolte, plus a $1,500 contribution attributed to Trudi Inslee, the governor’s wife.

While the Western States Petroleum Association isn’t backing the repeal, that doesn’t mean oil companies are happy with the current program. Slagle describes it as broken because the auctions have yielded high prices for pollution permits. His lobbying group has been releasing advertisements that align with Heywood’s message, connecting the climate law to high gas prices. It’s hard to know exactly how much the program has driven up prices, but estimates range from about a quarter to 50 cents a gallon, depending on whom you ask.

Slagle doesn’t agree with Heywood’s approach, though: He wants to work with legislators to address these shortcomings, not throw the law out. “I think what’s missed is that this can be solved without an initiative, right?” Slagle said. “This is what we’re saying. We’re actually in the middle of this, saying, ‘Hey, let’s fix this program.’”

BP, which left the Western States Petroleum Association in 2020 over the trade group’s opposition to certain climate policies in Washington state, is also in favor of keeping the Climate Commitment Act alive. “We believe that the market-based, economy-wide carbon pricing program will work, and we oppose the initiative to overturn it,” a spokesperson said in an email to Grist. 

The stakes of the repeal are high: Eliminating the cap-and-invest program would rip a $5 billion hole in the state’s transportation budget, taking away free public transit rides for young people, funding for bus routes, and more. The legislature would have to rework the budget, making tough calls on what bridges they want to replace and what roads they’ll have to close because they can’t be repaired, said Lennon Bronsema, vice president of campaigns at the Washington Conservation Action, a nonprofit that’s part of the No on 2117 committee.

Voting down the law would also take away funding for improving air quality in the state’s most polluted communities. “Those people who want to repeal the Climate Commitment Act are going to try to foist down our throats, and our kids’ lungs, more pollution,” said Governor Inslee in comments to the press last month. “They want to destroy our protection for our kids’ breathing.” And it would add more carbon to the atmosphere as the state struggles with the effects of climate change: freak heat waves, unusually large and destructive forest fires, and declining snowpack on mountains, a key water source for the region.

The repeal could have repercussions at the national level, too. New York recently unveiled plans for a cap-and-invest program, and officials are monitoring the backlash in Washington state. “If this repeal initiative succeeds, it would be a blow to that momentum,” said Caroline Jones, a senior analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund. Last year, an Environmental Defense Fund analysis found that the United States can’t meet its international commitments under the Paris Agreement without follow-through from states on their goals. Washington is one of the few states on track to meet its carbon-cutting targets, thanks largely to the Climate Commitment Act, Jones said.

So how did the state end up with a law that Jones considers a “gold standard” for state climate policy — and also something that oil companies support?

For the oil industry, part of the appeal lies in the law’s exemptions. Since BP and other crude refiners fall under the category of “emissions-intensive, trade-exposed” industries, they get some pollution permits free, making it cheaper to comply with the law. When the cap-and-invest program was rolled out, about 50 percent of the credits were handed out to major polluters to use, said Caitlin Krenn, a climate and clean energy campaign manager at Washington Conservation Action. 

Refineries get 100 percent of their allowances at no cost for the first four years of the program — after that, it’ll go down to 97 percent. That’s because of fears that these facilities would relocate elsewhere if Washington put strict regulations on them. But the fuel suppliers of gas and diesel, which might be owned by the same company that operates a refinery, don’t get any credits for free, Krenn said.

After the Climate Commitment Act passed in 2021, BP, which owns the state’s largest oil refinery near Bellingham, spent about $270 million on efficiency upgrades at its facility, estimated to reduce the refinery’s emissions by 7 percent. Cutting its emissions earlier than necessary gave BP the leeway to bank, trade, or sell its allowances. “The Climate Commitment Act rewards us for that. So, it’s not just a stick. It’s also a carrot,” Tom Wolf, a BP government relations manager for the West Coast, told the Seattle Times several months after Inslee signed the legislation into law. “We were doing this anyway … but there’s no doubt that it [the act] makes it even better.” 

If the Climate Commitment Act gets shot down in November, it would also make it hard for companies to plan for the future. “If the program disappeared, then we’re kind of back at square one,” said Slagle, of the Western States Petroleum Association. “And so then, what might happen down the road?”

Read Next

Washington’s cap on carbon is raising billions for climate action. Can it survive the backlash?

Kate Yoder

Businesses have long advocated for a market-based approach to climate policy instead of what they see as heavy-handed regulatory measures. That’s part of the reason the Climate Commitment Act ended up structured as it is, with prices set at auctions and polluters able to buy and sell permits. 

“It is a solution that is market-based, right? That is what business needed to have some predictability around this,” Bronsema said. “The alternative is an incredibly heavy hammer from the government that might bring down emissions but isn’t going to help provide all the benefits that the Climate Commitment Act does.”

What the oil industry doesn’t like about the current program is the costs. At the first auction a year ago, the price of emitting a ton of carbon landed at $49, nearly double the average price in California’s cap-and-trade market at the time. Over the course of the year, the price rose to $63 a ton, triggering extra “emergency” auctions meant to ensure businesses can access enough allowances at reasonable prices. 

Washington is currently pursuing linking its carbon market with ones in California and Quebec, a move Slagle favors since it’s likely to bring down the cost of allowances. That whole process, though, may be getting slowed down by the repeal initiative.

Early polling shows that proponents of the repeal, Initiative 2117, have some convincing to do. In a poll released last October, 41 percent of Washingtonians would vote yes on the repeal versus 49 percent who would vote it down. That leaves almost 10 percent undecided, and historically, voters in the state have tended to reject initiatives, according to analysis by Washington Conservation Action. Washington politics has changed since the late 1990s and mid-2000s, when voters approved initiatives to get rid of vehicle taxes and limit property taxes, sponsored by anti-tax advocate Tim Eyman. 

“People really want to know, like, ‘This is a good idea to repeal this,’” Bronsema said. “And I think we have a strong case that it’s not a great idea.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Washington’s key climate law is under attack. Big Oil wants it to survive. on Feb 13, 2024.

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

]]> https://grist.org/politics/washington-cap-and-invest-law-repeal-oil-companies/feed/ 0 458396 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/25/report-from-gaza-palestinian-journalist-akram-al-satarri-on-the-struggle-to-survive-stay-sane/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/25/report-from-gaza-palestinian-journalist-akram-al-satarri-on-the-struggle-to-survive-stay-sane/#respond Thu, 25 Jan 2024 13:12:30 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1a308f01441be830d8d5b6c5332f2368

We go to Rafah to speak with Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Gaza as the death toll continues to climb amid Israel’s relentless assault on the territory. The Health Ministry says at least 20 people were killed Thursday as they lined up to receive humanitarian aid, and at least 12 others were killed a day earlier at a U.N. shelter hit by tank shells. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have surrounded the two main hospitals in Khan Younis, stranding thousands of patients and displaced people inside, and evacuated a third hospital. Over 1.7 million people have been displaced in Gaza and more than 25,000 have been killed in Israel’s assault over the past three months, as the population continues to move further south in a desperate search for safety. “People are dying. People are scared,” says al-Satarri. “There is an eradication attempt that is taking place in Gaza.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/25/report-from-gaza-palestinian-journalist-akram-al-satarri-on-the-struggle-to-survive-stay-sane/feed/ 0 454808 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/how-uzbeks-use-ancient-methods-to-survive-the-cold-in-an-energy-crisis/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/how-uzbeks-use-ancient-methods-to-survive-the-cold-in-an-energy-crisis/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:38:32 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=25ebccc6ba4805176fab22fd7ca2051d
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/how-uzbeks-use-ancient-methods-to-survive-the-cold-in-an-energy-crisis/feed/ 0 450746 https://grist.org/politics/washington-carbon-cap-investments-gas-prices/ https://grist.org/politics/washington-carbon-cap-investments-gas-prices/#respond Mon, 08 Jan 2024 09:30:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=626635 For months now, it’s been free for anyone 18 or younger to ride the light rail through Seattle, the ferry across Puget Sound, and buses all over Washington state. As students tapped their new ORCA cards and hopped on the bus, probably the last thing they were thinking about was the state’s carbon pricing program, the source of funding behind their free ride.

One year after it went into effect, Washington’s “cap-and-invest” system has already brought in an eyebrow-raising $2.2 billion for action on climate change. The Climate Commitment Act, signed by Governor Jay Inslee in 2021, establishes a statewide limit on greenhouse gas emissions that steadily lowers over time. The law also creates a market, like California’s, for businesses to buy “allowances” for the carbon pollution they emit, prodding them to cut their emissions — and at the same time generating a boatload of money to tackle climate change. Touted as the “gold standard” for state climate policy, the law requires Washington to slash its emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as the baseline.

The program’s early success has attracted attention — praise from climate advocates and pushback from anti-tax hawks. A hedge fund manager named Brian Heywood has funded a petition drive to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, over its effects on gas prices, along with other petitions to strike down the state’s capital gains tax, give the police more leeway to pursue vehicles, and grant parents access to their kids’ medical records at school. The repeal could be headed to voters as a ballot initiative this November. If voters approve it, Heywood’s initiative wouldn’t just cancel the climate law; it would block the state from creating any other cap-and-trade system in the future.

“This is going to force us to do a better job communicating and defending our policies,” said Joe Nguyễn, a state senator representing White Center, an area just south of Seattle, who chairs the state’s Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee.

Experts said that the law is already having tangible benefits. Businesses, hoping to avoid paying for costly pollution “allowances,” are figuring out how to run their operations while emitting less carbon. Meanwhile, the revenue from the program is spurring clean energy efforts, including a large-scale solar project by the Yakama Nation, and attracting green industries like clean hydrogen. The funding will also help families install energy-efficient (and money-saving) heat pumps and provide incentives for garbage trucks, delivery vans, and buses to go electric.

The fate of the climate law could have ripple effects beyond Washington, the second state to adopt a cap on carbon after California. New York, for example, just unveiled plans for a cap-and-invest program in December. Officials in New York are closely monitoring the backlash in Washington state, and, in turn, other Northeastern states are watching New York to see what it decides. If Washington’s law goes up in flames, states might decide against enshrining similar carbon-cutting laws. But if it survives the backlash, it could boost other politicians’ confidence in putting a price on carbon pollution.

Grist spoke with experts in Washington about the lessons they’ve learned, one year into the program. They suggested that advocates for any stringent carbon price should be ready to play defense right away — and should work to make its benefits tangible to people around the state.

“The success of the Climate Commitment Act will depend on whether real people in real neighborhoods are actually seeing better infrastructure and things like better transit, home weatherization and electrification, and reductions in emissions from industry,” said Deric Gruen, co-executive director of the Front and Centered, an environmental justice coalition based in Seattle.

The gas price debacle

If the state’s residents have heard anything about the law, it’s most likely been about the bane of politics: the price of gasoline. Washington’s gas prices soared to $4.91 a gallon on average in June, the highest in the country. 

Almost as soon as the first auction to sell pollution credits was held in March, raising $300 million, opponents started drawing a connection between the climate law and “pain at the pump.” The price of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide clocked in at $49, nearly double the average price in California’s cap-and-trade market at the time. Kelly Hall, the Washington director for the regional nonprofit Climate Solutions, attributes the higher prices to the stringency of Washington’s program, which requires more ambitious carbon dioxide cuts than California’s.

In a YouTube video promoting the repeal campaign, Heywood calls the law a “sneaky” gas tax and characterizes it as a money-grab by the state government. “Who knows where [the money] goes?” he asks in the video. He maintains that Inslee and state Democrats weren’t upfront about its potential cost to drivers of gas-powered vehicles. Last year, Heywood hired signature gatherers to go around the state, and in November, they turned in more than 400,000 signatures to repeal the climate law. If enough of those signatures pass the verification process, the repeal initiative will be headed to voters this November.

“Once those auctions were high, there were billboards and ad campaigns and everything blaming the price of gas on this,” said David Mendoza, the director of government relations at The Nature Conservancy in Seattle. “Being ready for that pushback as soon as implementation actually gets started, I think is key.”

State officials have estimated that the program added somewhere around 26 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, though some economists have put the number as high as 55 cents. Confidentiality rules around which companies are participating in cap-and-trade auctions make the analysis difficult. Lawmakers like Nguyễn are working on a “transparency bill,” similar to one that went into effect in California last year, that aims to open financial records from oil companies to see if they’re price gouging.

Proponents of the Climate Commitment Act argue that Washington’s gas prices have always been higher than the national average — they reached $5.50 in 2022, before the climate law began — and that oil companies are choosing to pass the costs onto consumers. They also point out that drivers of electric vehicles in the state are paying the equivalent of less than $1.50 a gallon in electricity. Last year, tens of thousands of Washingtonians switched to electric vehicles. 

“If we are concerned about the cost of transportation for Washington businesses and residents, we have to keep our focus away from the arm-waving of the variations of gas prices that we’ve suffered through for decades and really look to true solutions,” said Michael Mann, the executive director for Clean & Prosperous Washington, a climate-friendly business coalition. “And the true solution to lower our transportation costs is to get off of fossil fuels.”

Who’s getting the money?

Legislators are using the revenue from the auctions for dozens of programs to tackle the state’s two biggest sources of carbon emissions: transportation and buildings. They have set aside $400 million for public transit projects, including the free transit for youth program, and $120 million for electrifying garbage trucks, delivery vans, school buses, and other large vehicles. Another $115 million is earmarked for rebates to help low-income households and small businesses install energy-efficient equipment like heat pumps, a key tool for lowering carbon emissions and energy bills.

The Climate Commitment Act requires that at least 35 percent of the investments go toward “overburdened communities,” such as the $25 million that’s for improving air quality in polluted neighborhoods. An additional 10 percent of investments are set aside for projects that directly benefit Native American tribes. The state budgeted $50 million to help tribes address climate change and adapt to its effects, for example, and $20 million for the Yakama Nation’s utility to build solar panels over irrigation canals. 

The rest of the proceeds go to cleaning up transportation, accelerating the shift to clean energy, and helping communities and ecosystems withstand the effects of climate change, without specific percentages attached. 

Front and Centered, which originally opposed the law based on concerns that cap-and-trade would fail to limit pollution, is now focused on making sure that communities get their promised share of the revenue. “The conversation is leaning into this thing about gas prices,” said Gruen, the group’s co-executive director, “but the attention really needs to be on effectiveness in reducing pollution and justice for frontline communities, and that seems to be getting lost in the conversation.” He says that communities should get more of a say in the budgeting process, so they get to be part of climate solutions in their neighborhoods. 

It’s taking a while for some projects to get up and running, but that’s sort of the nature of the work, Mendoza said. “From my own engagement with government agencies, they’re trying to do things differently,” he said. “They know that they need to invest in overburdened communities. They know they want to reach smaller organizations to get in a pipeline to receive these funds that invest directly in communities.”

How things are changing for businesses

Climate policies are often discussed in terms of “carrots” (the rewards) and “sticks” (the punishments for emissions). The “stick” in Washington’s law prompts businesses to clean up their act so they don’t have to pay for pollution credits. Some progress is already happening on that front, according to Mann of Clean and Prosperous. The oil giant BP, which supported the Climate Commitment Act, spent about $270 million on efficiency upgrades at its refinery in Cherry Point near Bellingham, estimated to reduce the facility’s emissions by 7 percent. Washington’s law also gave the U.S. its first all-electric Amtrak bus line when the transportation company MTRWestern, which contracted with Amtrak, swapped its diesel-powered bus between Seattle and Bellingham for one that charges on electricity.

Then there are the carrots. Every dollar invested by the state has yielded $5 in federal money through matching grant programs from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, according to Nguyễn. Legislators in other states are jealous, he said, “because we were able to take advantage of these things when they couldn’t, and it’s going to really accelerate the work that we’re doing.”

The global mining company Fortescue, for example, obtained $20 million from the state to build a multibillion-dollar “clean hydrogen” plant in Centralia, Washington, near an old coal-fired power plant that’s set to retire in 2025. (Hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in a range of tough-to-decarbonize industries, from aviation to steelmaking.) The project was recently awarded an additional $1 billion in federal funds. Without the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act, Mann said, getting the grant money from the state that made the project eligible for federal funding “would have been next to impossible.”

Another example is Group14, a Seattle startup that’s building the world’s largest factory for advanced silicon battery materials, which promises to make the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs more powerful and faster-charging. The factory, set to open in Moses Lake, Washington later this year, is expected to provide enough battery materials for 200,000 electric vehicles every year. It’s bolstered by funds from Washington’s program and the federal bipartisan infrastructure law.

Whatever happens next with Washington’s cap-and-invest law, whether it gets overturned or continues to bring in billions for climate action, it’s bound to influence how other states choose to tackle global warming. “It’s so funny when people see these things like this happen, and they say, ‘Oh, well, this went wrong, and that went wrong, and that went wrong,’” Nguyễn said. “And it’s like, of course — that’s what leadership looks like. You know, nobody had a map of how this was supposed to happen.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Washington’s cap on carbon is raising billions for climate action. Can it survive the backlash? on Jan 8, 2024.

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

]]> https://grist.org/politics/washington-carbon-cap-investments-gas-prices/feed/ 0 450258 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/migrant-workers-12282023100847.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/migrant-workers-12282023100847.html#respond Thu, 28 Dec 2023 15:50:05 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/migrant-workers-12282023100847.html China's army of migrant workers has been hot hard by the economic downtown, with many citing a wave of bankruptcies, factory closures and mass layoffs, telling Radio Free Asia in recent interviews that jobs are getting harder and harder to come by, as wages shrink. 

Despite reassuring claims of modest economic recovery from the ruling Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing, the struggling economy has left employers and governments unable to pay wages, or forced companies to shut down facilities and lay off staff.

All of that comes at a time when China's hundreds of millions of migrant workers might normally be hoping to earn some extra cash ahead of the Lunar New Year festivities in February.

"There are so many people out of work," one unemployed worker in his twenties who gave only the nickname Marginalized Mainlander said in a recent interview with RFA.

"This only started happening this past year," said the man, who has moved from city to city looking for construction work, and is now camped out in the workplace dormitory of an employed friend.

"A while back, it used to be so easy to find construction work," he said, adding that he had tried driving for a ride-hailing service in Shanghai, but gave up after he did the math.

"I was driving 12-hour shifts, and only making 280 yuan [US$39]," Marginalized said, adding that he and other drivers would sleep in their car for days on end to save on time and expenses. "I needed to make more than 300 just to break even."

After a few days, he quit the app, losing all of his deposit in the process.

"There were a lot of other people in the same boat," he said.

Marginalized said he would give it another couple of weeks, then head back to his hometown in rural Guangdong province if nothing turned up.

He's not the only one struggling.

June figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics showed a more than 21% unemployment rate among the country's 18-24 year-olds, a statistic that has since withdrawn for review, according to officials.

In July, Peking University scholar Zhang Dandan published a study showing that if all the young people who have moved back into their parental home to "lie flat" were counted, the March figure would be closer to 46.5%.

Meanwhile, new housing construction figures have taken a nosedive, falling by 21.2% from January through November, implying far fewer jobs for migrant workers to chase.

Manufacturing sector layoffs

It's a similar story in manufacturing.

Twentysomething Zhang Wei was laid off from his job at an electronics factory in June, and has been unemployed ever since.

The factory, based in the central city of Wuhan, had once made parts for Samsung mobile phones, but the orders were drying up, and only three out of its four production lines were operational at the time he was let go, said Zhang, who also asked to be identified by a pseudonym.

Zhang, who has a college degree, used to carry out quality inspections of smartphone screens, a skilled job.

"The problem is that the new workers coming in are cheaper," he said. "The electronics factory leadership were inhumane."

"They talk about high wages when they recruit you, but once you're in, it's different," Zhang said, in a reference to the labor agencies that typically recruit migrant factory workers. "They can fire you just like that."

"There are too many people unemployed, and you can't get a job just for the asking," he said, adding that this year has been the worst he has known, with agencies undercutting his requested salary by up to 20%.

He said the 4,000 yuan, or US$560, he was recently offered just isn't enough to make work, which he likened to prison labor, worthwhile.

"Who would want to go to prison for 4,000 yuan a month?" Zhang said. "Your hands never stop, you have to sit upright, and they report everything you do -- what's that if not a prison?"

Even more privileged white-collar workers are feeling the pinch this winter.

A state-sector computer systems analyst who gave only the nickname Pikachu for fear of reprisals said he has applied for jobs as wide-ranging as community grid worker, hospital IT specialist, and even student counselor at a university since quitting his job due to family circumstances.

"I went to apply for a community grid worker job a couple of days ago," he said. "They were looking to recruit 15 people, and when I went to take the exam, more than 1,000 applicants showed up."

Pikachu has been actively sending out resumes, but says he rarely hears back from anyone. He is also considering taking the civil service exams, but that route into a safe official job is now also massively oversubscribed.

"Five times oversubscribed," he said. "A lot of people sign up to try their luck, even if they don't meet the recruitment criteria."

And there is likely no way back to his former job, either.

"I heard that at least half of the employees will be laid off," he said, citing rumors from former colleagues.

As young men, Zhang, Pikachu and Marginalized aren't even among the most marginalized in the Chinese labor market. Women and people over 35 are likely to struggle even more than they do with job-hunting in the current climate.

Bosses clear out

China's former factory and company bosses, meanwhile, are shutting up shop, with many leaving the country in the wake of the zero-COVID restrictions, citing a deteriorated political situation under Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

Ren Xiaoyao has spent the last five years in a controlled shutdown of his three real estate companies, laying off more than 200 employees in the process, many of whom have since struggled to find work.

"They're pretty skilled, but only a few found jobs, and even those found they could only get one-third of their original salary," Ren, who gave a pseudonym for fear of reprisals,  told RFA from his new home in North America.

He said he left China "because Xi Jinping wanted to be an emperor," in a reference to Xi's abolition of presidential term limits and ongoing moves to concentrate executive power in his own hands in recent years.

"When he put [the abolition of term limits] on the agenda, I decided to shut down all of my China businesses," Ren said.

Fellow entrepreneur Cai Shenkun said his company is suffering from Xi's moves to enlarge and enrich the state sector at the expense of private companies, which once accounted for around 80% of jobs in the Chinese economy, according to official figures.

"State-owned enterprises lead the bidding for major projects, so companies like ours are gradually being shut out of the industry," said Cai, who runs a smart-lock identification tech company and is a prominent blogger and current affairs commentator.

"State-owned companies have basically taken a dominant position."

Cai has been planning to shutter his company for three years, but has hesitated because his employees have nowhere else to go.

"I am encouraging them to find other jobs, but they haven't yet, and they are still there," he said. "I keep telling them they can leave any time because there's no more business."

Eventually, Cai expects the firm to go under next year, like many others in the sector.

"Some of my friends' companies used to be very big, but now they've basically stopped or reduced production," he said. "They don't think they'll survive — it's a very common phenomenon."

Going out of business

While official figures pointing to economic damage are hard to find, due to the government's insistence on positive news about the economy, the financial website Titanium Media recently reported that some 90% of companies in the chip industry had gone out of business during the course of 2023.

Thousands of rural tourism businesses have also gone out of business, according to a report in The Paper, while industrial profits fell by 7.8% and the average number of employees in listed companies fell by 12% between 2018 and 2022, according to government figures.

While Cai and Ren have no plans to go back to China, Marginalized, Zhang Wei and Pikachu have little choice but to try to weather the economic gloom.

"If I have no money, people will look down on me," said Zhang, who dare not go home yet. "I don't know how I'm going to survive this winter."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Wang Yun for RFA Mandarin.

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/migrant-workers-12282023100847.html/feed/ 0 448218 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/22/ukraine-innovates-to-survive-as-moscow-advances-near-bakhmut-and-avdiyivka/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/22/ukraine-innovates-to-survive-as-moscow-advances-near-bakhmut-and-avdiyivka/#respond Fri, 22 Dec 2023 08:09:23 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b68c1c62151b5d7c128c11b3a621a44a
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/22/ukraine-innovates-to-survive-as-moscow-advances-near-bakhmut-and-avdiyivka/feed/ 0 447388 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/why-are-we-still-here-and-how-will-we-survive/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/why-are-we-still-here-and-how-will-we-survive/#respond Thu, 21 Dec 2023 22:02:36 +0000 https://progressive.org/magazine/why-are-we-still-here-and-how-will-we-survive-devon-20231221/
This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Jeanne Chilton Devon.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/why-are-we-still-here-and-how-will-we-survive/feed/ 0 447313 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/11/we-only-ate-rice-for-a-week-refugees-struggle-to-survive-in-jordan/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/11/we-only-ate-rice-for-a-week-refugees-struggle-to-survive-in-jordan/#respond Mon, 11 Dec 2023 11:13:57 +0000 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/we-only-ate-rice-for-a-week-yemeni-sudanese-refugees-struggle-to-survive-in-jordan/
This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Melissa Pawson.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/11/we-only-ate-rice-for-a-week-refugees-struggle-to-survive-in-jordan/feed/ 0 444919 https://grist.org/extreme-weather/marshall-islands-national-adaptation-plan-sea-level-rise-cop28/ https://grist.org/extreme-weather/marshall-islands-national-adaptation-plan-sea-level-rise-cop28/#respond Tue, 05 Dec 2023 10:50:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=624271 The Marshall Islands extend across a wide stretch of the Pacific Ocean, with dozens of coral atolls sitting just a few feet above sea level. The smallest of the islands are just a few hundred feet wide, barely large enough for a road or a row of houses. The country’s total landmass makes up an area smaller than the city of Baltimore, but it occupies an ocean territory almost the size of Mexico.  

Over the past two years, government officials have fanned out across the country, visiting remote towns and villages as well as urban centers like its capital of Majuro to examine how Marshallese communities are experiencing and coping with climate change. They found that a combination of rapid sea-level rise and drought has already made life untenable for many of the country’s 42,000 residents, especially on outlying atolls where communities rely on rainwater and vanishing land for subsistence. 

The survey was part of a groundbreaking, five-year effort by the Marshall Islands to craft a sweeping adaptation strategy that charts the country’s response to the threat of climate change. The plan, shared with Grist ahead of its release at COP28 in Dubai, calls for tens of billions of dollars of new spending to fortify low-lying islands and secure water supplies. Representatives from the Marshall Islands say the plan shows that their country can remain livable well into the next century — but only if developed countries are willing to help. Even with aid, the plan concedes many Marshallese will likely need to migrate away from their home islands, or even leave the country altogether for the United States, as climate impacts worsen.

“We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan,” said John Silk, the foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, during a closed-doors panel conversation at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in New York in September.

Other vulnerable countries have submitted adaptation plans to the United Nations before, and some have even planned large-scale relocations to escape sea-level rise, but the Marshall Islands plan is different, and not only because of the existential nature of climate risk in the country. As they developed the plan, government officials interviewed more than 3 percent of the country’s population — some 1,362 people — during 123 days of site visits on two dozen islands and atolls. The only other national adaptation plan that has involved any community participation was that of the island nation of St. Lucia, in the Caribbean. In that case, officials interviewed only 100 people.

“We’re about to make a huge change to our islands, and we can’t do that if we just make that decision unilaterally as government representatives,” said Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, a poet and activist who serves as the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy, in an exclusive interview with Grist ahead of the plan’s release. “It has to come from the community themselves too, because they’re the ones getting impacted.”

Experts who reviewed the plan described it as among the most comprehensive attempts by any country to plan for long-term climate impacts.

“This is one of the most thoughtful and meticulous long-term adaptation plans I’ve seen,” said Michael Gerrard, a law professor at Columbia University who has studied climate adaptation policy, including the Marshall Islands. “The plan doesn’t just wring hands; it sets forth a systematic decision-making process.”

Almost half of the Marshall Island residents interviewed for the plan said they’d witnessed sea-level rise in their communities, and nearly a quarter said they’d experienced a water shortage. More than 1 in 5 said climate change had threatened food security for their households.

The rural, northern island of Wotho, for example, has long served as a “food basket” for the rest of the Marshall Islands. But officials found that a slew of disasters has jeopardized life there. Houses flood with every high tide, the airstrip goes underwater during big storms, household wells pull up salty water, salt-scourged breadfruit trees produce rotten fruit, and fish have abandoned bleached coral reefs. 

Science predicts it will only get worse. Even under the most optimistic projections, which assume immediate action to limit global warming, the Marshall Islands will experience almost two feet of sea-level rise before the end of the century. That’s enough to expose thousands more Marshallese citizens to constant flooding and extreme food and water insecurity, rendering some of the country’s islands all but unlivable. Under the worst projections, which predict more than six feet of sea-level rise by 2150, many islands and atolls would disappear underwater entirely.

Even so, the community engagement process revealed that migrating away from their home islands is anathema to almost all Marshallese. More than 99 percent of interviewed residents rejected the idea of migration — as one respondent put it to an interviewer, “We will die here.”

The plan arrives as climate negotiators at COP28 debate major new funding commitments to help developing countries adapt to climate change and deal with climate losses. Leaders from the Marshall Islands say their plan highlights the urgent need for billions of dollars of new adaptation funding from developed nations. In other parts of the world, adaptation means the difference between bad impacts and worse impacts. In the Marshall Islands, successful adaptation means the difference between survival and extinction.

“My hope for my own home is that it remains here long enough for me to give back to the land,” said Jobod Silk, a youth climate representative from the Marshall Islands who conducted community interviews for the plan. “I hope that we remain on our land, that we remain sovereign, and that we’re never labeled as climate change refugees.”

---

Climate change is not the first time residents of the Marshall Islands have dealt with environmental devastation. After the United States defeated Japan in World War II, it took control of the country through a trust backed by the United Nations. Over the course of a decade, the U.S. dropped more than 60 nuclear bombs on Bikini Atoll and other islands as part of a secretive weapons testing program. The fallout from these tests poisoned the water on nearby islands and caused higher rates of cancer and birth defects for many Marshallese. Fish near the U.S. military base on Kwajalein Island have been found to contain dangerous levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Now, a generation later, sea-level rise and drought are again disrupting life for many Marshallese, threatening the homes and health of families that fled nuclear fallout just a few decades ago. Even before the development of the new adaptation plan, many residents of vulnerable villages had already started to alter their behaviors to cope with the new reality of climate change. During site visits to outlying atolls, Marshallese officials witnessed residents of one island constructing makeshift seawalls out of trash. They found that fishermen on another island had started to fish as a collective in waters where reefs have degraded and fish stocks have plummeted, combining their efforts so that they catch enough food for their entire community. 

In the short term, the new plan proposes to support these community-led adaptation efforts with billions of dollars of new money from other countries. U.N.-backed programs have already helped deliver rainwater-harvesting devices to outlying islands and build vertical vegetable gardens on others. With more money, the Marshallese government says it could expand air and sea shipments to these small islands to ensure a supply of substitute food, or provide canoes to every household as alternate transportation when roads are flooded. The plan defers to residents of outlying atolls by emphasizing what it calls “low-technology community initiatives and nature-based solutions” over engineered interventions like seawalls and dikes.

“This document is a self-determined document,” said Broderick Menke, an official at the Marshall Islands climate change directorate who served as the technical expert on the plan. “It’s not just the government making points, and it’s not just a consultant making decisions and providing answers. The roots of all of this is us coming together as the community and talking.”

In order to pursue these adaptation measures, the government will need to contemplate changes to the system of land ownership in the Marshall Islands. The country has almost no public land, and families pass down their properties along matrilineal lines, so the government can’t unilaterally build seawalls or set aside coastal areas for conservation, and disrupting this land tenure system would involve difficult conversations with traditional island leaders. The country also needs to update its environmental regulations and building codes in order to implement its short-term adaptation push.

Marshallese leaders say they can overcome these obstacles, and they stress that a fully funded portfolio of solutions would protect even the country’s most vulnerable islands for decades to come. But the plan also contains a grim warning that these adaptation efforts will not be able to protect the entire country indefinitely against future sea-level rise.

“The adaptation pathway for sparsely populated neighboring atolls and other islands comes down to buying time until sea level rise and other climate change impacts render the islands uninhabitable,” the plan says.

In addition to identifying adaptation strategies for droughts and flooding, the authors of the plan also had to create a procedure for deciding when and how to give up on protecting vulnerable areas. To that end, the plan lays out a phased “pathway” for adaptation, with “decision points” arriving over the next century as climate impacts worsen. This framework focuses attention and funding on short-term triage for vulnerable outlying islands like Wotho, and defers big decisions about the country’s future until later decades.

The first phase of the plan calls for the government to do everything possible over the next 20 years to protect vulnerable islands, leading up to a “decision point” some time between 2040 and 2050. When that point arrives, if it seems like climate change is going to overwhelm these islands despite adaptation efforts, officials must make a “decision regarding which atolls to protect and consolidate social services.” This wouldn’t involve moving any people or even buildings, but it might mean reducing government investment in education and health services. 

A few decades later, in 2070, the plan calls for an even more difficult decision — officials must “decide which pieces of land are to be protected for the long term” and “build the protection infrastructure … to accommodate relocated populations.” In a sign of the dire outlook for future sea-level rise, the plan suggests choosing as few as four pieces of land for future investment, out of the 24 inhabited islands and atolls in the country right now.

Adaptation experts said the Marshall Islands is one of the first countries to develop a long-term plan for relocating whole segments of its population.

“This is a noteworthy step in adaptation planning,” said Rachel Harrington-Abrams, a researcher at King’s College of London who studies relocation in vulnerable island states. She said the plan is the first from an atoll country like the Marshall Islands that “support[s] in situ adaptation while also enabling long-term planned relocation.” Harrington-Abrams added that island states such as Fiji and Vanuatu have planned to move vulnerable populations to higher ground, but these states have far more solid land than the Marshall Islands does.

The most likely candidates for long-term protection are Majuro and Ebeye, the country’s two main urban hubs. Together, these cities are already home to more than 70 percent of the Marshall Islands’ population, making them some of the most densely populated places in the Pacific. The plan predicts that further migration from rural islands to these cities is “very likely.” 

But these urban hubs, too, are extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise: Even two feet would flood around one-third of Ebeye’s atoll and almost half of Majuro’s. If the government decides to stop protecting rural islands and retrench on the urban ones, it must also fortify these cities so that they can withstand future flooding. The country would begin by investing billions of dollars into new seawalls, dikes, drainage systems, and home elevations, as well as desalination machines and water treatment facilities to cope with saltwater intrusion. A new water treatment plant was installed on Ebeye in 2020 with support from the Australian government and the Asian Development Bank, giving residents of the city reliable access to clean running water for the first time.

Full protection against six feet of sea-level rise would require a much more radical adaptation strategy. The plan calls for the government to raise entire segments of land on Majuro and Ebeye by as much as 12½ feet, high enough to escape not only rising tides but also groundwater penetration. In addition to raising the existing cities, the country would also need to construct new reclaimed land by dredging the ocean floor. The plan projects that a new landmass to accommodate 10,000 people would need to be about 1.4 square miles, or a little larger than New York’s Central Park. 

This type of land construction project has already been undertaken in the Maldives, which built an artificial island called Hulhumalé in the early 2000s to prepare for sea-level rise. That island is now home to more than 50,000 people. But the remoteness of the Marshall Islands, and the “technical feasibility” of land construction there, would likely drive the cost of such a construction project into the billions.

The last and most painful decision point, Marshallese officials found, will arrive at the year 2100. By that point, without massive investment in adaptation, many parts of the country will likely have become uninhabitable. The plan calls for leaders to make a profound choice about the future existence of the Marshall Islands itself.

“If by 2100, no decision can be made to protect areas of atolls to the [six-foot] sea level rise level, or if there is no funding for it, then the decision must be to help all population to migrate away from RMI,” or the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the plan says.

The most likely destination for these departing residents would be the United States: The Marshall Islands declared independence from the U.S. in 1979 but later signed a “compact of free association” with the country, allowing Marshallese residents unrestricted migration to the United States. In exchange, the U.S. exerts significant control over Marshallese waters and airspace, giving it a strategic military foothold in the Pacific.

The country’s population has already fallen by around 20 percent over the past decade as many citizens leave seeking jobs and education in the U.S. The majority of these migrants have settled in Oregon, Washington, and Arkansas. More than 12,000 have settled in the city of Springdale, Arkansas, alone. The city now holds annual Marshallese festivals and cultural events.

The creators of the plan emphasize that international migration is an absolute last resort, and one that the overwhelming majority of Marshallese residents oppose. During the government’s hundred-plus community meetings, fewer than 1 percent of interviewed citizens expressed support for migration as a climate adaptation strategy, indicating an almost total rejection of relocation policies. The plan doesn’t go into detail about how to implement such policies, or about how the Marshall Islands’ government could provide support or restitution for residents who have to move.

The losses that will accompany this migration are impossible to quantify, said John Silk, the foreign minister, at the panel in September. A large-scale relocation would make it impossible for many Marshallese to be buried on their home islands, a key part of Marshallese culture, and it would further erase Indigenous navigation methods that Marshallese sailors have used for millennia. 

“Loss to us is not just a financial loss or an economic loss; it’s a cultural loss if people have to migrate from their own home island to another place,” Silk said at the panel. “Even if you go to another part of the Marshall Islands, and you build a seawall, and we bring our people there, they will never feel at home, because they’re not.”

Despite the pain that would accompany such a large migratory movement, the creators of the adaptation plan view the plan as an optimistic document. If the Marshall Islands’ government can raise the money it needs for adaptation, it could also address some other challenges the country is already facing. It could bolster social services and health outcomes on rural outlying islands, reversing the trend of population loss and the rapid growth of Majuro and Ebeye. Such an investment in infrastructure and social resilience might even help stem the tide of out-migration to the United States.

“I think you can go even a step further, to bringing back the migrants that are going out of the Marshall Islands,” said Menke, the technical expert on the plan. “Marshallese go out there [to the United States] for education and for all these other services, but you know, they just have a … feeling of being away from home.”

The cost of achieving that future could run to an astonishing $35 billion, according to the plan, equivalent to around $800,000 for every current resident of the Marshall Islands. And the country needs to raise that money sooner rather than later, since the cost of adaptation will only increase as time goes on and climate impacts worsen.

Much of this money would need to come in the form of direct aid from rich countries like the United States, but the Marshall Islands could pull down some of it through international adaptation funds like the Green Climate Fund, or through multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank. If these aren’t enough, leaders may also need to pursue alternative financing mechanisms like an international tax on maritime shipping emissions, which the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands proposed in 2021. 

Even so, rich countries aren’t currently providing anywhere near enough adaptation finance to fund the entire plan, said Rebecca Carter, the lead adaptation researcher at the World Resources Institute, an environmental research nonprofit.

“If it was just the Republic of Marshall Islands, maybe there would be enough, but when we start multiplying their numbers by how many other places are facing similar threats, that’s when it becomes really untenable,” she told Grist.

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Leaders from the Marshall Islands hope their plan helps sway the international negotiations underway in Dubai. Negotiators are currently debating how much money developed countries should send poorer countries for climate adaptation, as well as how to measure the success of adaptation projects. The Marshall Islands’ in-depth adaptation plan shows both the urgent need for new funding, as well as the need to develop adaptation solutions in concert with affected communities, Jetn̄il-Kijiner says.

“I hope that it sheds light on the importance of adaptation and what communities like ours are being forced to plan for,” she said. “We’re trying to set a standard for how to engage with your own community and how to plan for these types of impacts.”

As the consequences of climate change in the Pacific grow more severe, the Marshall Islands and other small island states have become a leading force in international climate negotiations. The late Tony de Brum, a long-serving minister for the Republic, was a key architect of the Paris Agreement, and subsequent Marshallese leaders have pushed for even more ambitious mitigation targets, as well as big funding commitments for adaptation and climate reparations. (The country accounts for around .00001 percent of historical greenhouse gas emissions.)

Now Jetn̄il-Kijiner says the country’s adaptation plan could provide a blueprint for other countries facing down the threat of climate change. Instead of just assessing future risk or selecting infrastructure projects, leaders in the Marshall Islands used the planning process as an opportunity to deepen the bonds between the government and its citizens. They say the plan shows that it’s possible to pursue adaptation from the bottom up, rather than the top down.

“It’s a lot of responsibility to have to hold the hand of our community and say, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but this is something that we have to face, but it’s OK, we’re going to face it together,’” Jetn̄il-Kijiner told Grist. “I think that’s something that takes a lot of delicacy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside the Marshall Islands’ life-or-death plan to survive climate change on Dec 5, 2023.

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

]]> https://grist.org/extreme-weather/marshall-islands-national-adaptation-plan-sea-level-rise-cop28/feed/ 0 443721 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/09/a-family-business-fighting-to-survive-in-iran/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/09/a-family-business-fighting-to-survive-in-iran/#respond Thu, 09 Nov 2023 17:00:34 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=0c8ed759985cdaa29c3108c4ef51dd01
This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/09/a-family-business-fighting-to-survive-in-iran/feed/ 0 438305 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/can-an-american-ngo-survive-calling-for-the-decriminalisation-of-sex-work/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/can-an-american-ngo-survive-calling-for-the-decriminalisation-of-sex-work/#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2023 10:00:01 +0000 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/freedom-network-usa-supported-sex-work-decrim-what-happened-next/
This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Jean Bruggeman.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/can-an-american-ngo-survive-calling-for-the-decriminalisation-of-sex-work/feed/ 0 436931 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/13/can-netanyahu-survive-hamass-attack-on-israel/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/13/can-netanyahu-survive-hamass-attack-on-israel/#respond Fri, 13 Oct 2023 05:52:03 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=298429 Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel is without doubt of historic proportions and will be remembered for generations to come. The Israeli death toll has reached 1,200 people and the number of people kidnapped and being held in Gaza is estimated at more than 100. Israelis are realising that Hamas’s success is intricately tied More

The post Can Netanyahu survive Hamas’s attack on Israel? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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Photograph Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – CC BY 2.0

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel is without doubt of historic proportions and will be remembered for generations to come. The Israeli death toll has reached 1,200 people and the number of people kidnapped and being held in Gaza is estimated at more than 100.

Israelis are realising that Hamas’s success is intricately tied to the government’s colossal failures. And that of course has brought up the key question of whether Netanyahu and his messianic government can survive the fallout of the brutal attack.

The accusations are beginning to mount, even as it might take months if not years before we fully understand what happened.

Netanyahu’s strategy has always been to allow Hamas room for manoeuvre in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Palestinian society more generally.

“Those who want to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas,” he stated at a Likud party meeting in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to differentiate between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.”

Following Hamas’s attack, this strategic framework has come increasingly under intense fire.

There is also a lot of talk of an “intelligence failure”, where Hamas outsmarted Israel’s famed Unit 8200, the general secret services – also known as the Shabak – and several other agencies responsible for surveillance.

These intelligence units appear to have been operating under a mistaken colonial paradigm, one that casts Hamas as weak and lacking strategic acumen, leading them to ignore fairly obvious warning signs, such as the military manoeuvres Hamas had been carrying out on Gaza’s beach over the past few months. Perhaps the best phrase for this failure is colonial hubris.

Then there is the “preparedness failure”. This, too, is the result of colonial hubris. More concretely, it has now come out that the military has been moving battalions away from the border with Gaza to secure Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

As of September, some 22 battalions were spread throughout the region while only two remained near Gaza. In Hebron, for example, 600 to 800 soldiers regularly protect about 800 settlers, while three battalions accompany Jewish “prayer” at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

This past weekend an entire battalion that was supposed to secure the Gaza border was sent to protect Jewish settlers who went to pray in Huwara, the Palestinian town where settlers carried out a pogrom. As one commentor put it, the same battalion cannot simultaneously secure the southern region and a pogrom in the West Bank.

The lack of preparedness also bled into the hours and days that followed Hamas’s attack, with military units taking hours before they could reach besieged civilians. The families of those kidnapped feel completely abandoned by the government, while one person living not far from Gaza’s border expressed a sentiment increasingly shared by Israelis: “In this war, something cracked. The contract between us and the state had been clear: we guard the border, and the state guards us. We did our part bravely[…] the State of Israel did not fulfil its part.”

The right-wing government and its supporters have already established a defence. “Now,” they say, “is not the time to point fingers; now we must unite to defeat the common enemies.” Most liberal Zionists have readily adopted this position as well, vehemently criticising anyone who dares to break rank.

A broad unity government appears on the horizon, with former chief of staff and the leader of the opposition political alliance Blue and White, Benny Ganz, publicly indicating that he is willing to enter Netanyahu’s government until the fighting abates.

Yair Lapid, the leader of another opposition party, Yesh Atid (There Is Future), has set out strict conditions under which he would be willing to enter such a government. Some say Lapid is now wavering. Netanyahu knows full well that broadening the government will help stabilise his reign.

At the same time, there is little doubt that a defence playbook for the “day after” is being crafted. Netanyahu and his ministers will blame the different intelligence agencies, the pilots and elite military units who have been associated with those protesting against his government’s judicial overhaul.

They will blame Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Palestinians. They will blame the Supreme Court judges, the media, the army chief of staff and their own defence minister. They will blame the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the anti-Zionist leftists, and the academic staff in Israeli universities. They will also blame the liberal Zionists leading the protest movement.

Netanyahu and his entourage of poodles will spurt their poison and spin the narrative, doing anything and everything possible to secure their seats in power. It is, however, too early to know if they will succeed.

As evidence of the widespread death and destruction comes to light, Israeli public anger will only increase. Thirty-six hours after Hamas’s attacks began, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir finally appeared on the political scene calling for the complete destruction of Hamas while trying to deflect attention away from the quite apparent governmental failures.

“The State of Israel is experiencing one of the most difficult events in its history. This is not the time for questions, tests and investigations,” he said.

A report on his statement in the Walla news outlet garnered over 1,400 angry comments, many of which expressed outrage and a desire to send Ben-Gvir to jail or to exchange him for the hostages Hamas had taken.

But let there be no mistake: despite the wide chasm between the far-right pro-government and the liberal Zionist camps, there are also areas of broad consensus. Both liberal Zionists and their messianic counterparts believe that Netanyahu has been too timid when dealing with Hamas.

Despite the growing criticism, outcry and fury, there also appears to be an agreement that following a massive aerial attack, Israeli infantry will need to enter Gaza to “reestablish deterrence” and get rid of Hamas once and for all.

Many also agree with Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who recently revealed that he has ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”

A desire for violent retribution is the glue that holds Israeli society together at the moment, however tentatively. But this might also be the one key ingredient that Netanyahu needs to stay in power for years to come.

First published in Al Jazeera English

The post Can Netanyahu survive Hamas’s attack on Israel? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Neve Gordon.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/13/can-netanyahu-survive-hamass-attack-on-israel/feed/ 0 434051 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/01/rwc2023-fijians-survive-tough-battle-but-yet-to-confirm-quarterfinal-spot/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/01/rwc2023-fijians-survive-tough-battle-but-yet-to-confirm-quarterfinal-spot/#respond Sun, 01 Oct 2023 09:05:34 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=93875 By Iliesa Tora, RNZ Pacific sports journalist in Bordeaux

The Flying Fijians survived a scare and hung on to win 17-12 against a spirited Georgia in Bordeaux on Sunday morning, giving them hope of a quarterfinal spot at the Rugby World Cup in France.

Having trailed 9-0 at halftime, the Fijians scored two tries in the second half through captain Waisea Nayacalevu and replacement winger Vinaya Habosi.

Georgia gave everything they had and held their own against their much-fancied opponents, even charging for the tryline in the dying minutes of the game.

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More than 42,000 fans could not have asked for a better game as the two teams battled it out on the field.

Both sides had predicted a tough clash.

It turned out to be that way — Georgia dominated the first half, Fiji came back in the second.

Head coach Simon Raiwalui said they lost the plot in the second half and the message was for the team to get back to the basics and play their own game.

‘On the back foot’
“All credit to Georgia, they played really well in the first half. We were a bit on the back foot, we didn’t help ourselves with the basics,” he told the media after the game.

“It was a bit of getting back to basics, we were giving too much ball away in contact. I think we were lucky to [only] be down 9-0 at half-time. It was real tight to the end.

“We said let’s get back to the basics. Get an advantage line, hold the ball and put some pressure back on them.”

Raiwalui said he was not looking too far beyond Portugal next week and they would review the game.

“I am really just worried about Portugal coming up, we have to take care of business,” he said.

“Prepare well and put on a performance. If we look too far beyond that we are going to slip over.

“Georgia played well, they were very clinical in the first half, their forwards were very strong and their back three were very dangerous on the counter-attack.

‘Chased too much’
“The good thing about this team, in the past we may have chased the game too much. This team, behind the leadership of Waisea [Nayacalevu], wasn’t a tidy game but came away with the result.”

Nayacalevu said he kept telling the players to keep fighting when they were down.

“Today we didn’t perform to the best of our ability, credit to Georgia. Coming into this week, we knew Georgia would come with physicality and speed,” he said.

“First half we made a lot of mistakes, I told the boys to keep fighting, next job. Second half we executed a few plays, stuck in the fight and we got the result.

“What game! My feelings, I’m pretty exhausted. The game was tough, shout out to Georgia for a tough game today.

“I am proud of the boys, what a team effort today we didn’t slack off, we kept fighting. I told the boys we have to keep fighting. For the record, we want to be a history-making team and that is our goal. We will take it step by step.”

Georgia led at half-time
Georgia led Fiji 9-0 at half-time, thanks to three successful penalties from winger Davit Niniashvili.

A courageous defence by Georgia and no retreat style of approach saw them create havoc on the field, forcing the Flying Fijians into errors.

The Fijians could not connect with their lineout with hooker Sam Matavesi over-throwing a couple of throw-ins.

While they were able to hold their own in the scrums, the Fijians were not able to put their phases together.

Georgia on the other hand applied the pressure from the opening whistle and combined physical power upfront with flair and speed along the backs.

Luke Tagi lost the ball over the line as the Fijians went on attack midway into the first spell, after they opted for a tap penalty in front of the posts.

Earlier halfback Simione Kuruvoli had sent the ball wide and short from a penalty attempt.

Semi Radradra, captain Waisea Nayacalevu, Ilaisa Droasese and Selestino Ravutaumada made some good breaks but disruptive defence from Georgia thwarted any hopes of those moves scoring points.

While the Georgians worked as a group on attack and had support players around the ball carriers Fiji made the mistake of individual players on attack too many times over.

Fiji had better second half
Radradra received a yellow card early in the half after play resumed and the Fijians were reduced to 14 men for 10 minutes.

Nayacalevu finished off a move in the corner with his try before Frank Lomani kicked from the sideline for the extra two points.

That saw Georgia lead 9-7.

Then Lomani kicked a penalty before replacement Habosi danced his way past would be tacklers after taking the off-loads from Levani Botia who had found his way through the Georgian defence.

At 17-7 the Georgians kept coming back into the game and Luka Matkava kicked a penalty to close the gap to 17-12.

Man of the Match Levani Botia said he was proud of the team coming back the way they did.

“So proud of the boys, I think we struggled in the first half. We gave away opportunities but we came back in the second half,” he said.

Keeping the ball alive
“I think one thing about us Fijians is we like to keep the ball alive, we trust each other, I saw my teammate and I understand I have to give the opportunity. Rugby is rugby, you don’t know what will happen.”

Georgian coach Levan Maisashvili said he was proud of his team despite the loss.

“Obviously I cannot be happy about the final result today, but I am really proud of my team. They did their best, they gave everything, it was not enough to win the match,” he said.

“Unfortunately in the first half we had to change some players, there were many injuries and in the second half as well, so that had a huge impact and we paid the price.

“The first half tactically was pretty well done, there were a couple of individual mistakes when we couldn’t follow our tactic to go straight forward, and to kick the ball out, to put more pressure on the opponent, but every time we had this tactic we had great results in the first half.”

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.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/01/rwc2023-fijians-survive-tough-battle-but-yet-to-confirm-quarterfinal-spot/feed/ 0 431221 https://grist.org/culture/sweat-heat-body-climate-change/ https://grist.org/culture/sweat-heat-body-climate-change/#respond Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=618359 This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live. 

Under the relentless sun in Africa, the birthplace of humanity, every living thing had to find a way to beat the heat. Lions rested in the shade, termites built giant ventilation mounds, and elephants evolved giant ears that could flap like fans. Around 2 million years ago, our ancestors perfected the weirdest technique of them all: pushing water from inside our bodies to outside, a gift for enduring sweltering temperatures.

Other animals can sweat a bit, but not like us. Running around in the heat, a person can shed more than two gallons of water each day, draining one of life’s precious resources at a speedy pace. As the body tries to cool down, blood vessels widen, redirecting hot blood from the core of your body toward the surface. In tandem, sweat glands pump water, drawn from that blood, onto your skin. When those tiny beads evaporate, they carry heat off the body and into the air. 

“It is crucial to being human,” said Yana Kamberov, a geneticist studying the evolution of sweat at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s something that differentiates us from every other animal on the planet” — right up there with our oversized brains. The average person has between 2 and 4 million sweat glands in their skin, at 10 times the density of a chimpanzee’s, one of our closest living relatives. For humans, sweat proved even more useful than protective fur; our thick coat dwindled into peach fuzz to allow water to evaporate more efficiently.

Our biological sprinkler systems are now being put to the test. This summer was not just the hottest three consecutive months on record, but the hottest on Earth in 125,000 years. Phoenix spent 31 days in a row with a high of 110 degrees F or above. Across the Northern Hemisphere, from continent to continent, heat records fell at an alarming pace, with Morocco and China setting all-time highs above 120 degrees F. The swampy Gulf Coast heat soared as high as 115 degrees F, rewriting records for Houston and New Orleans. Even South America, in the throes of winter, saw unbelievable heat: A town in the Chilean Andes topped 100 degrees F — another all-time high.

It is getting to the point that life is dangerous without air-conditioning. If a widespread power outage hit Phoenix during a heat wave and lasted for days, it could kill thousands and send half the city to the emergency room, according to a recent study. And the soupy heat in the Gulf Coast comes with a challenge of its own: Super hot and humid air makes it hard for sweat to evaporate, because the environment is already thick with water molecules, which means more heat stays trapped inside the body, raising the risk of getting cooked from the inside out. 

“Dying from a heat wave is like a horror movie with 27 endings that you can choose from,” said Camilo Mora, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, who has cataloged 27 different ways that heat can lead to organ failure and death. 

As blood gets shunted toward the skin, for instance, it strains the heart and deprives the brain and gut of oxygen, leading to heart attacks and other grisly outcomes from widespread inflammation and clotting. Prolonged sweating can also cause dehydration, sometimes inducing kidney failure. Heat has so many ways to kill you that it’s easily the deadliest of all weather disasters Americans face. In 2017, Mora and colleagues found that 30 percent of the world’s population was already exposed to potentially deadly heat for 20 days or more each year.

Given how crucial perspiration is for survival, you’d think that researchers would have the science of sweat all figured out by now, but there are still open questions. Exactly how hot is too hot for the human body? How important is humidity? And why aren’t we more grateful for sweat? Its nasty reputation for making you stink belies the fact that it’s essentially a built-in life jacket to help you ride out record-breaking heat waves. 

Feeling moist and sticky is much better than the alternative — death by heat stroke. “I think it’s funny that humans have this enormous taboo about a biological function that’s ultimately going to help us survive climate change,” said Sarah Everts, the author of The Joy of Sweat.

Deadly heat can hit basically anywhere, catching people off-guard. Take the record-breaking temperatures that swept over Europe last summer, sending the thermostat soaring above 100 degrees F across the continent, resulting in more than 61,000 deaths. Our bodies can acclimatize to heat over a period of weeks, giving us the ability to sweat more. But temperatures can skyrocket quickly — in February this year, thermostats in Washington, D.C., jumped almost 30 degrees in a day, from a high of 53 degrees F one day to 81 the next. These kinds of leaps are a lot for our bodies to handle, making heat waves in cooler climates especially deadly.

Even in countries like Pakistan, where people are well-adapted to heat, sweltering temperatures are taking casualties. “With climate change, things are just going beyond limits of adaptation,” said Fahad Saeed, a scientist with the global climate policy institute Climate Analytics, who is based in Islamabad. “When you’re witnessing that in this part of the world, it really kind of tells you something is going beyond normal, because the people are acclimatized to this kind of weather, and still they are dying.”

A measure called the “wet-bulb temperature,” which combines heat and humidity with sunlight and wind speed, is used to calculate the threshold at which a healthy human body can no longer survive. Invented by the U.S. military in the 1950s after recruits kept collapsing from heat illness at a camp in South Carolina, it’s determined by covering a thermometer in a damp cloth and swinging it through the air to speed up evaporation. The theoretical point at which no amount of sweating can help you is thought to be six hours of exposure to a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. That translates to 95 degrees in complete humidity, for example, or 115 degrees at 50 percent humidity.

In recent years, parts of Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula have already briefly crossed this scary threshold. And more heat will come, bringing parts of Mexico’s coasts and more of South Asia into the danger zone. Worryingly, climate change is also driving up the moisture content of the air, especially in the tropics.

Newer research suggests that the limit might be even lower than 35 degrees C. In a study last year at Penn State University, young people volunteered to subject themselves to uncomfortably hot conditions in a lab. Participants swallowed telemetry pills that monitored their core body temperature and sat in a controlled chamber, moving just enough to mimic everyday activities like cooking and eating. When the body fails to stabilize its core temperature, things start to spiral out of control: In extreme conditions, heat stroke can set in within 10 to 15 minutes. The researchers found that the upper limit of safety, based on when the participants’ core temperatures started rising, was likely closer to a wet-bulb temperature of 31 degrees C, or 88 degrees F.  

And that’s for healthy people. Factors like age, illness, and body size change the math. People over the age of 60, who account for an estimated 80 percent of the 12,000 heat-related deaths in the United States each year, often have health conditions that make heat more dangerous. What’s more, as people get older, their sweat glands deteriorate, undermining their ability to cool down. Some antipsychotic medications have a side effect of suppressing sweating, possibly one of many reasons why those diagnosed with schizophrenia are particularly vulnerable to dying in the heat.

The reality is that most people don’t take all the necessary steps to stay cool during a heat wave, like seeking shade or drinking lots of cold water — another reason that a pragmatic “danger zone” for temperatures starts well below 35 degrees C. Earlier this month, researchers from the University of Oxford and the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts analyzed the hot and humid conditions under which the human body starts to overheat unless specific actions to cool down are taken. They found that under our current climate, 8 percent of the land on Earth will meet this threshold at least once a decade. That would increase to a quarter if global temperatures warm 2 degrees C above the preindustrial average, the amount we can expect if existing and planned fossil fuel projects are carried through.

Still, there’s a debate around how much humidity matters in health outcomes, said Jane Baldwin, an Earth systems science professor at the University of California, Irvine. Humidity isn’t showing up as a key driver of deaths in real-world epidemiological data like you’d expect based on theories about wet-bulb temperature. Baldwin recently coauthored a study trying to explain this discrepancy. One explanation could be that epidemiological data tends to come from cooler parts of the world, like Europe and the United States, whereas data is limited from tropical countries like India, Ghana, and Brazil, where the link between humidity and death would likely be strongest. Nailing down an answer to this question would help scientists make more accurate predictions about how climate change will affect health, Baldwin said. 

The opposite extreme — dry air — could present its own set of problems. In arid conditions, sweat evaporates very quickly. That’s great for cooling off, but sweat production has a limit, said Ollie Jay, a health professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. At rest, it’s hard to sweat more than a liter per hour, he said, but when you’re exercising, closer to three liters can pour out of your body in an hour. If you managed to reach that point of maximum sweatiness in dry heat, then you wouldn’t be able to sweat enough to cool down. “Most climate models for assessing future heat-stress risk assume that the body has an unlimited capacity to produce sweat,” Jay said, almost certainly leading to overestimates for what humans can handle in hot, arid climates.

Another unknown is just how much early exposure to heat changes our ability to sweat. One theory is that being exposed to high temperatures in the first two years of life can activate more sweat glands; we’re born with roughly the same number of sweat glands, but not all of them turn on and start pumping water. As a result, people born in hot places might have more active sweat glands than those born in cold climates. 

It raises questions of whether those who spend their youth avoiding sweat-soaked clothes by hiding in artificially cooled buildings could be less prepared for life on an increasingly hot planet. “Imagine, if you raise your babies purely in air conditioning,” Kamberov said, “then in a warmer world, how capable of adapting will they be?”

Sweat is essentially saving our lives all summer long — though you probably don’t enjoy it. Everts, the author of The Joy of Sweat, speculates that it violates our desire to be in control. Sweat pours out of us involuntarily: We can’t hold it in or delay it with willpower, unlike burps or farts. “When your body gets the cooldown directive, those pores open, and the sweat pours out,” Everts said, “and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to control that, right?” 

It doesn’t help that a sweaty person is often a stinky one, the curse of locker rooms everywhere. Sweat itself is odorless — it’s mostly just water — but when it mixes with bacteria on your skin, it can raise a stench. There are two types of sweat glands: Eccrine glands, the most prominent, are responsible for keeping your temperature in check and found all over the body — particularly on your forehead, palms, and the bottoms of your feet. Apocrine glands in hairy areas like the armpits and groin become active during puberty, secreting a thicker, protein-rich sweat that bacteria convert into that embarrassing aroma. Plugging your armpit pores with antiperspirant, then, won’t affect your ability to cool down: There are plenty of other escape routes on your skin.

In the olden days, people applied perfume and talcum powder to try to cover up the smell of B.O. But they were so used to it that by the time antiperspirants and deodorants came onto the market around the turn of the 20th century — the former aimed at blocking sweat pores, the latter at fighting odor-producing bacteria —  hardly anyone wanted to buy them. That posed a problem for the manufacturers. So in 1919, a copywriter named James Young who was working for the antiperspirant company Odorono (odor, oh no!) “put the fear of sweat in Americans,” Everts said. One magazine ad with the headline “The most humiliating moment in my life” featured a young woman overhearing that no one would dance with her because she suffered “frightfully from perspiration.” The idea was not just to make people aware of their stink, but to make them afraid it would stop them from finding love or a decent job. “I just wish people were less mortified by sweat,” Everts said.

The marketing campaign was a lasting success, even a century later. Last year, the global deodorant market was valued at $24 billion, and it’s on track to grow to $37 billion by the end of the decade, in part because of global warming, according to the market research firm Fortune Business Insights.

Today, some cultures are more matter-of-fact about sweat than others. In Pakistan, it’s simply a fact of life, Saeed said. Still, excessive sweating is frowned upon basically everywhere. “What can save you is not culturally accepted,” said Mora, the University of Hawaiʻi scientist. “I cannot imagine anywhere in the world where you would like to be hugged by a sweaty person.”

How sweaty you are isn’t in your control — but what you wear is. Hot, humid climates call for more exposed skin, making it easier for your sweat to evaporate; perhaps counterintuitively, loose, long sleeves and pants help you reap the benefits of sweat in arid climates, keeping the water from evaporating too quickly and at the same time blocking sunlight. Konrad Rykaczewski, a professor of engineering at Arizona State University, is researching how to help design clothing that maximizes the effectiveness of sweating. He says that scientists still don’t understand a lot about sweat on the scale that really matters for clothing design.

“The question is, how much of the sweat we produce actually goes to cooling us?” Rykaczewski said. Sweating profusely isn’t helping anyone — sweat that drips off your forehead is essentially wasted water, since it didn’t evaporate off you. By the same token, trapping a bunch of sweat underneath a hazmat suit could leave you susceptible to heat illnesses. Counterintuitively, even fabrics that wick sweat can end up stealing it away from your skin and wasting it, Rykaczewski said. When that water evaporates, it’ll cool the fabric and the air between the fabric and your skin, instead of your body directly.

Rykaczewski’s research is focused on understanding how heat affects the human body in the real world, something that’s difficult to study. “No one’s measuring someone that’s going to get heatstroke, right?” Rykaczewski said. “That’s not ethical.” 

So, in place of live humans, he and his colleagues at Arizona State have developed a sweating robot, technically called a “thermal mannequin,” that simulates human responses to super-hot temperatures. The robot — named ANDI for “Advanced Newton Dynamic Instrument” — takes frequent trips into the sizzling Arizona heat, equipped with sensors, an internal cooling system, as well as pores for sweating. One unique thing about ANDI is that it can represent anyone. Rykaczewski can modify the program to simulate how a person might weather the heat, calculating how factors like age, body size, or drug use might affect the body’s response in different situations. And it all comes at the low cost of $650,000. “We basically are developing the most expensive way to measure heat impacts on humans,” Rykaczewski joked.

ANDI is essentially a crash test dummy for a hotter planet. Our bodies are up against heat that threatens to render our dampness useless. Humans have been sweating for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s core to who we are. But to truly understand it? For that, we needed to build a robot.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Will sweat help us survive climate change? on Sep 19, 2023.

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

]]> https://grist.org/culture/sweat-heat-body-climate-change/feed/ 0 428115 https://grist.org/extreme-weather/hurricane-idalia-florida-big-bend-flooding-storm-surge/ https://grist.org/extreme-weather/hurricane-idalia-florida-big-bend-flooding-storm-surge/#respond Wed, 30 Aug 2023 14:51:45 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=617469 This year’s first major hurricane made landfall early Wednesday morning, bringing 125-mile-per-hour winds to Florida’s Big Bend region. Officials and residents told Grist that the sparsely populated coastal area, which stretches from near Gainesville to just south of Tallahassee, was wholly unprepared for Hurricane Idalia, a category 3 storm fueled by exceptionally hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The area hasn’t been struck directly by a hurricane in more than a century.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mandy Lemmermen, the battalion chief for the Dixie County fire department, who was hunkered down in an operations center in the county seat of Cross City when she spoke to Grist on Tuesday evening. “You can’t survive this.” 

After taking shape in the Gulf of Mexico, Idalia underwent a process known as “rapid intensification,” swiftly strengthening from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane as it passed over the hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, then weakening just before it made landfall. The most devastating Atlantic hurricanes of the past few years, including 2022’s Ian and 2021’s Ida, have all undergone this process. Scientists believe that climate change is making it more common.

By early morning Wednesday, just minutes after landfall, the storm had already pushed more than six feet of storm surge over the island town of Cedar Key, submerging many buildings in the beachfront area. A similar tide was flowing up the Steinhatchee River, where it was poised to cause similar flooding. More than 160,000 customers in the state had lost power, and more than 20 counties across the state had issued some form of mandatory evacuation order. Areas as far north as Georgia and South Carolina were expected to see rain damage, and areas as far south as Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg had already experienced flooding as winds pushed storm surge into city streets.

But the longest-lasting effects are likely to be in the rural communities along the remote Big Bend coast.

“It’s Waterworld there,” said Kathryn Frank, a professor of urban planning at the University of Florida who has worked with Big Bend communities on climate adaptation. “You have water coming from every direction, and that’s why it hasn’t developed much.”

Because the area is so flat, storm surge reaches farther inland than it does even in other parts of Florida. In Levy County, for instance, Frank’s team found that a Category 3 storm could inundate terrain as far as 20 miles away from the water’s edge.

The coastal shelf along the Big Bend is shallow and flat as well, which leads to much higher waves, increasing the depth of hurricane flooding. The National Hurricane Center estimated yesterday that Idalia would produce 12-foot surges along the coast, but Dixie County’s own hazard mitigation plan estimates that surges could reach as high as 24 feet, large enough to inundate almost every structure in coastal towns like Horseshoe Beach. The fact that the storm is arriving during a full moon, which produces higher tides, will make the surge even worse.

The region also floods from the inland side, because it sits atop the Floridan Aquifer, an underground water layer that discharges up to the surface when it rains. Rivers like the Suwanee and the Steinhatchee often flood for weeks at a time. The vast majority of land area in areas like Taylor County sits inside the hundred-year floodplain, indicating a level of risk that many cities like Houston, Texas, have deemed unsustainable for development.

To make matters worse, residents often have limited resources to deal with flooding. The median household income in Dixie County is around $44,000, far below the national average. A recent report from United Way of the Big Bend found that far more families in the region are struggling to meet basic needs than in the rest of the state. 

Some residents in Dixie County have already experienced prolonged displacement from even minor rainfall events. A series of floods back in the spring and summer of 2021 brought five feet of water to many houses in the county’s Old Town neighborhood, which sits on the Suwannee River, and locals were still waiting to get back into their homes in January of the following year. 

“It feels like living in a swamp,” said Deena Long, who moved to a manufactured home in the area from Georgia back in 2018. “The first two years, everything was underwater. It came right up to our trailer and our well house, and everything else was totally underwater, and it was the same for our neighbors on both sides.” 

Long said she and her husband have to wear galoshes to walk through her yard, and they often see snakes floating around in the water. Nevertheless, she planned to stick it out at home during Hurricane Idalia. Long and other residents have blamed the county for not maintaining the area’s drainage infrastructure.

“There’s not enough culverts, there’s not enough drainage. It’s poor planning on the government’s part,” she told Grist. “It’s been a strong conversation, but nothing ever happens. It gets pushed back under the rug.” 

Even several miles inland, in areas that sit higher off the ground, the winds were substantial on Wednesday.

“There are trees down in all directions,” said Rebecca Greenberg, a criminology graduate student who stayed behind in Dixie County to keep track of her dogs and horse. “I can hear loud booms. I think it’s trees or trailers or propane tanks getting blown down.”

Having struggled with even minor flood events, the Big Bend’s infrastructure is nowhere near prepared for a storm of Idalia’s magnitude. As of 2015, more than 30 percent of residents in Taylor and Dixie counties lived in mobile or manufactured homes, which can sustain huge damage or collapse altogether during big wind storms. A large portion also use residential septic systems, which can fail and backflow into homes. When Frank conducted a study of sea-level rise in Levy County, her team found that many coastal roads and wastewater plants would sink several feet underwater during even a mild storm.

“Even during dry seasons, it’s wet, so when you get a storm like this one, with a big storm surge, it can travel really far inland,” said Frank. “That’s very bad for environmental health.” It’s possible that septic and drinking water systems could be inoperable for weeks or months, she added.

Unlike in rural parts of the Louisiana coast, there are no levees or shoreline protection projects that can control flooding. In the three coastal counties in Idalia’s path, which have a combined population of around 80,000, just 2,000 households buy flood insurance from the federal government, according to FEMA data. The state’s Resilient Florida grant program, which has spent millions on climate adaptation projects, has only funded a few planning initiatives in the Big Bend.

The roads in Long’s area are made out of dirt, so they become muddy and impassable even during mild rain. During the worst flood events over the past few years, she has relied on her neighbor to drive her out of the area on a tractor.

Idalia’s track over the rural Big Bend will likely ensure that overall monetary damages from the storm are far lower than for storms like Hurricane Ian, which hit a densely populated area. But for the people who do live in the Big Bend, the devastation could be total, according to Frank.

“The eye is going straight at these little towns, like Steinhatchee, that are just trying to make the best of it,” she said. “My heart goes out to that little little small town.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘You can’t survive this’: Hurricane Idalia strikes Florida’s most vulnerable coast on Aug 30, 2023.

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

]]> https://grist.org/extreme-weather/hurricane-idalia-florida-big-bend-flooding-storm-surge/feed/ 0 423905 https://grist.org/international/can-manilas-cycling-boom-survive-a-return-to-car-traffic/ https://grist.org/international/can-manilas-cycling-boom-survive-a-return-to-car-traffic/#respond Thu, 24 Aug 2023 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=616843 This story was co-published with Rappler, a Philippines-based online news publication.

Tina Batalla had owned a bicycle for many years. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that the then-21-year-old university student really started using it to get around Metro Manila after a friend invited her out on a rainy day ride in June 2020.

“There were no cars, and it felt safe,” she said. Riding on streets free of the car traffic that has earned Metro Manila a reputation as one of the most congested urban areas in the world built Batalla’s confidence that she could get around by bike despite not being a “hard-core cyclist.” 

“Re-experiencing the city I grew up in clicked a switch in me, and I felt like this is something I want to continue doing,” she said.

Batalla is one of many Filipinos — and people around the world — who embraced biking in a new way during the pandemic. But now, the country’s climate-friendliest mode of transportation besides walking is at risk, as national lawmakers slash the budget for bike lanes — and Filipino cyclists are organizing to ensure that the silver lining of the pandemic leads to lasting improvements in bicycle infrastructure.

Keeping the gains

COVID-19 pushed Metro Manila’s already-struggling public transit system into crisis: The government shut down mass transportation in the city for two and half months in an effort to contain the virus, and after the shutdown lifted, capacity limits forced commuters to wait for up to three hours just to board the Metro Rail Transit, or MRT. Similar wait times plagued buses and jeepneys, iconically Filipino public transit vehicles.

Bike owners outnumber car owners 5 to 1 in Metro Manila, a metropolitan area made up of 16 interconnected cities. The long lines at transit stations left cycling as the most viable alternative for many. Hospitals began setting up bike parking to accommodate the droves of doctors and nurses cycling to work. Local city governments used traffic cones or simple stripes of paint to outline pop-up bike lanes, and the national government’s Department of Transportation, or DOTr, created a new office to focus explicitly on active transport (which includes biking, walking, scooters, and the like). By June 2021, 313 kilometers (194 miles) of new bike lanes had been added to streets within Metro Manila through the combined efforts of local and national governments.

“The pandemic was a huge factor in pushing the Philippine government to prioritize and promote active mobility,” said Eldon Joshua Dionisio, the program manager of DOTr’s active transport office, which has grown to include 14 employees.

Metro Manila’s pandemic cycling boom mirrors a phenomenon experienced in cities all over the world. In the U.S., people began cycling at “unprecedented levels” and bike sales surged. In Europe, more than $1.1 billion dollars worth of biking infrastructure was built between March and October 2020, with cities like Paris and Brussels leading the way. And in South America, cities like Lima and Bogotá began building out bike lanes along routes that had been identified years beforehand but never installed until the pandemic drove more cyclists onto the streets.

All that pedal-pushing has come with a host of benefits. Elijah Go Tian, a lead on the Low Carbon Transport Project at the United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines, noted that switching from cars to bikes drastically lowers climate change-causing emissions. The daily travel emissions of people who cycle are 84 percent lower than those of non-cyclists, according to one Oxford study. More bike trips and fewer car trips also makes for less air pollution, which costs the Philippines approximately $87 billion annually in healthcare costs and productivity loss, according to a 2021 study. Bikes can also reduce car traffic and noise pollution, help riders stay healthier and more active, and provide greater agency over one’s own mobility.

Despite this multitude of benefits, the gains of the last three years are not guaranteed to persist in the Philippines. Though the national government earmarked 4 billion pesos (around $71 million) for active transport from 2020 to 2023, the budget has been cut each year, down to 500 million pesos for 2024 from a high of 2 billion pesos in 2022. 

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“We have decision-makers who are still car-centric,” Dionisio said. 

That drop in funding for the office that oversees safe biking infrastructure could slow progress considerably: A recent survey found that 4 out of 5 household heads in the Philippines agree that more people would use bikes as transportation if the roads were safer.

“The momentum has been slowing down a bit,” said Tian.

Decision-makers in business and politics come primarily from the car-owning class, which can exacerbate inequality, said Earl Decena, a sustainable transportation officer at the business association Makati Business Club. Though only 6 percent of Filipinos own cars, biking has been associated with poverty in the past, and sometimes discriminated against in both the public and private sector. 

“The norm, especially pre-pandemic, has been that if you’re on a bicycle, you’re not treated the same way you would be treated if you came in a vehicle,” he said. “There’s an undertone of, ‘If you’re in a car, you can probably pay more.’” 

When that attitude gets scaled up to the level of policy, it can enshrine preferential treatment for car owners — rather than the 94 percent of Filipinos who don’t own cars — into law.

Maintaining momentum

Fractured and uneven oversight of biking infrastructure also causes problems for bikers, explained Ramir Angeles. Angeles is a transportation engineer for the government of Quezon City, one of the cities that makes up Metro Manila. Since local government units oversee local roads, while the national government oversees national roads, maintenance of bike lanes can be uneven. 

“Bike lanes have now become a much more hostile environment than they were” during the height of the pandemic, said Angeles, adding that the return to pre-pandemic levels of car traffic has escalated the sense of danger for many bikers. And in some parts of Metro Manila, bike infrastructure is actively “being removed or downgraded,” he added. 

Batalla has experienced the latter firsthand. When she learned in February that the bike lanes along Ayala Avenue, a major thoroughfare in one of Metro Manila’s busiest business districts, were going to be converted into dreaded “sharrows,” which would force bikers to share a lane with public transit vehicles like buses and jeepneys while leaving private vehicle lanes untouched, she was outraged. 

“These bike lanes were so important for the safety of our essential workers … What happens if we have cities that keep on making them work but don’t actually care about their safety?” she asked. “It really hit me that if we did not get on the streets, speak up and organize, those lanes would basically be lost forever.”

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Batalla’s response to that frustration was to organize. What started as a one-off group ride in protest of the Ayala Avenue plan eventually grew into the #MakeItSafer campaign, part of a larger transportation advocacy group called the Move As One Coalition. The campaign convinced Ayala Land, the decision-making entity behind the bike lane conversion, to enter into a dialogue with advocates to work towards a different solution. And when Ayala Land “rejected the community’s proposed safety interventions,” Move As One staged another protest ride in July, this time to pressure the decision-makers to fix bike lanes and strengthen enforcement to keep motorcycles out of bike lanes.

Batalla’s experience points to a factor that could help maintain Metro Manila’s momentum: the vibrant community of bikers that has been expanding rapidly since 2020. Cycling clubs started by those riders have been popping up all over the metro area, facilitating group rides, pop-up events, and protests. The result is a network of people across the city who are primed to mobilize to protect bikers’ interests.

And even if cycling isn’t accelerating as quickly as it did in 2020, the numbers of bikers on the roads remain high. A bike count in June 2022 found about 54,000 cyclists on main roads over four hours. Even that number, which Angeles said is an undercount and which was only conducted in four of the 16 cities that make up Metro Manila, makes clear that cyclists remain a sizable demographic. 

“Because of the community that was built, because of the people who were awakened, there is a stronger pushback,” said Aneka Crisostomo, a sustainable transport advocate and community manager at Tambay Cycling Hub, a bike shop and gathering spot in Pasig, another city in Metro Manila. 

“There are people who are now more vigilant about the road space we deserve, because a lot of us saw that it actually can be done.”

Many businesses are starting to see the value in catering to that growing community, said Makati Business Club’s Decena. Restaurants that earn a reputation for being “bike friendly” by treating bikers as valued customers rather than second-class citizens attract valuable word-of-mouth marketing among the cycling community. He also pointed to larger companies like McDonald’s and Robinsons, a mall chain, that have prioritized safe bike parking. 

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“The majority of our population, and therefore the majority of our market, is a cycling market,” he said. “If you’re a business, you stand to make more if you cater to the cyclists and pedestrians.”

Ultimately, Decena thinks it’s no big mystery what Metro Manila needs to do to maintain its cycling momentum and deliver a host of climate and health benefits to its citizens. 

It doesn’t need to become Amsterdam, Paris, or even Bogotá, which Decena thinks is a more useful comparison than wealthy cities in the Global North. The city just needs its leaders to stick with the initiatives they started during the pandemic — to build out and maintain safe bike infrastructure rather than prioritizing cars at every turn.

“If you plan for transport based on your past patterns, you are always running the risk of replicating whatever patterns have held in the past,” he said. “So there has to come a point where you say, ‘We want to change what that looks like moving forward.’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can Manila’s cycling boom survive a return to car traffic? on Aug 24, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Whitney Bauck.

]]> https://grist.org/international/can-manilas-cycling-boom-survive-a-return-to-car-traffic/feed/ 0 421517 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/21/no-time-to-celebrate-trump-can-survive-the-indictments/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/21/no-time-to-celebrate-trump-can-survive-the-indictments/#respond Fri, 21 Jul 2023 05:57:37 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=289628

Never underestimate the Democrats and the American System’s capacity to let the slithering orange monstrosity off the hook and back into power.

Many of the nation’s liberal talking heads and pundits want you think that the US bourgeois electoral and constitutional system is working because the fascist leader and putschist Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump is now under multiple criminal investigations and has been indicted twice so far – in Manhattan for the payment of hush money to safeguard his path to the presidency in 2016 and at the federal level in Florida for his handling of classified documents since his departure from the White House.

Indictments are now apparently imminent for his brazen attempts to subvert and reverse the 2020 presidential election – one likely coming muti-count indictment from  the federal government and another likely coming multi-count indictment from a Georgia prosecutor in Atlanta. And we have recently learned that Herr Donald is under criminal investigation for fake Elector schemes in Michigan and Arizona (see this for a useful summary of all the legal cases involving Trump right now).

So hip, hip hooray, time to break out the champagne because the Malignant One, accurately described by Noam Chomsky in January 2020 as “the most dangerous criminal in human history,” is going down? US-Amerikaner fascism is on the ropes, right?

Not so fast. The orange-blushed mob-boss has been turning his indictments into fundraising gold and has successfully exploited them to solidify his position as the runaway top Republican presidential candidate to unseat the incredibly unpopular and doddering corporate-imperialist Joe Biden in 2024-25.  He is using the belated criminal inquiries and indictments to feed the paranoid-style narrative that he is being persecuted by a “radical Left” “deep state” that has “weaponized the justice system” against him and other palingenetic white nationalists (like the January 6 prisoners he regularly invokes and promises to pardon) who want to redeem America from “globalist” “Marxists” (like those well-known communists Joe Biden and Kamala Harris) and make the nation Great Again.

Trump has a dedicated base that believes – more as “a tribal pose” and “attitude” than as “ a fully formed thought” (Sarah Longwell) – his richly Hitlerian claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. That same cult following believes their Dear Leader’s claim that all the charges and investigations aimed at him are the bogus products of a “radical Left deep state” that is persecuting him for nefarious political purposes that have noting to do with him breaking any laws.  The fact that he has twice been determined likely guilty of high felonies by democratically selected grand juries comprised of ordinary citizens is of no significance to his many millions of demented fans.

The federal indictments have come very, very late in the game, thanks to reprehensible foot-dragging by the nation’s conservative, cringing, and hyper-cautious Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is by no means clear that Trump can be tried and found guilty at the federal level prior to Trump potentially winning the 2024 presidential election and then shutting the investigations down and pardoning himself along with others who joined his effort to overthrow previously normative US bourgeois electoral democracy and tule of law in 2020 and 2021.

Aileen Cannot, the Trump-appointed hack of a federal judge in charge of the coming Florida classified documents trial seems ready to delay the proceedings on the thoroughly false premise that federal special prosecutor Jack Smith’s case in this matter is unusually complex and voluminous.

It is quite possible (as the esteemed Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe recently noted on MSNBC) that the time squeeze resulting from Garland’s pathetic delay will prevent the special federal prosecutor Jack Smith from going after Trump on insurrection charges for January 6^th.

There’s no law preventing Trump from running and assuming office even if he is convicted  prior to the November 2024 elections and the January 2025 presidential inauguration. Once he gets back in power, Trump will of course pardon himself, which is not forbidden by any part of the US Constitution. The monumentally corrupt and illegitimate, lifetime-appointed Christian fascist Supreme Court that he and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel created will certainly not block any such action on his part.

Trump’s  ancient opponent Joe “Nothing Would Fundamentally Change” Biden is epically disliked by US-Americans (only Jimmy Carter has had lower approval numbers than Biden three-plus years into a US residency) and is gravely short on charisma and inspiration. Without the Covid-19 pandemic’s 2020 emergence, the doddering warmonger, oil-driller, and strikebreaker Biden would likely have lost the last presidential election. A recession or near recession in in the next year or so would likely seal the fate of the dedicated fascism-appeaser Joe “Working Across the Aisle” Biden, who has decided to run on “Bidenomics” – an arguably stupid thing to do amidst stubborn price inflation – and not against the authoritarian neofascist Christian white nationalism that has taken over the rightmost of the United States two capitalist parties.

In 2024 as in past presidential elections, the Electoral College will overrepresent the nation’s most revanchist and reactionary, Christian white nationalist states and regions. Also working in Trump’s advantage is the virulent partisan and racist voter suppression in place across Red State America and, perhaps more importantly, the concerted right-wing takeover down to the precinct level  of hundreds if not thousands of local vote-supervising and vote-tabulating positions.

This is no time for relief and celebration, trust me.  Promising literal revenge, Trump has an Enemies List that would make Richard Nixon green with envy.  A recent New York Times report shows that the Trump campaign is “planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government,” working up detailed plans to “re-shap[e] the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands” should he take back the White House in 2025. The imperial presidency is nowhere near imperial enough for Trump and his big team of far-right policy wonks, an army of experts in authoritarian strategy and procedure far beyond anything at his disposal in 2016 and 2017.

And what if Trump’s legal troubles did somehow knock him off the Republican ticket next year (unlikely as that may be)? The most likely successor in the coin flip Electoral College contest with the nearly hapless bourgeois Democrat Biden is still Ron DeSantis, who is if anything a more lethal, hateful, sadistic, and disciplined fascist than Trump.

The evidence for locking Trump up and throwing away the key has been there all along.  No functioning and self-respecting “democracy” would allow this demented sack of fascist shit to still stalk the land, holding vicious campaign/hate rallies where he tells his frothing volk that he will be their “retribution” and suggests that he will deport U.S. born and raised Marxists and socialists.

That’s on the dismal, dollar-drenched Weimar Dems, the national corporate-imperialist party of inauthentic opposition and Hollow Resistance.

Sorry, no champagne.  The American System is by no means guaranteed to work to stop the US Amerikaner fascisation process, which has deep roots in American capitalism-imperialism, American white supremacism, American patriarchy, American imperialism, and American Christianity  and which is richly enabled by the nation’s archaic 18^th Century slaveowners’ constitution – a potent twenty-four decade-old Minority Rule straightjacket on popular sovereignty.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Street.

My small turboprop plane whirred low through thick clouds. Below me, St. Paul Island cut a golden, angular shape in the shadow-dark Bering Sea. I saw a lone island village — a grid of houses, a small harbor, and a road that followed a black ribbon of coast.

Some 330 people, most of them Indigenous, live in the village of St. Paul, about 800 miles west of Anchorage, where the local economy depends almost entirely on the commercial snow crab business. Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea. I was traveling there to find out what the villagers might do next.

The arc of St. Paul’s recent story has become a familiar one — so familiar, in fact, I couldn’t blame you if you missed it. Alaska news is full of climate elegies now — every one linked to wrenching changes caused by burning fossil fuels. I grew up in Alaska, as my parents did before me, and I’ve been writing about the state’s culture for more than 20 years. Some Alaskans’ connections go far deeper than mine. Alaska Native people have inhabited this place for more than 10,000 years.

As I’ve reported in Indigenous communities, people remind me that my sense of history is short and that the natural world moves in cycles. People in Alaska have always had to adapt.

Even so, in the last few years, I’ve seen disruptions to economies and food systems, as well as fires, floods, landslides, storms, coastal erosion, and changes to river ice — all escalating at a pace that’s hard to process. Increasingly, my stories veer from science and economics into the fundamental ability of Alaskans to keep living in rural places.

You can’t separate how people understand themselves in Alaska from the landscape and animals. The idea of abandoning long-occupied places echoes deep into identity and history. I’m convinced the questions Alaskans are grappling with — whether to stay in a place and what to hold onto if they can’t — will eventually face everyone.

I’ve given thought to solastalgia — the longing and grief experienced by people whose feeling of home is disrupted by negative changes in the environment. But the concept doesn’t quite capture what it feels like to live here now.

A few years ago, I was a public radio editor on a story out of the small Southeast Alaska town of Haines about a storm that came through carrying a record amount of rain. The morning started routinely — a reporter on the ground calling around, surveying the damage. But then, a hillside rumbled down, taking out a house and killing the people inside. I still think of it — people going through regular routines in a place that feels like home, but that, at any time, might come cratering down. There’s a prickly anxiety humming beneath Alaska life now, like a wildfire that travels for miles in the loamy surface of soft ground before erupting without notice into flames.

But in St. Paul, there was no wildfire — only fat raindrops on my windshield as I loaded into a truck at the airport. In my notebook, tucked in my backpack, I’d written a single question: “What does this place preserve?”

The sandy road from the airport in late March led across wide, empty grassland, bleached sepia by the winter season. Town appeared beyond a rise, framed by towers of rusty crab pots. It stretched across a saddle of land, with rows of brightly painted houses — magentas, yellows, teals — stacked on either hillside. The grocery store, school, and clinic sat in between them, with a 100-year-old Russian Orthodox church named for Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the day in June 1786 when Russian explorer Gavril Pribylov landed on the island. A darkened processing plant, the largest in the world for snow crabs, rose above the quiet harbor.

You’re probably familiar with sweet, briney snow crab — Chionoecetes opilio — which is commonly found on the menus of chain restaurants like Red Lobster. A plate of crimson legs with drawn butter there will cost you $32.99. In a regular year, a good portion of the snow crab America eats comes from the plant, owned by the multibillion-dollar company Trident Seafoods.

Not that long ago, at the peak of crab season in late winter, temporary workers at the plant would double the population of the town, butchering, cooking, freezing, and boxing 100,000 pounds of snow crab per day, along with processing halibut from a small fleet of local fishermen. Boats full of crab rode into the harbor at all hours, sometimes motoring through swells so perilous they’ve become the subject of a popular collection of YouTube videos. People filled the town’s lone tavern in the evenings, and the plant cafeteria, the only restaurant in town, opened to locals. In a normal year, taxes on crab and local investments in crab fishing could bring St. Paul more than $2 million.

Then came the massive, unexpected drop in the crab population — a crash scientists linked to record-warm ocean temperatures and less ice formation, both associated with climate change. In 2021, federal authorities severely limited the allowable catch. In 2022, they closed the fishery for the first time in 50 years. Industry losses in the Bering Sea crab fishery climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars. St. Paul lost almost 60 percent of its tax revenue overnight. Leaders declared a “cultural, social, and economic emergency.” Town officials had reserves to keep the community’s most basic functions running, but they had to start an online fundraiser to pay for emergency medical services.

Through the windshield of the truck I was riding in, I could see the only cemetery on the hillside, with weathered rows of orthodox crosses. Van Halen played on the only radio station. I kept thinking about the meaning of a cultural emergency. 

Some of Alaska’s Indigenous villages have been occupied for thousands of years, but modern rural life can be hard to sustain because of the high costs of groceries and fuel shipped from outside, limited housing, and scarce jobs. St. Paul’s population was already shrinking ahead of the crab crash. Young people departed for educational and job opportunities. Older people left to be closer to medical care. St. George, its sister island, lost its school years ago and now has about 40 residents.

If you layer climate-related disruptions — such as changing weather patterns, rising sea levels, and shrinking populations of fish and game — on top of economic troubles, it just increases the pressure to migrate. 

When people leave, precious intangibles vanish as well: a language spoken for 10,000 years, the taste for seal oil, the method for weaving yellow grass into a tiny basket, words to hymns sung in Unangam Tunuu, and maybe most importantly, the collective memory of all that had happened before. St. Paul played a pivotal role in Alaska’s history. It’s also the site of several dark chapters in America’s treatment of Indigenous populations. But as people and their memories disappear, what remains?

There is so much to remember. 

The Pribilofs consist of five volcano-made islands — but people now live mainly on St. Paul. The island is rolling, treeless, with black sand beaches and towering basaltic cliffs that drop into a crashing sea. In the summer it grows verdant with mosses, ferns, grasses, dense shrubs, and delicate wildflowers. Millions of migratory seabirds arrive every year, making it a tourist attraction for birders that’s been called the “Galapagos of the North.”

Driving the road west along the coast, you might glimpse a few members of the island’s half-century-old domestic reindeer herd. The road gains elevation until you reach a trailhead. From there you can walk the soft fox path for miles along the top of the cliffs, seabirds gliding above you — many species of gulls, puffins, common murres with their white bellies and obsidian wings. In spring, before the island greens up, you can find the old ropes people use to climb down to harvest murre eggs. Foxes trail you. Sometimes you can hear them barking over the sound of the surf.

An arctic fox pup barks at a visitor. Nathaniel Wilder

Left: A shed reindeer antler on St. Paul Island. The herd is managed by the tribal government. Above: ATV tracks between beaches near the northeastern point of St. Paul Island. Nathaniel Wilder

Two-thirds of the world’s population of northern fur seals — hundreds of thousands of animals — return to beaches in the Pribilofs every summer to breed. Valued for their dense, soft fur, they were once hunted to near extinction.

Alaska’s history since contact is a thousand stories of outsiders overwriting Indigenous culture and taking things — land, trees, oil, animals, minerals — of which there is a limited supply. St. Paul is perhaps among the oldest example. The Unangax̂ — sometimes called Aleuts — had lived on a chain of Aleutian Islands to the south for thousands of years and were among the first Indigenous people to see outsiders — Russian explorers who arrived in the mid-1700s. Within 50 years, the population was nearly wiped out. People of Unangax̂ descent are now scattered across Alaska and the world. Just 1,700 live in the Aleutian region.

St. Paul is home to one of the largest Unangax̂ communities left. Many residents are related to Indigenous people kidnapped from the Aleutian Islands and forced by Russians to hunt seals as part of a lucrative 19th century fur trade. St. Paul’s robust fur operation, subsidized by slave labor, became a strong incentive for the United States’ purchase of the Alaska territory from Russia in 1867.

On the plane ride in, I read the 2022 book that detailed the history of piracy in the early seal trade on the island, Roar of the Sea: Treachery, Obsession, and Alaska’s Most Valuable Wildlife by Deb Vanasse. One of the facts that stayed with me: Profits from Indigenous sealing allowed the U.S. to recoup the $7.2 million it paid for Alaska by 1905. Another: After the purchase, the U.S. government controlled islanders well into the mid-20th century as part of an operation many describe as indentured servitude.

The government was obligated to provide for housing, sanitation, food, and heat on the island, but none were adequate. Considered “wards of the state,” the government compensated Unangax̂ for their labors in meager rations of canned food. Once a week, Indigenous islanders were allowed to hunt or fish for subsistence. Houses were inspected for cleanliness and to check for homebrew. Travel on and off the island was strictly controlled. Mail was censored.

Between 1870 and 1946, Alaska Native people on the islands earned an estimated $2.1 million, while the government and private companies raked in $46 million in profits. Some inequitable practices continued well into the 1960s, when politicians, activists, and the Tundra Times, an Alaska Native newspaper, brought the story of the government’s treatment of Indigenous islanders to a wider world.

During World War II, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and the U.S. military gathered St. Paul residents with little notice and transported them 1,200 miles to a detention camp at a decrepit cannery in Southeast Alaska at Funter Bay. Soldiers ransacked their homes on St. Paul and slaughtered the reindeer herd so there would be nothing for the Japanese if they occupied the island. The government said the relocation and detention were for protection, but they brought the Unangax̂ back to the island during the seal season to hunt. A number of villagers died in cramped and filthy conditions with little food. But Unangax̂ also became acquainted with Tlingits from the Southeast region, who had been organizing politically for years through the Alaska Native Brotherhood/Sisterhood organization.

After the war, the Unangax̂ people returned to the island and began to organize and agitate for better conditions. In one famous suit, known as “the corned beef case,” Indigenous residents working in the seal industry filed a complaint with the government in 1951. According to the complaint, their compensation, paid in the form of rations, included corned beef, while white workers on the island received fresh meat. After decades of hurdles, the case was settled in favor of the Alaska Native community for more than $8 million.

“The government was obligated to provide ‘comfort,’ but ‘wretchedness’ and ‘anguish’ are the words that more accurately describe the condition of the Pribilof Aleuts,” read the settlement, awarded by the Indian Claims Commission in 1979. The commission was established by Congress in the 1940s to weigh unresolved tribal claims.

Prosperity and independence finally came to St. Paul after commercial sealing was halted in 1984. The government brought in fishermen to teach locals how to fish commercially for halibut and funded the construction of a harbor for crab processing. By the early ‘90s, crab catches were enormous, reaching between 200 and 300 million pounds per year. (By comparison, the allowable catch in 2021, the first year of marked crab decline, was 5.5 million pounds, though fishermen couldn’t catch even that.) The island’s population reached a peak of more than 700 people in the early 1990s but has been on a slow decline ever since.

I’d come to the island in part to talk to Aquilina Lestenkof, a historian deeply involved in language preservation. I found her on a rainy afternoon in the bright blue wood-walled civic center, which is a warren of classrooms and offices, crowded with books, artifacts, and historic photographs. She greeted me with a word that starts at the back of the throat and rhymes with “song.”

“Aang,” she said.

Lestenkof moved from St. George, where she was born, to St. Paul, when she was four. Her father, who was also born in St. George, became the village priest. She had long salt-and-pepper hair and a tattoo that stretched across both her cheeks made of curved lines and dots.  Each dot represents an island where a generation of her family lived, beginning with Attu in the Aleutians, then traveling to the Russian Commander Islands — also a site of a slave sealing operation — as well as Atka, Unalaska, St. George, and St. Paul.

“I’m the fifth generation having my story travel through those six islands,” she said.

Lestenkof is a grandmother, related to a good many people in the village and married to the city manager. For the last 10 years she’s been working on revitalizing Unangam Tunuu, the Indigenous language. Only one elder in the village speaks fluently now. He’s among the fewer than 100 fluent speakers left on the planet, though many people in the village understand and speak some words.

Back in the 1920s, teachers in the government school put hot sauce on her father’s tongue for speaking Unangam Tunuu, she told me. He didn’t require his children to learn it. There’s a way that language shapes how you understand the land and community around you, she said, and she wanted to preserve the parts of that she could.

“[My father] said, ‘If you thought in our language, if you thought from our perspective, you’d know what I’m talking about,’” she said. “I felt cheated.”

She showed me a wall covered with rectangles of paper that tracked grammar in Unangam Tunuu. Lestenkof said she needed to hunt down a fluent speaker to check the grammar. Say you wanted to say “drinking coffee,” she explained. You might learn that you don’t need to add the word for “drinking.” Instead, you might be able to change the noun to a verb, just by adding an ending to it.

Her program had been supported by money from a local nonprofit invested in crabbing and, more recently, by grants, but she was recently informed that she may lose funding. Her students come from the village school, which is shrinking along with the population. I asked her what would happen if the crabs fail to come back. People could survive, she said, but the village would look very different.

“Sometimes I’ve pondered, is it even right to have 500 people on this island?” she said.

If people moved off, I asked her, who would keep track of its history?

“Oh, so we don’t repeat it?” she asked, laughing. “We repeat history. We repeat stupid history, too.”

Until recently, during the crab season, the Bering Sea fleet had some 70 boats, most of them ported out of Washington state, with crews that came from all over the U.S. Few villagers work in the industry, in part because the job only lasts for a short season. Instead, they fish commercially for halibut, have positions in the local government or the tribe, or work in tourism. Processing is hard, physical labor — a schedule might be seven days a week, 12 hours a day, with an average pay of $17 an hour. As with lots of processors in Alaska, nonresident workers on temporary visas from the Philippines, Mexico, and Eastern Europe fill many of the jobs.

The crab plant echoes the dynamics of commercial sealing, she said. Its workers leave their homeland, working hard labor for low pay. It was one more industry depleting Alaska’s resources and sending them across the globe. Maybe the system didn’t serve Alaskans in a lasting way. Do people eating crab know how far it travels to the plate?

“We have the seas feeding people in freakin’ Iowa,” she said. “They shouldn’t be eating it. Get your own food.”

Ocean temperatures are increasing all over the world, but sea surface temperature change is most dramatic in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. As the North Pacific experiences sustained increases in temperature, it also warms up the Bering Sea to the north, through marine heat waves. During the last decade, these heat waves have grown more frequent and longer-lasting than at any time since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago. Scientists expect this trend to continue. 

A marine heat wave in the Bering Sea between 2016 and 2019 brought record warmth, preventing ice formation for several winters and affecting numerous cold-water species, including Pacific cod and pollock, seals, seabirds, and several types of crab.

Snow crab stocks always vary, but in 2018, a survey indicated that the snow crab population had exploded — it showed a 60 percent boost in market-sized male crab. (Only males of a certain size are harvested.) The next year showed abundance had fallen by 50 percent. The survey skipped a year due to the pandemic. Then, in 2021, the survey showed that the male snow crab population dropped by more than 90 percent from its high point in 2018. All major Bering Sea crab stocks, including red king crab and bairdi crab, were way down too. The most recent survey showed a decline in snow crabs from 11.7 billion in 2018 to 1.9 billion in 2022.

Scientists think a large pulse of young snow crabs came just before years of abnormally warm water temperatures, which led to less sea ice formation. One hypothesis is that these warmer temperatures drew sea animals from warmer climates north, displacing cold water animals, including commercial species like crab, pollock, and cod.

Another has to do with food availability. Crabs depend on cold water — water that’s 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit), to be exact — that comes from storms and ice melt, forming cold pools on the bottom of the ocean. Scientists theorize that cold water slows crabs’ metabolisms, reducing the animals’ need for food. But with the warmer water on the bottom, they needed more food than was available. It’s possible they starved or cannibalized each other, leading to the crash now underway. Either way, warmer temperatures were key. And there’s every indication temperatures will continue to increase with global warming.

“If we’ve lost the ice, we’ve lost the 2-degree water,” Michael Litzow, shellfish assessment program manager with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told me. “Cold water, it’s their niche — they’re an Arctic animal.”

The snow crab may rebound in a few years, so long as there aren’t any periods of warm water. But if warming trends continue, as scientists predict, the marine heatwaves will return, pressuring the crab population again.

Bones litter the wild part of St. Paul Island like Ezekiel’s valley in the Old Testament — reindeer ribs, seal teeth, fox femurs, whale vertebrae, and air-light bird skulls hide in the grass and along the rocky beaches, evidence of the bounty of wildlife and 200 years of killing seals.

When I went to visit Phil Zavadil, the city manager and Aqualina’s husband, in his office, I found a couple of sea lion shoulder bones on a coffee table. Called “yes/no” bones, they have a fin along the top and a heavy ball at one end. In St. Paul, they function like a magic eight ball. If you drop one and it falls with the fin pointing right, the answer to your question is yes. If it falls pointing left, the answer is no. One large one said “City of St. Paul Big-Decision Maker.” The other one was labeled “budget bone.”

The long-term health of the town, Zavadil told me, wasn’t in a totally dire position yet when it came to the sudden loss of the crab. It had invested during the heyday of crabbing, and with a somewhat reduced budget could likely sustain itself for a decade.

“That’s if something drastic doesn’t happen. If we don’t have to make drastic cuts,” he said. “Hopefully the crab will come back at some level.”

The easiest economic solution for the collapse of the crab fishery would be to convert the plant to process other fish, Zavadil said. There were some regulatory hurdles, but they weren’t insurmountable. City leaders were also exploring mariculture — raising seaweed, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins. That would require finding a market and testing mariculture methods in St. Paul’s waters. The fastest timeline for that was maybe three years, he said. Or they could promote tourism. The island has about 300 tourists a year, most of them hardcore birders.

“But you think about just doubling that,” he said.

The trick was to stabilize the economy before too many working-age adults moved away. There were already more jobs than people to fill them. Older people were passing away, younger families were moving out.

“I had someone come up to me the other day and say, ‘The village is dying,’” he said, but he didn’t see it that way. There were still people working and lots of solutions to try.

“There is cause for alarm if we do nothing,” he said. “We’re trying to work on things and take action the best we can.”

Aquilina Lestenkof’s nephew, Aaron Lestenkof, is an island sentinel with the tribal government, a job that entails monitoring wildlife and overseeing the removal of an endless stream of trash that washes up ashore. He drove me along a bumpy road down the coast to see the beaches that would soon be noisy and crowded with seals.

We parked and I followed him to a wide field of nubby vegetation stinking of seal scat. A handful of seal heads popped up over the rocks. They eyed us, then shimmied into the surf.

In the old days, Alaska Native seal workers used to walk out onto the crowded beaches, club the animals in the head, and then stab them in the heart. They took the pelts and harvested some meat for food, but some went to waste. Aquilina Lestenkof told me taking animals like that ran counter to how Unangax̂ related to the natural world before the Russians came.

“You have a prayer or ceremony attached to taking the life of an animal — you connect to it by putting the head back in the water,” she said.

Slaughtering seals for pelts made people numb, she told me. The numbness passed from one generation to the next. The era of crabbing had been in some ways a reparation for all the years of exploitation, she said. Climate change brought new, more complex problems. 

I asked Aaron Lestenkof if his elders ever talked about the time in the detention camp where they were sent during World War II. He told me his grandfather, Aquilina’s father, sometimes recalled a painful experience of having to drown rats in a bucket there. The act of killing animals that way was compulsory — the camp had become overrun with rats — but it felt like an ominous affront to the natural order, a trespass he’d pay for later. Every human action in nature has consequences, he often said. Later, when he lost his son, he remembered drowning the rats. 

“Over at the harbor, he was playing and the waves were sweeping over the dock there. He got swept out and he was never found,” Aaron Lestenkof said. “That’s, like, the only story I remember him telling.”

We picked our way down a rocky beach littered with trash — faded coral buoys, disembodied plastic fishing gloves and boots, an old ship’s dishwasher lolling open. He said the animals around the island were changing in small ways. There were fewer birds now. A handful of seals were now living on the island year-round, instead of migrating south. Their population was also declining.

People still fish, hunt marine mammals, collect eggs, and pick berries. Aaron Lestenkof hunts red-legged kittiwakes and king eiders, though he doesn’t have a taste for the bird meat. He finds elders who do like them, but that’s gotten harder. He wasn’t looking forward to the lean years of waiting for the crabs to return. Proceeds from the community’s investment in crabbing boats had paid the heating bills of older people; the boats also supplied the elderly with crab and halibut for their freezers. They supported education programs and environmental cleanup efforts. But now, he said, having the crab gone would “ affect our income and the community.”

Aaron Lestenkof was optimistic that they might cultivate other industries and grow tourism. He hoped so, because he never wanted to leave the island. His daughter was away at boarding school because there was no in-person high school any more. He hoped, when she grew up, that she’d want to return and make her life in town.

On Sunday morning, the 148-year-old church bell at Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church tolled through the fog. A handful of older women and men filtered in and stood on separate sides of the church among gilded portraits of the saints. The church has been part of village life since the beginning of Russian occupation, one of the few places, people said, where Unangam Tunuu was welcome.

A priest sometimes travels to the island, but that day George Pletnikoff Jr., a local, acted as subdeacon, singing the 90-minute service in English, Church Slavonic, and Unangam Tunuu. George helps with Aquilina Lestenkof’s language class. He is newly married with a 6-month-old baby.

After the service, he told me that maybe people weren’t supposed to live on the island. Maybe they needed to leave that piece of history behind.

“This is a traumatized place,” he said. 

It was only a matter of time until the fishing economy didn’t serve the village anymore and the cost of living would make it hard for people to stay, he said. He thought he’d move his family south to the Aleutians, where his ancestors came from.

“Nikolski, Unalaska,” he told me. “The motherland.”

The next day, just before I headed to the airport, I stopped back at Aquilina Lestenkof’s classroom. A handful of middle school students arrived, wearing oversize sweatshirts and high-top Nikes. She invited me into a circle where students introduced themselves in Unangam Tunuu, using hand gestures that helped them remember the words.

After a while, I followed the class to a work table. Lestenkof guided them, pulling a needle through a papery dried seal esophagus to sew a waterproof pouch. The idea was that they’d practice words and skills that generations before them had carried from island to island, hearing and feeling them until they became so automatic, they could teach them to their own children.

Read next:

• How Alaska’s coastal communities are racing against erosion
• Don’t Look Down: As permafrost thaws, the ground beneath Alaska is collapsing
• Unstable Ground: How thawing permafrost threatens a plan to drill in Alaska’s Arctic

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Billions of snow crabs are missing. A remote Alaskan village depends on the harvest to survive. on Jul 5, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Julia O’Malley.

My small turboprop plane whirred low through thick clouds. Below me, St. Paul Island cut a golden, angular shape in the shadow-dark Bering Sea. I saw a lone island village — a grid of houses, a small harbor, and a road that followed a black ribbon of coast.

Some 330 people, most of them Indigenous, live in the village of St. Paul, about 800 miles west of Anchorage, where the local economy depends almost entirely on the commercial snow crab business. Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea. I was traveling there to find out what the villagers might do next.

The arc of St. Paul’s recent story has become a familiar one — so familiar, in fact, I couldn’t blame you if you missed it. Alaska news is full of climate elegies now — every one linked to wrenching changes caused by burning fossil fuels. I grew up in Alaska, as my parents did before me, and I’ve been writing about the state’s culture for more than 20 years. Some Alaskans’ connections go far deeper than mine. Alaska Native people have inhabited this place for more than 10,000 years.

As I’ve reported in Indigenous communities, people remind me that my sense of history is short and that the natural world moves in cycles. People in Alaska have always had to adapt.

Even so, in the last few years, I’ve seen disruptions to economies and food systems, as well as fires, floods, landslides, storms, coastal erosion, and changes to river ice — all escalating at a pace that’s hard to process. Increasingly, my stories veer from science and economics into the fundamental ability of Alaskans to keep living in rural places.

You can’t separate how people understand themselves in Alaska from the landscape and animals. The idea of abandoning long-occupied places echoes deep into identity and history. I’m convinced the questions Alaskans are grappling with — whether to stay in a place and what to hold onto if they can’t — will eventually face everyone.

I’ve given thought to solastalgia — the longing and grief experienced by people whose feeling of home is disrupted by negative changes in the environment. But the concept doesn’t quite capture what it feels like to live here now.

A few years ago, I was a public radio editor on a story out of the small Southeast Alaska town of Haines about a storm that came through carrying a record amount of rain. The morning started routinely — a reporter on the ground calling around, surveying the damage. But then, a hillside rumbled down, taking out a house and killing the people inside. I still think of it — people going through regular routines in a place that feels like home, but that, at any time, might come cratering down. There’s a prickly anxiety humming beneath Alaska life now, like a wildfire that travels for miles in the loamy surface of soft ground before erupting without notice into flames.

But in St. Paul, there was no wildfire — only fat raindrops on my windshield as I loaded into a truck at the airport. In my notebook, tucked in my backpack, I’d written a single question: “What does this place preserve?”

The sandy road from the airport in late March led across wide, empty grassland, bleached sepia by the winter season. Town appeared beyond a rise, framed by towers of rusty crab pots. It stretched across a saddle of land, with rows of brightly painted houses — magentas, yellows, teals — stacked on either hillside. The grocery store, school, and clinic sat in between them, with a 100-year-old Russian Orthodox church named for Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the day in June 1786 when Russian explorer Gavril Pribylov landed on the island. A darkened processing plant, the largest in the world for snow crabs, rose above the quiet harbor.

You’re probably familiar with sweet, briney snow crab — Chionoecetes opilio — which is commonly found on the menus of chain restaurants like Red Lobster. A plate of crimson legs with drawn butter there will cost you $32.99. In a regular year, a good portion of the snow crab America eats comes from the plant, owned by the multibillion-dollar company Trident Seafoods.

Not that long ago, at the peak of crab season in late winter, temporary workers at the plant would double the population of the town, butchering, cooking, freezing, and boxing 100,000 pounds of snow crab per day, along with processing halibut from a small fleet of local fishermen. Boats full of crab rode into the harbor at all hours, sometimes motoring through swells so perilous they’ve become the subject of a popular collection of YouTube videos. People filled the town’s lone tavern in the evenings, and the plant cafeteria, the only restaurant in town, opened to locals. In a normal year, taxes on crab and local investments in crab fishing could bring St. Paul more than $2 million.

Then came the massive, unexpected drop in the crab population — a crash scientists linked to record-warm ocean temperatures and less ice formation, both associated with climate change. In 2021, federal authorities severely limited the allowable catch. In 2022, they closed the fishery for the first time in 50 years. Industry losses in the Bering Sea crab fishery climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars. St. Paul lost almost 60 percent of its tax revenue overnight. Leaders declared a “cultural, social, and economic emergency.” Town officials had reserves to keep the community’s most basic functions running, but they had to start an online fundraiser to pay for emergency medical services.

Through the windshield of the truck I was riding in, I could see the only cemetery on the hillside, with weathered rows of orthodox crosses. Van Halen played on the only radio station. I kept thinking about the meaning of a cultural emergency. 

Some of Alaska’s Indigenous villages have been occupied for thousands of years, but modern rural life can be hard to sustain because of the high costs of groceries and fuel shipped from outside, limited housing, and scarce jobs. St. Paul’s population was already shrinking ahead of the crab crash. Young people departed for educational and job opportunities. Older people left to be closer to medical care. St. George, its sister island, lost its school years ago and now has about 40 residents.

If you layer climate-related disruptions — such as changing weather patterns, rising sea levels, and shrinking populations of fish and game — on top of economic troubles, it just increases the pressure to migrate. 

When people leave, precious intangibles vanish as well: a language spoken for 10,000 years, the taste for seal oil, the method for weaving yellow grass into a tiny basket, words to hymns sung in Unangam Tunuu, and maybe most importantly, the collective memory of all that had happened before. St. Paul played a pivotal role in Alaska’s history. It’s also the site of several dark chapters in America’s treatment of Indigenous populations. But as people and their memories disappear, what remains?

There is so much to remember. 

The Pribilofs consist of five volcano-made islands — but people now live mainly on St. Paul. The island is rolling, treeless, with black sand beaches and towering basaltic cliffs that drop into a crashing sea. In the summer it grows verdant with mosses, ferns, grasses, dense shrubs, and delicate wildflowers. Millions of migratory seabirds arrive every year, making it a tourist attraction for birders that’s been called the “Galapagos of the North.”

Driving the road west along the coast, you might glimpse a few members of the island’s half-century-old domestic reindeer herd. The road gains elevation until you reach a trailhead. From there you can walk the soft fox path for miles along the top of the cliffs, seabirds gliding above you — many species of gulls, puffins, common murres with their white bellies and obsidian wings. In spring, before the island greens up, you can find the old ropes people use to climb down to harvest murre eggs. Foxes trail you. Sometimes you can hear them barking over the sound of the surf.

An arctic fox pup barks at a visitor. Nathaniel Wilder

Left: A shed reindeer antler on St. Paul Island. The herd is managed by the tribal government. Above: ATV tracks between beaches near the northeastern point of St. Paul Island. Nathaniel Wilder

Two-thirds of the world’s population of northern fur seals — hundreds of thousands of animals — return to beaches in the Pribilofs every summer to breed. Valued for their dense, soft fur, they were once hunted to near extinction.

Alaska’s history since contact is a thousand stories of outsiders overwriting Indigenous culture and taking things — land, trees, oil, animals, minerals — of which there is a limited supply. St. Paul is perhaps among the oldest example. The Unangax̂ — sometimes called Aleuts — had lived on a chain of Aleutian Islands to the south for thousands of years and were among the first Indigenous people to see outsiders — Russian explorers who arrived in the mid-1700s. Within 50 years, the population was nearly wiped out. People of Unangax̂ descent are now scattered across Alaska and the world. Just 1,700 live in the Aleutian region.

St. Paul is home to one of the largest Unangax̂ communities left. Many residents are related to Indigenous people kidnapped from the Aleutian Islands and forced by Russians to hunt seals as part of a lucrative 19th century fur trade. St. Paul’s robust fur operation, subsidized by slave labor, became a strong incentive for the United States’ purchase of the Alaska territory from Russia in 1867.

On the plane ride in, I read the 2022 book that detailed the history of piracy in the early seal trade on the island, Roar of the Sea: Treachery, Obsession, and Alaska’s Most Valuable Wildlife by Deb Vanasse. One of the facts that stayed with me: Profits from Indigenous sealing allowed the U.S. to recoup the $7.2 million it paid for Alaska by 1905. Another: After the purchase, the U.S. government controlled islanders well into the mid-20th century as part of an operation many describe as indentured servitude.

The government was obligated to provide for housing, sanitation, food, and heat on the island, but none were adequate. Considered “wards of the state,” the government compensated Unangax̂ for their labors in meager rations of canned food. Once a week, Indigenous islanders were allowed to hunt or fish for subsistence. Houses were inspected for cleanliness and to check for homebrew. Travel on and off the island was strictly controlled. Mail was censored.

Between 1870 and 1946, Alaska Native people on the islands earned an estimated $2.1 million, while the government and private companies raked in $46 million in profits. Some inequitable practices continued well into the 1960s, when politicians, activists, and the Tundra Times, an Alaska Native newspaper, brought the story of the government’s treatment of Indigenous islanders to a wider world.

During World War II, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and the U.S. military gathered St. Paul residents with little notice and transported them 1,200 miles to a detention camp at a decrepit cannery in Southeast Alaska at Funter Bay. Soldiers ransacked their homes on St. Paul and slaughtered the reindeer herd so there would be nothing for the Japanese if they occupied the island. The government said the relocation and detention were for protection, but they brought the Unangax̂ back to the island during the seal season to hunt. A number of villagers died in cramped and filthy conditions with little food. But Unangax̂ also became acquainted with Tlingits from the Southeast region, who had been organizing politically for years through the Alaska Native Brotherhood/Sisterhood organization.

After the war, the Unangax̂ people returned to the island and began to organize and agitate for better conditions. In one famous suit, known as “the corned beef case,” Indigenous residents working in the seal industry filed a complaint with the government in 1951. According to the complaint, their compensation, paid in the form of rations, included corned beef, while white workers on the island received fresh meat. After decades of hurdles, the case was settled in favor of the Alaska Native community for more than $8 million.

“The government was obligated to provide ‘comfort,’ but ‘wretchedness’ and ‘anguish’ are the words that more accurately describe the condition of the Pribilof Aleuts,” read the settlement, awarded by the Indian Claims Commission in 1979. The commission was established by Congress in the 1940s to weigh unresolved tribal claims.

Prosperity and independence finally came to St. Paul after commercial sealing was halted in 1984. The government brought in fishermen to teach locals how to fish commercially for halibut and funded the construction of a harbor for crab processing. By the early ‘90s, crab catches were enormous, reaching between 200 and 300 million pounds per year. (By comparison, the allowable catch in 2021, the first year of marked crab decline, was 5.5 million pounds, though fishermen couldn’t catch even that.) The island’s population reached a peak of more than 700 people in the early 1990s but has been on a slow decline ever since.

I’d come to the island in part to talk to Aquilina Lestenkof, a historian deeply involved in language preservation. I found her on a rainy afternoon in the bright blue wood-walled civic center, which is a warren of classrooms and offices, crowded with books, artifacts, and historic photographs. She greeted me with a word that starts at the back of the throat and rhymes with “song.”

“Aang,” she said.

Lestenkof moved from St. George, where she was born, to St. Paul, when she was four. Her father, who was also born in St. George, became the village priest. She had long salt-and-pepper hair and a tattoo that stretched across both her cheeks made of curved lines and dots.  Each dot represents an island where a generation of her family lived, beginning with Attu in the Aleutians, then traveling to the Russian Commander Islands — also a site of a slave sealing operation — as well as Atka, Unalaska, St. George, and St. Paul.

“I’m the fifth generation having my story travel through those six islands,” she said.

Lestenkof is a grandmother, related to a good many people in the village and married to the city manager. For the last 10 years she’s been working on revitalizing Unangam Tunuu, the Indigenous language. Only one elder in the village speaks fluently now. He’s among the fewer than 100 fluent speakers left on the planet, though many people in the village understand and speak some words.

Back in the 1920s, teachers in the government school put hot sauce on her father’s tongue for speaking Unangam Tunuu, she told me. He didn’t require his children to learn it. There’s a way that language shapes how you understand the land and community around you, she said, and she wanted to preserve the parts of that she could.

“[My father] said, ‘If you thought in our language, if you thought from our perspective, you’d know what I’m talking about,’” she said. “I felt cheated.”

She showed me a wall covered with rectangles of paper that tracked grammar in Unangam Tunuu. Lestenkof said she needed to hunt down a fluent speaker to check the grammar. Say you wanted to say “drinking coffee,” she explained. You might learn that you don’t need to add the word for “drinking.” Instead, you might be able to change the noun to a verb, just by adding an ending to it.

Her program had been supported by money from a local nonprofit invested in crabbing and, more recently, by grants, but she was recently informed that she may lose funding. Her students come from the village school, which is shrinking along with the population. I asked her what would happen if the crabs fail to come back. People could survive, she said, but the village would look very different.

“Sometimes I’ve pondered, is it even right to have 500 people on this island?” she said.

If people moved off, I asked her, who would keep track of its history?

“Oh, so we don’t repeat it?” she asked, laughing. “We repeat history. We repeat stupid history, too.”

Until recently, during the crab season, the Bering Sea fleet had some 70 boats, most of them ported out of Washington state, with crews that came from all over the U.S. Few villagers work in the industry, in part because the job only lasts for a short season. Instead, they fish commercially for halibut, have positions in the local government or the tribe, or work in tourism. Processing is hard, physical labor — a schedule might be seven days a week, 12 hours a day, with an average pay of $17 an hour. As with lots of processors in Alaska, nonresident workers on temporary visas from the Philippines, Mexico, and Eastern Europe fill many of the jobs.

The crab plant echoes the dynamics of commercial sealing, she said. Its workers leave their homeland, working hard labor for low pay. It was one more industry depleting Alaska’s resources and sending them across the globe. Maybe the system didn’t serve Alaskans in a lasting way. Do people eating crab know how far it travels to the plate?

“We have the seas feeding people in freakin’ Iowa,” she said. “They shouldn’t be eating it. Get your own food.”

Ocean temperatures are increasing all over the world, but sea surface temperature change is most dramatic in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. As the North Pacific experiences sustained increases in temperature, it also warms up the Bering Sea to the north, through marine heat waves. During the last decade, these heat waves have grown more frequent and longer-lasting than at any time since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago. Scientists expect this trend to continue. 

A marine heat wave in the Bering Sea between 2016 and 2019 brought record warmth, preventing ice formation for several winters and affecting numerous cold-water species, including Pacific cod and pollock, seals, seabirds, and several types of crab.

Snow crab stocks always vary, but in 2018, a survey indicated that the snow crab population had exploded — it showed a 60 percent boost in market-sized male crab. (Only males of a certain size are harvested.) The next year showed abundance had fallen by 50 percent. The survey skipped a year due to the pandemic. Then, in 2021, the survey showed that the male snow crab population dropped by more than 90 percent from its high point in 2018. All major Bering Sea crab stocks, including red king crab and bairdi crab, were way down too. The most recent survey showed a decline in snow crabs from 11.7 billion in 2018 to 1.9 billion in 2022.

Scientists think a large pulse of young snow crabs came just before years of abnormally warm water temperatures, which led to less sea ice formation. One hypothesis is that these warmer temperatures drew sea animals from warmer climates north, displacing cold water animals, including commercial species like crab, pollock, and cod.

Another has to do with food availability. Crabs depend on cold water — water that’s 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit), to be exact — that comes from storms and ice melt, forming cold pools on the bottom of the ocean. Scientists theorize that cold water slows crabs’ metabolisms, reducing the animals’ need for food. But with the warmer water on the bottom, they needed more food than was available. It’s possible they starved or cannibalized each other, leading to the crash now underway. Either way, warmer temperatures were key. And there’s every indication temperatures will continue to increase with global warming.

“If we’ve lost the ice, we’ve lost the 2-degree water,” Michael Litzow, shellfish assessment program manager with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told me. “Cold water, it’s their niche — they’re an Arctic animal.”

The snow crab may rebound in a few years, so long as there aren’t any periods of warm water. But if warming trends continue, as scientists predict, the marine heatwaves will return, pressuring the crab population again.

Bones litter the wild part of St. Paul Island like Ezekiel’s valley in the Old Testament — reindeer ribs, seal teeth, fox femurs, whale vertebrae, and air-light bird skulls hide in the grass and along the rocky beaches, evidence of the bounty of wildlife and 200 years of killing seals.

When I went to visit Phil Zavadil, the city manager and Aqualina’s husband, in his office, I found a couple of sea lion shoulder bones on a coffee table. Called “yes/no” bones, they have a fin along the top and a heavy ball at one end. In St. Paul, they function like a magic eight ball. If you drop one and it falls with the fin pointing right, the answer to your question is yes. If it falls pointing left, the answer is no. One large one said “City of St. Paul Big-Decision Maker.” The other one was labeled “budget bone.”

The long-term health of the town, Zavadil told me, wasn’t in a totally dire position yet when it came to the sudden loss of the crab. It had invested during the heyday of crabbing, and with a somewhat reduced budget could likely sustain itself for a decade.

“That’s if something drastic doesn’t happen. If we don’t have to make drastic cuts,” he said. “Hopefully the crab will come back at some level.”

The easiest economic solution for the collapse of the crab fishery would be to convert the plant to process other fish, Zavadil said. There were some regulatory hurdles, but they weren’t insurmountable. City leaders were also exploring mariculture — raising seaweed, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins. That would require finding a market and testing mariculture methods in St. Paul’s waters. The fastest timeline for that was maybe three years, he said. Or they could promote tourism. The island has about 300 tourists a year, most of them hardcore birders.

“But you think about just doubling that,” he said.

The trick was to stabilize the economy before too many working-age adults moved away. There were already more jobs than people to fill them. Older people were passing away, younger families were moving out.

“I had someone come up to me the other day and say, ‘The village is dying,’” he said, but he didn’t see it that way. There were still people working and lots of solutions to try.

“There is cause for alarm if we do nothing,” he said. “We’re trying to work on things and take action the best we can.”

Aquilina Lestenkof’s nephew, Aaron Lestenkof, is an island sentinel with the tribal government, a job that entails monitoring wildlife and overseeing the removal of an endless stream of trash that washes up ashore. He drove me along a bumpy road down the coast to see the beaches that would soon be noisy and crowded with seals.

We parked and I followed him to a wide field of nubby vegetation stinking of seal scat. A handful of seal heads popped up over the rocks. They eyed us, then shimmied into the surf.

In the old days, Alaska Native seal workers used to walk out onto the crowded beaches, club the animals in the head, and then stab them in the heart. They took the pelts and harvested some meat for food, but some went to waste. Aquilina Lestenkof told me taking animals like that ran counter to how Unangax̂ related to the natural world before the Russians came.

“You have a prayer or ceremony attached to taking the life of an animal — you connect to it by putting the head back in the water,” she said.

Slaughtering seals for pelts made people numb, she told me. The numbness passed from one generation to the next. The era of crabbing had been in some ways a reparation for all the years of exploitation, she said. Climate change brought new, more complex problems. 

I asked Aaron Lestenkof if his elders ever talked about the time in the detention camp where they were sent during World War II. He told me his grandfather, Aquilina’s father, sometimes recalled a painful experience of having to drown rats in a bucket there. The act of killing animals that way was compulsory — the camp had become overrun with rats — but it felt like an ominous affront to the natural order, a trespass he’d pay for later. Every human action in nature has consequences, he often said. Later, when he lost his son, he remembered drowning the rats. 

“Over at the harbor, he was playing and the waves were sweeping over the dock there. He got swept out and he was never found,” Aaron Lestenkof said. “That’s, like, the only story I remember him telling.”

We picked our way down a rocky beach littered with trash — faded coral buoys, disembodied plastic fishing gloves and boots, an old ship’s dishwasher lolling open. He said the animals around the island were changing in small ways. There were fewer birds now. A handful of seals were now living on the island year-round, instead of migrating south. Their population was also declining.

People still fish, hunt marine mammals, collect eggs, and pick berries. Aaron Lestenkof hunts red-legged kittiwakes and king eiders, though he doesn’t have a taste for the bird meat. He finds elders who do like them, but that’s gotten harder. He wasn’t looking forward to the lean years of waiting for the crabs to return. Proceeds from the community’s investment in crabbing boats had paid the heating bills of older people; the boats also supplied the elderly with crab and halibut for their freezers. They supported education programs and environmental cleanup efforts. But now, he said, having the crab gone would “ affect our income and the community.”

Aaron Lestenkof was optimistic that they might cultivate other industries and grow tourism. He hoped so, because he never wanted to leave the island. His daughter was away at boarding school because there was no in-person high school any more. He hoped, when she grew up, that she’d want to return and make her life in town.

On Sunday morning, the 148-year-old church bell at Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church tolled through the fog. A handful of older women and men filtered in and stood on separate sides of the church among gilded portraits of the saints. The church has been part of village life since the beginning of Russian occupation, one of the few places, people said, where Unangam Tunuu was welcome.

A priest sometimes travels to the island, but that day George Pletnikoff Jr., a local, acted as subdeacon, singing the 90-minute service in English, Church Slavonic, and Unangam Tunuu. George helps with Aquilina Lestenkof’s language class. He is newly married with a 6-month-old baby.

After the service, he told me that maybe people weren’t supposed to live on the island. Maybe they needed to leave that piece of history behind.

“This is a traumatized place,” he said. 

It was only a matter of time until the fishing economy didn’t serve the village anymore and the cost of living would make it hard for people to stay, he said. He thought he’d move his family south to the Aleutians, where his ancestors came from.

“Nikolski, Unalaska,” he told me. “The motherland.”

The next day, just before I headed to the airport, I stopped back at Aquilina Lestenkof’s classroom. A handful of middle school students arrived, wearing oversize sweatshirts and high-top Nikes. She invited me into a circle where students introduced themselves in Unangam Tunuu, using hand gestures that helped them remember the words.

After a while, I followed the class to a work table. Lestenkof guided them, pulling a needle through a papery dried seal esophagus to sew a waterproof pouch. The idea was that they’d practice words and skills that generations before them had carried from island to island, hearing and feeling them until they became so automatic, they could teach them to their own children.

Read next:

• How Alaska’s coastal communities are racing against erosion
• Don’t Look Down: As permafrost thaws, the ground beneath Alaska is collapsing
• Unstable Ground: How thawing permafrost threatens a plan to drill in Alaska’s Arctic

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Billions of snow crabs are missing. A remote Alaskan village depends on the harvest to survive. on Jul 5, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Julia O’Malley.

The post Prayer Helped Me Survive Poverty, But I Needed Government Support, Too appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Trish Brown.

As the U.S. remains on track for a record number of mass killings in 2023, an FBI training video instructing people on how to survive a shooting has gone viral this week.

The video, which the FBI first shared on YouTube in September 2020, is making the rounds on Twitter and TikTok, with posters expressing a mix of incredulity and outrage at the state of U.S. gun control.

"TW: Violence. If you ever need to travel to Purgeland, United [States] of Idiocracy, follow [these] instructions," Rafael Contreras Rodríguez tweeted from Auckland, New Zealand Monday.

The video's message to anyone caught up in a mass shooting is there are three options: "Run, hide, or fight."

"In this FBI training video, customers at a bar are caught in an active shooter event," the FBI's description reads. "By employing the run, hide, and fight tactics, as well as knowing the basics of rendering first aid to others, they are prepared, empowered, and able to survive the attack."

The video includes tips such as, "Running makes you harder to hit... and improves your chances of survival," and, "If we control the weapon, we control the shooter."

"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years."

Ultimately, the FBI advises people to run for an exit if possible, hide if there is no safe escape route, and fight only as a last resort.

For those who do choose to fight, the FBI reminds viewers: "You're fighting for your life. Don't fight fair!"

While the video is more than two years old, it is sparking a new wave of reactions days after the second deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year. On Saturday, Mauricio Garcia opened fire with an AR-15-style gun on the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas, killing eight, as CNN reported.

"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years," Ephraim Gopin tweeted Tuesday. "I am without words. The craziest thing? It was made by THE FBI! The fact that they felt the need to get this out to the public is insane. Sad."

User Kat Abu shared the video under the two words, "broken country."

"I am from Australia—can someone please explain if this is parody or not?" Stu Mac responded.

"It's not," Abu tweeted back.

The video's recirculation comes as the U.S. is on track to reach a record number of mass killings in 2023. A mass killing is defined as an incident in which four or more people—excluding the perpetrator—are killed. According to Gun Violence Archive figures, the U.S. has seen 21 mass killings so far this year, a rate of more than one per week. If this rate continues,The Guardian reported, the country could see 60 by the end of the year.

Another database of mass killings from USA TODAY, Northeastern University, and The Associated Pressputs the number of mass killings for 2023 at 22, the most so early in the year since the database was launched in 2006.

A mass killing does not have to be carried out by guns, but this year, firearms were "almost exclusively" to blame, the APsaid.

This year has also seen a high number of public mass shootings, such as the bloodbath at the Texas mall. In a typical year, there will be six such massacres, but the Allen, Texas, shooting marked the sixth so far for 2023, Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox toldUSA TODAY.

"Those are the kinds of events that make headlines, scare people, and make them look around when they go into a supermarket or retail store," Fox said.

There have also been 208 mass shootings—an incident in which four or more people excluding the perpetrator are killed or injured by firearms—this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This is the highest for this point in the year since 2016.

California and Texas have witnessed the largest number of these shootings at 17 each. In Texas, which has the most registered guns of any state in the nation, Democratic politicians expressed frustration at gun laws that have only gotten laxer in the state.

"I'm just so tired and hurt and devastated by the continuing mass shootings in this state and in this nation… Eight innocent people are dead—dead by gunfire. Guns again," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said in a video shared on Twitter in response to Saturday's shooting. "Of course, I offer my prayers and concerns for those families who are struggling with the loss of their loved ones. But I also ask the question: 'When are we going to confront the real cause?' And that is a proliferation of guns, guns, guns."

Fox told USA TODAY that the number of mass killings in the U.S. began to rise in 2019, and he attributed their recent increase to an uptick in gun sales as well as the mental and financial strain of the coronavirus pandemic and political polarization. And he thinks these numbers are unlikely to decrease without a significant change.

"Will things go back to a more average level we saw a decade ago? Maybe," Fox said. "But given the condition of America and the weaponry that's available, I wouldn't bet on it."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Olivia Rosane.

After kicking off 2023 by announcing a departure from "public disruption as a primary tactic" and plans for a mass demonstration in London, Extinction Rebellion U.K. and allied groups threatened a historic wave of civil disobedience if Parliament declines to engage with their demands for climate action by next week.

The new announcement came ahead of "The Big One," the demonstration set to kick off in London on Friday. The coalition's primary demands are:

1. We must end all new licenses, approvals, and funding for fossil fuel projects as we begin a transition to a fair society centered on reparatory justice for all life on Earth.
2. The U.K. government must create emergency citizens' assemblies to lead on fair, long-term solutions to the most urgent issues of our time.

"We have come to Parliament to deliver two demands for a better world. These demands will give children a fairer, safer future," declared 7-year-old Drake, whose 43-year-old mother and 72-year-old grandfather joined him in delivering the demands to policymakers on Tuesday.

Drake's mother, Hester Campbell, explained that "parents like myself are increasingly concerned about the huge issues our government is neglecting. Hunger, inequality, racism, and the climate crisis—all are rapidly worsening. The government is failing in its duty to protect us and we are calling for that to end."

Dirk Campbell, the boy's grandfather, said that "I've seen the government breaking promise after promise. We are offering them a last chance and they must take it seriously."

"I've seen the government breaking promise after promise. We are offering them a last chance and they must take it seriously."

The U.K. arm of Extinction Rebellion (XR) and other groups are giving the government until 5:00 pm BST on Monday to craft a plan to deliver on their demands.

"Four months ago, Extinction Rebellion announced 'We quit' and entered into a period of alliance-building with other movements and groups by temporarily stepping back from our tactics of civil disobedience," explained XR's Rob Callender. "Since then, the government has made policy announcements that effectively double down on deadly climate chaos. This is their last chance to show us that they are serious about saving our lives and our futures by agreeing to enter negotiations around our demands."

"A failure to do so will mean that Extinction Rebellion has no choice but to unquit—and to step up our campaign to force the government to take the drastic and radical actions necessary to avoid runaway climate change," Callender continued. "This time, we're not alone—allies from this 200-strong bloc will be stepping up alongside us."

"The four days of The Big One will see the people deciding what to do next if the government lets us down yet again by failing to meet our deadline," Callender said. If necessary, by Monday night, "the people will have delivered a plan for stepping up their campaigns," he vowed, and "within three months, Extinction Rebellion will have designed a plan for the greatest acts of civil disobedience in this country's history."

Other organizations supporting The Big One include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Don't Pay U.K., Friends of the Earth, Global Justice Now, Green Christian, Greenpeace, Just Stop Oil, Landworkers Alliance, Parents for Future U.K., Patagonia, Pesticide Action Network U.K., Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union, Scientists for Global Responsibility, Viva!, and War on Want.

"Every day more lives and livelihoods are lost to the climate crisis," said Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now, adding that the involved groups "now get this fact and want to take action together to do something about it," and "The Big One will be a springboard for building a bigger and bigger movement that drives the long-term systemic change that our society needs."

Don't Pay U.K.'s Joe Davies similarly said that "right now, with everything that is happening in the world, we need solidarity more than ever and that is what The Big One is all about. It will empower and bring together tens of thousands of people with very different opinions and modalities of protest and resistance to share their goals and find ways of delivering them together."

Final preparations for the gathering—which XR and allies have been promoting across country with "Unite to Survive" banners—come as the U.K. government has not only backed new climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects in the North Sea and "false solutions" like carbon capture and storage but also introduced "authoritarian and draconian laws" targeting protesters, noted XR co-founder Clare Farrell.

"It's quite astonishing how this government want to legislate out of existence a bunch of hippies with tubes of glue in their pocket because they scare the state so much," said Farrell. "It's important to have an open conversation of the impacts of these laws. But it's also important to note that they are not having the chilling effect that the state had hoped for. Instead, people are coming together at moments like The Big One to find new and creative ways to protest effectively."

"Stepping up after The Big One is going to take many different and disruptive forms. It doesn't have to mean taking to the streets with us or gluing yourself to things," she stressed. "We have recently seen lawyers who had ways to disrupt their profession by refusing to take part in the prosecution of climate activists. I can imagine people within the media, which continues to be guilty of untruths and misleading stories about the climate, developing their own ways of disrupting their own industry."

"Over the months ahead," she predicted, "millions of people are going to start getting very creative and clever about what disruption means to them and what they are prepared to do to make it happen—because more and more [of] them know for sure that we are in deep shit and that those in power are doing next to nothing about it."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

A group of rich Americans marked Tax Day on Tuesday by calling on the U.S. Congress to aggressively tax wealthy people like themselves, warning that the U.S. will remain in a state of "perpetual chaos" until lawmakers boldly confront the worsening inequality crisis.

"Tax Day isn't just a filing deadline—it's also an annual reminder that the ultra-rich exist in an entirely separate world when it comes to taxes," said Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, an advocacy group that supports progressive taxation.

"For us, the loopholes are bigger, the rates are lower, and many rules are entirely optional," Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, continued. "The tax code has been contributing to growing inequality for decades, and we're reaching a point where the concentration of wealth is simply unsustainable. We need a change, or our economy and our democracy will not survive. For my future, my grandchildren’s future, and our country’s future, we need to tax the rich."

Ahead of a Tuesday morning event on Capitol Hill, which will feature Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and other progressive lawmakers, Patriotic Millionaires released a tax reform agenda that calls for, among other changes, a 90% top marginal tax rate for people with annual incomes above $100 million and a federal tax exemption for people who earn less than a "cost-of-living wage."

The group also proposed legislation titled the Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth And Restore Civil Harmony (OLIGARCH) Act, which would create a progressive wealth tax structure aimed at countering the vast concentration of fortunes at the very top.

Patriotic Millionaires explained that the bill would establish "wealth tax bracket thresholds based on multiples of median American household wealth."

"The bracket thresholds are set at 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and 1,000,000 times median household wealth, with marginal rates at 2, 4, 6, and 8 percent respectively," the group said. "It will wax and wane with wealth concentration, intensifying during periods of extreme inequality when wealth at the top is increasing faster than wealth in the middle, and tapering off to near non-existence when median household wealth increases and inequality moderates."

Watch the group's Capitol Hill press conference, which is scheduled to begin at 10:30 am ET:

Erica Payne, founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement Tuesday that the heavily skewed U.S. tax code contains "the seeds of our destruction."

A massive trove of Internal Revenue Service documents obtained by ProPublica last year showed that the 25 richest Americans—including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—paid an average true tax rate of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018 in large part because unrealized capital gains from stock appreciation are not taxed.

Patriotic Millionaires on Tuesday called for a Billionaire Minimum Income Tax that would "impose a minimum tax on a wealthy household's true economic income, including unrealized capital gains, thereby eliminating the incentive for billionaires to hoard assets and avoid selling, and instead live on low-interest personal loans."

"Elites over decades have broken the social contract," said Payne. "The only way to restore stability to this nation, the only way to fix this country, is to tax this country appropriately. That includes 90% tax rates on centi-millionaires and an aggressive wealth tax designed to make billionaires less rich."

According to an Oxfam America analysis published last week, U.S. billionaires have gotten 86% richer over the past decade, with $37 of every $100 of wealth created between 2012 and 2021 going to the top 1%. The bottom 50% only received $2 for every $100 of wealth generated during that period, according to Oxfam.

"Tax Day is a reminder that the tax system isn't working for ordinary Americans. It's built to favor the richest in our society," said Nabil Ahmed, Oxfam America’s Director of Economic Justice. "The ultrawealthy are sitting on mountains of wealth that remain largely untouched by taxes, and their wild riches are in no small part a result of intentional public policy."

"We need to implement strategic wealth taxes if we want to stand any chance at reining in this kind of Gilded-Era wealth inequality that allows the super-rich to have a stranglehold over our economy," Ahmed added.

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

To soften the blow, federal officials and Arizona politicians are now turning to a pair of tribal nations that control more than a third of the water that the state gets from the Colorado River. Thanks to a set of laws and agreements hashed out over the past six months, the state and federal governments are paying the two tribes to reduce their water usage over the next few years, easing the pressure on the rest of the state.

The drought has given the two tribes an essential role in the negotiations over the river as thirsty Arizona industries, particularly manufacturing and real estate, look to them for help navigating the water shortage. In exchange for reducing their usage from the river, the tribes will receive compensation totaling hundreds of millions of dollars that could help improve reservation water quality by refurbishing old wells and upgrading pipe infrastructure  But these new opportunities to monetize water come with trade-offs for the tribes as they weigh whether to retain water for reservation agriculture.

“It’s creative thinking,” said Heather Tanana (Diné), a law professor at the University of Utah who studies tribal water rights. “Everyone is always talking about, ‘How do we solve the supply issues?’ We have to try something, and here the tribe is getting something out of it.”

Many tribes along the 1,500-mile Colorado River have struggled to secure water access due to complicated legal barriers. Some tribes have never managed to quantify their water rights at all, thanks to long standing opposition from the federal government and the states. The Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) and the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT), whose reservations are both located in Arizona, are the exceptions to that rule. 

Both tribes settled with the U.S. government decades ago, guaranteeing their rights to a large share of Colorado River water that they used before settlers arrived. Together they now enjoy rights to almost 10 percent of the river’s total flow. Moreover, these rights are among the most senior on the river, meaning the tribes will be the last to lose their allocations during shortages. GRIC and CRIT use much of this water to irrigate large farming operations that grow alfalfa and cotton, but they own more water than they can deploy on farms, so they store some in underground reservoirs.

The Biden administration and Arizona political leaders are seeking to pay the tribes to use less water, reducing the burden on cities and businesses around Phoenix and Tucson. The Gila River Indian Community will leave water in Lake Mead, one of the Colorado’s major reservoirs, which will help prevent mandatory statewide water cuts; the Colorado River Indian Tribes will lease their water to non-tribal users in Arizona, sharing it with farms and cities. The two tribes have considered such agreements for years, but the Biden administration and Congress have made a new push to free up the tribes’ water over the past year amid the drought.

Those efforts bore fruit last week when the Gila River Indian Community announced a landmark conservation deal with the federal government, agreeing to leave a huge chunk of its water in Lake Mead for three years. The Biden administration will pay the tribe around $150 million, which it can use to restore wells and build infrastructure on the reservation. The feds also agreed to build an $83 million pipeline that will bring recycled wastewater to the reservation for farming, providing a further substitute for the Colorado.

GRIC’s reservation sits just south of Phoenix, and it has partnered with Phoenix-area cities on leasing and conservation deals before. But last week’s agreement with the Biden administration is by far the tribe’s largest water deal to date. The water that GRIC will forego over the next three years could supply half a million homes, and leaving it in Mead will help ensure that the reservoir doesn’t bottom out, as federal officials have feared.

The all-star cast at the press conference drove home the significance of the agreement for Arizona’s non-tribal users. The state’s governor and both of its senators were in attendance, along with two members of Congress, the mayors of Phoenix and Tucson, and two high-ranking officials from the Department of the Interior. 

“These are truly historic investments,” said Stephen Roe Lewis, the governor of the Gila River Indian Community. “This is an Arizona-wide response to a need to reduce and conserve water in the lower basin.” Roe Lewis’s endorsement of the deal appeared to mark a shift from August of last year, when the tribe said it would hold off on participating in conservation agreements and instead would continue to store extra water in its own underground aquifers.

If the tribe takes less water from Lake Mead, the water level in the reservoir will be higher by about 2 feet. Since the federal government uses Mead’s water level as a benchmark for calculating water cuts, a higher reservoir will mean less severe cuts for Arizona. In effect, the Biden administration is paying GRIC so that cities and companies in Arizona will lose less water than they otherwise would under its proposed cuts.

“One of the signals that [GRIC] wanted to send in signing this agreement now is that tribes are not excluded from the conversation,” said Donald Pongrace, a lawyer at the firm Akin Gump who serves as counsel for GRIC. “Tribes are central to the dialogue and the solutions, right and coming up [with a system conservation plan] before anybody else just confirms that.”

The deal could help secure water supplies for the state’s booming and thirsty semiconductor industry, according to Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water official.

“They use a lot of water, and more and more are looking to come here, and those plants are gonna put a new demand on servicers,” he told Grist. “This makes the supplies for those plants more secure, because [Lake Mead] is less likely to crash.”

The Colorado River Indian Tribes, whose reservation sits on Arizona’s western border, are also taking steps to help the Grand Canyon state survive the coming shortage. After years of advocacy by Arizona lawmakers, President Biden signed a bill in January that allows the tribe to lease its water within Arizona, opening up a vast store of water for marketing within the state. Unlike GRIC, which has been able to lease water for decades thanks to the terms of an earlier settlement, CRIT has never been able to lease its 650,000 acre-foot allocation of water. 

The CRIT leases will provide an alternate water source for thirsty cities in the Phoenix metro area, allowing local governments to buy new water if they lose out on their own share of the Colorado River. If the tribe takes an aggressive approach to leasing out the water over the next few years, it could help alleviate much of the pain from future shortages; when the bill passed, Senator Mark Kelly said it “could not be more significant” for his state’s water future.

CRIT also negotiated its own conservation agreement back in 2021, a kind of test run for GRIC’s deal with the Biden administration last week. In that deal, tribal leaders agreed to leave 150,000 acre-feet of water in Mead in return for a payment of $38 million. Most of the money came from the state government, but the last $8 million came from a group of major corporations including Intel, Procter & Gamble, and Keurig Dr. Pepper, all of which have operations in Arizona that entail significant water usage.

(Representatives for CRIT didn’t respond to interview requests in time for publication.)

As transformative as the new deals might be for these Arizona water users, Tanana says they also represent a big step forward for GRIC and CRIT, giving the two tribes the ability to leverage resources in the way non-tribal users always have.

“Tribes should be allowed the same ability to do what they want to do with their water as anyone else,” she said, noting that many other tribes in the Colorado River Basin still don’t have the ability to lease their water. “When [GRIC and CRIT] have been compensated for their water, they were able to use that funding to meet community needs. So it’s a big deal.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US turns to tribes to help Arizona survive Colorado River cuts on Apr 11, 2023.

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

Extinction Rebellion (XR), backed by nearly 100 other organizations, hopes to bring together at least 100,000 people for "The Big One," which the group announced at the start of this year along with its shift away from "public disruption as a primary tactic."

While XR members have still engaged in some civil disobedience since—from dousing a U.K. government building in black paint resembling oil to calling out law firms for "defending climate criminals" on office windows—the movement argues that "at this crucial moment in history it's time to do the work and decide together on the kind of future we all want and need."

Banners calling on U.K. residents to "Unite to Survive" were hung Thursday at iconic and everyday sites, from bridges and castles to coastal fences and stone circles—including Durdle Door, Dufus Castle, the Angel of the North, and Castlerigg Stone Circle.

"We will not stand by as the planet burns," vowed Olly Baines, a 72-year-old retired chief executive from St. Austell in Cornwall, England. "Our banners on the A30 in Cornwall are calling for all to join us and Unite to Survive on April 21-24 in London, which aims to be the biggest environmental protest ever. There is no time left."

During those four days, "the streets will be transformed with people's pickets outside government departments and a diverse program of speakers, performers, and workshops, awash with color and culture," says the XR webpage for the event. "There will be art and music, talks from experts, places to listen and engage, and activities for the kids."

The current schedule is:

• Friday, April 21: Unite to Survive—Westminster is filled with flags, banners, and people.
• Saturday, April 22: Earth Day—An enormous celebration and family-friendly march for biodiversity.
• Sunday, April 23: Running Out of Time—The Big One coexists with the London Marathon.
• Monday, April 24: Choose Your Future—Parliament returns, the demand is delivered.

"Extinction Rebellion is founded in creativity with arts groups all over the world," said Bridget Turgoose, a 57-year-old creative director from London. "We make things by hand with an emphasis on doing it together rather than the perfection of a brush stroke!"

"This mass banner drop is to spread the word about the Big One in London, where our creativity and passion will be impossible to ignore," Turgoose added. "There is so much joy in creating which is essential in these dark times. To create is to rebel."

The Big One will come on the heels of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in March and described by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as "a survival guide for humanity." The document stresses the need for immediate, dramatic cuts to planet-heating pollution, largely by phasing out fossil fuels—and details the dire consequences if the world refuses to do so.

John Lardner, a history teacher from Forres, Scotland, said Thursday that "I am very worried about the world my students will inherit."

"This is why I will be in London from April 21st to demand meaningful action on the climate and ecological crisis," Lardner explained. "For over 50 years we have known about these things but a cabal of greedy fossil fuel businessmen, bankers, politicians, and journalists, have obscured the truth. Enough is enough."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.

It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.

Thousands of scientific studies and nearly 8000 pages of findings have been boiled down in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released overnight.

• READ MORE:  UN calls for rapid, ambitious action to tackle climate crisis
• IPCC report: world must cut emissions and urgently adapt to climate realities
• The AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023

In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.

“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.

Read here https://t.co/zAMzd12lR7 pic.twitter.com/YcCqIHxuLJ

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) March 20, 2023

Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.

“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.

“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”

The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.

New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.

University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.

“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”

Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.

No country too small
Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.

New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.

Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.

“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”

Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.

Humans at fault
Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.

Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.

Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.

Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.

“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”

Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.

“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.

“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”

Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.

The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.

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.

In 2002, Deirdre Birmingham and her husband, John Biondi, bought a 166-acre farm in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless region. On a portion of that land — once used to raise cattle and grow feed crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa — they planted apple and pear trees to make fermented ciders. On a larger, spring-fed portion, abutting the orchard and en route to meadow and oak forest, they seeded in Indian and June and bluestem grasses, echinacea and bergamot, spiderwort and blazing stars, restoring a portion of the region’s native prairie. They knew this would benefit beleaguered wild bees but they weren’t fully aware how this decision to rewild their landscape would help the farm, too.

Two decades later, on June 14, 2022, the weather turned unseasonably hot. After tedious cold and wet weeks, temperatures swelled throughout the morning until they hit the high 90 degrees F. “We had this record-breaking heat and the trees just fast-forwarded into blossom, and dandelions and so many other things also went into bloom,” Birmingham said. “I could see wild bees on our pears and I thought, they just have tons of work to do, and a lot of choices” of flowers to visit. She worried they’d skip her orchard’s 16,000 trees, which like many food plants rely on pollinators to produce a crop. Honeybees, which are trucked in to perform this task on orchards around the nation, were nowhere to be found — her beekeeper neighbor’s shipment was late. To her surprise, though, local wild pollinators like bumble, sweat, and mason bees, nesting in the restored prairie, did all the pollination work. The result: a bountiful apple crop. “The wild will do it for you,” Birmingham said.

There’s plenty of research that supports Birmingham’s experience of wild bees’ relevance in pollinating crops like tree fruits, blueberries, and cranberries, and the role diverse plantings play in giving bees a needed forage and habitat boost. That’s why USDA and conservation nonprofits like the Xerces Society encourage farmers to plant buffers like pollinator strips — wide swaths of flowering plants adjacent to crop fields. (Birmingham got help from both.) But there may be more going on between Birmingham’s plants and bees in this era of climate change. Her property, with its multifaceted landscape of forest and crop trees, hedgerows and prairie, has the hallmarks of a refugium.

Refugia, from the Latin for shelter and first used in biology in the 1940s, are viewed as “relatively buffered” from climate change and a haven for vulnerable species. A refugium might be found in a sheltered valley along a river, with plenty of cover from trees. As extreme heat and drought wither plants, obliterate pollen, dry up water sources and make it harder for bees to function or find food — not to mention, threaten the human food supply — a refugium’s cooler, damper microclimate could help all manner of species survive.

In fact, refugia have played a critical role in protecting species before. During the last Ice Age, the woodland ringlet butterfly, the common European viper, brown bear, black hellebore and mountain ash, hunkered down in warmer microclimates to survive the cycle of extreme cold. When things warmed up, they re-emerged and repopulated parts of the planet.

Researchers are now looking at ways this might work in our age of rising temperatures, and the role that farms might play in enhancing biodiversity. The UN Environment Program found that food and agriculture currently drive 70 percent of species loss, through deforestation, grassland conversion, chemical use, and other changes to the landscape. But farms like Birmingham’s might help counter that trend at a time when climate change is accelerating the threat to species.

For example, in a “complex landscape structure” like Birmingham’s, tree canopy provides cooling shade; densely planted trees and woody shrubs (i.e., hedgerows) block wind to prevent the land from drying out; soil covered with low-lying cover crops retains moisture; and flora move moisture into the air to lower the surrounding temperature. All of this help bees, birds, and the plants themselves.

At Dru Rivers’ Full Belly organic farm in California’s northern Capay Valley — about a 90-minute drive from the Bay Area — she and her partners planted hedgerows over 30 years ago, including some that yield crops, like pomegranates and olives. The farm’s 400 acres also produce about 100 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, through which they rotate cover crops. All of those choices enhanced the soil. So when torrential rains from the state’s unprecedented atmospheric river hit this past January, the porous soil managed to absorb all the water rather than flooding the farm. And, said Rivers, “We have the firm belief that our healthy soil helped in the drought” that hammered California over the last three years. “We still have really vibrant orchards.”

As Full Belly’s plant life has survived extremes, so too has extensive wildlife. Studies found that Full Belly provides so much welcoming habitat that it virtually “grow[s] their own [wild] bees,” making honeybee pollination unnecessary. Full Belly also supports a vast amount of birdlife, including wood ducks, Western bluebirds, and red shouldered hawks. Although researchers haven’t recorded temperatures in the farm’s microclimate, it bears the hallmarks of a refugium and “the greenness of it is comforting, even for people habitat,” Rivers says.

Data show that the best climate-mitigating effect comes from a mosaic of landscape types, with more greenery producing greater benefits. These “dampen the impact of extreme weather events, be it high temperature, extreme drought, extreme precipitation,” wrote Jonas Lembrechts, an ecologist at the University of Antwerp, in an email. “Such ‘green solutions’ can certainly be highlighted as one of the better climate adaption scenarios a person can do.”

These habitats are plentiful in nature too. Scientists around the world have been locating existing refugia and tallying their various soil types, water availability and slope direction, all of which play a role in creating nurturing microclimates. One meadow refugium in a Sierra Nevada, California, valley was found to be 18 degrees F cooler than surrounding mountainsides; researchers identified 400 plant and 100 bird species on just 800 acres. “Especially at night, the cooling effect of nature reserves can reach to 2 kilometers (nearly one mile),” Lembrechts wrote, expanding a refugium’s reach.

These protective reserves are critical for the future of species. Refugia in general “harbor large amounts of genetic diversity, so I guess that gives some hope,” said biologist Matthew Koski at Clemson University, because the species that survive in these microclimates can potentially evolve. “So conserving these regions is extremely important.” One challenge: “What if these refugia are kept to very small, protected areas and then developed around? That’s going to be totally problematic because it’s likely that those population sizes will decline,” he said, unless some connectivity between microhabitats can be established. Work is already underway in the U.S. to address those problems, with solutions like pollinator corridors in rural and urban areas.

A recent study pointed out that even a farm that supports a monoculture like wheat is often scattered with less-productive tracts suitable for habitat. Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, a landscape ecologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada at Canada’s National Wildlife Research Centre, has been studying 30 agricultural landscapes in Ontario. She sees particular promise in hedgerows, under which she’s found summer temperatures to be “remarkably” cooler than on adjacent crop fields, sometimes by nearly 15 degrees F. (Lembrechts found a similar scenario in Flemish gardens.) The more trees, the more cooling effects from direct shading and wind movement patterns. Treed hedgerows in particular “can maximize biodiversity of beneficial insects and provide co-benefits for climate mitigation,” concluded research co-conducted by Naujokaitis-Lewis.

That doesn’t mean refugia are immune to the stresses of extreme weather. “Microclimates that are a few degrees cooler might be enough to weather a short period of extreme heat or drought, but eventually pollinators need to leave their relative safety to forage for food,” said Grant Duffy, an ecologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand. And plants will eventually succumb to persistent scorch and lack of water, even if your “soil sponge,” as Lembrechts calls it, helps out for a while.

Nevertheless, a range of plants that bloom across the span of a bee’s life might allow it to stay put in a protected oasis longer. “Anything that adds more habitat complexity is going to create more microclimate variability [to give] pollinators … a better range of options when temperatures are especially warm (or cold), so they can avoid the worst of those extremes,” Duffy said.

In other words, refugia could buy species some time. First to adapt, then to wend their way toward more comfortable areas. “All animals can survive within certain critical thermal limits — the lower and higher temperatures at which they die — which they achieve by something we call plasticity, or acclimation,” said Hester Weaving, an entomologist at the University of Bristol. Insects can adapt to heat by producing heat-shock proteins, for example. “You can imagine that this process could be really useful for climate change, because, different from evolution, which is occurring over many generations and might be too slow, acclimation can happen within hours.” How plastic are insects, including bees? Not very, a recent study of Weaving’s revealed. “That’s when you know these microclimates are going to be really important for [their] survival,” she said.

Agricultural landscapes with a robust array of plants will likely become even more important as temperatures warm. “When we create pollinator-friendly habitat, we create larger populations of pollinators that are going to have a better capacity to adapt to future changes,” said biologist Jessica Forrest of the University of Ottawa, who studies how climate change affects plant-pollinator interactions. The bigger those populations are, “the more chance there is that one individual’s got a mutation that allows it to tolerate whatever new environmental condition is coming along.”

Sadly, those benefits aren’t recognized often enough. Naujokaitis-Lewis, for example, has encountered farmers bent on removing hedgerows from their property to keep them from toppling onto fields in intensifying storms, fully unaware of the climatic advantages of keeping them intact. Birmingham, meanwhile, has experienced these advantages firsthand. Two years ago, her landscape proved its greater worth. “We had a drought year that didn’t faze our prairie because these plants are so deep-rooted,” she said. Not only did her fruit trees get pollinated; her wild bees survived and thrived in their habitat.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A chilling effect: How farms can help pollinators survive the stress of climate change on Mar 5, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lela Nargi, The Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Skyba, a photojournalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, acknowledged that he is privileged to have these life-saving items while some freelancers struggle to survive sub-zero nights in frontline basements. But one year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, journalists can never be too prepared.

“Operating in Ukraine is about being absolutely autonomous, and it’s about being dependent on you, your crew, and everything that’s in your car, if you have one,” Skyba said. 

The war in Ukraine has taken an enormous toll on the country’s press corps. Since last February, 15 local and international journalists have been killed—13 in direct relation to their work—many have been injured, and countless others have faced mental health challenges. Yet for local journalists, the initial shock of the war — and the confusion over how to cover it safely — has given way to a growing sense of resilience among reporters as they have been forced to adapt to their new roles as full-time war correspondents. In interviews with CPJ, journalists said not only are they committed to continue covering the war, they are prepared for the challenges to come. And equipment is just one part of the story. 

‘A choice that Ukrainian journalists didn’t make’ 

While nearly eight million Ukrainians have fled the country since last February, according to U.N. figures, many of the country’s journalists chose to stay put and cover the conflict. In interviews, Ukrainian journalists remembered those first few weeks as shimmering with panic, a terrifying, chaotic time, when reporting was enveloped by the fog of war. Safety advisors who work with international news crews remember the general confusion, the fluidity of the situation, and the deficit of timely, reliable information when advising journalists’ movements as Russian troops encroached from multiple fronts. 

The brutal speed of the invasion meant the country’s press corps quickly became war correspondents, “a choice that Ukrainian journalists didn’t make,” Skyba told CPJ. Even journalists like Skyba, who had covered the events around the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbas region were stunned by the invasion’s suddenness and scale. Few other stories mattered. 

“We had people who were sports journalists, culture journalists, who became war correspondents,” says Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist who co-founded Public Interest Journalism Lab, a group that researches and implements journalism best practices. “A new generation appeared largely because of the scale [of the war].”

Kristina Berdynskykh’s work “completely changed” following the invasion, she told CPJ. A longtime politics reporter for outlets including New Voice of Ukraine, she shifted to freelance work, telling the stories of ordinary people in wartime. It’s not lost on her that she’s also a civilian whose life changed dramatically. In last February and March, she spent 17 days in Kyiv’s Obolon metro station with her mother and a teenage relative. 

“At the beginning we didn’t understand sounds,” she said of the unfamiliar noises over the metro’s roof. “Is it air defense? Is it incoming? Is it outgoing? We didn’t used to live in a war. For us, everything was completely new.”

In the early days of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and newsrooms desperately needed life-saving personal protective equipment like helmets and ballistic vests. But at that point, supply was so low that many were left in the lurch. Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Ukrainian online news outlet Zaborona, gave local journalists six bulletproof vests stored in her newsroom before searching for equipment outside the country. She co-founded the 2402 Fund, an organization that provides safety equipment and training to journalists in Ukraine. CPJ has also assisted with such efforts, sending lifesaving medical supplies and individual first aid kits to Ukrainian journalists, as well as directing them to support from other press freedom groups. (CPJ deputy emergencies director Kerry Paterson is on 2402’s advisory board and CPJ’s delivery of the first aid kits was facilitated by the organization.)

Equipment can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for freelancers. Mykola Pastukh is a journalist who also provided support to foreign news crews after the war began. A former cinematographer, he had a car and camera equipment. “I decided it would be silly not to use it. I started shooting,” he told CPJ. But he couldn’t afford a helmet or a vest. After he was nearly injured in a bombing while reporting with a U.S. crew, he acquired a bulletproof vest from a soldier. (His arm was later partially paralyzed in a shelling attack during which he wore protective gear.)   

To help local journalists prepare, 2402 offers Hostile Environment First Aid Training (HEFAT), the same courses provided to many foreign correspondents heading to global hotspots. Skyba, who teaches risk assessment as part of 2402’s courses, underscores just how vital this information is for journalists – whether they are covering war or simply trying to survive. Berdynskykh told CPJ that the most dangerous moment she faced was not on a reporting trip but on a New Year’s Eve outing, when shelling rained down near her car. 

“There is no other option to survive,” Skyba said. “For the local journalists, risk-averse thinking is required all the time. Even taking the wrong street if you’re socializing with your friends can save your life. A rocket can land any second on the nearest building and you are done.”

Journalists adapt, while eyeing new threats

Ukrainian newsrooms have adapted their practices to wartime coverage. At Zaborona, journalists conduct risk assessments and have check-in calls when they are out reporting, and the publication provides the option of evacuation if the situation is deemed too dangerous. The outlet also offers psychological support. Reporting teams work in shifts: while one group is on the front line, another reports from a less dangerous location. No team is on the front line for more than a week to ensure everyone gets time to rest.

As the war drags on, new threats and complications have emerged. Journalists are reporting from areas containing unexploded ordnance (UXO). Attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure have forced the media to operate amid constant blackouts. Newsrooms are now competing with the military to purchase Starlink terminals—dishes that connect to Starlink satellites and provide internet service to remote areas—in order to keep their operations running, said Skyba. 

Ukraine’s journalists also face unique challenges to their mental health. Stories they have covered, including of alleged war crimes in Mariupol and Bucha, can exact a heavy psychological price. But unlike their foreign correspondent counterparts, they cannot go home to peaceful countries. Gumenyuk said that many colleagues’ lives have been utterly shattered by the war: she mentioned fellow reporters whose homes in Irpin and Chernihiv were bombed, who were detained reporting in eastern Ukraine, or who were internally displaced after fleeing Kherson.  

Many journalists said they deal with chronic stress. Yet they feel reluctant to take a break – for some, journalism is a way to serve their country, without carrying arms. (Other journalists did pick up arms, leaving the profession to fight in the war.) Several told CPJ that journalists live with the persistent feeling that they are not doing enough if they’re not reporting from the front lines, exposed to the maximum possible danger. All the stress creates fatigue, and fatigue can lead to mistakes, which only compounds the risk, said Skyba. 

Then there are the losses to war: friends, relatives, and colleagues killed. Speaking of this near-universal experience, Berdynskykh recalled the first person she knew personally who was killed: Maks Levin, the Ukrainian photojournalist who was found dead after going missing in the Kyiv region early in the war.

“I don’t know how we adapt, we just do,” Sergatskova said. “What is clear from this type of coverage is the mental health challenges now facing Ukrainian journalists. There is a huge need for Ukrainian-language psychologists who can work specifically with journalists, and who can understand the details of the profession.” 

Ukrainian journalists say they are prepared to cover this war for the long haul. International news outlets are, too: The New York Times and The Washington Post both opened new Kyiv bureaus last year, fortifying their presence for the foreseeable future. As the invasion’s first anniversary approaches, local journalists are concerned about what Sergatskova called “Ukraine fatigue,” the risk of the world’s attention turning elsewhere to the next conflict, the next scandal, the next story. 

Whatever happens next, Ukraine’s press corps will continue being the eyes and ears of their country, telling the story of the war that will no doubt change Ukraine for generations to come. And with the help and solidarity of their colleagues, the safety trainings, and the protective equipment, they will do so as safely as they can, for as long as it takes.

“I understand that the war keeps going, and maybe we’ll have a few years of war. I am pretty sure I will cover this war because I don’t have any choice,” says Berdynskykh. “I will live in Ukraine. I want to cover this war.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lucy Westcott.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Isabella Cipirska.

When I was growing up, there was a parody of an old-fashioned public announcement tacked to the wall of our kitchen that I vividly remember. It had step-by-step instructions for what to do "in case of a nuclear bomb attack." Step 6 was "bend over and place your head firmly between your legs"; step 7, "kiss your ass goodbye."

That shouldn't be surprising, since my parents, Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, once-upon-a-time priest and nun, were well-known antinuclear activists.  I was too young to be a part of the "duck-and-cover generation" who, at school, practiced hiding from a nuclear attack beneath their desks or heading for local bomb shelters in the basements of churches and town halls.

Born in 1974, I think of myself as a member of The Day After generation, who were instructed to watch that remarkably popular made-for-TV movie in 1983 and report on our observations and feelings. Dramatizing the life of people in a small town in Kansas after a full-scale nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, it made a strong (if perhaps unintentional) case that dying in the initial blast would have been better than surviving and facing the nuclear winter and over-armed chaos that followed.

In this Ukraine War era, maybe we could label today's kids as the Generation Fed Up With Grown Ups (Gen Fed Up). The members of Gen Z are "digital natives," born with smartphones in their hands and instantly able to spot all the messy seams in, and agendas behind, poorly produced, un-informative Public Service Announcements like the New York City Emergency Management department's much pilloried recent PSA about what to do in case of—yep, you guessed it!—a nuclear attack: get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned. (Sounds pretty close to the poster on my wall growing up, doesn't it?)

Young people need real information and analysis, survival skills and resources. Generation Z and the younger Generation Alpha (I have some of both in my family) are growing up in a world torn apart by the selfishness and shortsightedness of earlier generations, including the impact of the never-ending production and "modernization" of nuclear weapons, not to speak of the climate upheaval gripping this planet and all the horrors that go with it, including sea level rise, megadrought, flooding, mass migration, starvation, and on and on and on…

Jornado del Muerto

The nuclear age began during World War II with the July 16, 1945, test of a six-kilogram plutonium weapon code-named Trinity in the Jornado Del Muerto Valley in New Mexico. No one bothered to tell the estimated 38,000 people who lived within 60 miles of that atomic test that it was about to take place or that there might be dangerous nuclear fallout following the blast. No one was evacuated. The area, whose Spanish name in translation means, appropriately enough, Journey of Death, was rich in indigenous culture and life, home to 19 American Indian pueblos, two Apache tribes, and some chapters of the Navajo Nation. Though hardly remembered today, they were the first nuclear casualties of our age. 

That initial test was quickly evaluated as successful and, less than a month later, American war planners considered themselves ready for the ultimate "tests"—the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima on August 6th and Nagasaki three days later. The initial blasts from those back-to-back bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people on the spot and immediately thereafter, and countless more from radiation sickness and cancer.

Fat Man and Little Boy, as those bombs were bizarrely code-named, should have signaled the end of nuclear war, even of all war. The incineration of so many civilians and the leveling of two major cities should have been motivation enough to put the cork in the deadly power of the atom and consign nuclear weapons to some museum of horrors alongside the guillotine, the rack, and other past devices of obscene torture.

But it would prove to be just the beginning of an arms race and a cheapening of life that goes on to this day. After all, this country continues to "modernize" its nuclear arsenal to the tune of trillions of dollars, while Vladimir Putin has threatened to use one or more of his vast store of "tactical" nukes, and the Chinese are rushing to catch up. I keep thinking about how 77 years of nuclear brinkmanship and impending doom has taken its global toll, even while making life more precarious and helping render this beautiful and complex planet a garbage can for forever radioactive waste. (Okay, okay, hyperbole alert… it's not forever, just literally a million years.) 

Some among the duck-and-cover generation feared that they wouldn't live to see adulthood, that there would be no tomorrow. Not surprisingly, too many of them, when they grew up, came to treat the planet as if there indeed were no tomorrow. And you can see evidence of just that attitude any time you consider the "prosperity" of the second industrial revolution with its toxic sludge of fossil fuels, PCBs, asbestos, lead in paint and gas, and so many plastics. This polluting of our ground, water, and air was all, I suspect, spurred on by a nihilistic nuclearism.

It seems impossible to work so hard to shift from burning carbon to capturing solar or wind power if there's a chance that it could all go up in a mushroom cloud tomorrow.  But there have been some notable efforts from which to draw hope and inspiration as we keep living out those very tomorrows. As environmentalist and futurist Bill McKibben writes in his memoir The Flag, The Cross and The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back on His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What The Hell Happened, President Jimmy Carter tried to guide this country to a less carbon-dependent future—and it cost him the presidency. The Carter White House sought to mitigate the damage of the 1979 oil crisis with significant investments in solar power and other green technologies and cutting-edge conservation. Had such policies been allowed to take hold, as McKibben points out, "climate changes would have turned from an existential crisis to a manageable problem on a list of other problems."

Can you imagine? We love Carter now for his folksy accessibility, moral stamina, and promotion of affordable housing through Habitat for Humanity, but as we doom-scroll the latest news about present and future climate catastrophes, we have to reach back through time to even imagine a healthier tomorrow. Sadly enough, with Carter, we might have been near a turning point, we might have had a chance… and then actor (and huckster) Ronald Reagan rode his 10-gallon cowboy hat into the White House, removed the rooftop solar panels the Carters had installed, instituted tax cuts for the very wealthy, and loosened regulations on every type of polluter. President Reagan did that in 1986, only a year or so after the last month of our era that the planet was cooler than average. 

Tomorrow

1986 seems like just yesterday! Now what? How about tomorrow?

After all, here we are in 2022 about to hit eight billion strong on this planet of ours. And there is, of course, a tomorrow. Hotter and drier but dawning all the same. Wetter and windier but coming anyway.

I have three kids, ages 8, 10 and 15, and they anchor me in a troubling and strange, if still ultimately beautiful, reality. This world, however finite with its increasingly overwhelming problems, is still precious to me and worth a good fight. I can't turn away from tomorrow. It's not an abstraction. The headlines now seem to endlessly scream: we are at a potential tipping point in terms of the climate. Did I say a potential tipping point? I meant to make that plural. In fact, an article in the September 8th issue of the Guardian lists 16 of them in all. Sixteen! Imagine that!

Three of the biggest ones that climate scientists agree we're close to tipping over are:

1. The collapse of Greenland's ice cap, which will produce a huge rise in global sea levels.

2. The collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic Ocean, which will further disrupt rainfall and weather patterns throughout the world, severely curtailing global food production.

3. The melting of the Arctic's carbon-rich permafrost, releasing staggering amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and so further broiling this planet. (Will it freeze again if we do the right thing? Not likely, as it seems as if that tipping point has already tipped.)

In the face of all of this, in the age of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, and the rest of the crew, how do you change political or corporate behavior to slow, if not reverse, global warming? More than three-quarters of a century of uncertain tomorrows has made the human race—particularly, of course, those in the developed/industrialized world—awful stewards of the future.

"So when we need collective action at the global level, probably more than ever since the second world war, to keep the planet stable, we have an all-time low in terms of our ability to collectively act together. Time is really running out very, very fast." So said Johan Potsdam, a scientist with the Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. As he added tellingly, speaking of the global temperature ceiling set at the Paris climate accords in 2015 (and already considered out of date in the latest devastating United Nations report), "I must say, in my professional life as a climate scientist, this is a low point. The window for 1.5C is shutting as I speak, so it's really tough."

Dire predictions, reams of science, sober calls to act from climatologists and activists, not to speak of island and coastal communities already being displaced by a fast-warming world. Only recently, two young people from the climate movement Last Generation threw mashed potatoes at the glass covering a classic Claude Monet painting in a museum near Berlin in a bid to get attention, while activists from Just Stop Oil used tomato soup on the glass of Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London in October. In neither case were the paintings themselves harmed; in both cases, they have my attention, for what that's worth.

For striking numbers of climate refugees globally, the point has already tipped and, given their situations, they might like to have some tomato soup and mashed potatoes—to eat rather than to be flung as protest props. In the longer term, for their children and grandchildren, they need masses of people in the biggest greenhouse gas polluters—China and the United States top the list—to radically alter their lifestyles to help protect what's left of this distinctly finite planet of ours.

Yesterday

Thomas Berrigan, my grandfather, was born in 1879. My grandmother Frida was born in 1886. While they missed the pre-industrial era by more than 100 years, their early lives in the United States were almost carbon-free. They hauled water, chopped wood, and largely ate from a meager garden. As poor people, their carbon footprint remained remarkably small, even as the pace and pollution of life in the United States and the industrialized West picked up.

My father, Philip Berrigan, born in 1923, was the youngest of six brothers. There could have been two more generations of Berrigans between his birth and mine in 1974, but there weren't. I could have been a grandmother when I gave birth to my last child in 2014, but I wasn't. So, in our own way, whether we meant to or not, we slowed down the march of generations and I'm grateful for the long perspective that gives me.

In her later years, my grandmother marveled at the ways in which a car could bring her back and forth to the city "all in one day." More recently, her great-grandchildren have found that they could still go to school (after a fashion) thanks to computers during the Covid pandemic, communicating in real-time with teachers and classmates scattered elsewhere in our world.    

It's not likely that I'll live until 2079, my grandfather's 200th birthday, but his great-granddaughter, my daughter Madeline, will just be turning 65 then. If she has my mother's longevity, she'll be 86 when we hit the year 2100, That is the grim milestone (tombstone?) when climate scientists expect that we could reach a disastrous global average temperature of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Unless. Unless something is done, many somethings are done to reverse greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise, that spells disaster beyond measure for my children's children. 

When I look at old photos, I see my own face in my mother's hollowed-out, age-spotted cheeks. And when I look at my daughter's still chubby cheeks and the way her eyebrows arch, I see my own younger face (and that of my mother's, too).

As far as I'm concerned, the year 2100 is my future, even though I won't be here to struggle through it with my children and their children. In the meantime, we keep putting one foot in front of the other (walking is better for the environment anyway) and struggling somehow to deal with this beautiful, broken world of ours. One generation cedes to the next, doing its best to impart wisdom and offer lessons without really knowing what tools those who follow us will need to carve a better tomorrow out of a worsening today.

To go back to the beginning, while such a thing is still possible, if nuclear weapons, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, fossil fuels, and apocalyptic fear helped get us to this breaking point, we need something truly different now. We need not war, but peace; not new nukes, but next-generation-level diplomacy; not fossil fuels, but the greenest of powers imaginable. We need a world that Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, and their ilk can't even imagine, a world where their kind of power is neither needed, nor celebrated. 

We need gratitude, humility, and awe at the deep web of interconnection that undergirds the whole of nature. We need curiosity, joy in discovery, and celebration. And our kids (that Gen Fed Up) can help us access those powers, because they're inherent in all children. So, no more ducking and covering, no more Day After, no more staying inside. Let us learn from Generation Z and Generation Alpha and change—and maybe survive.

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

These reports are alarming, because hydropower is a major source of carbon-free energy for the West — during a wet year, it can meet 30 percent of the region’s annual electricity demand in the West. 

But a recent study by scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory challenges the idea that hydropower’s role as a backbone for the electric grid is fading. The authors looked back at the historical record to see how the western hydropower fleet has been affected by periods of drought over the 20th and 21st centuries. What they found shows that the reality is more complex, and that even during a serious drought, hydropower is more reliable than people might think.

“I think the misconception about hydro is driven by these marquee cases like Glen Canyon and the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River,” said Sean Turner, a hydrologist and water resources engineer and one of the authors of the study. “Those are really big and significant plants, but they’re a very, very small part of the overall Western hydropower fleet, which consists of hundreds of plants across the entire western region, contributing to an interconnected power grid. You need to study the whole system.”

The Edward Hyatt Power Plant intake facility at Lake Oroville (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) and a photo of Sean Turner (Andrea Starr / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

I spoke with Turner about his findings, and about whether hydropower’s past performance is a good predictor of how reliable it will be in the future.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Q.What was the driving question behind your recent study on hydropower and drought?

A.The question was, what does drought actually mean for hydropower in the West? How does it affect different regions? We’re talking about 11 states, an enormous area, and diverse climates throughout the West. We’ve got the data to answer that question really rigorously.

Q.What did you find?

A.Even during the most severe droughts of the last 20 years, the Western hydropower fleet still maintained 80 percent of its average annual output — equal to the total output from all other renewables combined in the West. The reason you get this reliability is that despite the West’s notoriously volatile climate, there’s climate diversity. Drought in one region may be associated with wet conditions in another region, and so you’re unlikely to see the entire hydropower fleet affected by drought at the same time.

Q.Is the past a good predictor of the future in this case, because of climate change?

A.It depends. The reservoirs in the Southwest are totally unique. They store such huge volumes of water equal to multiple years of flow in the river. On balance, it looks like the impact of climate change in this area is going to be to slightly reduce the availability of water. And you have a system that’s already on a knife’s edge, where the amount of water allocated for cities, for agriculture, is already pretty much equal to the mean flow of the basin. So over a long period of time, if you don’t change how much water’s being taken out of the system, reservoirs are going to draw down. And you can kind of say that the past is no longer a reliable predictor of the future. 

There are other systems, most other systems in the West, where your reservoirs fill up and draw down over much shorter periods of time. And that can be on the order of days in some of the major plants in the Columbia River Basin. In those cases, the past is a much more reliable predictor of the future. Even minor changes to the flow regime in the Columbia River are not going to greatly impact how much power can be generated from those plants. 

Q.Even though the Southwest is a small part of the overall hydropower picture in the West, will states there need to compensate for that lost electricity in other ways, looking ahead?

A.At the moment, those dams are still producing power. If drought conditions continue and there are no extreme management actions to alleviate them, then those plants may have to shut down for a period of time until the reservoir levels recover. If that occurs, certainly other resources would need to be brought online. They’re part of an interconnected grid, so electricity can be imported from elsewhere. The impact is less likely to be power cuts and lights out, it’s more likely to be increased electricity costs and potentially increased carbon emissions, because there’s likely to be more reliance on gas and other resources.

Q.Is this something those states should be more proactively worried about in terms of achieving their clean energy goals?

A.It depends on how long the impact is. If drought conditions in the Southwest become a permanent feature, then those reservoir levels aren’t going to recover. And so you’ve got permanent loss of a significant source of carbon-free electricity. If that’s not replaced by some other carbon-free source, then there’s gonna be a long-term impact on the emissions of the electricity sector. 

That’s a huge if. A lot of people are confidently making projections about the demise of Western water resources, particularly in the Southwest, due to the recent conditions, due to the threat of climate change. But hydrology is notoriously difficult to predict. It wouldn’t surprise me if in five years’ time, those reservoir levels were raised back up after a significant wet period. You just don’t know. And if that occurs, then you’ve got another lengthy period of time where you can continue to rely on those resources to produce carbon-free electricity.

Q.The study warns about a repeat of the drought that occurred in 1976 and 1977. What happened then?

A.This was a really severe historical drought. Most of the hydropower fleet was built by this period, and unlike more recent droughts, it affected most of the West. The two powerhouses of hydro generation in the West are the Northwest and California. California is really sensitive to two-year droughts. 1976 was a dry year in California. Then you had ’77 which was a really dry year throughout the West. We don’t have data for all plants that were operating during that time, but from the plants that we do have, that appears to be the year with the largest number of shutdowns. 

Q.Is the idea that that’s sort of a worst-case scenario for the future?

A.It could be. The climate can produce things that you haven’t seen in 50 years. There’s potential for even worse cases. It may be 100 years before you see something like that again, or maybe it’ll be next year. But even in that case, the overall impact on hydro was still 25 percent or something below average total Western generation. So even in the most extreme drought, when we look back 100 years, there’s nothing that cripples hydro in a serious way. Hydro still supplies a lot of electricity during those periods.

Q.What are you looking at next?

A.Another study, which I think will be done relatively soon, will be on trying to understand more about the impacts of climate change on drought and whether or not that increases the risk of what we call Dead Pool events, so those cases where you get reservoir levels dropping below intakes. The historical record that we’ve got — 100 years — is a short period, and in hydrological terms, you don’t get a full view of variability of what the climate could possibly produce. What happens if you have some megadrought, multi-year, and it starts causing lots of plant shutdowns at the same time? How does that then affect the power grid? 

Q.So does this recent study not actually tell us much about the future for hydro under climate change? What should people take away from it? 

A.It’s not necessarily the case that the West is gonna be more and more dry. The hydropower powerhouse is the Northwest, and most general climate models predict wetter conditions in the Northwest. Even in the Southwest, there’s still a debate to be had about what’s likely to happen over the next 100 years as a result of climate change, because the system is extremely complex. Warming temperatures are likely to be associated with more precipitation. It’s really the balance between the impact on precipitation and the impact on evapotranspiration. So the climate change impacts remain very uncertain. 

We are really focusing on a retrospective analysis of the impact of drought. It does reveal a lot about the present and future because the hydrological system will continue to produce droughts, many of those droughts will be similar in nature to the droughts that have been experienced in the past. And those general conclusions about the importance of climate diversity throughout the West, and the resiliency of the hydropower fleet — those are going to apply for future droughts as well. I can understand why people care so much about Glen Canyon and Hoover because those are such iconic systems. It’s not the whole story. That would be the main thing I want people to grasp.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The West’s biggest source of renewable energy depends on water. Will it survive the drought? on Oct 18, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Pontecorvo.

Photograph Source: frankieleon – CC BY 2.0

Inflation continues to rise in the United States. Although gas prices have recently fallen since their record high over the summer, the cost of groceries rose by 11.4 percent over the last year, and there is no expectation that they will fall back to reasonable levels. Prices overall have risen by 8.2 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index report covering September 2022 as compared to the same month last year. While most working Americans are not getting hefty wage raises to compensate for inflation, seniors will see their Social Security benefits—which are pegged to inflation—rise next year. Starting in January 2023, beneficiaries will see an 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) bump in their Social Security checks.

Conservatives are scoffing at this automated increase, as if it were a special treat that the Biden administration has cooked up to bribe older voters. Fox News reported that there was a “social media backlash” against White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s tweet lauding the upcoming increased COLA benefits for seniors. The outlet elevated comments by the conservative America First Policy Institute’s Marc Lotter, who retorted to Klain, “Nice try Ron. Raising benefits next year does not help seniors with the higher prices they are paying today or the higher prices they’ve been paying since you took office.”

But Social Security benefits have risen automatically with inflation since 1975 by design, precisely so that the livelihoods of seniors are not beholden to partisanship. This is an imminently sensible way to ensure that retired Americans, who spent their working lives paying Social Security taxes, can have a basic income.

If conservatives are complaining that an 8.7 percent bump is not enough to counter inflation, one might expect them to demand an even greater increase to Social Security benefits.

But, as is often the case with conservative economic logic, hypocrisy abounds. Bloomberg Government reporter Jack Fitzpatrick recently reported that several House Republicans who are vying to chair next year’s House Budget Committee if their party wins a majority in the November 2022 general elections are crafting plans for reductions, not increases. They hope to leverage negotiations on raising the 2023 debt ceiling by demanding cuts to Social Security and Medicare—programs that the GOP loves to deceptively label “entitlements.”

Fitzpatrick, using conservatives’ nakedly partisan language, said that Republican negotiators “could subsequently put major entitlement programs in play.” One of the GOP members of Congress eyeing the committee leadership, Georgia’s Buddy Carter, was more forthcoming about his plan, saying, “Our main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary—it’s got to be on entitlements.” Another Republican lawmaker, Jodey Arrington of Texas, also hoping to chair the crucial committee, understood the value of discretion when discussing cuts to programs favored by his constituents. He warned his Republican colleagues against getting too specific because “this can get so politicized.”

But Republicans have been demanding cuts to so-called entitlement programs for at least the past seven years running, in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Oddly, the Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler found no evidence to back up Democratic Senator Patty Murray’s recent claim that “Republicans plan to end Social Security and Medicare if they take back the Senate.” Awarding Murray four “Pinocchios”—the Fact Checker column’s highest possible rating for lies—Kessler assured readers, saying, “Don’t worry, seniors: There is no such plan.” (In the hundreds of comments on the piece, many readers called out Kessler’s obvious service to Republicans in helping to hide their agenda.)

Social Security is one of the best, most popular government-funded programs in the nation. I recently explained its workings to my parents who emigrated from the United Arab Emirates to the U.S. a year ago. The custom they are familiar with in countries like the UAE is that of a “gratuity” or severance, paid to retiring workers—a lump-sum tip—based on their salary and number of years worked.

I explained that in contrast, U.S. workers pay a small percentage of their wages into the Social Security fund their entire working life. Upon retirement, workers draw a monthly sum based on their salary, years worked, and the current cost of living. While this may not sound as enticing as receiving a large sum of money at once, the monthly payments will never run out and last from retirement until death. My parents were duly impressed.

This year, to mark the 87th anniversary of Social Security, Data for Progress found in a poll that the program remains extremely popular and that a majority of voters want to increase benefits.

Those surveyed also worried that Congress could cut current or future benefits, or privatize the program. Most had not heard about Republican plans for cuts, however, suggesting that the efforts to hide the GOP’s real agenda have generally worked.

And, most were in favor of a very simple solution to ensure that Social Security’s funds don’t run out as revenues have dropped due to increasing inequality, and life expectancy has increased: make the wealthy pay their fair share. Social Security payroll taxes are capped at $147,000 in wages currently (and beginning in 2023 will increase a modest 9 percent to $160,200). That means those earning a million dollars a year in 2022 pay the same amount into Social Security as those earning $150,000. Removing the cap ensures that the fund will remain solvent and stable.

Social Security, in spite of some flaws, is also one of the nation’s most progressive programs, helping to further racial and gender justice among older Americans.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), “Social Security is a particularly important source of income for groups with low earnings and less opportunity to save and earn pensions, including Black and Latino workers and their families, who face higher poverty rates during their working lives and in old age.”

Furthermore, CBPP finds that “Social Security is especially important for women, because they tend to earn less than men, take more time out of the paid workforce, live longer, accumulate less savings, and receive smaller pensions.”

In spite of enduring Republican desires to cut the program, it is not nearly as generous as it ought to be. A global comparison of government retirement benefits by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2019 found that the U.S. ranked 24th on the ratio of worker benefits to earnings. This is below average for OECD countries, and lower than the benefits paid by countries like Turkey, Greece, Estonia, and Latvia, in spite of the U.S. being the richest nation in the world.

In other words, there is a basis for the conservative critique that an 8.7 percent increase in Social Security benefits slated for 2023 is insufficient. But the solution is to make benefits more generous, rather than to cut the program as Republicans aim to do.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

The Fijiana 15s defeated 13th ranked South Africa 21-17 today to get their first win at the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Fiji struck first through winger Ilisapeci Delaiwau in the 12th minute after some broken play and her try was successfully converted by Lavena Cavuru.

A couple of missed opportunities where the 16th ranked Fijiana could have extended their lead, but luckily the South Africans were not able to capitalise on this.

• READ MORE:  Red Roses hot favourite to win 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cup
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Zintle Mpupha sliced through the Fijiana defence and dotted down between the sticks making the conversion easy for Janse van Rensburg to level the score.

Akanisi Sokoiwasa cruised over for a try on the stroke of half-time with Cavuru getting the conversion to take a 14-7 lead at the break.

In the 59th minute, South Africa won a penalty and they powered over on their second attempt after recycling the ball quickly with Aseza Hele diving over to level the score 14-all.

Janse van Rensburg struck with a penalty goal to give the South Africans the lead with 40 seconds left, but the Fijianas had the last say with No 8 Karalaini Naisewa brushing aside the defence to score under the sticks.

Fijiana will face France at Northland Events Centre, Whangarei, next Saturday at 6.15pm in their final pool game.

Alipate Narawa is a Fiji Village reporter.

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

Two courtroom dramas unfolded this week in the U.S., both the result of America’s gun obsession: In Florida, jurors recommended Nikolas Cruz be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Cruz murdered 17 students and staff at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, 2018. Meanwhile, a Connecticut jury decided on financial penalties for conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, who was found guilty of defamation.

Jones long claimed that the Dec. 14, 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged, and that some of the grieving parents were actually “crisis actors,” reading government-provided scripts in a false flag operation mounted to justify gun confiscation. The jury awarded eight families and one FBI agent in the suit a stunning sum of almost $1 billion. Outside these courtrooms, the cycle of gun violence continues, as Americans amass an unprecedented private arsenal estimated at close to 400 million firearms—more guns than people.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 45,000 people died by gunfire in the U.S. in 2020. Over 24,000 were by suicide, while over 19,000 were homicides. More than 1,000 people were shot to death by police. These grim figures are without comparison in the world. U.S. gun deaths have become so commonplace they barely warrant a mention in the media. We, as a society, have grown accustomed to the carnage.

“We are a nation under siege,” Nina Turner, national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, said on the Democracy Now! news hour last July, one day after a teenager fired on a July 4th parade in Hyde Park, Illinois, killing seven and wounding 48. “When you cannot take your family to a parade, you can’t go to the grocery store — I’m thinking about Buffalo — your babies are not safe in schools — Uvalde — and other incidents over the last past 20 years in this country, we have a problem. Part of this problem is the gun obsession in the United States of America. Unfortunately, we have too many elected officials who are bought and paid for by the NRA.”

A majority of Americans support stricter gun controls. But enacting meaningful federal gun control legislation has become virtually impossible. In June, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. It strengthens background checks for gun buyers under 21 years old, provides money for school security and for mental health services. It doesn’t address the core problem, as explained on Democracy Now! by Robin Lloyd, managing director of the gun violence prevention organization Giffords, in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas school shooting last June:

“There’s definitely something specific to the United States and our lack of strong gun laws and our patchwork of gun laws that we have across different states that allow this to keep happening, in addition to the sheer number of firearms that exist in this country and how easy it is to access them.”

Giffords is named for its co-founder, former Congressmember Gabby Giffords. She survived being shot in the head on January 8, 2011 while holding a public constituent meeting in a Tucson supermarket parking lot. A gunman opened fire, killing six people, including a nine-year-old girl.

The pervasiveness of guns and gun violence in the U.S. is bleeding into Mexico. The Mexican government has just filed suit in federal court in Arizona, charging five Arizona gun dealers with engaging in arms trafficking.

“Eighty percent of the guns traced back to the U.S. are coming from shops in Arizona, which is a major corridor for most of the top cartels in Mexico, like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación,” journalist Luis Chaparro said on Democracy Now!

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, in a recent report, tracks the flow of illicit weapons to armed conflicts and organized crime, leading to more violence and the erosion of governance.

Here in the United States, hundreds of millions of guns are purchased legally; too many are wielded with criminal or seditious intent. This was frighteningly demonstrated on January 6th, 2021, when thousands of President Trump’s supporters, many of them armed, stormed the U.S. Capitol, seeking to overturn Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden. Some even wanted to execute perceived enemies of Trump, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump ally Alex Jones long championed resistance to the peaceful transfer of power in 2021. He has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, but has refused to cooperate.

Can democracy survive in a society awash in guns as violence-promoting charlatans like Donald Trump and Alex Jones are increasingly embraced by Republican Party elites? It is the job of us all to see that it does.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan.

Authoritarianism, once seen as a trend to watch, can now be considered an invasive species. It has been on the rise in different parts of the globe, fueled, among other things, by anti-rights rhetoric that is pervasive, deceptive and coordinated, and made visible through disinformation campaigns, attacks on journalists and constant erosion of civic space. It continues to spread.

Brazilian civic space needs to be protected to ensure that journalists, activists and human rights defenders don't become an endangered species.

In Latin America, democracy has been rapidly deteriorating. In a meeting of freedom of expression groups during the COLPIN Forum 2021, civil society—including a majority of IFEX members—expressed serious concern with this situation, stating that "[t]he ascendancy of authoritarianisms, both right and left, has deepened in most of our countries, putting the foundations of democracy at stake. We have verified that, in the framework of the pandemic, these authoritarian expressions have been a source of manipulation and disinformation and have increased the practices of concealment and obstacles to access to information. In this framework, we can see the existence of regimes in the region, where the rule of law is practically non-existent and where a totalitarian logic prevails that asphyxiates any citizen expression. Journalism in exile has multiplied in the region."

Authoritarianism is not new to Latin America. It has followed the region's history and has recently re-emerged with strength as a response to voters showing frustration with old-school parties, particularly in countries plagued by corruption, insecurity and economic inequality. Tools provided by technology have catalyzed the reach and influence of a discourse that exploits these fears, offering shallow alternatives. The result are regimes characterized by individualistic and populistic leaders, the breaking of constitutional norms, and abuses of power.

Civil society has for long faced this long-standing threat. Maybe that is why Latin America is one of the regions in the world where the highest number of killings of journalists and human rights defenders has been reported. During January 2022 alone, 20 human rights defenders and four journalists were killed across the region. The numbers today are much higher.

It is in the midst of this regional and global context that, on October 2, Brazil elections will take place. The polls follow a fierce campaign that has had polarization at its center. Polarization has been fomented and augmented by tactics and techniques that build on the abusive use of new and emerging technology, but which weaponizes old narratives rooted in prejudice, racism, misogyny and a total non-acceptance of 'the other.' Values like diversity and plurality have been attacked, along with those who defend them.

The signs are clear—Brazil has been seeing a dramatic decline in civil liberties in the last years. During his current campaign, Bolsonaro is attacking institutions, discrediting the electoral process and fiercely promoting weaponization and guns. There is no doubt that the future of democracy in Brazil will be decided in early October.

Brazil, as Latin America's largest economy and the fourth-largest democracy in the world, is the canary in the coal mine, and one could argue that it is the future of global democracy that is at stake in the upcoming pools. Not only of democracy, but of human rights and environmental sustainability.

So, what's next for Brazil?

There is no simple answer to that question. Even if Bolsonaro is not re-elected, the challenges ahead are gigantic. But if he wins, the authoritarian project wins. And Brazil will become another pin in the map, an additional territory where the roots of authoritarianism grow deeper and more entrenched.

Brazilian civic space needs to be protected to ensure that journalists, activists and human rights defenders don't become an endangered species. We need to defend democracy by promoting freedom of expression and strengthening civil society.

Civil society groups and journalists have a critical role to play—they have been exposing and correcting weaponized disinformation that aims to mislead voters and suppress voting during elections in every region of the world.

In Brazil, IFEX members—the Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism and Artigo19—have been working to ensure the safety of journalists, the right to protest, the right to information and the right to participation. They have, for example, requested presidential candidates' commitment to freedom of expression; they have been promoting fact-checking initiatives; have worked to incentive participation and information about the electoral process amongst the youth; and have promoted debate and discussion about issues central to our current democratic struggles, such as disinformation, hate speech, transparency, political violence and social media.

What they need now is our attention and support. They need to know they are not alone and that we will be watching the polls and their aftermath in early October. IFEX members throughout the region and beyond have shown their solidarity through a concerted social media campaign that calls to: #DefendJournalism #ProtectCivicSpace in Brazil. If not, the authoritarianism playbook will continue to proliferate across the map.

Don't be silent. Let's keep our eyes on Brazil and support the frontline work of those defending democracy. Join us in this call!

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

The traditional horse race politics of Democrat versus Republican are being supplanted by a more fundamental confrontation between defenders of our democracy, flawed as it is, and those who call themselves patriots while pursuing authoritarianism. The Republican Party, in thrall to the cult of Donald Trump, is openly professing subversion of elections. Allied with armed militias, the GOP and its backers are working to bend or break the institutions of government.

The growing, rightwing militia movement adds the prospect of violence to the electoral process.

"We are in a crisis of democracy. We are not approaching a constitutional crisis; the crisis is upon us. And the question is: What do we do about it," Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, asked on the Democracy Now! news hour.

President Joe Biden gave a primetime speech last week on the threats to democracy, calling out Donald Trump by name and repeatedly referencing "MAGA Republicans," the now-dominant "Make America Great Again" GOP faction entirely servile to Trump that embraces his lie that he won the 2020 election. Biden's backdrop was Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where two foundational documents of the United States were debated and signed: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said. "They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but…as patriots. They see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they're determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people."

Traditionally, Republicans leaned on voter suppression as one of their key tactics. In 1980, conservative Republican activist Paul Weyrich said in a speech: "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Now, Trump allies are seeking to more directly intervene in elections. The Brennan Center for Justice recently wrote a letter to state Associations of Election Officials, saying, "Insider threats are not a new phenomenon, nor are they unique to election security, but the current participation of election deniers in the election process, and active recruitment of more, has sparked an increase in breaches of the physical security of election equipment…those who manufacture distrust in elections use false claims that security has been breached or chain of custody broken as part of their efforts."

CNN obtained a video of a Michigan GOP training session for poll workers, with party officials instructing people to break election laws by infiltrating polling places to challenge voters, take video recordings illegally, and other actions to disrupt voting.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis created the nation's first "election police force," with armed officers tasked with ferreting out election fraud that even DeSantis admits is almost non-existent. In August, this new police force arrested 20 people, mostly Black men, for voting after believing their right to vote as former felons had been restored. Many of them now face up to five years in prison. The chilling message is clear: voting while Black can be dangerous.

Trump-allied election deniers are also seeking higher office, winning Republican primaries with pledges to "decertify the 2020 election," a key Trump demand. Kari Lake, a former newscaster who is Arizona's Republican candidate for governor, has taken the pledge despite the fact that no such legal decertification process exists. Three Republican candidates for Secretary of State and Pennsylvania's Republican candidate for governor, along with scores of county clerk candidates have all embraced Trump's 2020 election lies. These elected offices actually run the elections.

"The Trump wing of the party and the MAGA Republicans have jumped the rails of constitutional democracy, of the factual universe and of representative democracy," Nancy MacLean, a historian of the right at Duke University, said on Democracy Now! "You cannot have a democracy in which one party does not accept the legitimacy of the other party's candidates, elected officials and the outcomes of elections. But that is where we have come with Donald Trump and the MAGA faction."

The growing, rightwing militia movement adds the prospect of violence to the electoral process. Trump recently said that if reelected he would consider "full pardons with an apology to many" of the January 6th, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrectionists.

The 2022 midterms and the 2024 general elections will profoundly impact the trajectory of our political system. Elie Mystal's question is one we all must seriously consider: What are we going to do about it?

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

The traditional horse race politics of Democrat versus Republican are being supplanted by a more fundamental confrontation between defenders of our democracy, flawed as it is, and those who call themselves patriots while pursuing authoritarianism. The Republican Party, in thrall to the cult of Donald Trump, is openly professing subversion of elections. Allied with armed militias, the GOP and its backers are working to bend or break the institutions of government.

The growing, rightwing militia movement adds the prospect of violence to the electoral process.

"We are in a crisis of democracy. We are not approaching a constitutional crisis; the crisis is upon us. And the question is: What do we do about it," Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, asked on the Democracy Now! news hour.

President Joe Biden gave a primetime speech last week on the threats to democracy, calling out Donald Trump by name and repeatedly referencing "MAGA Republicans," the now-dominant "Make America Great Again" GOP faction entirely servile to Trump that embraces his lie that he won the 2020 election. Biden's backdrop was Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where two foundational documents of the United States were debated and signed: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said. "They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but…as patriots. They see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they're determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people."

Traditionally, Republicans leaned on voter suppression as one of their key tactics. In 1980, conservative Republican activist Paul Weyrich said in a speech: "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Now, Trump allies are seeking to more directly intervene in elections. The Brennan Center for Justice recently wrote a letter to state Associations of Election Officials, saying, "Insider threats are not a new phenomenon, nor are they unique to election security, but the current participation of election deniers in the election process, and active recruitment of more, has sparked an increase in breaches of the physical security of election equipment…those who manufacture distrust in elections use false claims that security has been breached or chain of custody broken as part of their efforts."

CNN obtained a video of a Michigan GOP training session for poll workers, with party officials instructing people to break election laws by infiltrating polling places to challenge voters, take video recordings illegally, and other actions to disrupt voting.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis created the nation's first "election police force," with armed officers tasked with ferreting out election fraud that even DeSantis admits is almost non-existent. In August, this new police force arrested 20 people, mostly Black men, for voting after believing their right to vote as former felons had been restored. Many of them now face up to five years in prison. The chilling message is clear: voting while Black can be dangerous.

Trump-allied election deniers are also seeking higher office, winning Republican primaries with pledges to "decertify the 2020 election," a key Trump demand. Kari Lake, a former newscaster who is Arizona's Republican candidate for governor, has taken the pledge despite the fact that no such legal decertification process exists. Three Republican candidates for Secretary of State and Pennsylvania's Republican candidate for governor, along with scores of county clerk candidates have all embraced Trump's 2020 election lies. These elected offices actually run the elections.

"The Trump wing of the party and the MAGA Republicans have jumped the rails of constitutional democracy, of the factual universe and of representative democracy," Nancy MacLean, a historian of the right at Duke University, said on Democracy Now! "You cannot have a democracy in which one party does not accept the legitimacy of the other party's candidates, elected officials and the outcomes of elections. But that is where we have come with Donald Trump and the MAGA faction."

The growing, rightwing militia movement adds the prospect of violence to the electoral process. Trump recently said that if reelected he would consider "full pardons with an apology to many" of the January 6th, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrectionists.

The 2022 midterms and the 2024 general elections will profoundly impact the trajectory of our political system. Elie Mystal's question is one we all must seriously consider: What are we going to do about it?

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jacob G. Hornberger.

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The salaries and pensions provided by the North Korean government have not been enough to survive for at least several decades.  Border closures at the start of the coronavirus pandemic have devastated the country, including by creating food shortages that have pushed prices so high some residents are now struggling even more to come up with enough money to eat. 

For the aged, the options are limited. One is to sell the 12 beer ration coupons the government distributes every six months, which equates to about two liters (slightly more than four pints) per month.

“Now in the third consecutive year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hardships of the residents are high, but the living conditions among the elderly are even worse. Most of them are struggling to earn money for food,” a resident of the capital Pyongyang told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“You can see the elderly who are old and weak selling beer tickets to earn money near the Taedonggang Beer Bar. These are elderly people who can't afford to live on their social security pension of only about 1,000 won (U.S. $0.12) per month, so they come out to earn a few pennies,” said the source.

It’s a buyer’s market because the coupons only give the bearer the right to buy the liter of beer. The beer itself is sold separately. 

 According to the source, the coupons are bought by the elderly traders, who then resell them for a profit of about $0.10 per ticket. If they sell an entire six-months of coupons, they can earn about 9,600 won, or about $1.20.

“They are outside all day sweating in the hot weather. But the elderly people who don’t have money saved up or are not in a situation to get support from their children have to do this,” the source said. “There are countless elderly people in this situation in the capital Pyongyang.”

Some elderly residents in the capital are even forced to sell their homes in order to feed themselves, according to the source.

“In early July, my friend’s parents, who were living in Chung district, sold their three-bedroom apartment and moved to a smaller one-bedroom in Mangyongdae district. My friend’s father, who was awarded the honorable ‘Hero of Labor’ title, and the family lived in the Youngwoong apartment near Pyongyang station,” the source said.

“However, as their livelihood became difficult and their children could not afford to support their parents, they couldn’t make ends meet. So they moved to a smaller house,” the source said, adding that their livelihood was now tied to the leftover money they had from selling the larger home.

The “Hero of Labor” title conferred additional food rations to the father and a pension five times higher than other elderly people at 5,000 won ($0.62), but that is only enough to buy one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of rice, according to the source.  

Government pensions are too small to live on and the harsh economic conditions brought on by the coronavirus has made it almost impossible for many elderly people to survive, a resident of the city of Hoeryong in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. 

“These days, people are complaining that the unavailability of work makes it more difficult to live now than during the Arduous March,” the second source said, referring to the 1994-1998 North Korean famine that killed millions, as much as 10 percent of the population by some estimates.

“The lives of the elderly who either do not have children to look after them or are incapable of earning money in a business are truly miserable,” the second source said. 

North Koreans are expected to work at their jobs until they are 60 years old, the source said. After that they can receive a meager pension for the duration of their retirement, between 700 and 1,500 won ($0.09 to $0.19) per month.

“Regardless of your age, how can you live on only 1,000 won [$0.12] for an entire month?” the second source said. 

“It is often the case that even the meager social security pension is not paid on time. In Hoeryong as well as in most provinces, the social security pension given to the elderly is covered by the tax from the market merchants,” the second source said.

The marketplace has not been operating at full capacity in Hoeryong due to recent lockdowns and restrictions of movement, according to the second source.

“The number of merchants has decreased significantly, so the People’s Committee of the city has no money for the pensions,” the second source said.

To address the problem of poverty among the elderly, North Korea recently built a new nursing home in each province, the second source said, but demand is extremely high and only the privileged can get a bed in any of them.

“In principle, the elderly who have no children to take care of them and the disabled who have lost their ability to work should be admitted to nursing homes. In reality, only seniors with strong backgrounds, such as veterans, people of merit, or officials can enter the homes,” the second source said.

“It is a reality in our country that the lives of the elderly are getting worse day by day, no matter how many children they have.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chang Gyu Ahn for RFA Korean.

The post Capitalism Won’t Fix the Climate Crisis. It Will Also Not Survive It. appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Kendall Hawkins.

There’s a temperature threshold beyond which the human body simply can’t survive — one that some parts of the world are increasingly starting to cross. It’s a “wet bulb temperature” of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. 

To understand what that means, it helps to start with how the human body regulates its temperature. Our bodies need to stay right around 98.6 degrees F. If that number gets too high or too low, bad things can happen. And since bodies are always producing heat from normal functions, like digesting, thinking, and pumping blood, we need a place for that heat to go. That’s why our bodies have a built-in cooling system: sweat. 

Sweat works by using a physics hack called evaporative cooling. It takes quite a bit of heat to turn water from a liquid to a gas. As droplets of sweat leave our skin, they pull a lot of heat away from our bodies. When the air is really dry, a little bit of sweat can cool us down a lot. Humid air, on the other hand, already contains a lot of water vapor, which makes it harder for sweat to evaporate. As a result, we can’t cool down as well. 

This is where the term wet bulb temperature comes in: It’s a measure of heat and humidity, essentially the temperature we experience after sweat cools us off. We can measure the wet bulb temperature by sticking a damp little sleeve on the end of a thermometer and spinning it around. Water evaporates from the sleeve, cooling down the thermometer. If it’s humid, it hardly cools down at all, and if the air is dry, it cools down a lot. That final reading after the thermometer has cooled down is the wet bulb temperature. 

In Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on Earth, temperatures often get up to 120 degrees F — but the air is so dry that it actually only registers a wet body temperature of 77 degrees F. A humid state like Florida could reach that same wet bulb temperature on a muggy 86 degree day. 

When the wet bulb temperature gets above 95 degrees F, our bodies lose their ability to cool down, and the consequences can be deadly. Until recently, scientists didn’t think we’d cross that threshold outside of doomsday climate change scenarios.  But a 2020 study looking at detailed weather records around the world found we’ve already crossed the threshold at least 14 times in the last 40 years. So far, these hot, humid events have all been clustered in two regions: Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. 

The warm water in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf makes the air above extremely humid. Inland, on the Arabian Peninsula, the arid continental heat causes temperatures to skyrocket. And when these two systems meet, they can tip the wet bulb temperature above that 95 degree F wet bulb threshold. 

In Pakistan, it’s a little less clear what’s driving these hot, humid extremes. But scientists think it’s caused by warm, humid air flowing inland during the monsoon season. As it passes over the Indus River, the air only gets more humid until it hits cities like Jacobabad, often referred to as one of the hottest cities on earth. To date, Jacobabad has crossed that deadly wet bulb threshold a whopping six times — the most of any single city on record. 

If we plot all these events over time, it’s clear these hot, humid extremes are increasing as the planet warms. Scientists expect these events to occur even more frequently in these regions going forward. Other places like coastal Mexico and a large portion of South Asia might soon be at risk of crossing these thresholds for the first time. 

Extreme heat is deadly at temperatures well below the 95-degree threshold. Healthy young adults can experience serious health effects at a wet bulb temperature of 86 degrees F. And even dry heat can be dangerous when people’s bodies simply can’t pump out sweat fast enough to cool themselves. 

Worldwide, extreme heat likely kills at least 300,000 people each year. But it can be notoriously difficult to track the death counts associated with individual heat waves. Heat often kills indirectly — triggering heart attacks, strokes, or organ failures — making it hard to determine whether those deaths were caused by the heat or an unrelated medical condition. 

Even relatively mild heat waves can be deadly when they occur in places where people are not prepared for those temperature extremes. For example, a 2010 heat wave in Russia, where summer temperatures rarely rise above 74 degrees F, killed an estimated 55,000 people despite only hitting about 100 degrees F.

Heat-related death counts are even harder to calculate in regions without accurate or timely death records. In Pakistan — home to many of the world’s humid heat records — the government doesn’t officially track deaths, said Nausheen Anwar, director of the Karachi Urban Lab, a research program that studies the impacts of extreme heat in Pakistan. Instead, her lab often relies on interviews with doctors, ambulance drivers, or graveyard owners to calculate the impacts of heat waves.

With every degree of global warming, these dangerous heat events are becoming even more likely. Stopping climate change may be our best chance to keep them as rare as possible.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The temperature threshold the human body can’t survive on Aug 17, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jesse Nichols.

Nathan J. Robinson & Noam Chomsky

August 15, 2022. Current Affairs.

“China is our enemy,” Donald Trump declared repeatedly. “These are our enemies. These are not people who understand niceness.” Accordingly, when Trump was in office, his administration “took a sledgehammer” to U.S.-China relations, which “reached their lowest point in decades.” Trump officials spoke of China using the most hysterical imaginable McCarthyite language. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the “threat from the CCP” was “inside the gates” and could be found in “Des Moines and Phoenix and Tallahassee… [The CCP] will stop at nothing to undermine the very way of life we have here in America and in the West.” Steve Bannon wrote, “China has emerged as the greatest economic and national security threat the United States has ever faced.” FBI director Christopher Wray warned in July 2020 that “the Chinese threat” endangered “our health, our livelihoods, and our security.”

What, precisely, is China attempting to do that endangers the “way of life we have here”? Wray explained that “the scope of the Chinese government’s ambition” is nothing less than “to surpass our country in economic and technological leadership.” William Barr warned China was engaged in an “economic blitzkrieg,” which would see it ascend to the “commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower.” Here we have a hint as to the true nature of the “China threat”: it is the threat that the United States will no longer rule the world. A basic premise of our foreign policy is that we are fully entitled to do so indefinitely.

This becomes explicit in the Trump administration’s strategy documents. The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) warns that “China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.” One might ask how the United States—which is not located in the Indo-Pacific region—could be “displaced” there, but the NSS does not touch on the question of why the United States, rather than the much more populous country of China, is entitled to dominance in Asia. China and Russia, says the NSS, are “contesting our geopolitical advantages” and we are locked into a “great power competition.” This also means we must “restore the readiness of our forces for major war” by drastically increasing the capacity of our military to annihilate large numbers of human beings quickly. The NSS recommends we “overmatch” the “lethality” of all the world’s other armed forces in order to “ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight.”

The Trump administration’s “Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” explains that one of the U.S.’s top interests in the Indo-Pacific is to “maintain U.S. primacy” and sustain “diplomatic, economic, and military preeminence in the fastest-growing region of the world,” so that China does not develop a new “sphere of influence.” In other words, we have to make sure that the largest Asian country does not have more power and influence in Asia than the much smaller United States.

It should be obvious that as China grows, efforts to maintain “primacy” over it in its own region will require increasingly aggressive confrontation, meaning the Trump stance put the United States on a direct course toward conflict. One might therefore hope the liberal internationalists of the Democratic Party would have an approach less likely to lead to dangerous tension with another nuclear-armed power. But even as he campaigned, Joe Biden was engaged in “attempts to out-hawk Mr. Trump” on China, to the point of releasing anti-China campaign material that was criticized by some as racist. Biden called Xi Jinping a “thug” and wrote in Foreign Affairs that “the United States does need to get tough on China.”

As the New York Times observed, once in office Biden essentially maintained Trump’s foreign policy, including on China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order” is “the one posed by the People’s Republic of China.” The 2022 National Defense Strategy, like Trump’s, pledges to combat “the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC” and pledges to “prioritiz[e] the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific.” To that end, the Biden administration has continued “surging troops and military hardware into the region and encouraging its allies to enlarge their arsenals.” “The policies are converging,” according to Stephen E. Biegun, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Trump administration. In fact, the present course was initiated by Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” which promised among other things to “prioritize[] Asia for our most advanced military capabilities.” Obama declared “the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.”

The New York Times tells us that both “the Trump and Biden administrations have had to grapple with the question of how to maintain America’s global dominance at a time when it appears in decline.” The United States is thus quite open, under presidents of both parties, about seeking to limit China’s role in global affairs and impede its development. A desire to “maintain global dominance” is treated as a perfectly legitimate and benign aspiration. Indeed, liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias, explaining why it is worrisome that China “threatens [our] position as the world’s number one state,” says that the notion that the U.S. ought to have more power than any other country “is one of the least controversial things you could say in American politics.” (Because the premise is uncontroversial in the United States, Yglesias treats it as true, and reaches the bizarre conclusion that we should aim to populate the world with “one billion Americans” so that we do not become the “little dog” to China.)

It has long been the presumption of U.S. planners that we are entitled to have our way in Asia. After the Chinese Revolution in 1949, American politicians began debating the “loss of China,” with accusations flying back and forth as to who “lost” it. The terminology contains a tacit assumption that the U.S. owned China and it was ours to lose. The idea of China being out of our control was horrifying. Today, the United States is attempting to prove that China has no hopes of becoming a regional hegemon in its own backyard, using a “military-first” approach. The U.S., U.K., and Australia have announced they “will co-operate on the development of hypersonic weapons, expanding a trilateral security pact designed to help Washington and its allies counter China’s rapid military expansion.” And as Michael Klare observes, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of US bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states… to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis.” The Department of Defense tells us that “Beijing views the United States as increasingly determined to contain the PRC.” Since our Indo-Pacific policy is built explicitly around containing the PRC, it should not be surprising that Beijing feels that way.

Those who characterize China as a threat can immediately produce a substantial list of its misdeeds to justify the charge. There are of course serious human rights abuses in China, including its suppression of dissent and the repression of the Uyghur population. It has unquestionably violated international law in the South China Sea. Trump’s National Intelligence Director (NID) John Ratcliffe said China “robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace.” A July 2022 NID report warns of sinister Chinese influence efforts “to expand support for PRC interests among state and local leaders [in the United States] and to use these relationships to pressure Washington for policies friendlier to Beijing.” The Trump administration, at the urging of Chuck Schumer, formally labeled China a “currency manipulator.” William Barr said China practices “modern-day colonialism” in its “foreign aid” infrastructure initiatives by “loading poor countries up with debt, refusing to renegotiate terms, and then taking control of the infrastructure itself.”

The problem with the list of charges, however, is that they either plainly pose no threat to the United States or are actions we ourselves claim the right to engage in.

For instance, the evidence of China’s hideous mistreatment of the Uyghurs is compelling. But it is difficult to see how the Uyghur repression makes China a threat. By the same reasoning, Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen make it a threat to the U.S.. Furthermore, the United States plainly has no problem with the violation of human rights. It all depends on the perpetrator. While Biden has signed a bill punishing China for its repression of Uyghurs, he is happy to fist-bump a dictator and sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel to continue penning Gazans in an open-air prison and murdering Palestinian children. The U.S. could easily put a stop to the cruelty against Palestinians, but Biden saves his criticism for those who would point out the existence of apartheid (such as, for instance, leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem).

Some charges against China are exaggerated, like the idea of its neo-colonial “debt trap.” (Some international debt traps are quite real, however.) Others might as well be lists of events in American history. As the AP notes, to charge China with intellectual property theft is to condemn “the very sort of illicit practices that helped America leapfrog European rivals two centuries ago and emerge as an industrial giant.” Alexander Hamilton, whose life is celebrated in a popular patriotic musical, advocated “a federal program to engage in industrial theft from other countries on a grand scale.” Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, notes that “only after becoming the leading industrial power did [the U.S.] become a champion of intellectual-property protections.” Similarly, our condemnations of economic warfare and influence campaigns ring hollow, given that the United States exercises its economic power through possession of the global reserve currency and the CIA is quite open about conducting influence operations abroad. Kyle Haynes of The Diplomat asks us to imagine a situation in which:

An emerging great power is rapidly expanding its military capabilities. It unilaterally abrogates decades-old norms and agreements by militarizing a strategically vital waterway, and is seeking to coercively expel the reigning global hegemon from the region.

This could be a description of China today, or of the period in which the United States came to rule the Western hemisphere. China is simply rejecting the principle that we are allowed to “kick away the ladder,” by which countries climb the ladder of development through whatever unscrupulous means they please—including violence, deceit, and the theft of higher technology—and then impose a “rules-based order” to prohibit others from doing the same.

It is worth asking: If China is a threat to us because it is establishing military installations in the South China Sea, then what are we to China? When China established its first overseas military base—in Djibouti—it was treated as part of a plan to “shift global power dynamics, eroding US dominance, and relegating Europe to the sidelines of international affairs.” What, then, should China make of our own 750 overseas bases across 80 nations? Are they innocuous and defensive, or an insidious effort to shape the world to serve our interests? When China reached a security agreement with the tiny Solomon Islands, raising the possibility of its opening a second overseas base, the United States immediately began to “turn the screws” on the Solomon Islands, in what Chinese officials (accurately) called an “attempt to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the South Pacific.” China scholar Lyle Goldstein, having reviewed a series of official articles called China’s Atlantic Strategy, says that “one of the things they said very clearly was ‘The Atlantic is absolutely critical to the United States, and the United States is coming to our backyard and poking around in the South China Sea, so we have to go to their backyard.’” Is turnabout fair play, or do the rules only apply to our competitors? For instance, China has indeed violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But the United States hasn’t even signed the convention. China’s actions toward Taiwan are menacing. But the United States has claimed the right to depose governments around the world. To talk of our deep concern for human rights as we starve the people of Afghanistan is perverse.

Such points as these are often labeled “whataboutism”—distracting attention from one set of crimes by pointing to another (in this case, examining our own crimes and not just those of official enemies). In fact, they are evidence that we do not seriously care about the ideals we profess. Once we see that the ideals are applied selectively, we can ask what governs the choice to apply or not apply them in particular cases. As a general rule, the U.S. opposes the criminality and violence of those powers we wish to contain and supports the criminality and violence of our valued partners and allies. There is a single standard, then: whatever serves our perceived interests is good, whatever undermines them is wrong.

China, of course, sees this plainly. “The attacks on China mirror exactly what the United States has been doing,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry. Zhao argued that the U.S. “has no respect for the international order underpinned by the UN Charter and international law” and is a “saboteur of the international order” because it “wantonly withdraws from treaties and organizations,” placing “its domestic law above international law and international rules.” In pointing out that the U.S., with its long history of illegal violence, is almost always at war, Zhao concluded:

“In the eyes of the United States, international rules must be subordinate to and serve its interests. When international rules happen to be consistent with U.S. interests, they are cited as authority. Otherwise they are simply ignored.”

Is the Chinese position here incorrect? Is it unjust? In fact, it is difficult to see how anyone could argue with it. George W. Bush, when warned that some of his planned retaliation for the 9/11 attacks could be illegal, replied “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” The United States freely violates treaties when it pleases, and when the International Court of Justice ruled that the United States had acted unlawfully in supporting the Nicaraguan contras, the U.S. simply refused to recognize the Court’s jurisdiction and blocked enforcement of the judgment. The United States has indicated that if the International Criminal Court should ever try to put an American on trial for the kinds of crimes that we now demand Vladimir Putin be indicted for, we would be willing to invade the Hague if necessary to halt the prosecution. Anything to ensure that we are not subject to the same rules as everybody else.

One reason China is disinclined to listen to the United States’ pious pronouncements on military aggression, human rights, and international law, then, is that the entire history of the U.S. is a history of military aggression, human rights abuse, and brazen violations of international law. If we wish to be taken seriously when we speak of our ideals, we need to show that these ideals are not just invoked in bad faith as ways of keeping others from engaging in the behavior that sustains our country’s global power. The humble and devout Christians who run the United States might wish to glance again at Matthew 7:2-4, which contains a valuable caution:

“For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a beam in your own eye?” 

But what about Taiwan? Surely here is an instance in which China is posing a serious threat—not to us directly, but to the principle of self-determination. In recent years, China’s rhetoric about reunifying Taiwan with China has become increasingly bellicose, and there are ominous signs that as China’s military capacity grows, so does the risk that it will go to war to subsume Taiwan. Lyle Goldstein notes the increasing prevalence of rhetoric out of China that “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military] has the will and capability to ensure national unification.” A PLA video quotes a Chinese navy captain saying: “We have the determination and ability to mount a painful direct attack against any invaders who would wreck unification of the motherland, and would show no mercy.” (Goldstein says that not taking these threats seriously is “reckless beyond belief.”)

The situation is a serious one. But to understand it and try to respond sensibly, we have first to refresh ourselves on some basic history. Taiwan was part of China for hundreds of years, before being ceded to Japan in 1911. Before and during World War II, Japan used Taiwan as a military base, its “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” In 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan to the Republic of China (ROC), although there was controversy over its sovereignty for some years afterwards. When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) defeated the ROC in the Chinese civil war in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC forces retreated to Taiwan and set up a government in exile. For the next decades, both the PRC and the ROC claimed to be the legitimate government of all of China, both the mainland and Taiwan, and during the ‘60s and ‘70s, Chiang’s government in Taiwan was still planning to reinvade the mainland. The United States long endorsed the position that Taiwan was part of China, and only ceased to recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of all China when it became clear that the PRC was not going away. In recent decades, Taiwan itself has seen a diminution in residents who identify as Chinese rather than Taiwanese, and an increased sense of the island as its own nation rather than the Republic of China. (In fact, Taiwanese officials used to dislike the country being referred to as Taiwan, because it implied it was a separate nation rather than the legitimate Chinese government. Taiwan has long competed in the Olympics under the name “Chinese Taipei,” in part because the Republic of China government argued that its sovereignty was not confined to Taiwan.)

It is easy to portray the conflict over Taiwan today simply as the story of a large aggressor wanting to dominate a small neighbor. But the history makes the story more complicated. In the aftermath of a civil war, if the defeated party retreats to a small part of the country, it is predictable that a complicated sovereignty dispute will arise. There is no obvious U.S. analogy to help us understand. We would have to imagine that the losing side in our own civil war had retreated to Galveston or Key West and claimed to be the legitimate government for the whole country, before eventually shifting to a more realistic position of desiring autonomy. It is not only easy to see how a generations-long conflict over sovereignty could arise in such a situation, but also easy to see how, if a large foreign power armed and supported the government-in-exile, and threatened to go to war to preserve independence of the smaller state, the prospects for an amicable resolution of the sovereignty dispute could be diminished.

Over time, Taiwan has clearly gone from being a disputed part of China to a nation of its own that deserves the right of self-determination. But when we look at the situation from the PRC’s perspective, we can see why certain U.S. actions in support of Taiwan may actually be counterproductive. First, we can understand why the PRC views Taiwan as part of China, and might consider reunification important—Taiwan has been a part of China before, and Taiwan has been used by both Japan and the ROC to wage or plot war against the mainland. The United States, then, should tread lightly, because the more the PRC associates the cause of Taiwanese independence with the U.S. strategy to encircle China with hostile countries to maintain U.S. power in the region, the more determined the PRC may be to crush any prospect of Taiwanese independence. To give another analogy: if Puerto Rico sought independence, we can ponder whether a favorable U.S. response to the cause of independence would be made more or less likely if China declared its intention to defend Puerto Rico militarily and indicated its intention to use Puerto Rico as a core ally in combating U.S. hegemony in the Caribbean.

If our end goal is to ensure the self-determination of Taiwan, and prevent it from being obliterated in a war, what is the correct approach? First, we should obviously avoid taking steps that would make it more likely that Beijing would decide to try to pursue unification through force. We should do our best to preserve the peaceful status quo, because if China were  to seize Taiwan, it is not clear the United States could successfully defend the island, and any U.S.-China war would be a humanitarian and economic catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude, especially for the people of Taiwan.

In fact, there is good reason to believe a war over Taiwan can be avoided. The Taiwanese themselves, when polled, are far more likely to say that they do not think the situation will end in war, and “some Taiwan politicians think that the US’s increasingly bitter competition with China is adding to the risk.” The Financial Times quoted a Taiwanese expert who said that “Washington needed to better explain its growing alarm over the perceived risk of a Chinese attack.” And a researcher at the Taiwanese Institute for National Defense and Security Research assessed the risk of a Chinese attack as “very low.” The Taiwanese and Chinese governments have actually met on cordial terms in fairly recent memory and millions of Chinese tourists visit Taiwan each year. There is even a conceivable peaceful path to eventual independence by which the status quo is maintained until Taiwanese autonomy is essentially a fact rather than an aspiration, and in which, in future generations to come, the Chinese desire for reunification becomes an anachronistic piece of rhetoric no longer taken seriously. (Outright independence is controversial even in Taiwan and the shape of the ideal long-term outcome is unclear. Whatever it is, it should certainly not be determined by the United States’ aspirations for Taiwan.)

Following the path to a lasting peaceful and just settlement will require the United States to refrain from actions that make China feel it needs to assert its might, or that make it see a failure to pursue reunification through force as a humiliating capitulation to the United States. We must avoid creating the impression that we consider China an enemy and Taiwan a crucial ally against that enemy. We should certainly avoid entering into an arms race with China that turns the region into a “powder keg.”

Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that U.S. support for Taiwanese self-determination has little to do with a principled belief in democracy and everything to do with preserving our power in Asia. (After all, if we believed on principle in self-determination for all the peoples of faraway lands, we would not be pouring weapons into Israel to keep Palestinian self-determination from breaking out.) Instead, Chris Horton of The Atlantic explains why the United States is so invested in the cause of Taiwan:

“[It] is difficult to overstate Taiwan’s strategic importance to both the United States and an increasingly assertive China. The island’s location, economy, and security are all essential to American interests, and if Taiwan were to become part of China, as Beijing has insisted it must, China would instantly become a Pacific power, control some of the world’s most cutting-edge technologies, and have the ability to choke off oil shipments to Japan and South Korea—leverage it could use to demand the closure of U.S. military bases in both countries. In effect, Beijing would likely be able to achieve its goal of forcing the U.S. out of Asia. It is no surprise, then, that Taiwan is one of the rare issues on Capitol Hill today with bipartisan agreement—Congress has been regularly passing pro-Taiwan legislation with unanimous support throughout the Donald Trump era.”

Are we really committed to Taiwan out of a belief in self-determination, then? One might answer that it does not matter: Taiwanese self-determination is a right worth defending even if the United States has ulterior motives. But if the interest of the United States is in a U.S.-aligned Taiwan rather than a free Taiwan—indeed, we supported Taiwan even when it was an authoritarian state—this may lead the U.S. to forgo actions that would be in the interest of Taiwanese self-determination but bring Taiwan and China closer together. For instance: Lyle Goldstein says that, as was the case with Ukraine, there are opportunities for diplomacy, but they involve fostering warmer relations between China and Taiwan:

So many opportunities were missed to avert the war in Ukraine. To state the obvious, if they had simply declared that Ukraine would be a neutral state, how hard would that have been? … That was a completely feasible option, but it just didn’t fit with our ideology. The idea that we might climb down, that we might compromise—that’s showing weakness, so we can never do that. Taiwan has all kinds of diplomatic positions. We should be encouraging those. … There are all kinds of compromises to be made, people-to-people exchanges, military confidence-building measures. All of that should’ve happened with Ukraine and Russia, but no, we insisted on a confrontational approach, and now we have a ghastly war.

Instead of trying to facilitate amicable cross-strait relations, we have instead opted for the course of encouraging Taiwan to become a missile-covered “porcupine” that can resist a Chinese invasion. U.S. officials have been deliberately taking steps that they know will anger China—such as Biden promising he would go to war with China over the island, and Nancy Pelosi’s self-aggrandizing visit. In doing so, we may flatter ourselves that we are supporting Taiwanese self-determination, but what we are actually doing is increasing the likelihood that the country will be destroyed. (The situation was similar in Ukraine: the (empty) promise to admit Ukraine to NATO was justified in the name of Ukraine’s security. But it did nothing to dissuade Vladimir Putin from his belief that without his deployment of force, Ukraine would end up as part of a hostile Western military alliance.) For 50 years, the U.S. has accepted the “One China” policy, with neither side making moves to undermine it. It could continue, in the absence of reckless and provocative moves by the U.S.

In fact, China’s sensible long-term strategy regarding Taiwan is not to invade, which would severely harm itself and its prospects, and perhaps spark a suicidal war. (It also hasn’t shown signs of planning to invade.) Without invading, China can make clear that if it chose to, it could strangle the island, which survives on trade. China can continue to pursue its long-term strategy of becoming the center of Eurasia, with vast development and investment projects (now incorporating parts of Africa and even U.S. domains in Latin America) expanding to the Middle East. Europe will look on and try to figure out how to get into this enormous China-based economic system, and over time, Taiwan will increasingly want to join as well, improving commercial relations. China is certainly a threat to U.S. economic power: this is what’s likely to produce violent conflict with the United States, not the threat of invading Taiwan.

Alarmingly, there are those in the United States who think war with China over Taiwan is all but inevitable. “To us, it’s only a matter of time, not a matter of if,” said the director of intelligence of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Rather than war being unthinkable, a diplomatic solution is unthinkable. But those who truly want to see a free Taiwan—rather than a Taiwan used as a geopolitical pawn by major powers, with horrific consequences for the Taiwanese—have a duty to ask how the U.S.’s stated desire to keep China down though increasing our military power in Asia may affect China’s resolve and behavior on the issue of Taiwan.

U.S. tension with China is sometimes characterized as the classic “security dilemma” of international relations, “whereby military programs and national strategies deemed defensive by their planners are viewed as threatening by the other side,” in the words of Paul Godwin of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Stephen M. Walt warns “remarkably, plenty of smart, well-educated Westerners—including some prominent former diplomats—cannot seem to grasp that their benevolent intentions are not transparently obvious to others.” In other words, China does not see that we are (supposedly) only trying to deter Chinese aggression when we take such steps as: building a hostile regional military alliance, flooding the surrounding territory with high-precision weaponry aimed at China, labeling China an “enemy,” sending increasing numbers of warships to patrol its coast (ostensibly to enforce the Law of the Sea Convention—which we have not signed—and given the euphemism “freedom of navigation operations”), sending Australia a fleet of nuclear submarines to counter China, and conducting military exercises near China’s shores. China is not supposed to act the way we would act if Chinese warships were steadily accumulating in the Gulf of Mexico and conducting military exercises. Chinese military drills are interpreted by us as hostile, but the U.S. organizing the largest maritime warfare exercise in the world as a warning to China should not be interpreted by China as hostile. The Chinese are supposed to accept that we only ever engage in “defense,” while it is other countries that engage in “aggression.”

But let us consider the possibility that our actions are not, in fact, best characterized as “defensive” at all. Americans might not pay close attention to American actions, but the Chinese do, and perhaps China is not tragically misinterpreting our policy, but has simply read our publicly available strategy documents. They see that U.S. planners wish to maintain control of the Indo-Pacific and deny China the right to do in the Eastern Hemisphere what we have done in the Western Hemisphere. They might open the Wall Street Journal and read the “Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs” arguing that to protect the “world America built,” we must undertake a new “urgent, enduring effort to contain an advancing rival,” even if this means new “Cold War-style tensions and crises” (i.e., the constant threat of human civilization coming to an abrupt and violent end). The Chinese government may also read in our new National Defense Authorization Act that the secretary of defense is tasked with “strengthen[ing] United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region so as to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.” They might hear our talk of the “rules-based order” and then remember that Barack Obama, speaking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said “the rule book is up for grabs. And if we don’t pass this agreement—if America doesn’t write those rules—then countries like China will.” In 2012, they saw leading “moderate” Republican Mitt Romney pledge to “ensure that this is an American, not a Chinese century,” arguing that “security in the Pacific means a world in which our economic and military power is second to none,” i.e., we have an inherent right to be more powerful than China and point city-destroying weapons at it that we could deploy at a moment’s notice.

The United States may be incapable of seeing its own actions as anything other than idealistic and benevolent, but our own government has clearly stated our intention to prevent a “fair fight” and maintain the ability to annihilate anyone who challenges our power. As John Mearsheimer explained in 2005, the increasing tension as China grows more powerful comes about because:

The US does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated in the 20th century, it is determined to remain the world’s only regional hegemon. Therefore, the U.S. can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer capable of ruling the roost in Asia. In essence, the U.S. is likely to behave towards China much the way it behaved towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The United States intends to rule the world, even if that requires escalating the threat of a war that will be possibly terminal to human civilization, and of course eschewing diplomacy, (which would be appeasement).

The starting point for reducing tensions with China, then, is to take a look in the mirror and ask whether each demand we make of it is fair, and whether we are willing to do unto others as we ask them to do unto us. We might consider whether a good relationship is ever likely if we continue trying to ring China with hostile sentinel states in an attempt to contain its power. We might also consider whether China has certain legitimate grievances against the demands made by the United States. On climate change, for instance, we are depending on China not to behave nearly as destructively as we have. The average American is a far worse carbon polluter than the average Chinese person, and the U.S. and Europe are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions, meaning that China must be far less irresponsible as it develops if it hopes to avoid accelerating the catastrophe. When we ask China not to expand the reach of its military across the globe, or not to contemplate the overthrow of governments it feels threatens its interests, or to treat U.S. intellectual property claims as universal, we are asking for it to show more restraint than we have, and not to seek the kind of power we have sought. These requests may make sense—if all countries acted like the U.S., the world would quickly be destroyed—but they should be made from a position of humility.

The situation we face now is unbelievably dangerous. An insane arms race is underway. For many years, China kept a relatively low level of nuclear weapons, and proudly so. Now it is accelerating production of weapons that can only ever either be (1) a massive waste of resources (if unused) or (2) a genocidal horror (if ever used). Even Henry Kissinger—hardly a man of peace—has warned that the United States and China are stumbling toward a World War I-like calamity. Of course, in the age of thermonuclear weapons, the potential for destruction is far, far greater than it was in 1914.

It does not have to be this way.

First, we should recognize that the idea that China poses a military threat to the United States itself is so absurd that Lyle Goldstein says it is “almost a joke in national security circles,” citing the example of “11 U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers versus a single Chinese conventional ‘test’ aircraft carrier.” China does, however, pose a threat to the United States’ ability to maintain its desired level of economic dominance in Asia. If we are unwilling to share the Earth, conflict is assured.

There are undoubtedly deep areas of contention between the United States and China that will take long, laborious negotiations to resolve to the satisfaction of both parties. Perhaps there will be compromises that please nobody. But we should begin from the position that war is simply not a thinkable option in the 21st century. Martin Luther King, Jr., was correct when he said that the choice we face is: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” A Third World War must not happen under any circumstances.

China, for its part, has implored the United States (and the U.K.) not to adopt a “Cold War mentality,” arguing that it is “irresponsible” to hype up the threat and saying we must “cast away imagined demons.” China has accused the U.S. of trying to “reignite a sense of national purpose by establishing China as an imaginary enemy.” Indeed, the “igniting a sense of national purpose by establishing an imaginary enemy” is precisely what we have a history of doing in this country, and it wouldn’t be the first time that the Chinese have been blamed for America’s domestic problems. (Those hyping the “China threat” will of course see China’s warnings about a “Cold War mentality” as sneaky attempts to trick us into letting our guard down so the CCP can infiltrate Des Moines.) The editors of Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear helpfully review the history of U.S. politicians whipping up fear of Asiatic enemies to argue that “that horrid, pestilent other is causing all our problems.” When “the political culture can’t quite deliver its promises, it will appease the white working class by creating an external enemy and blaming the victim.” The “they” threatening our way of life is ever-changing, but in every case resolvable conflicts of interest become “epic civilizational contests between imagined diametrically opposed foes.”

We should be cooperating with China. It is necessary for China and the United States, two major economies, to sort out crucial issues together, like global warming, pandemics, and nuclear weapons. Our fates are tied together. There is no choice but to get along. Yet relations have been falling apart. After Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, in addition to launching new military exercises that could lead to deadly errors and escalation, China broke off talks with the U.S. about climate change, among other matters. The climate crisis is the perhaps most important issue facing the world, a major emergency, and now the two leading powers in the world can’t even discuss how to solve it. This is the road to disaster. The U.S. needs to stop needlessly stoking conflict, think about how things look from the Chinese perspective, and work sincerely to understand and collaborate with a country of 1.4 billion people we have to share a planet with. This does not mean one must be an apologist for China’s wrongdoing, or that its human rights abuses should not be taken seriously. It means that the U.S. must cease to consider global control a “vital interest” and must accommodate and respect the interests of others. It means that the pursuit of long-term survival of the species means abandoning the desire to permanently preserve our hegemony.

This content originally appeared on chomsky.info: The Noam Chomsky Website and was authored by anthony.

Nathan J. Robinson & Noam Chomsky

August 15, 2022. Current Affairs.

“China is our enemy,” Donald Trump declared repeatedly. “These are our enemies. These are not people who understand niceness.” Accordingly, when Trump was in office, his administration “took a sledgehammer” to U.S.-China relations, which “reached their lowest point in decades.” Trump officials spoke of China using the most hysterical imaginable McCarthyite language. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the “threat from the CCP” was “inside the gates” and could be found in “Des Moines and Phoenix and Tallahassee… [The CCP] will stop at nothing to undermine the very way of life we have here in America and in the West.” Steve Bannon wrote, “China has emerged as the greatest economic and national security threat the United States has ever faced.” FBI director Christopher Wray warned in July 2020 that “the Chinese threat” endangered “our health, our livelihoods, and our security.”

What, precisely, is China attempting to do that endangers the “way of life we have here”? Wray explained that “the scope of the Chinese government’s ambition” is nothing less than “to surpass our country in economic and technological leadership.” William Barr warned China was engaged in an “economic blitzkrieg,” which would see it ascend to the “commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower.” Here we have a hint as to the true nature of the “China threat”: it is the threat that the United States will no longer rule the world. A basic premise of our foreign policy is that we are fully entitled to do so indefinitely.

This becomes explicit in the Trump administration’s strategy documents. The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) warns that “China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.” One might ask how the United States—which is not located in the Indo-Pacific region—could be “displaced” there, but the NSS does not touch on the question of why the United States, rather than the much more populous country of China, is entitled to dominance in Asia. China and Russia, says the NSS, are “contesting our geopolitical advantages” and we are locked into a “great power competition.” This also means we must “restore the readiness of our forces for major war” by drastically increasing the capacity of our military to annihilate large numbers of human beings quickly. The NSS recommends we “overmatch” the “lethality” of all the world’s other armed forces in order to “ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight.”

The Trump administration’s “Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” explains that one of the U.S.’s top interests in the Indo-Pacific is to “maintain U.S. primacy” and sustain “diplomatic, economic, and military preeminence in the fastest-growing region of the world,” so that China does not develop a new “sphere of influence.” In other words, we have to make sure that the largest Asian country does not have more power and influence in Asia than the much smaller United States.

It should be obvious that as China grows, efforts to maintain “primacy” over it in its own region will require increasingly aggressive confrontation, meaning the Trump stance put the United States on a direct course toward conflict. One might therefore hope the liberal internationalists of the Democratic Party would have an approach less likely to lead to dangerous tension with another nuclear-armed power. But even as he campaigned, Joe Biden was engaged in “attempts to out-hawk Mr. Trump” on China, to the point of releasing anti-China campaign material that was criticized by some as racist. Biden called Xi Jinping a “thug” and wrote in Foreign Affairs that “the United States does need to get tough on China.”

As the New York Times observed, once in office Biden essentially maintained Trump’s foreign policy, including on China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order” is “the one posed by the People’s Republic of China.” The 2022 National Defense Strategy, like Trump’s, pledges to combat “the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC” and pledges to “prioritiz[e] the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific.” To that end, the Biden administration has continued “surging troops and military hardware into the region and encouraging its allies to enlarge their arsenals.” “The policies are converging,” according to Stephen E. Biegun, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Trump administration. In fact, the present course was initiated by Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” which promised among other things to “prioritize[] Asia for our most advanced military capabilities.” Obama declared “the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.”

The New York Times tells us that both “the Trump and Biden administrations have had to grapple with the question of how to maintain America’s global dominance at a time when it appears in decline.” The United States is thus quite open, under presidents of both parties, about seeking to limit China’s role in global affairs and impede its development. A desire to “maintain global dominance” is treated as a perfectly legitimate and benign aspiration. Indeed, liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias, explaining why it is worrisome that China “threatens [our] position as the world’s number one state,” says that the notion that the U.S. ought to have more power than any other country “is one of the least controversial things you could say in American politics.” (Because the premise is uncontroversial in the United States, Yglesias treats it as true, and reaches the bizarre conclusion that we should aim to populate the world with “one billion Americans” so that we do not become the “little dog” to China.)

It has long been the presumption of U.S. planners that we are entitled to have our way in Asia. After the Chinese Revolution in 1949, American politicians began debating the “loss of China,” with accusations flying back and forth as to who “lost” it. The terminology contains a tacit assumption that the U.S. owned China and it was ours to lose. The idea of China being out of our control was horrifying. Today, the United States is attempting to prove that China has no hopes of becoming a regional hegemon in its own backyard, using a “military-first” approach. The U.S., U.K., and Australia have announced they “will co-operate on the development of hypersonic weapons, expanding a trilateral security pact designed to help Washington and its allies counter China’s rapid military expansion.” And as Michael Klare observes, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of US bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states… to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis.” The Department of Defense tells us that “Beijing views the United States as increasingly determined to contain the PRC.” Since our Indo-Pacific policy is built explicitly around containing the PRC, it should not be surprising that Beijing feels that way.

Those who characterize China as a threat can immediately produce a substantial list of its misdeeds to justify the charge. There are of course serious human rights abuses in China, including its suppression of dissent and the repression of the Uyghur population. It has unquestionably violated international law in the South China Sea. Trump’s National Intelligence Director (NID) John Ratcliffe said China “robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace.” A July 2022 NID report warns of sinister Chinese influence efforts “to expand support for PRC interests among state and local leaders [in the United States] and to use these relationships to pressure Washington for policies friendlier to Beijing.” The Trump administration, at the urging of Chuck Schumer, formally labeled China a “currency manipulator.” William Barr said China practices “modern-day colonialism” in its “foreign aid” infrastructure initiatives by “loading poor countries up with debt, refusing to renegotiate terms, and then taking control of the infrastructure itself.”

The problem with the list of charges, however, is that they either plainly pose no threat to the United States or are actions we ourselves claim the right to engage in.

For instance, the evidence of China’s hideous mistreatment of the Uyghurs is compelling. But it is difficult to see how the Uyghur repression makes China a threat. By the same reasoning, Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen make it a threat to the U.S.. Furthermore, the United States plainly has no problem with the violation of human rights. It all depends on the perpetrator. While Biden has signed a bill punishing China for its repression of Uyghurs, he is happy to fist-bump a dictator and sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel to continue penning Gazans in an open-air prison and murdering Palestinian children. The U.S. could easily put a stop to the cruelty against Palestinians, but Biden saves his criticism for those who would point out the existence of apartheid (such as, for instance, leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem).

Some charges against China are exaggerated, like the idea of its neo-colonial “debt trap.” (Some international debt traps are quite real, however.) Others might as well be lists of events in American history. As the AP notes, to charge China with intellectual property theft is to condemn “the very sort of illicit practices that helped America leapfrog European rivals two centuries ago and emerge as an industrial giant.” Alexander Hamilton, whose life is celebrated in a popular patriotic musical, advocated “a federal program to engage in industrial theft from other countries on a grand scale.” Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, notes that “only after becoming the leading industrial power did [the U.S.] become a champion of intellectual-property protections.” Similarly, our condemnations of economic warfare and influence campaigns ring hollow, given that the United States exercises its economic power through possession of the global reserve currency and the CIA is quite open about conducting influence operations abroad. Kyle Haynes of The Diplomat asks us to imagine a situation in which:

An emerging great power is rapidly expanding its military capabilities. It unilaterally abrogates decades-old norms and agreements by militarizing a strategically vital waterway, and is seeking to coercively expel the reigning global hegemon from the region.

This could be a description of China today, or of the period in which the United States came to rule the Western hemisphere. China is simply rejecting the principle that we are allowed to “kick away the ladder,” by which countries climb the ladder of development through whatever unscrupulous means they please—including violence, deceit, and the theft of higher technology—and then impose a “rules-based order” to prohibit others from doing the same.

It is worth asking: If China is a threat to us because it is establishing military installations in the South China Sea, then what are we to China? When China established its first overseas military base—in Djibouti—it was treated as part of a plan to “shift global power dynamics, eroding US dominance, and relegating Europe to the sidelines of international affairs.” What, then, should China make of our own 750 overseas bases across 80 nations? Are they innocuous and defensive, or an insidious effort to shape the world to serve our interests? When China reached a security agreement with the tiny Solomon Islands, raising the possibility of its opening a second overseas base, the United States immediately began to “turn the screws” on the Solomon Islands, in what Chinese officials (accurately) called an “attempt to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the South Pacific.” China scholar Lyle Goldstein, having reviewed a series of official articles called China’s Atlantic Strategy, says that “one of the things they said very clearly was ‘The Atlantic is absolutely critical to the United States, and the United States is coming to our backyard and poking around in the South China Sea, so we have to go to their backyard.’” Is turnabout fair play, or do the rules only apply to our competitors? For instance, China has indeed violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But the United States hasn’t even signed the convention. China’s actions toward Taiwan are menacing. But the United States has claimed the right to depose governments around the world. To talk of our deep concern for human rights as we starve the people of Afghanistan is perverse.

Such points as these are often labeled “whataboutism”—distracting attention from one set of crimes by pointing to another (in this case, examining our own crimes and not just those of official enemies). In fact, they are evidence that we do not seriously care about the ideals we profess. Once we see that the ideals are applied selectively, we can ask what governs the choice to apply or not apply them in particular cases. As a general rule, the U.S. opposes the criminality and violence of those powers we wish to contain and supports the criminality and violence of our valued partners and allies. There is a single standard, then: whatever serves our perceived interests is good, whatever undermines them is wrong.

China, of course, sees this plainly. “The attacks on China mirror exactly what the United States has been doing,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry. Zhao argued that the U.S. “has no respect for the international order underpinned by the UN Charter and international law” and is a “saboteur of the international order” because it “wantonly withdraws from treaties and organizations,” placing “its domestic law above international law and international rules.” In pointing out that the U.S., with its long history of illegal violence, is almost always at war, Zhao concluded:

“In the eyes of the United States, international rules must be subordinate to and serve its interests. When international rules happen to be consistent with U.S. interests, they are cited as authority. Otherwise they are simply ignored.”

Is the Chinese position here incorrect? Is it unjust? In fact, it is difficult to see how anyone could argue with it. George W. Bush, when warned that some of his planned retaliation for the 9/11 attacks could be illegal, replied “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” The United States freely violates treaties when it pleases, and when the International Court of Justice ruled that the United States had acted unlawfully in supporting the Nicaraguan contras, the U.S. simply refused to recognize the Court’s jurisdiction and blocked enforcement of the judgment. The United States has indicated that if the International Criminal Court should ever try to put an American on trial for the kinds of crimes that we now demand Vladimir Putin be indicted for, we would be willing to invade the Hague if necessary to halt the prosecution. Anything to ensure that we are not subject to the same rules as everybody else.

One reason China is disinclined to listen to the United States’ pious pronouncements on military aggression, human rights, and international law, then, is that the entire history of the U.S. is a history of military aggression, human rights abuse, and brazen violations of international law. If we wish to be taken seriously when we speak of our ideals, we need to show that these ideals are not just invoked in bad faith as ways of keeping others from engaging in the behavior that sustains our country’s global power. The humble and devout Christians who run the United States might wish to glance again at Matthew 7:2-4, which contains a valuable caution:

“For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a beam in your own eye?” 

But what about Taiwan? Surely here is an instance in which China is posing a serious threat—not to us directly, but to the principle of self-determination. In recent years, China’s rhetoric about reunifying Taiwan with China has become increasingly bellicose, and there are ominous signs that as China’s military capacity grows, so does the risk that it will go to war to subsume Taiwan. Lyle Goldstein notes the increasing prevalence of rhetoric out of China that “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military] has the will and capability to ensure national unification.” A PLA video quotes a Chinese navy captain saying: “We have the determination and ability to mount a painful direct attack against any invaders who would wreck unification of the motherland, and would show no mercy.” (Goldstein says that not taking these threats seriously is “reckless beyond belief.”)

The situation is a serious one. But to understand it and try to respond sensibly, we have first to refresh ourselves on some basic history. Taiwan was part of China for hundreds of years, before being ceded to Japan in 1911. Before and during World War II, Japan used Taiwan as a military base, its “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” In 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan to the Republic of China (ROC), although there was controversy over its sovereignty for some years afterwards. When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) defeated the ROC in the Chinese civil war in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC forces retreated to Taiwan and set up a government in exile. For the next decades, both the PRC and the ROC claimed to be the legitimate government of all of China, both the mainland and Taiwan, and during the ‘60s and ‘70s, Chiang’s government in Taiwan was still planning to reinvade the mainland. The United States long endorsed the position that Taiwan was part of China, and only ceased to recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of all China when it became clear that the PRC was not going away. In recent decades, Taiwan itself has seen a diminution in residents who identify as Chinese rather than Taiwanese, and an increased sense of the island as its own nation rather than the Republic of China. (In fact, Taiwanese officials used to dislike the country being referred to as Taiwan, because it implied it was a separate nation rather than the legitimate Chinese government. Taiwan has long competed in the Olympics under the name “Chinese Taipei,” in part because the Republic of China government argued that its sovereignty was not confined to Taiwan.)

It is easy to portray the conflict over Taiwan today simply as the story of a large aggressor wanting to dominate a small neighbor. But the history makes the story more complicated. In the aftermath of a civil war, if the defeated party retreats to a small part of the country, it is predictable that a complicated sovereignty dispute will arise. There is no obvious U.S. analogy to help us understand. We would have to imagine that the losing side in our own civil war had retreated to Galveston or Key West and claimed to be the legitimate government for the whole country, before eventually shifting to a more realistic position of desiring autonomy. It is not only easy to see how a generations-long conflict over sovereignty could arise in such a situation, but also easy to see how, if a large foreign power armed and supported the government-in-exile, and threatened to go to war to preserve independence of the smaller state, the prospects for an amicable resolution of the sovereignty dispute could be diminished.

Over time, Taiwan has clearly gone from being a disputed part of China to a nation of its own that deserves the right of self-determination. But when we look at the situation from the PRC’s perspective, we can see why certain U.S. actions in support of Taiwan may actually be counterproductive. First, we can understand why the PRC views Taiwan as part of China, and might consider reunification important—Taiwan has been a part of China before, and Taiwan has been used by both Japan and the ROC to wage or plot war against the mainland. The United States, then, should tread lightly, because the more the PRC associates the cause of Taiwanese independence with the U.S. strategy to encircle China with hostile countries to maintain U.S. power in the region, the more determined the PRC may be to crush any prospect of Taiwanese independence. To give another analogy: if Puerto Rico sought independence, we can ponder whether a favorable U.S. response to the cause of independence would be made more or less likely if China declared its intention to defend Puerto Rico militarily and indicated its intention to use Puerto Rico as a core ally in combating U.S. hegemony in the Caribbean.

If our end goal is to ensure the self-determination of Taiwan, and prevent it from being obliterated in a war, what is the correct approach? First, we should obviously avoid taking steps that would make it more likely that Beijing would decide to try to pursue unification through force. We should do our best to preserve the peaceful status quo, because if China were  to seize Taiwan, it is not clear the United States could successfully defend the island, and any U.S.-China war would be a humanitarian and economic catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude, especially for the people of Taiwan.

In fact, there is good reason to believe a war over Taiwan can be avoided. The Taiwanese themselves, when polled, are far more likely to say that they do not think the situation will end in war, and “some Taiwan politicians think that the US’s increasingly bitter competition with China is adding to the risk.” The Financial Times quoted a Taiwanese expert who said that “Washington needed to better explain its growing alarm over the perceived risk of a Chinese attack.” And a researcher at the Taiwanese Institute for National Defense and Security Research assessed the risk of a Chinese attack as “very low.” The Taiwanese and Chinese governments have actually met on cordial terms in fairly recent memory and millions of Chinese tourists visit Taiwan each year. There is even a conceivable peaceful path to eventual independence by which the status quo is maintained until Taiwanese autonomy is essentially a fact rather than an aspiration, and in which, in future generations to come, the Chinese desire for reunification becomes an anachronistic piece of rhetoric no longer taken seriously. (Outright independence is controversial even in Taiwan and the shape of the ideal long-term outcome is unclear. Whatever it is, it should certainly not be determined by the United States’ aspirations for Taiwan.)

Following the path to a lasting peaceful and just settlement will require the United States to refrain from actions that make China feel it needs to assert its might, or that make it see a failure to pursue reunification through force as a humiliating capitulation to the United States. We must avoid creating the impression that we consider China an enemy and Taiwan a crucial ally against that enemy. We should certainly avoid entering into an arms race with China that turns the region into a “powder keg.”

Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that U.S. support for Taiwanese self-determination has little to do with a principled belief in democracy and everything to do with preserving our power in Asia. (After all, if we believed on principle in self-determination for all the peoples of faraway lands, we would not be pouring weapons into Israel to keep Palestinian self-determination from breaking out.) Instead, Chris Horton of The Atlantic explains why the United States is so invested in the cause of Taiwan:

“[It] is difficult to overstate Taiwan’s strategic importance to both the United States and an increasingly assertive China. The island’s location, economy, and security are all essential to American interests, and if Taiwan were to become part of China, as Beijing has insisted it must, China would instantly become a Pacific power, control some of the world’s most cutting-edge technologies, and have the ability to choke off oil shipments to Japan and South Korea—leverage it could use to demand the closure of U.S. military bases in both countries. In effect, Beijing would likely be able to achieve its goal of forcing the U.S. out of Asia. It is no surprise, then, that Taiwan is one of the rare issues on Capitol Hill today with bipartisan agreement—Congress has been regularly passing pro-Taiwan legislation with unanimous support throughout the Donald Trump era.”

Are we really committed to Taiwan out of a belief in self-determination, then? One might answer that it does not matter: Taiwanese self-determination is a right worth defending even if the United States has ulterior motives. But if the interest of the United States is in a U.S.-aligned Taiwan rather than a free Taiwan—indeed, we supported Taiwan even when it was an authoritarian state—this may lead the U.S. to forgo actions that would be in the interest of Taiwanese self-determination but bring Taiwan and China closer together. For instance: Lyle Goldstein says that, as was the case with Ukraine, there are opportunities for diplomacy, but they involve fostering warmer relations between China and Taiwan:

So many opportunities were missed to avert the war in Ukraine. To state the obvious, if they had simply declared that Ukraine would be a neutral state, how hard would that have been? … That was a completely feasible option, but it just didn’t fit with our ideology. The idea that we might climb down, that we might compromise—that’s showing weakness, so we can never do that. Taiwan has all kinds of diplomatic positions. We should be encouraging those. … There are all kinds of compromises to be made, people-to-people exchanges, military confidence-building measures. All of that should’ve happened with Ukraine and Russia, but no, we insisted on a confrontational approach, and now we have a ghastly war.

Instead of trying to facilitate amicable cross-strait relations, we have instead opted for the course of encouraging Taiwan to become a missile-covered “porcupine” that can resist a Chinese invasion. U.S. officials have been deliberately taking steps that they know will anger China—such as Biden promising he would go to war with China over the island, and Nancy Pelosi’s self-aggrandizing visit. In doing so, we may flatter ourselves that we are supporting Taiwanese self-determination, but what we are actually doing is increasing the likelihood that the country will be destroyed. (The situation was similar in Ukraine: the (empty) promise to admit Ukraine to NATO was justified in the name of Ukraine’s security. But it did nothing to dissuade Vladimir Putin from his belief that without his deployment of force, Ukraine would end up as part of a hostile Western military alliance.) For 50 years, the U.S. has accepted the “One China” policy, with neither side making moves to undermine it. It could continue, in the absence of reckless and provocative moves by the U.S.

In fact, China’s sensible long-term strategy regarding Taiwan is not to invade, which would severely harm itself and its prospects, and perhaps spark a suicidal war. (It also hasn’t shown signs of planning to invade.) Without invading, China can make clear that if it chose to, it could strangle the island, which survives on trade. China can continue to pursue its long-term strategy of becoming the center of Eurasia, with vast development and investment projects (now incorporating parts of Africa and even U.S. domains in Latin America) expanding to the Middle East. Europe will look on and try to figure out how to get into this enormous China-based economic system, and over time, Taiwan will increasingly want to join as well, improving commercial relations. China is certainly a threat to U.S. economic power: this is what’s likely to produce violent conflict with the United States, not the threat of invading Taiwan.

Alarmingly, there are those in the United States who think war with China over Taiwan is all but inevitable. “To us, it’s only a matter of time, not a matter of if,” said the director of intelligence of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Rather than war being unthinkable, a diplomatic solution is unthinkable. But those who truly want to see a free Taiwan—rather than a Taiwan used as a geopolitical pawn by major powers, with horrific consequences for the Taiwanese—have a duty to ask how the U.S.’s stated desire to keep China down though increasing our military power in Asia may affect China’s resolve and behavior on the issue of Taiwan.

U.S. tension with China is sometimes characterized as the classic “security dilemma” of international relations, “whereby military programs and national strategies deemed defensive by their planners are viewed as threatening by the other side,” in the words of Paul Godwin of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Stephen M. Walt warns “remarkably, plenty of smart, well-educated Westerners—including some prominent former diplomats—cannot seem to grasp that their benevolent intentions are not transparently obvious to others.” In other words, China does not see that we are (supposedly) only trying to deter Chinese aggression when we take such steps as: building a hostile regional military alliance, flooding the surrounding territory with high-precision weaponry aimed at China, labeling China an “enemy,” sending increasing numbers of warships to patrol its coast (ostensibly to enforce the Law of the Sea Convention—which we have not signed—and given the euphemism “freedom of navigation operations”), sending Australia a fleet of nuclear submarines to counter China, and conducting military exercises near China’s shores. China is not supposed to act the way we would act if Chinese warships were steadily accumulating in the Gulf of Mexico and conducting military exercises. Chinese military drills are interpreted by us as hostile, but the U.S. organizing the largest maritime warfare exercise in the world as a warning to China should not be interpreted by China as hostile. The Chinese are supposed to accept that we only ever engage in “defense,” while it is other countries that engage in “aggression.”

But let us consider the possibility that our actions are not, in fact, best characterized as “defensive” at all. Americans might not pay close attention to American actions, but the Chinese do, and perhaps China is not tragically misinterpreting our policy, but has simply read our publicly available strategy documents. They see that U.S. planners wish to maintain control of the Indo-Pacific and deny China the right to do in the Eastern Hemisphere what we have done in the Western Hemisphere. They might open the Wall Street Journal and read the “Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs” arguing that to protect the “world America built,” we must undertake a new “urgent, enduring effort to contain an advancing rival,” even if this means new “Cold War-style tensions and crises” (i.e., the constant threat of human civilization coming to an abrupt and violent end). The Chinese government may also read in our new National Defense Authorization Act that the secretary of defense is tasked with “strengthen[ing] United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region so as to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.” They might hear our talk of the “rules-based order” and then remember that Barack Obama, speaking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said “the rule book is up for grabs. And if we don’t pass this agreement—if America doesn’t write those rules—then countries like China will.” In 2012, they saw leading “moderate” Republican Mitt Romney pledge to “ensure that this is an American, not a Chinese century,” arguing that “security in the Pacific means a world in which our economic and military power is second to none,” i.e., we have an inherent right to be more powerful than China and point city-destroying weapons at it that we could deploy at a moment’s notice.

The United States may be incapable of seeing its own actions as anything other than idealistic and benevolent, but our own government has clearly stated our intention to prevent a “fair fight” and maintain the ability to annihilate anyone who challenges our power. As John Mearsheimer explained in 2005, the increasing tension as China grows more powerful comes about because:

The US does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated in the 20th century, it is determined to remain the world’s only regional hegemon. Therefore, the U.S. can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer capable of ruling the roost in Asia. In essence, the U.S. is likely to behave towards China much the way it behaved towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The United States intends to rule the world, even if that requires escalating the threat of a war that will be possibly terminal to human civilization, and of course eschewing diplomacy, (which would be appeasement).

The starting point for reducing tensions with China, then, is to take a look in the mirror and ask whether each demand we make of it is fair, and whether we are willing to do unto others as we ask them to do unto us. We might consider whether a good relationship is ever likely if we continue trying to ring China with hostile sentinel states in an attempt to contain its power. We might also consider whether China has certain legitimate grievances against the demands made by the United States. On climate change, for instance, we are depending on China not to behave nearly as destructively as we have. The average American is a far worse carbon polluter than the average Chinese person, and the U.S. and Europe are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions, meaning that China must be far less irresponsible as it develops if it hopes to avoid accelerating the catastrophe. When we ask China not to expand the reach of its military across the globe, or not to contemplate the overthrow of governments it feels threatens its interests, or to treat U.S. intellectual property claims as universal, we are asking for it to show more restraint than we have, and not to seek the kind of power we have sought. These requests may make sense—if all countries acted like the U.S., the world would quickly be destroyed—but they should be made from a position of humility.

The situation we face now is unbelievably dangerous. An insane arms race is underway. For many years, China kept a relatively low level of nuclear weapons, and proudly so. Now it is accelerating production of weapons that can only ever either be (1) a massive waste of resources (if unused) or (2) a genocidal horror (if ever used). Even Henry Kissinger—hardly a man of peace—has warned that the United States and China are stumbling toward a World War I-like calamity. Of course, in the age of thermonuclear weapons, the potential for destruction is far, far greater than it was in 1914.

It does not have to be this way.

First, we should recognize that the idea that China poses a military threat to the United States itself is so absurd that Lyle Goldstein says it is “almost a joke in national security circles,” citing the example of “11 U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers versus a single Chinese conventional ‘test’ aircraft carrier.” China does, however, pose a threat to the United States’ ability to maintain its desired level of economic dominance in Asia. If we are unwilling to share the Earth, conflict is assured.

There are undoubtedly deep areas of contention between the United States and China that will take long, laborious negotiations to resolve to the satisfaction of both parties. Perhaps there will be compromises that please nobody. But we should begin from the position that war is simply not a thinkable option in the 21st century. Martin Luther King, Jr., was correct when he said that the choice we face is: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” A Third World War must not happen under any circumstances.

China, for its part, has implored the United States (and the U.K.) not to adopt a “Cold War mentality,” arguing that it is “irresponsible” to hype up the threat and saying we must “cast away imagined demons.” China has accused the U.S. of trying to “reignite a sense of national purpose by establishing China as an imaginary enemy.” Indeed, the “igniting a sense of national purpose by establishing an imaginary enemy” is precisely what we have a history of doing in this country, and it wouldn’t be the first time that the Chinese have been blamed for America’s domestic problems. (Those hyping the “China threat” will of course see China’s warnings about a “Cold War mentality” as sneaky attempts to trick us into letting our guard down so the CCP can infiltrate Des Moines.) The editors of Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear helpfully review the history of U.S. politicians whipping up fear of Asiatic enemies to argue that “that horrid, pestilent other is causing all our problems.” When “the political culture can’t quite deliver its promises, it will appease the white working class by creating an external enemy and blaming the victim.” The “they” threatening our way of life is ever-changing, but in every case resolvable conflicts of interest become “epic civilizational contests between imagined diametrically opposed foes.”

We should be cooperating with China. It is necessary for China and the United States, two major economies, to sort out crucial issues together, like global warming, pandemics, and nuclear weapons. Our fates are tied together. There is no choice but to get along. Yet relations have been falling apart. After Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, in addition to launching new military exercises that could lead to deadly errors and escalation, China broke off talks with the U.S. about climate change, among other matters. The climate crisis is the perhaps most important issue facing the world, a major emergency, and now the two leading powers in the world can’t even discuss how to solve it. This is the road to disaster. The U.S. needs to stop needlessly stoking conflict, think about how things look from the Chinese perspective, and work sincerely to understand and collaborate with a country of 1.4 billion people we have to share a planet with. This does not mean one must be an apologist for China’s wrongdoing, or that its human rights abuses should not be taken seriously. It means that the U.S. must cease to consider global control a “vital interest” and must accommodate and respect the interests of others. It means that the pursuit of long-term survival of the species means abandoning the desire to permanently preserve our hegemony.

This content originally appeared on chomsky.info: The Noam Chomsky Website and was authored by anthony.

Can a nation survive as a democratic republic without an honest and trusted news ecosystem? Is it an actual fact that truthful and reliable news—combined with the kind of cultural trust people have in both government and each other as the result of a shared reality—are both historic and necessary preconditions for a democracy to work at all?

When there's no consensus about shared reality, governance—even highly compromised governance—becomes nearly impossible.

Thomas Jefferson once famously said that if he was given the ultimatum of choosing to live in a functioning nation without newspapers or a place with newspapers but no national government, he'd surely choose the latter.

It was a statement of his generation's love of newspapers, literature, and free speech far more than the anti-government spin that right-wingers try for when quoting the author of the Declaration of Independence. No republic in the history of the world had ever survived without an informed, participating electorate, and this nation's Founders knew it.

This truth was echoed two generations later when the young French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, spent half a year traveling America and wrote one of the entire century's best-selling books, Democracy in America, published in 1833.

Astonished, he repeatedly mentions in the book how blown away he is that the dirt-poorest farmer or remote-hollow hillbilly is as literate and enthusiastic about discussing current world events and politics as an upper-class resident of Paris.

Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that our vibrant, free, trusted press was the one thing that set America apart so democracy could work here; it was so critical, he believed, that he was openly skeptical there were enough literate people or a free enough press in France to be able to safely give up the monarchy and imitate America.

Now, it seems, consolidation and the pouring of billions of dollars by conservative billionaires into our media infrastructure has produced a crisis in America's democracy.

It's frightening people, and they're looking for solutions.

The Pew Research Center published a surprising new study this week showing that fully 48 percent of Americans "say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means losing some freedom to access and publish content…" This is up almost 10 percent from just four years ago.

Similarly, the percentage of Americans, Pew notes, "who say freedom of information should be protected—even if it means some misinformation is published online—has decreased from 58% to 50%."

Depending on the outlet, news is often skewed (either by omission of stories or simply presenting partial information) even on so-called "mainstream media"; naked lies told by politicians are only rarely called out; and political advertising today is more often deceptive than straightforward.

And Americans know it, and are sick of it.

A Pew study from last November found that roughly two-thirds of Americans believe they've seen news media slant stories to favor or disadvantage one political party or point of view. Three-out-of-five people said this was causing a "great deal" of confusion about issues related, for example, to the last presidential election.

The problem is particularly bad on the conservative side of media, in part because there's only a very limited progressive media ecosystem, and in part because (in my opinion) conservative positions are often so unpopular that lies are necessary to bring voters along.

Who in their right mind, after all, is enthusiastic about voting for politicians whose platform includes defunding the FBI, denying toxin-exposed veterans healthcare, forcing 10-year-olds to carry a rapists' baby to term, keeping insulin prices almost 10 times higher than in most other nations, and ending Social Security and Medicare?

No wonder so many right-wing radio, podcast, and cable-TV personalities focus instead on trans girls in sports, refugees from Guatemala, and crimes committed by Black and Brown people.

I have colleagues and acquaintances in conservative media who, in moments of braggadocio or drunken candor, have told me straight-up that they know some of the stories they cover are either lies or spun in ways that distort their actual meaning. Their justification is Socrates' "noble lie" doctrine: that a small lie serving a greater good is not really a sin.

One was both shocked and skeptical when I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, I'd never promulgated a lie on the air and, when I do occasionally get things wrong, I always try to correct them on-air as soon as possible.

The nonprofit group Media Matters for America has built a solid following and reputation by almost daily identifying naked lies and half-truths being promulgated on Fox "News" and other right-wing media. Fox hosts' and guests' most recent spin, for example, is that the FBI spent Tuesday of this week "planting evidence" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

Brian Maloney used to run a site called the "Radio Equalizer" designed to hold lefties to account when they lie on the air and used to occasionally skewer me. He hasn't posted on his blog since 2012, however, and his YouTube channel seems moribund. His latest project, Media Equalizer, seems not so much to hold liberal media to account as to complain about liberal politicians and progressive policies.

Either leftie shows like mine and those on MSNBC are generally truthful, or we're so small compared to the multi-billion-dollar conservative empires that populate the American media landscape that we're not worth covering.

So, how should America deal with media that purports to be "news" but, in fact, is offering a grotesque serving of spin, misdirection, and outright lies in addition to the factual news that gains them credibility and underpins their coverage?

This is a really, genuinely tough one. Truth in media laws are a legal and political minefield, particularly when it comes to public policy.

For example, is Medicare Advantage a sneaky way to privatize and thus destroy real Medicare, or an innovation allowing competition in the senior healthcare market?

My opinion is solidly in the former camp, but there are some seniors who simply can't afford the premiums for Medicare and a Medigap plan so, for them, the "free" Advantage programs are barely but definitely better than nothing at all. My opinion, in other words, isn't necessarily a fact and there are arguable shades of gray around conclusions that can be drawn from the facts themselves.

That said, there are objectively definable lies that are regularly told by so-called conservative media and propaganda outlets run by foreign governments. Not to mention the striking reality that 45 percent of Americans get much or most of their news from Facebook.

And this is serious stuff. Propaganda and "fake news" represent an existential threat to liberal democracies. When there's no consensus about shared reality, governance—even highly compromised governance—becomes nearly impossible.

Today in America (and, increasingly, around the world) advocates of dictatorship and oligarchy are using this device to divide and tear apart liberal democracies, from the Americas to Europe to Australia.

Billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch began his right-wing propaganda operation in Australia, throwing that nation's political system so deeply into crisis that former Prime Minister Keven Rudd was moved to write an op-ed for the nation's largest independent newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, in which he chronicles how "Australian politics has become vicious, toxic and unstable."

Rudd then asks, "The core question is why?" and answers his own question unambiguously:

"But on top of all the above, while manipulating each of them, has been Rupert Murdoch—the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.

"Murdoch is not just a news organization. Murdoch operates as a political party, acting in pursuit of clearly defined commercial interests, in addition to his far-right ideological world view."

From Australia, Murdoch moved to the U.K. where he took over numerous newspapers and media outlets, cheerleading for grifter and Trump wannabee Boris Johnson and his Brexit. He then became an American citizen, which let his company legally own U.S. television networks and stations and now lords over Fox "News," arguably the second most toxic source of anti-American and white-supremacist propaganda.  

In the social media arena, Facebook's owner and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, oversees what is the largest purveyor of news in the world today, including here in the U.S.

Zuckerberg, the country's richest millennial, had a secret dinner with Donald Trump during the Trump presidency, and held multiple meetings with right-wing politicians, reporters, op-ed writers, and influencers, according to Politico. I can find no record of him having similar private dinners with either Obama or Biden, nor with any groups of progressive journalists, writers, or influencers.

Numerous sources identify Facebook as one of the major hubs of organizing for right-wing events including January 6th, the rise of Qanon, and the contemporary militia and white supremacist Nazi movements.

His company continues to keep a tightly held secret the algorithm which decides which pages and posts get pushed to readers and which don't, thus secretly deciding what types of news and opinion are most heavily spread across America.

Arguably, their dominance of news dissemination makes Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg two of the most powerful men in America. Another morbidly rich billionaire, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, although apparently hasn't personally influenced or interfered with that publication's reporting. But the potential is certainly there: he who has the gold makes the rules, as the old saying goes.

To compound the confusion about who to trust in the news business, about two decades ago two reporters for a Fox station in Florida were explicitly told by station management to alter a story about Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone to make it friendlier to Monsanto. They complied multiple times until the alterations reached the point where they believed the story was filled with blatant lies and refused to air it.

The Fox station fired them and they sued for wrongful termination. Fox fought the case, arguing that, as their employer, it could tell them what to say and they had to do it to keep their jobs.

A jury awarded them about a half million dollars, but when Fox appealed the case it was reversed (and Fox then went after the reporters for attorneys' fees, threatening to bankrupt them). The court explicitly ruled that news organizations can direct their on-air personalities to lie to viewers.

So, what do we do about this? 

Al Franken had a novel idea a few years back, suggesting a way to deal with lying politicians like Trump:

"Anyone can call the FCC and lodge a complaint. The FCC then presents the complaint to an adjudicative body comprised of three judges appointed by Republicans and three judges appointed by Democrats. If a majority determines that the statement is untrue, the FCC can warn the president. And if he tweets or tells the same lie again on TV or radio or to a newspaper, he can be fined up to $10,000, or 15 percent of his net worth."

The problem, of course, is the old James Madison quote about our not needing laws if men were angels, and its corollary, that those who administer and adjudicate our laws are as potentially corruptible as anybody else.

For example, what if President DeSantis were to hand-pick the six members? As we learned with the board that oversees the Postal Service, there are more than a few people with a D after their names who are just as corrupt as many Rs: would you trust the outcome?

The FCC already has a policy opposing fake or misleading news. As they note on their website:

"The FCC is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press. It is, however, illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge."

That said, the FCC doesn't regulate the content of cable or internet-based programs; content-wise, their authority is pretty much limited to over-the-air broadcast media like radio and TV.

Libel lawsuits are another remedy for the victims of fake news, but they're extraordinarily difficult to win in the US given our First Amendment protections and the doctrine that public figures generally can't sue for libel at all.

Canada explicitly outlaws fake news, although that hasn't stopped Fox "News" from popping up on outlets across that country. Their Broadcasting Act explicitly says:

"Prohibited Programming Content:

It's nonetheless difficult to enforce on cable or Internet outlets in Canada, and a similar approach here would run afoul of the First Amendment's prohibitions on regulation of "freedom of speech, or of the press."  

Finland has taken a unique approach to the problem of fake news, particularly on social media, by incorporating news and media training into required elementary and secondary school classes. America could consider the same, although, like the snit we just saw about teaching American history or sex education, it would almost certainly provoke squeals of outrage from right-wingers.

But screw them. America is in a crisis right now caused, in large part, by dishonest actors across the right-wing spectrum of our media and social media.

Forty percent of Americans don't believe the results of the 2020 election, and nearly half of Republicans think Democrats engage in ritual drinking of children's blood and worse. There is no corollary or even similar misunderstanding of reality or bizarre set of beliefs among the left or those in the center.

For the moment, media literacy training in schools across America and requiring transparency from social media—both things Congress would have to undertake to succeed—seem like the best approaches we can take to both protect free speech and diminish the impact of lies and propaganda on American political and social life.

If the Biden administration were to enforce the nation's antitrust laws and break up the media conglomerates, or Congress were to bring back the media ownership limits as they were before being gutted in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, either or both would go a long way toward increasing the social and political diversity of voices across our media public squares.

These will all be hard, but they're important if we value our democratic republic and want it to survive. And they're just the start: if you have any additional ideas, I'd love to hear them.

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

For veteran journalist Sharif Hassanyar, the final breaking point came in September last year. The Taliban had ousted the elected government of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani almost a month earlier, and the last American soldiers had since withdrawn in a chaotic race to get out. As head of Ariana News, an independently owned television station, Hassanyar had initially instructed his panicked staff to stay focused on their work. “We knew that under a Taliban regime all civil liberties would be very limited,” Hassanyar told me. “But despite all of this, I would try to keep the morale of our colleagues high… and encourage our staff to work fearlessly.”

Steadily, pressures grew—directly from Taliban operatives who beat some journalists or visited the homes of others who were in hiding, and indirectly from Ariana executives who would say the station had to self-censor out of caution. Hassanyar himself felt directly threatened, and left the country for Pakistan on September 1. From there, he ran the news operation remotely, still believing it might be possible for the station to continue covering live events as before. When one of his news managers contacted him to ask for guidance on how to cover a protest by scores of Afghan women, Hassanyar instructed him to broadcast the protest live and invite Afghan analysts to discuss it on air. 

It didn’t take long for Hassanyar’s cell phone to start ringing. Taliban intelligence officials called several times, demanding that he shut down the broadcast. Hassanyar didn’t cave to Taliban orders right away, but a short time later, bearded Taliban intelligence officials arrived at Ariana’s offices in the Bayat Media Center. They threatened that if live coverage of the women’s demonstration didn’t end immediately, Taliban militiamen would close the gates of the BMC complex and prevent employees from leaving or entering the building. 

Afghan American business executive and philanthropist Ehsanollah “Ehsan” Bayat had built the BMC, a five-story building roughly six kilometers (3.7 miles) from the Afghan presidential palace, in 2014. In addition to being the headquarters of Bayat’s media operations, the BMC also houses the Afghan Wireless Telecommunication Company (AWCC), in which Bayat has a majority stake, and which has more than 5,000 employees. With so many people’s livelihoods and safety at stake, Hassanyar—under pressure not only from the Taliban at this point, but also from senior executives from within his organization—ordered his staff to cut off coverage of the women protestors. 

A short time later, on September 10, Hassanyar quit Ariana News.

Hassanyar is one of countless Afghan journalists whose dreams of a free media in Afghanistan have come to a rapid end. Many lost their jobs when the Taliban takeover led to economic collapse. Others, like him, have fled the country to escape Taliban repression. Hassanyar gave up his home, leaving behind his father, mother, and several siblings, and he largely relinquished his aspirations to help build a more free and democratic Afghanistan.

Intimidation and harassment

The story of Ariana News, once one of the more influential networks in Afghanistan, reflects the troubles all media in the country now face. Around the time of Hassanyar’s departure, the Taliban—including operatives from the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI)—launched a wave of censorship, threats, intimidation, detention, beating, and harassment of journalists at Ariana News and other outlets. After Hassanyar’s departure, the increased repression caused at least three of his successors as head of Ariana News to flee Afghanistan, too.

Now, a full year after the Taliban takeover, critical news gathering in Afghanistan by local media remains very difficult. It requires patience and courage—a willingness by reporters and TV news presenters to put themselves, their families, and others at risk. In such dire circumstances, it’s perhaps hard to recall that the blossoming of Afghanistan’s media was one of the great success stories of the period when U.S. and international forces oversaw the country.

Hassanyar was enthusiastic about running the new station, and in turn asked for full authority—free from any intervention by the owner or his business executives—as a condition for accepting the offer. He says Bayat agreed, provided Ariana would not favor any political group, and that newscasters would not directly insult any Afghan. Hassanyar accepted those conditions, and took the job. 

Bayat didn’t always stick to his commitment, according to two other former Ariana News executives who did not want to be named, but his interventions were rare in the early years of Ariana News’ broadcasting. In one case, they said, Bayat quashed an investigation into a land issue saying it could undermine contracts he had with international forces and harm his relations with the Afghan government. (When CPJ asked Bayat for comment on this and other matters, a spokesperson declined to provide CPJ’s list of questions to Bayat and instead forwarded to CPJ a written statement from current ATN managing director Habib Durrani. “After more than 17 years of operation in such a fast paced, rapidly changing environment, employees will disagree and have different opinions and perspectives on a wide variety of issues,” Durrani’s statement said in part.)

The two stations began to suffer, however, as the Taliban insurgency was spreading. By 2018, journalists were getting wounded or killed in increasing numbers, and the former executives said Bayat intervened more frequently in coverage. By 2020, COVID-19 was also raging through the country, undermining the economy and hurting business.  
Ariana News closed its two provincial stations in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif in 2020 and laid off most of its staff in the two provinces, including many women. According to Hassanyar, former Ariana News head Ali Asghari, and Waris Hasrat, a former political programs manager at the network, ATN and Ariana News had already shed roughly 130 employees by the time the Ghani government fell in 2021, bringing the total number to around 270.

Forced resignations

The 2021 Taliban takeover, however, precipitated a full-scale gutting of most Afghan media. According to Hassanyar, several ATN and Ariana News TV presenters and female employees simply left their jobs when Kabul fell on August 15. The full story, however, is more complex. Roya Naderi, who hosted morning programs focused on social issues and was one of ATN’s most popular presenters, told CPJ that she was in the office on that day. Ariana executives told women at ATN to leave the TV station as the Taliban were approaching the city. Naderi told CPJ that when she arrived home, she put on long black clothes, fearing what might happen if Taliban militiamen saw her dressed otherwise—and waited to see what her future would be. 

Four days later, Naderi recalls, someone from the HR department of ATN called to ask for her resignation, saying the Taliban wouldn’t tolerate female presenters. She says that even though she and others feared Taliban reprisals, they wanted to return to work because they desperately needed the income. But Naderi says she and many of her female colleagues were forced to resign regardless. (A spokesperson for ATN’s HR department told CPJ by messaging app that it had not fired employees mentioned in this article “due to so called ‘pressure’ from the Taliban,” and disputed that some had been let go.)

Ariana News executives took a different approach than ATN. Representatives of several news outfits, including Hassanyar, had banded together in early 2021 to form a watchdog group called the Afghanistan Freedom of Speech Hub. After the Taliban takeover, they decided they would continue to put women broadcasters on air. 

Fawzia Wahdat, a presenter with Ariana News, told CPJ she was able to continue presenting news on-air until November 9 last year. She had worked for Ariana News for about a decade until that point. After the takeover, she says, Taliban intelligence operatives forced Ariana to segregate male and female employees into separate work spaces—an account confirmed by two former senior managers of Ariana News. Ariana’s HR staff, apparently at Taliban direction, instructed female employees to wear long black robes. 

During most of the period from 2004 to 2021, “we worked with complete freedom,” Wahdat told CPJ. “But with the Taliban’s takeover, all programs, producers, news writers, and presenters were under pressure… Often, producers would give us specific questions to ask the guests and we could not go beyond those boundaries. However, I could not do that.”

When journalists neglected the unwritten rules, the Taliban would pressure them further. “They told us to support them and their political system in our programs,” says Wahdat. “They would tell us that journalists had campaigned against them for 20 years and now it was time to pay them back by supporting them.” Eventually, Ariana News executives forced Wahdat to resign, she says.

Nasrin Shirzad, another news anchor and presenter of political programs for Ariana News, says she worked non-stop on the day Kabul fell. Even before the Taliban took power, Shirzad’s work as a political presenter and news anchor had not been easy. Conservatives in her home district in the eastern region of Nangarhar disapproved of her work at a TV station. In her home area, “there is no school for girls,” says Shirzad, who was only able to get educated because her parents moved to Kabul. “They don’t like girls outside of the home, let alone on TV.”

Shirzad told CPJ that about a month before the Taliban takeover, police discovered an explosive device planted near her apartment building. Her neighbors blamed her for endangering them because her high profile had made her a target. A day after the fall of Kabul, Shirzad says, members of the Taliban started pressuring Ariana News to fire her. At least some of the Taliban involved were relatives from her home area. Hassanyar recalls that threats were delivered to him as well as Shirzad’s brother. 

On August 21, Shirzad said, Ariana managers told her that her life was in danger and that she should stop working for the TV station. Hassanyar confirmed her account, saying that around that time he received a call from someone who identified himself as a distant relative of Shirzad. “They told me that she is not allowed to be on air anymore,” recalls Hassanyar. “They threatened me that if she continues to work at the TV station, they will do anything they want to her and will find me and do anything to me. Shirzad came to me and was crying, asking what she should do. I told her that nothing is more valuable than her own life … I didn’t fire her, but unfortunately she was compelled to leave work.”  

Male presenters could still appear on air, but faced censorship. Bizhan Aryan, a news anchor and host of political shows, told CPJ that in a live broadcast on the evening of August 16, he challenged a Taliban spokesman about their policies requiring men to wear beards and women to fully cover their heads and bodies. Ariana News executives later reprimanded him for discussing controversial issues and being contentious toward the Taliban spokesperson. Later, according to Aryan, that part of the interview was removed from the station’s online archive.

Aryan continued to challenge Taliban spokespeople, however. When the head of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency visited Kabul shortly after the fall of the country to the Taliban, Aryan interviewed Inamuallah Samangani, a Taliban spokesperson. He asked him why the Taliban were dealing with Pakistani intelligence and not the foreign minister or some other civilian representative. Aryan then pressed him further about the visit—about Pakistan’s aims for Afghanistan, and about whether Pakistan had caused a delay in the Taliban’s announcement of a cabinet. “That show became more problematic as the managers asked me why I posed such challenging questions to him,” Aryan told CPJ. “They told me that if I continued to pressure the Taliban, they would have no option but to fire me.” 

Aryan continued to work for Ariana News until the end of September 2021, after which, he says, he was forced to take leave and then was informed he’d been laid off. After that, he told CPJ, the Taliban continued to harass him by telephone and maintained surveillance of his home, until he fled Afghanistan in March 2022.

Hard choices

Ariana’s managers were also subject to pressure. 

Hamid Siddiqui took charge of Ariana News in September 2021 after Hassanyar left the network. “Several times during my tenure as the manager of Ariana News, the Taliban intelligence agency summoned me to GDI headquarters,” recalls Siddiqui, who lasted less than a month in the job. “I tried to refuse, but they threatened to detain me if I didn’t show up. The intelligence operatives there told me not to allow female presenters at the station anymore. I said, ‘I can’t accept that,’ but the then-chief of Taliban intelligence for media affairs, Mashal Afghan, slapped me and told me to shut up and listen to him.” (CPJ attempted to reach Afghan for comment, but was not able to get a response.)

Siddiqui says he asked the intelligence officer why he was acting so rudely. For that, he was detained for three hours, “during which time they beat me up, insulted me and hit me on the head and back many times with their rifles… That same night, the human resources department of Ariana News fired me.”

Another manager took over, but he lasted just 25 days before fleeing to Germany. In mid-October 2021, Asghari became the fourth head of Ariana News in two months. Asghari is a Shiite Muslim and belongs to the Ghezelbash minority ethnic group. The Sunni Taliban labeled him a Hazara—the largest Shiite ethnic group in Afghanistan—and hurled insults at him.

Asghari told CPJ that during his tenure at the helm of Ariana News’ daily operations from October 2021 to May 2022, he was summoned more than 10 times to the Taliban’s intelligence headquarters, where he was questioned about Ariana News and its programs. He says the Taliban had recruited a large number of people—perhaps around 200—to monitor and track Afghan media, an estimate based largely on his visits to the media affairs department of the GDI, led at the time by Jawad Sargar. 

Asghari says that at the beginning of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, GDI operatives were mainly focused on pressuring the TV station on what they considered major issues, like the appearance of female presenters or the broadcasting of soap operas. But in the last few months of Asghari’s work, Sargar would micromanage even small matters, showing up at the station to warn that if he did something the Taliban didn’t like, they would arrest, detain, or possibly even kill him. (In response to CPJ requests for comment on this and other accusations, Sargar left CPJ a voicemail saying this was “totally wrong,” and promising to discuss it further. He did not respond, however, to several attempts to reach him again.)

“For example, they would come and tell us to change quotes,” says Asghari. “Nowhere in the world is it acceptable to change verbatim quotes…  If we would quote U.S. Special Representative [for Afghanistan] Tom West as saying the ‘Taliban group’ in a news piece, Sargar would come and threaten and intimidate us as to why we used the term ‘Taliban group,’ and then he would order us to change the quote and write ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ instead.” 

Sargar would enter Ariana News offices whenever he wanted, and visit all departments of the TV station without notice. He would summon a journalist to a meeting room and order him to take out his phone and other belongings and put them on the table to make sure the meeting was not recorded, Asghari says. 

Sargar would never call Asghari by his name. Instead, says Asghari, he’d say, “Hey Hazara,” and when Asghari would argue against censorship, Sargar would jokingly threaten, saying “Hey Hazara, I will kill you one day,” or “You’re a Shiite and shaking hands with you is haram (forbidden).” 

Sargar summoned Asghari on March 12, 2022, to the GDI headquarters where another intelligence operative interrogated him about Ariana’s coverage of the National Resistance Front (NRF), an anti-Taliban group. Asghari says his interrogator handcuffed him during the three-hour questioning session, and also sought information about his family members’ past and present jobs and if they were engaged with the NRF. 

In a WhatsApp message sent to Asghari on March 18, 2022, reviewed by CPJ, Sargar asked Asghari not to publish anything about meetings between intelligence officers and the media. TOLONews had just broadcast a report that the intelligence agency had asked it to stop airing soap operas, and the Taliban had detained three of its employees. “During the few days we had meetings with media officials, it was a condition that no one could leak these issues,” the message reads, referring to the order to stop showing soap operas. “But TOLONews rebelled. Our controversy arose. We hope that there will be a blackout on such issues and no one would publish the news. Even [news] of the arrest of TOLO officials,” the message reads.

On April 22, 2022, Asghari was walking in the Karte Seh area of Kabul when a Taliban vehicle approached with four armed men. They jumped out and beat him severely with a bicycle lock, he says, calling him a “spy journalist” and an infidel. He suffered head injuries as a result. Asghari decided that he could no longer stay in Afghanistan and fled to another country shortly afterward. He says he still feels unsafe there.  

Other Afghan journalists and media executives face similarly hard choices. Keeping the country’s journalistic flame alive can mean bowing to the dictates of the Taliban; leaving the business invariably comes at the price of leaving homes, families, livelihoods, and professions.. 

For media owners, the financial stakes can also be high.

Bayat, for instance, has large investments in Afghanistan’s telecoms, power, and energy industries in addition to his Ariana properties. His Bayat Group employs more than 10,000 Afghans. Three former Ariana News employees, who did not want to be named, told CPJ they believe that Bayat has censored his television networks since the Taliban takeover because he doesn’t want controversies to threaten the operations of his Afghan Wireless (AWCC,) Bayat Power, and Bayat Energy companies. 

ATN’s Durrani did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment on these former employees’ views. In his statement to CPJ, he pledged that Ariana would continue to broadcast while ensuring that the safety and well-being of its staff was always its highest priority. “Despite the country’s economic challenges ATN remains on air and will stay on air for generations ahead,” he said.

The Ariana insiders who spoke to CPJ are less optimistic. Asghari says he was told by former colleagues that Ariana News’ revenues, including paid advertising from AWCC, now cover only about 35% of its expenses, with the rest paid by Bayat. 

They also told CPJ that the total number of ATN and Ariana News employees in television, radio, and online has plummeted from roughly 400 people in 2018 to about 60 in 2022. Radio Ariana and Ariana News FM stopped broadcasting six months ago. Ariana News employees, including its online division, now number about 18 people, with only one female employee. 

Another challenge for ATN: the struggle to fill the programming void left by the Taliban ban on soap operas and other entertainment programs. According to Hassanyar and Asghari, ATN and Ariana News still operate as two separate stations, but share their content, with ATN heavily reliant on coverage by Ariana News. The former managers fear that the pressure of increasing censorship, threats, and financial constraints might soon force Ariana News to stop broadcasting altogether–leaving ATN a shell of its former self.

For them and many other Afghan journalists, the Taliban’s ongoing insistence that they support the media “within our cultural frameworks” rings particularly hollow.

Waliullah Rahmani is an Asia researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists. From 2016 to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, he was founder and director of Khabarnama Media, one of the first digital media organizations in Afghanistan.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Waliullah Rahmani.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Seb Cook.

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This article is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine.

Late on May 31, 2018, five days after she was sworn in as prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley and her top advisers gathered in the windowless anteroom of her administrative office in Bridgetown, the capital, for a call that could determine the fate of her island nation. The group settled into uncomfortable straight-backed chairs around a small mahogany table, staring at framed posters of Barbados’ windmills and sugar cane fields. Mottley, who was then 52, can appear mischievous in the moments before her bluntest declarations, but on this evening her steely side showed. She placed her personal cellphone on speaker and dialed a number in Washington for the International Monetary Fund. As arranged, Christine Lagarde, the managing director, answered.

Mottley got to the point: Barbados was out of money. It was so broke that it was taking out new loans just to pay the interest on the old ones, even as its infrastructure was coming undone. Soon the nation would have no choice but to declare itself insolvent, instigating a battle with the dozens of banks and creditors that held its $8 billion in debt and triggering austerity measures that would spiral the island into further poverty. There was another way, Mottley said, but she needed Lagarde’s help.

Mottley, the first woman to lead Barbados, had been working toward this conversation for nearly two years, consulting expert financial and legal advisers to develop a plan that would restructure the country’s soaring debts in a way that would free up money to invest in Barbados’ economy. Then, nine months before voting day, that plan took on new urgency as two powerful hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean 12 days apart; they missed Barbados, but one of them obliterated nearby Dominica.

In Mottley’s view, that obliteration was “like a nuclear event.” It was increasingly clear that climate change would make all the projects that Barbados already could not afford more necessary — and more expensive. The storms revealed that even the most heroic economic planning could be laid to waste in a moment. It was already obvious that every climate crisis was an economic crisis; but going forward, she realized, every economic crisis would effectively be a climate crisis. For Mottley, this meant the money she needed the IMF to help her recoup wasn’t just for her people’s prosperity but for their survival.

Mottley’s insistence on speaking directly with Lagarde — she had been pushing for the meeting for nearly a week while Lagarde’s office demurred — was an unorthodox way to approach the leader of one of the world’s dominant economic institutions. Having descended from two generations of elite politicians, Mottley had learned, though, that important decisions at large organizations are made at the top. Her grandfather was the mayor of Bridgetown; her father served as the country’s consul general to the United States. She was groomed at the island’s elite girls’ academy, Queen’s College, and at the private United Nations International School in New York. Beside her in the anteroom was her adviser Avinash Persaud, a close friend since the days when they each studied at the London School of Economics, where she received her law degree in 1986. Persaud, who went on to lead research departments at J.P. Morgan and State Street Bank, was deeply knowledgeable about development finance. The two friends were joined by the principals of a little-known but influential London financial firm called White Oak Advisory — Sebastian Espinosa and David Nagoski — debt experts who had developed a novel contractual clause to protect countries from at least some of the economic consequences of climate-driven catastrophes.

With Lagarde on the phone, Mottley made her pitch. Barbados, she said, was going to default on the debt it owed to private banks and investors. She wanted Lagarde’s support in persuading them to renegotiate its terms. The IMF is both the assessor and the enforcer of global economic policy, the de facto gatekeeper to the world’s capital markets. Mottley knew that banks and investors would work with her only if Barbados were participating in a formal IMF program for economic reform — and it had to start immediately.

Mottley told Lagarde that Barbados was prepared to do voluntarily what most countries have to be coerced to do: cut its budget and raise taxes. But she needed something in return. With the effects of climate change bearing down on the region, the kind of austerity the IMF demanded from developing nations — slashing the size of government agencies and firing thousands of public employees while auctioning off real estate and other national assets — would no longer work. Mottley wanted Lagarde to endorse an economic program that would still allow her to raise salaries of civil servants, build schools and improve piping and wiring for water and power. “Before you carry people on a long journey,” she told Lagarde, “you have to give them a little breakfast.”

Barbados, while considered relatively wealthy by World Bank standards, hadn’t been able to borrow on the international market since 2013, and it had no capacity to pay for essential programs and projects. The concern was immediate, Mottley explained: Hurricane season was about to begin. The room fell quiet. No one was sure how Lagarde would respond. Would she trust Mottley to spend on Barbados first? Or demand — as the IMF usually did — deference to debtors? Then, as Mottley’s advisers recall, came the director’s surprising reply: She was extremely supportive of what Mottley was proposing.

The next day, Mottley declared that Barbados would stop making its payments on the nation’s debts. “Today, my friends, we pry off the hands that have been strangling us,” she said. Some of the business leaders she had gathered to stand behind her at the lectern winced. The value of Barbados’ bonds on the global markets crashed. S&P Global downgraded the island’s credit. The country teetered on the edge of financial chaos. With that, Mottley’s adventure onto the global stage of financial and climate activism began.

What Mottley sought would not be easy. She would have to untangle the relationships connecting the IMF with the financial institutions that invest in countries like Barbados — a global financial system that simultaneously helps and preys upon countries at their moments of greatest need. She would have to challenge the rules of that system and its powerful figures, who often struggle to recognize how climate change is altering the traditional dynamics of debt and development. Mottley would come to see the traps of that system as fundamentally unjust, born from generations of colonial rule. Just as outsiders once pillaged the Caribbean for wealth created by the hands of slaves, investors in those former imperial powers now squeezed former territories for their assets, for access to markets, for interest on loans. And she would have to contend with all of that waiting for the next storm, knowing she governed a dot of land isolated in one of the most vulnerable places on Earth.

Few parts of the planet are as imperiled by the changing climate as the Caribbean’s crescent-shaped string of islands. Every summer, the warm waters off the northwest coast of Africa spin off cyclonic systems that hurtle across the Atlantic, reaching the easternmost stretch of these islands — where Barbados stands sentinel. Quick successions like that of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, the two storms that narrowly missed the island, were supposed to be rare. Now, though, experts believe that global warming could drive a fivefold increase in strong hurricanes, suggesting that hits from Category 4 and 5 storms will become an annual near-certainty.

Droughts, meanwhile, are growing longer and drier, threatening drinking-water supplies and making it difficult to grow food. Barbados, a teardrop-shaped island of 290,000 people, is among the half of Caribbean islands the United Nations already describes as water-scarce, with seawater seeping into its aquifers and rainfall that might drop by as much as 40% by the end of the century. The droughts will lead to wildfires, killing more vegetation and crops. When it does rain, it is projected to rain heavily and all at once, causing precipitous landslides, which will wipe out roads, rip up electrical grids and cut off energy supplies. At the same time, rising and warming seas are eroding shorelines and killing off reefs and fisheries. According to the IMF, roughly two-thirds of the 511 disasters to hit small countries since 1950 have occurred in the Caribbean, taking more than 250,000 lives.

These islands have another dubious distinction: They carry more debt, relative to the size of their economies, than almost anywhere else on the planet, a fiscal burden that makes it virtually impossible for them to pay for the infrastructure necessary to protect them from the climate disruptions to come. Barbados, which in 2017 had the third-highest debt per capita of any country in the world, was spending 55% of its gross domestic product each year just to pay back debts, much of it to foreign banks and investors, while spending less than 5% on environmental programs and health care.

This is true beyond the Caribbean too. In poor nations around the world — from the deserts of North Africa to the low-lying islands of the Pacific and the Caribbean — rising sovereign debt is becoming a hidden but decisive aspect of the climate crisis. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, external debt for what are called Small Island Developing States, or SIDS, more than doubled between 2008 and 2021. The IMF projected that three-quarters of emerging-market economies would pay a third or more of their tax revenue just on debt service in 2021. In the zero-sum game of budgets, that means less money for shoring up infrastructure that is already in shambles. A recent analysis by Eurodad, the European debt-and-finance advocacy organization, found that over the last six years, Latin American and Caribbean countries have slashed what they pay on anything non-debt-related by 22%. As Mottley explained to me, “We always have to put aside debt money first.”

The warming planet has turned this into a self-perpetuating cycle: Were it not for the disasters worsened by climate change, much of the region’s debt might not exist in the first place. Jamaica’s debt, for example, can be tied to the response to Hurricane Gilbert more than three decades ago. Grenada’s is in part because of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Dominica’s 2017 loss, relative to its GDP, was the equivalent of a $44 trillion hit to the U.S. economy.

According to the World Bank, these climate-driven damages have made it difficult for the Caribbean economies to achieve anything resembling healthy growth. Since 1980, the cumulative cost of disasters has amounted to more than half of a year’s worth of total economic product for 14 Caribbean nations. The costs have eclipsed average annual GDP growth in five of them. There are poor countries with more debt, and there are island countries in the Pacific facing more imminent climate threats, but nowhere in the world do the debt and climate vulnerabilities overlap to the extent they do in the Caribbean. Fixing the debt crisis, as Persaud told me, “isn’t about countries mopping up their fiscal discipline. It is that countries on the front line face a different kind of risk. They face wipeout risk.”

The IMF could buffer this crisis. Indeed, doing so is arguably its mission. The IMF was formed in 1944 when the soon-to-be victors of World War II met at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to build a new economic system for a world devastated by years of war and depression. Its mandate: to stabilize global markets and keep currencies — and debts — predictable. Today 190 member countries pay dues into a pool from which they can borrow in a crisis.

On balance, the IMF and the World Bank have served their primary function well, steadying economies and offering the reassurance of economic leadership to global markets over many decades. But the fund also became a conduit by which global capital, and the mixed blessings that come with it, flow to the world’s poorer nations. Its advisers are the people who dictate the often-painful recalibrations a troubled country must take to crawl back toward economic recovery and regain market trust. It has become one of the most influential, if underappreciated, determiners of climate policy in the world.

The IMF doesn’t lend much money directly — that’s the job of the World Bank and other development banks — and it doesn’t negotiate between a country and its creditors. But it does draw the boundaries of possibility and policy, and its stamp of approval is an essential prerequisite for other investors, banks and ratings agencies to encourage new projects or lend more money. Should those private contracts fail, the bankers and other buyers know that to some degree, the great international finance institutions stand by ready to help make them whole. An indebted developing country is paralyzed and ostracized without the IMF’s stamp of approval, which gains it access to the world’s capital markets. And that approval is conditioned on fiscal changes that can carve deeply into the bone of civil society.

For her entire life, Mottley had watched Barbados painstakingly build itself up as a postcolonial democracy. Now climate change was prying away the nation’s — and the whole region’s — grip on its destiny. The big institutions capable of aiding Caribbean countries, Mottley could see, leaned too heavily on outdated assumptions and equations. The IMF requires countries to perform within its framework but has been slow to allow that global warming might require the framework to change, only recently beginning to fold some nominal climate risk into its calculations. It continues to hold countries to metrics for success — primarily the ability to keep the ratio of total debt to annual GDP quite low — that many economists say are unrealistic and arbitrary. The IMF has held steadfastly to its doctrine for years, based on its studies of how larger economies, not small ones, function. But a doctrine that demands austerity often only increases a country’s vulnerability to climate threats. “There’s an orthodoxy as to what is acceptable, and what can be sustained,” Mottley said.

By declaring nations like Barbados too rich to qualify for development aid, the World Bank — which effectively puts IMF policy into practice — has relegated them to economic purgatory. The bank has folded climate risk into a range of climate-related aid and disaster-finance programs, but it still does not formally consider a country’s specific climate risk when it evaluates eligibility for its discounted development loans.

Then, by failing to fully account for how the exceptional costs of climate change affect national wealth, the IMF and the World Bank have wound up driving countries in need toward profit-reaping hedge funds and banks, to borrow billions of dollars, often at credit-card-like interest rates.

Throughout, the debts have been collected. They were collected as the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis lingered and as a pandemic decimated tenuous health care systems and tourist-reliant economies. They continue to be collected despite a climate crisis that is caused almost entirely by the copious fossil fuels that those same powerful creditor nations burned to industrialize and achieve their own wealth, the very wealth that undergirds the IMF. Caribbean nations are being asked, in a sense, to pay not only their own debts but the rest of the world’s debts, too, for all the progress it made while leaving the Caribbean behind.

Mottley’s ascent seemed inevitable to some Barbadians — one childhood friend said that at 12, she promised she would be prime minister — but not to all. Even after she earned her law degree at 21, her father urged her toward private practice. Why would Mia, the oldest of four siblings, a girl who loved music and for a while even managed a reggae band, want to wade into the island’s internecine politics? “Horses for courses,” Mottley told me recently, using the British phrase suggesting that everyone has a purpose in life. Her mother was the real politician. “Mommy would tell us all along that you all and your father are lawyers, but I am the law,” she said. It was her mother who “sees people, she hears people, she feels people.” That became Mottley’s creed. As prime minister, she is often seen at food trucks and is known as Mia to cabdrivers and reporters.

Mottley was first elected to Barbados’ Parliament in 1994. She was the youngest Barbadian ever appointed to a ministerial position and has served as both the country’s attorney general and its minister of economic affairs. Since 2008, she has twice headed the Barbados Labour Party. Her 2018 election was a landslide, with the party taking all 30 seats in the country’s lower Parliament.

She told me once that one of her great regrets was not being around to fight for Barbados’ independence in 1966. The country’s first prime minister, Errol Barrow, was a family friend, and Mottley grew up steeped in his belief that it was the responsibility of the island’s government to use its resources to lift up, educate and house its citizens. She also shared Barrow’s indignation about Barbados’ past. The island, first claimed by King James I of England, was importing slaves from Africa as early as 1625, receiving thousands of people from Guyana and the Gold Coast and using them up — their life expectancy once on Barbados was less than 10 years — to produce sugar. When the British Parliament passed the act that abolished slavery in its territories in 1833, it paid white slave owners 20 million pounds to compensate them for the loss of their property, even as it required the kidnapped Africans to provide four additional years of free labor as “apprentices.”

“It goes further,” Mottley told me. The British rulers then told its freed slaves that if they didn’t continue to work, they couldn’t live on the plantations that made up most of the 166-square-mile island, “the master and servant land.” That arrangement continued for many decades, extending the system of sugar and exploitation that powered the modernization of Britain and its boom in banking, shipping and insurance. Along the way some 250,000 Black Barbadians died.

As it turns out, Mottley says, she didn’t miss the rebellion after all. “My belly full but me hungry,” she intoned one afternoon, recalling Bob Marley. “A hungry mob is an angry mob.” Her point was that the stakes for Barbados and the Caribbean are still high and the dynamics the same: The region’s 45 million people still have little voice and are easy to forget, and as the Caribbean becomes increasingly unlivable, it could become a source of potential destabilization — and mass migration — right at America’s door.

For at least a decade before Mottley was elected, a mixture of poor management and corruption had eroded the country’s economy. As Barbados’ former central bank governor DeLisle Worrell described it to me, the country had developed a “dysfunctional” fiscal culture in which government agencies and departments took loans and negotiated deals without consulting the central bank, accumulating sprawling debt and a backlog of need. On the touristed southern end of the island, sewage erupted from neglected pipes as funding to fix them lagged. The country’s response was to print more money and borrow more from abroad, to stanch the economic bleeding. In 2013, during Worrell’s term, Barbados took one of the largest commercial loans in its history — $150 million — from Credit Suisse at 7% interest; within a year, it had grown to $225 million, and by 2018, the interest on the balance was 12%. The money didn’t last, and the sewer lines weren’t fixed. It would be the last commercial loan Barbados could get. Running a consistent deficit, the country began drawing down its foreign reserves to service the loans. By the time of the 2018 election, the government was nearly broke, its reserves having dwindled to enough for just 28 days.

The people of Barbados did not choose Mottley — or her Barbados Labour Party — over its rival by a margin of 3-to-1 because their political philosophies were substantively different. They were not; both are center left. Nor was the vote driven by people thinking Mottley would challenge the global finance system or solve climate change. The vote was for fiscal competence.

Climate change was only a small part of the fiscal morass, but it was a big part of what could keep Barbados from ever clawing out. As Mottley plotted how to escape the fiscal spiral, she met repeatedly with European climate scientists who helped bring into focus how everything from the island’s housing stock to its coral reefs would determine how habitable Barbados would be in the future. Along with restructuring the country’s debt, Mottley laid out a plan, called Roofs to Reefs, to restore the island’s physical and ecological infrastructure. But it was going to take money — a lot of it. Mottley thought she could work her way to the heights of global finance to gather that money. She wasn’t the first to try it, and she didn’t know how hard a climb that would soon prove to be.

The IMF’s education in the economic threat of climate change began with Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It was heading straight for Barbados but veered south and instead hit Grenada, another former British colony, as a Category 3 storm; it damaged most of the structures on the island, including 73 of the country’s 75 schools. Four-fifths of Grenada’s power grid was knocked out, along with most of its nutmeg trees, virtually eliminating a key export for years. The total damages topped $800 million. Aid did come; the World Bank disbursed $20 million almost immediately. Grenada, already heavily indebted before the storm, still plunged into a deep recession. In December 2004, it missed its first payment, entering what Standard & Poor’s termed “selective default.” Then, seven months later, another hurricane struck.

In the IMF’s view, Grenada could not sustain its debts, and that judgment gave cover for the country to renegotiate with the banks and foreign governments that it owed. The IMF’s assessment came at the usual price, though. Grenada agreed to slash its federal payroll — the government was the largest employer on the island — as well as sell off assets and privatize agencies, all toward the goal of reducing its debt.

As the IMF sees it, reducing debt is the recipe for financial stability. But in the climate era, stability also requires enormous spending. Grenada needed sea walls to protect its towns against ocean surges and retaining walls to keep its mountainous roads from collapsing. It needed to harden the country for worse storms and droughts to come. And immediately after Ivan, it needed a place to send its children and its sick. So the government spent a part of its budget on new schools and hospitals and roads. But when Grenada missed its fiscal targets, the IMF instead blamed the country’s “capital expenditure overruns” for its “fiscal slippages.” From then on, according to a 2007 staff report, the IMF wanted Grenada to pay off its debts to outside investors first.

“The IMF always blames the countries,” says Timothy Antoine, director of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Grenada’s permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance during the hurricanes. Focusing on debt alone was “absolutely ludicrous,” a sign that the fund was still unprepared to acknowledge the extreme effect that a catastrophic event had on a country’s finances. Grenada had cut its budget and increased its revenues but watched its economy crumble and its poverty explode anyway. Lack of fiscal discipline alone could not account for the country’s troubles, and it wanted the support of the most powerful global institutions in finding a solution.

Over time, the IMF did begin to recognize the importance of preparing for the economic shock that climatic changes could bring — by 2014, several of its Grenada reports mentioned it. Still, connecting the risk to the consequence of default appears to have been too great a leap. Climate change was not even identified as a cause or risk factor when the IMF released its post-mortem on Grenada’s restructuring in 2017, suggesting that it had few methods for quantifying how environmental pressures might affect debt or the pace of its repayment. What was discussed was political instability and rising interest rates, not faltering agricultural exports or rising heat. “They only have a hammer,” says Daniel Munevar, a former senior analyst for Eurodad now with the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

In June 2014, as Grenada again approached insolvency, Antoine gathered civic and religious leaders in the second-story meeting room of a Catholic church overlooking Grand Anse Beach to plot a different approach. Grenada’s leaders wanted a mechanism that could protect them against repeating the same fate when another climate catastrophe hit. But the IMF staff weren’t sure how to put a value on the chance of a catastrophe and how to measure something that hadn’t even happened yet. A breakthrough came from White Oak Advisory — the consultants Grenada had hired.

Espinosa, the firm’s co-founder, had long seen how wealthy countries pushed exotic insurance products as the fix to protect against high risk. But it occurred to him that insurance, which is designed to protect against unlikely calamities, was a poor match for the grim certainties of the climate crisis. He thought instead about how debt and equity contracts often have triggers that change the terms when parties aren’t confident about their risk. What if debt relief were to be triggered by a storm? It could guarantee that Grenada would be protected when the next climate catastrophe arrived.

White Oak constructed a contract clause that would automatically grant Grenada a reprieve from payments on much of its commercial debt if another hurricane hit the island, introducing a new tool for managing sovereign debt crises in a climate-plagued region.

As Mottley began to shepherd Barbados through its own insolvency, Grenada’s experience taught her that success would depend on her ability to use the IMF to her advantage. If she failed, Barbados risked being recolonized, this time financially. Moreover, when it came to facing off against the country’s creditors, Mottley didn’t just want a discount on her debts. She wanted the one thing she’d learned would begin to make her public debt resilient to the shocks of climate change — Barbados’ own hurricane clause.

After Mottley announced that Barbados would default on its debts, the IMF wasn’t the main obstacle to restructuring them; instead, it was the financial institutions that held the debts. It might stand as a mystery how anyone thinks he or she can make money off the tribulations of a group of tiny countries. But impoverished Caribbean islands have delivered wealth to larger powers for centuries, and today is no exception. Before, it was risky commodity ventures that made great fortunes. Now it is increasingly the risk itself. Traffickers in debt offer money that is desperately needed. By taking on the risk that these tiny nations will default, they profit handsomely — and if the risk gets to be too high, they can pass the debt on at a discount to more adventurous investors. That’s the nature of finance. But the climate crisis is raising the risks considerably, and in so doing, it is once again binding the destiny of these fragile nations to the speculative will of faraway powers. Postcolonialism barely had a chance to take hold before it gave way to climate colonialism.

When in 2018 Mottley told Barbados’ creditors that she did not intend to pay them, she and her team had a plan. The country owed approximately $8 billion, much of it to Barbadian banks owned by Canadian institutions like Scotiabank and CIBC, but nearly $1 billion of the total was owed to global financial firms, including Credit Suisse, the investment-management firm Pimco and a Morgan Stanley subsidiary called Eaton Vance. Her goal — drawn up in collaboration with the IMF — was to reduce Barbados’ total debt load by a third within 15 years. She needed to persuade her creditors to take what’s known as “a haircut,” reducing what they were owed, in this case by roughly a third. The old bonds would be exchanged for new ones at a lower interest rate. It was essential that a hurricane clause be included, too.

On the other side of the negotiations was a young, ambitious investment manager out of Boston named Federico Sequeda. A portfolio manager in emerging markets for Eaton Vance, Sequeda was accustomed to buying sovereign-debt stakes in places like Vietnam and Brazil. The mutual funds he oversaw held large positions in Barbados’ bonds. Sequeda, for one, would take umbrage at the suggestion that emerging-markets investors are predatory. Clearly, these developing countries need capital to function, he points out. Nobody is willing to donate that capital, and so accessing it — just like every other service purchased in the world — comes at a price. Ideally, there is sufficient transparency of motive and transaction so that the exchange can be a win for both sides.

In the run-up to Mottley’s election, Sequeda had flown down to the island to meet with Worrell, the former central bank chief, to get a pulse on the changes foreign investors could expect should she be elected. Still, he was caught off guard by both the sweep of Mottley’s plan and her determination to execute it. The creditors thought that Barbados could pay more and that the country was using the IMF’s cooperation to leverage lower payments. They were neither versed in nor particularly concerned with climate change as a unique risk to their investments. The notion that a hurricane clause might be imposed on funds that firms sold to their clients as less volatile than other investments was untenable. Sequeda didn’t think climate change — or the invention of a debt instrument to address it — was his business or responsibility. “We’re not really set up to analyze the probability of a climate-type risk taking place, and we don’t really think we’re actually the investors who want to be taking on that risk,” he told me.

The problem was that Sequeda and others already had huge exposure to climate risk. Commercial banks and private investors now hold approximately $54 trillion, or more than half, of the total global sovereign debt in emerging markets, linking themselves to the fate of the world’s poorest countries in what the Institute of International Finance warns is “a vicious circle of interdependency.”

Complicating matters is that only part of that total debt is publicly known. Bloomberg records, for example, show that before Mottley’s default, Barbados had at least 30 outstanding bonds and loans worth more than $1 billion, at interest rates as high as 12%. Eurodad examined another financial trading database for The New York Times, looking at bonds in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Belize and Suriname — four countries with bonds issued in U.S. or European currencies — and found foreign commercial debt worth nearly $10 billion. The records show that almost every major bank and investment house has a stake in these countries. BlackRock, for example, held $840 million in Dominican bonds as of January 2021. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup have all held bonds in the countries, some at exorbitant interest rates. Jamaica, for one, recently owed some $208 million to J.P. Morgan Chase at 11.6%.

Almost certainly this is only a glimpse of a bigger and murkier picture. Eurodad researchers estimate that a vast majority of holdings — about 75% — is private debt that cannot be identified. It is obscured by the contracts that funds and equity groups make with governments, which are not required to be disclosed. Sometimes, Persaud said, even governments aren’t sure to whom they are beholden. Or, as one sovereign-debt lawyer once joked, the only reliable way for a country to identify the holders of its bonds is to stop paying.

The lack of transparency raises fundamental questions about the fairness of default negotiations and the inability of the people most endangered by the debt-climate collision to hold their governments — and their creditors — accountable. In many cases, creditors can sue countries, but countries have difficulty suing back, leaving citizens even more exposed. Over the past two decades, according to Eurodad, half of sovereign debt restructurings have led to litigation, often forcing higher payments than a country can afford.

The most aggressive litigators are found within an ecosystem of hedge-fund investors, sometimes called vulture funds, that wait for the most vulnerable moment to buy distressed debt cheaply and then flip it for a profit, often by resisting any sort of restructuring or renegotiation. In 2008, NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, a hedge fund, bought a discounted stake in Argentina’s pre-default debt and then pursued a relentless legal strategy for repayment — at one point having an Argentine Navy ship seized off the coast of Ghana. It earned its money back and then some when Argentina issued a new bond deal. A fund called Aurelius Capital Management similarly bought up Puerto Rico’s debt, then argued in court that the island had to repay the fund before it could finance other projects, including hurricane preparedness. That case was dismissed.

In late 2018, Persaud received an email stating that a Connecticut hedge fund called Greylock Capital had bought an undisclosed portion of Barbados’ debt, and with it, a seat at the table among its creditors. The email, as Persaud recalled, warned that “they could take us to court.” But Greylock’s interest offered an opportunity. A distressed-debt fund also doesn’t need to recoup the same value that Sequeda did to make its profit, because it bought the bonds for a lower cost. Greylock might be able to drive down Sequeda’s price, helping Mottley get the terms she wanted.

From almost the start, the disaster clause Mottley sought was a sticking point. Her team would write up a lengthy proposal, always with a natural-disaster clause among Barbados’ demands. The creditors’ committee routinely would remove it. Mottley, patient, held out.

The clause White Oak designed wouldn’t reduce Barbados’ debt directly. But by suspending payments, it provided immediate access to funds in the aftermath of a calamity and shifted payment to the back end of the term. It would avoid disorderly default and keep Barbados, in the event of a catastrophe, at the table. The investors, though, didn’t buy it. Some of them, Persaud says, sharpened their tactics, telling reporters that Barbados was slow-walking its economic repair. The Financial Times reported that some creditors found White Oak’s $27 million fee to be “absurd.” Then, Sequeda and the creditors’ committee went to Washington and lobbied the IMF, demanding that it require Barbados to set aside a larger annual surplus — in essence, to free more cash to repay its debt faster.

The IMF maintains it kept the creditors at arm’s length. But sometime soon after, according to Persaud, its mission chief on the Barbados deal, Bert van Selm, grew impatient for the government to settle — even if it meant the hurricane clause would be lost. “I said, ‘Bert, are you trying to pressure us into a debt restructuring?’” Persaud told me. He says van Selm replied that the IMF needed the restructuring to be finished. Alejandro Werner, though, the IMF’s former director for the Western Hemisphere, is more direct about what occurred. For months, he says, he struggled to keep the IMF’s internal departments aligned so that Barbados’ program could succeed. But the more Mottley delayed, the more the pieces threatened to come apart. Some of the IMF staff thought Barbados was “being very obnoxious in asking for the natural-disaster clause,” he told me. “Everybody was kind of like: ‘OK, we’re so close. Let’s just close.’”

One day in early 2019, with the negotiations at an impasse, Persaud flew to New York for a private meeting with Sequeda. For nearly a year, the two sides had been in a stalemate. In person it was different. They sat for coffee at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel, with views over Central Park and Midtown Manhattan. Sequeda, who was unyielding in previous meetings, softened. His father-in-law and Persaud’s father were both from Guyana. Persaud, once a Wall Street executive himself, could talk Sequeda’s talk. Sequeda wanted to make sure the new bonds would be large enough for him to easily sell his stake later on — something made more likely if the bond met the $500 million threshold to be listed on the J.P. Morgan emerging-market index. Persaud, of course, wanted the disaster clause. “He kept saying liquidity,” Persaud said. “I kept saying disaster clause.”

A few months later, the agreement was signed. There would be a fund of roughly $530 million. Barbados received a 26% reduction in its debt, enough to — at least temporarily — drop its interest payments from 7% of its economy to 3% and free up more than $500 million a year. And it received its disaster protection, making Barbados the largest issuer of bonds with hurricane clauses in the world.

It was a tremendous victory for Mottley and Persaud, but soon afterward, two things happened to remind them just how precarious life on an island can be: The COVID-19 pandemic struck, and a relatively modest storm rolled over the country.

The July 2, 2021, forecast was for blustery rains, but not extreme by Caribbean standards. As the winds picked up in Bridgetown around 7:15 a.m., Sandra Clarke made up some peanut butter on biscuits for breakfast. Clarke had worked as a stenographer for the Health Ministry. She liked Mottley — “She’s down to earth.” When the IMF terms spurred the Barbados government to cut roughly 1,000 jobs, Clarke was among those let go. It hurt her finances, but she still felt that Mottley was acting in Barbadians’ best interests. That morning, the howling grew louder, and the rain came harder. A tearing sound made Clarke look up — there was a gap where a wall and the ceiling met. “Run!” her son shouted. “I can see the sky.”

Months later, I met Clarke where she was staying, a government-run emergency shelter in an 18th-century stone seminary overlooking the eastern shore of the island. The good news, she told me, was that the government planned to rebuild her home. The bad news was that progress had been slow, and the house remained a series of dilapidated courtyards, with a yellow dumpster in the front yard filled with soggy mattresses and splintered wood.

Three years after Mottley identified climate change as Barbados’ preeminent threat, and three years into her effort to restructure its economy to better prepare for that threat, the country still hadn’t been able to address one of its highest priorities: shoring up vulnerable, poorly built housing. The storm, called Elsa, which barely ranked as a Category 1 hurricane, happened to fall just short of the catastrophe level that would trigger the country’s hurricane debt relief. It was, however, the kind of routine challenge the government should be able to withstand. Indeed, Clarke had gone to the government a year earlier to apply for a program that would have fixed up her house, but the waiting list was long and the funding short.

The dollars that might have saved Clarke’s home were instead used to amass a surplus that the government had promised the IMF. Mottley had reduced the public work force and raised all sorts of taxes to ballast the government’s balance sheet. All of this was done for the sake of two metrics by which the IMF still judged a country’s success: How much savings could the government set aside, and how quickly could it reduce the ratio of its debt to its GDP? To critics like Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, these metrics weren’t fit to the task, and meeting them was proving to be more than Barbados could bear.

As a key condition of its IMF program, Barbados agreed to produce a surplus of 6% of its GDP each year. Because government revenues — from taxes and fees — were dependent on how well the nation’s economy performed, this assumed that it would grow at a rate it had not in years, if ever, an expectation that several economists described as unrealistic, even cruel. Van Selm, the IMF’s mission chief for Barbados at the time, defends the number. “It can be done,” he told me. The IMF, meanwhile, held Barbados to its second critical measure: It would have to use much of that surplus to slash its debt levels until the debt made up just 60% of the nation’s GDP.

These are metrics that looked great in the textbooks of global economics schools in the 1960s, but they are not the measure by which the ruling economies of the world are judged today. Japan’s economy is doing fine with a debt ratio of 258%, and the United States has a ratio of 150% — both countries, Mottley said, that “did everything that they tell us traditionally not to do.” The 60% ratio, in particular, requires extreme austerity. “It’s a little bit of a matter of theology rather than economics,” Persaud told me. He and many others believe that it’s not the total amount of debt that matters, but to whom it is owed and how much it costs to carry. Development aid, for example, is often delivered as extremely low-interest loans. Should that count the same as high-interest debts to hedge funds? “It’s become a fetish,” Persaud said.

As small nations accumulate substantial debt because of climate change, which they neither caused nor benefited from causing, it raises even larger questions. Should those countries be penalized again for carrying that debt on their balance sheets, even as investors — in the purest distillation of climate colonialism — profit from that debt? Should there not at least be an allowance in IMF policy that distinguishes between climate-caused expenses and other, normal governing expenses?

When she was elected, Mottley thought she could work within the IMF’s system — that it could be flexible enough to let her whittle away at the drastic needs her country faced. A year after the negotiations were complete, though, she was beginning to see this was an illusion. That was when the COVID pandemic kneecapped Barbados’ tourism industry. Government revenues plummeted, the country’s surplus flipped into a 2% deficit and its debt started to rise again. The IMF cut Barbados a break when the pandemic hit, lowering its surplus target, but only temporarily. As the free-fall continued into 2021, the IMF announced that it would soon push Barbados toward its 6% target surplus once again, with van Selm saying that he was “pretty sure that tourism in Barbados will bounce back.” If the IMF’s goal was to support Mottley in building resilience to shock — climate as well as economic — its policies seemed to be having the opposite effect. The fund’s insistence on building a surplus was instead putting Barbados in a holding pattern, effectively sidetracking climate priorities.

Why? One reason, according to current and former staff members I spoke to, was that some groups within the IMF still didn’t think that accounting for climate change was essential to their work. Lagarde, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was sympathetic to Mottley’s climate fears, says Mark Plant, a 24-year veteran of policymaking at the IMF who now runs a finance division at the Center for Global Development, but during her tenure the fund made few strides on the issue. Then, in 2019, Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian environmental economist, came from the World Bank to direct the IMF. Climate issues were trending politically, “and so she has pushed it quite hard,” Plant said. The same year, Alejandro Werner and Krishna Srinivasan, then the IMF’s deputy director for the Western Hemisphere, wrote a policy paper that for the first time laid out a broad philosophy for incorporating climate risk into the fund’s analytical framework. It suggested that in the future the IMF should lead countries into considering climate costs and make its support conditioned on it. Implementing those intentions has proved complicated, though. “The fund,” Plant says, is still “struggling to fund the right levers.”

One problem, according to Aldo Caliari, who heads policy and strategy at Jubilee USA, an interfaith group active in development finance, is that the organization is still trying to build the staff and expertise it needs to grasp the fiscal impact of the climate threat. Sometimes, its efforts have appeared borderline disingenuous. A few years back, for example, the IMF began advising countries to build a climate reserve fund made up of roughly 1% of their GDP to help pay for disaster recovery. But that, say analysts of IMF policy like the U.N.’s Munevar, basically is asking struggling countries to not use money that they could spend to prevent a disaster — so that they can use it to mop up afterward instead.

The IMF, through the official statements it offered for this article, says that climate change is “now in the DNA” of the institution and that it is acting aggressively on the issue. “The IMF is a learning institution,” a fund spokesman said. “We recognized the need for change in recent years and are moving fast on that journey.”

The fund points to the paper Srinivasan and Werner wrote in 2019, which called for new mechanisms, like the hurricane clauses Grenada and Barbados enacted, to create fiscal breathing room for countries to pay for climate impacts. It presented a vision for the future in which climate issues rise to such prominence within the organization that climate planning becomes a central criterion for IMF approval.

By 2022, the fund had made some headway. Among other efforts, it and the World Bank have both begun to help countries either self-insure against disaster or secure discounted institutional financing before a catastrophe happens. The two organizations are running a pilot program in six vulnerable countries to assess their climate-change policies. For low-income countries, the IMF now requires the economic shock of a disaster — though not the gradual and corrosive trends of climate change — to be considered in its analysis of debt. Most recently, in April, the IMF announced the creation of a new, $45 billion resilience trust, some of which is likely to head to Barbados. Mottley, for her part, says she has found the IMF increasingly attuned to her country’s needs.

Still, when in late 2020 Eurodad looked for evidence that the climate-change policies were rising to prominence within the IMF, it found little. Researchers examined 80 IMF programs around the world and found that climate was central to the fund’s assessment in only one country — Samoa. Critics and insiders both observe that a sense of urgency is still missing. “Eventually” the IMF will have to figure out how to better incorporate climate vulnerability, Werner told me. “I mean, we’re still advancing on that.”

One evening in January, I visited Persaud at his home atop a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. Winding up his short, steep drive, I parked in front of a set of broad concrete steps with views over Bridgetown. Persaud came to the porch dressed casually, in a light blue button-down and slacks. We headed toward his backyard, where two friends, Barbadians visiting from the United States, sat among trees on a short-cropped lawn.

Much had happened in the previous few months. In November, Mottley announced that Barbados would cast off Queen Elizabeth as the country’s titular head of state and declare itself the world’s newest republic, then called for a snap election, which she won handily. The mood was light; the next day, a new government would swear allegiance to its own country for the first time. Persaud poured a glass of California cabernet while his guests told stories about Mottley from high school.

Then Persaud got serious, returning to Barbados’ precarious future. “We cannot do this just through debt, even if there were no limits,” he said. Nor could any country in the Caribbean — or, for that matter, any vulnerable country in the world — survive the climate crisis by borrowing more money. No amount of economic growth would ever be enough, either. The deeper he and Mottley got into their economic reeducation, he said, the clearer it became that a just future for people in small, front-line countries would require a radical shift in how the IMF and the World Bank applied their resources.

For years, Persaud has been at Mottley’s side, answering midnight text messages, tuning her fiscal options, looking five chess moves ahead, innovating ways to fix the region’s fiscal crisis even as her star rose through international speeches and she worked to raise the issue of sovereign debt from an obscure cause to a global climate concern. When Mottley talks about economics, it’s partly her thinking — she is indisputably the boss and has a striking fluency in policy minutiae — but almost always partly his, too. He writes many of those speeches. If Mottley is the decisive leader, Persaud is the fount of possible solutions, churning out or delving into economic innovations he thinks might save the world.

There are the hurricane clauses, catastrophe bonds, “blue bonds” — which designate money just for ocean conservation — and a trendy new category called debt-for-climate swaps. The list goes on, Persaud said. The problem isn’t lack of ideas. It’s how to scale them so they can have measurable effects.

Lately, he had been focused on a new plan that would draw on two pools of money. The IMF directly controls nearly $1 trillion worth of member reserves, which it can distribute to members using what it calls “special drawing rights” and mostly holds for some larger emergency. Surely the climate crisis counted as an emergency. The IMF could use its internal drawing rights and expand the availability of 0% loans to help fund the kinds of adaptation efforts that the United Nations estimates will soon cost as much as $500 billion annually. Doing so would require changing a lot of rules, particularly about who qualifies for that funding and how it is earmarked. The IMF’s new Resiliency and Sustainability Trust — a catchall for everything from climate mitigation to pandemic costs — is a start, but only just that. “It’s about 10 times too small,” Persaud said.

Persaud’s plan has an even more costly and ambitious element: addressing mitigation, which Morgan Stanley estimates will cost $50 trillion globally over the next 27 years. IMF members hold $13 trillion in national reserves. Persaud proposes using 1% of that larger pool to seed an enormous new climate trust that would attract outside investment for emissions-slashing projects. The trust could make seed loans at a nominal interest rate and target those loans to specific development projects, keeping the debt off governments’ balance sheets — and excluded from debt-ratio calculations. Persaud thinks that funding could attract perhaps another $2.5 trillion in annual investments from banks and equity funds. That, finally, would be big money.

As expensive as these plans may sound, they are likely to save money and ultimately pay for themselves. According to Colin Young, executive director of the regional Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, for every dollar spent on climate resilience, six dollars are saved in recovery efforts. Not doing anything, researchers at Tufts University found, will allow costs to mount so much that they will subsume today’s Caribbean economies even without the shock of devastating storms. By 2050, the researchers wrote, the costs of inaction will amount to 10% of the region’s total economic activity — a fiscal death sentence.

It is possible that none of the approaches that Persaud argues for will ever be enough. But the IMF is increasingly aware that the scale of the problem requires solutions that are antithetical to the old way of thinking. One person close to the IMF’s highest levels of policymaking told me that some of the countries facing the most intense climate peril will never be able to pay back what they owe. “They’re going to require complete debt forgiveness, and some bit of austerity around the edges is not going to change that,” he said. “The order of magnitude of the problem is just too big.”

Persaud, like virtually everyone I spoke to, is hesitant to talk about erasing sovereign debt. After all that Barbados has been through, he would still prefer to work within the global finance system. “I know we don’t want to create the moral hazard of giving away money for free,” he says. Besides, global institutions can forgive only their own loans. Because most of the debt is now held by commercial investors, it stands to reason that to receive relief from them, the development banks or other large economies would have to be willing to pay those investors back.

There is an argument to be made, though, that the loss of the money owed is a minimal price in the context of the profit that has been made, and that there is justice to this form of mercy. BlackRock, for example, is now among the largest holders of Barbados’ publicly traded debt, having purchased large blocks of it once Sequeda and the creditors settled. Consider what BlackRock, which is also the largest global financier of the oil-and-gas industry, has earned directly from the processes that have caused climate warming.

In a capitalist society, it is fair to ask why anyone should get anything free. But Barbados and the countries of the Caribbean are paying a tangible price now in lives and in dollars because of the emissions of wealthier nations. Perhaps the suggestion that lenders forgive debt isn’t about kindness but about obligation — about seeing it as a kind of back tax that they owe to society and to front-line societies, in particular.

Throughout the winter, the pressure mounted on Mottley. The IMF’s three-year program was drawing to a close, and the fund was still insisting that Barbados would have to swing back toward 6% budget surpluses by 2024 — or else it would lose access to promised funding, as well as the credibility that would allow it to borrow from markets in the future. The IMF announced this while Barbados’ economy continued to struggle and while COVID still raged, and so Mottley, perhaps approaching the end of her patience, raged too.

I reached Mottley one afternoon at her house on the beach, a home where she had spent time since she was a little girl. She arrived for our video call late, delayed by a stop she made across the island at a water-pumping station, where she had gone to assure locals that the government would fix its 70-year-old cast-iron foundation. It was the sort of thing, the most basic thing, that her government was managing to address in these difficult budgetary times — but only barely.

She sat on an outdoor sofa, her laptop on her knees, the camera close to her face in the way we have all grown accustomed to in the era of Zoom. It was the second of our three interviews over the course of the past year, and she began by telling me about the beach in front of her house. It used to teem with spiny sea urchins. “As a child, I stepped on more cobblers than I would like to recall,” she said. “Now you can walk, you don’t see anything.” The beach itself was eroding, her house edging into the rising sea.

In four years, Mottley had become a leader not just for Barbados but effectively for dozens of Caribbean countries, many with populations smaller than a midsize American city, all of which had to face these global institutional juggernauts by themselves. In 2018, she excoriated the United Nations General Assembly — “For us, it is about saving lives. For others, it is about saving profits” — in a speech about the forgotten countries on the climate front lines. She spoke, in 2021, at the opening of the 26th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, in which she pointedly accused the developed world of hypocrisy, asking, “When will our leaders lead?” Since 2008, she pointed out, the G20 nations had spent $25 trillion printing new money to juice their own stalling economies, money they could have used to prevent the worst of the climate crisis instead. That failure “will allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction,” she said. She left the conference holding hands with President Joe Biden.

All that access to leaders like Lagarde, Georgieva and Biden gave Barbados an advantage over other Caribbean countries — an advantage Mottley was happy to leverage but which meant that even Barbados’ modest successes might be unrealistic for its regional peers. “We are unequally yoked,” she said. If there was any consolation, it was that the IMF itself finally appeared to be attaching action on climate to its reputation. Thanks to Mottley’s efforts, Barbados had become a showcase for the IMF, a way to prove it could be agile on climate issues, too.

Barbados, though, was still being measured against the antiquated convention of its ratio of debt to GDP, which happened to be growing as the pandemic and war unsettled markets. How could the IMF still want the budget to swing back into surplus? Mottley found it infuriating. “I can’t do these things if I have to spend money on augmenting water supply because of the climate crisis,” she said.

Suddenly it seemed as if all of it had become a treadmill exercise. The efforts to win a disaster clause — a clause that the Inter-American Development Bank has now made standard for its loans in the Caribbean. The deep thinking and brainstorming of bigger solutions. The climate swaps to exchange debt-service fees for ecological upgrades. And so on. Maybe her goal hadn’t been big enough. Maybe it wasn’t about finding more money in the current system but about changing the system altogether. “I’m saying the same things over and over, over and over,” Mottley told me. “You begin to feel as though you’re going crazy.”

In March, Mottley was scheduled to give a speech at the World Trade Organization. She has two rules for capitalizing on her high-profile public appearances: Always make a big ask, and never leave the podium without offering a solution. Persaud set to writing the speech, but this time felt different. Neither he nor Mottley was confident that trade helped solve the big problems of the world. It seemed to make them worse.

For Mottley, the fact that Britain was swimming in vaccine doses for months while Barbados had to beg China for a few thousand vials was a prime example. The politics of the pandemic had erased Mottley’s inhibitions about dealing more straightforwardly with the climate crisis, too. The World Trade Organization couldn’t protect against pandemics. It couldn’t preserve peace in Europe. It couldn’t fix climate change. Mottley would now disavow the current global financial system in its entirety, because it was still, at its heart, a colonial system, a system of oppression.

Lately, she told me, she had been thinking a lot about the idea of reparations, and about how Barbadians have struggled, and how far they had come. The horrific paradox, of course, was that after the British banned slavery, they did pay reparations — just not to the victims of the crime. At every step, Mottley reflected, freedom had come incrementally for Barbadians. Or rather, the oppression had found new, seemingly more benign forms. First, it was the decadeslong work-for-land scheme. Later, it was their beaches and banks — almost all of which are foreign-owned. And after that, it was their cash, in the form of interest. What more was there to give?

Elsewhere, the world has confronted its past abuses. Mottley recalled a trip to Europe 20 years ago, during which she observed a ceremony for Germany’s reparations paid to survivors of the Holocaust. While she was there, South Asians were rioting in Britain over their former colonial oppression. She was struck that no such thought was given to the Caribbean. The Caribbean was unseen then, and it remains unseen now. To fight the climate crisis, to fight the pandemic or meet development goals, Mottley said, countries are still fighting for a platform. “You will realize that in almost every instance, we’re fighting our old struggles on the same basis,” she said. “What is its underlying cause? The inequity in the world in which we live, and the inequity is preserved fundamentally because we’ve not changed the power structure.”

There were no misgivings or hesitations about what she was preparing to deliver to the WTO. She and Persaud had decided to be blunt. The rest was a delicate balance. “She does not want to be put into a box,” Persaud said. “She does not want to be put in a female box, I don’t want her in a SIDS box, and we don’t want to be anti-West, because that’s not who we are.” Mottley read the speech the day before and read it again, absorbing it.

“My friends,” she began, with a nod across the floor to Director General Ngozi Okonjo-​Iweala, “the global order is not working.” It does not deliver on peace or on prosperity or on stability, she said. The words of global partnerships were hollow, the partnerships themselves glib, corrupted by greed and selfishness — and they remained fundamentally imbalanced. Debt is written off in Ukraine, as it was for Germany after World War II. Other countries, though, the ones subjugated throughout history, have seen their humanitarian crises ignored. The world, she said, “is segregated regrettably between those who came first and in whose image the global order is now set” and a global order that is itself “simply the embalming of the old colonial order that existed at the time of the establishment of these institutions.”

Gone was the patient case-building, the appeals to logic and empathy, that characterized so many of her recent speeches. Her hair, always in a neat Afro, was grayer and frazzled; her fatigue seeped through her expression. “We have therefore to ask ourselves whether we can live in this global order.”

It was time to reset. The war in Ukraine was forcing that reset anyway. She could work with the global economic system to raise capital. She could probably find a strategy to bolster her island’s standing in the face of cataclysmic climate change, at least for a while. But combining both? It had proved impossible. It was time to use the IMF’s drawing rights, the hurricane clauses, all of it. And then Mottley laid out Persaud’s plan to establish a new climate trust based on the IMF’s reserves, her big ask.

But to make these changes, she warned, the world had to get to a new place in spirit. It had to fill some gaping moral cavity. “That we are more concerned with generating profits than saving people,” she said, “is perhaps the greatest condemnation that can be made of our generation.”

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Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Abrahm Lustgarten.

Three years ago, when he sank everything he had into 66 acres of irrigated pasture in Shasta County, Davy thought he’d drought-proofed his cattle operation.

He’d been banking on the Sacramento Valley’s water supply, which was guaranteed even during the deepest of droughts almost 60 years ago, when irrigation districts up and down the valley cut a deal with the federal government. Buying this land was his insurance against droughts expected to intensify with climate change. 

But this spring, for the first time ever, no water is flowing through his pipes and canals or those of his neighbors: The district won’t be delivering any water to Davy or any of its roughly 800 other customers.

Without rain for rangeland grass where his cows forage in the winter, or water to irrigate his pasture, he will probably have to sell at least half the cows he’s raised for breeding and sell all of his calves a season early. Davy expects to lose money this year — more than $120,000, he guesses, and if it happens again next year, he won’t be able to pay his bills. 

“I would never have bought (this land) if I had known it wasn’t going to get water. Not when you pay the price you pay for it,” he said. “If this is a one-time fluke, I’ll suck it up and be fine. But I don’t have another year in me.” 

Since 1964, the water supply of the Western Sacramento Valley has been virtually guaranteed, even during critically dry years, the result of an arcane water rights system and legal agreements underlying operations of the Central Valley Project, the federal government’s massive water management system.

But as California weathers a third year of drought, conditions have grown so dry and reservoirs so low that the valley’s landowners and irrigation districts are being forced to give up more water than ever before. Now, this region, which has relied on the largest portion of federally-managed water flowing from Lake Shasta, is wrestling with what to do as its deal with the federal government no longer protects them.

All relying on the lake’s supplies will make sacrifices: Many are struggling to keep their cattle and crops. Refuges for wildlife also will have to cope with less water from Lake Shasta, endangering migratory birds. And the eggs of endangered salmon that depend on cold water released from Shasta Dam are expected to die by the millions. 

For decades, water wars have pitted growers and ranchers against nature, north against south. But in this new California, where everyone is suffering, no one is guaranteed anything.

“In the end, when one person wins, everybody loses,” Davy said. “And we don’t actually solve the problem.”

This parched valley was once a land of floods, regularly inundated when the Sacramento River overflowed to turn grasslands and riverbank forests into a vast, seasonal lake. 

Settlers that flooded into California on the tide of the Gold Rush of 1849 staked their claims to the river’s flow with notices posted to trees in a system of “first in time, first in right.” 

The river was corralled by levees, the region replumbed with drainage ditches and irrigation canals. Grasslands and swamps lush with tules turned to ranches and wheat fields, then to orchards, irrigated pasture and rice. 

The federal government took over in the 1930s, when it began building the Central Valley Project.’s Shasta Dam, which displaced the Winnemem Wintu people. A 20-year negotiation between water rights holders and the United States’ Bureau of Reclamation culminated in a deal in 1964.

Today, under the agreements, which were renewed in 2005, nearly 150 landowners and irrigation districts that supply almost half a million acres of agriculture in the western Sacramento Valley are entitled to receive about three times more water than Los Angeles and San Francisco use in a year.

It’s a controversial amount in the parched state. Before this year, the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, as they’re called, received the largest portion of the federally-managed supply of water that flows from Shasta Lake. It’s more than cities receive, more than wildlife refuges, more even than other powerful agricultural suppliers like the Westlands Water District farther south.

Their contract bars the irrigation districts’ supply from being cut by more than a quarter in critically dry years. During the last drought in 2014, federal efforts to cut it to 40 percent of the contracted amount were met with resistance, and deliveries ultimately increased to the full 75 percent allocation for the dry year.

But this year, facing exceptionally dry conditions, the irrigation districts negotiated with state and federal agencies, and agreed in March to reduce their water deliveries to 18 percent. Other agricultural suppliers with less senior rights are set to get nothing. 

Growers understand that they have to sacrifice some water this year, said Thaddeus Bettner, general manager for Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, the largest of the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors and one of the largest irrigation districts in the state. But he wondered why irrigation districts in the Western Sacramento Valley draw so much of the blame. 

“I understand we’re bigger than everybody so we catch the focus,” Bettner said. “We’re just trying to survive this year. Frankly, it’s just complete devastation up here. And it’s unfortunate that the view seems to be that we should get hurt even more to save fish.”

Cutting deliveries to growers means that more water can flow through the rivers, which slightly raises the chances for more endangered winter-run Chinook salmon to survive this year.

“They had the water rights to take 75 percent of their allocation instead of 18 percent, and we were anticipating another total bust,” said Howard Brown, senior policy advisor with NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “One hundred percent temperature dependent mortality (of salmon eggs) would not have been something out of reason to imagine.”

Yet more than half of the eggs of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon are expected to still die this year, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

State and federal biologists are racing to move some of the adult salmon to a cooler tributary of the Sacramento River and a hatchery.

“We’re spreading the risk around, and putting our eggs in different baskets,” Brown said. “The animal that’s on the flag of California is extinct. How many can we afford to lose before we lose our identity as people and as citizens of California?”

In any other year, Davy would run his cattle on rain-fed rangeland he leases in Tehama County until late spring before moving the herd to his home pasture, kept green and lush with spring and summer irrigation. 

Davy, who grew up roping and running cattle, supports his career as a full-time rancher with his other full-time job as a farm advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension, specializing in livestock, rangelands, and natural resources. 

Three years ago, he sold his home in Cottonwood, on the Shasta-Tehama county line, for a fixer-upper nearby with holes in the floor, a shoddy electrical system and windows that wouldn’t close. This fixer-upper had two inarguable selling points: a view of Mount Shasta and water from the Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation District, a settlement contractor. 

This year, without rain, the grass where his cows forage through the winter crunches underfoot.

“This grass should be up to my waist right now,” Davy said, readying a chute he would soon use to transport his cattle. He unloaded hay from his pickup to feed the cows and calves until he could move them — unheard of, he said, in April. 

Forty miles away, his pasture, green from the April rains, is faring a little better — but the green can’t last without irrigation. Thinking about it too hard makes Davy feel sick. 

“I try to stick to what I can get done today, and then assume next year I’ll be okay. I think that’s the mantra for agriculture,” he said: “Next year will be better.”

About 75 miles south of Davy’s ranch, rangeland and irrigated pastures open up to orchards and thousands of acres of empty rice fields. 

“Nothing like I thought I’d ever see,” said Mathew Garcia, gazing at one of his dry rice fields in Glenn, about an hour and a half north of Sacramento.

In any other year, he would have been preparing to seed and flood the crumbled clay. This year, he had to abandon even the one field he’d planned to irrigate from a well. The ground was too thirsty to hold the water. 

Garcia’s water comes from two different irrigation districts with settlement contracts. This year, the roughly 420 acres he farms will see water deliveries either eliminated or too diminished to plant rice. He’ll funnel the water instead to his tenant’s irrigated pasture where cattle graze. 

“Without the water, we have dirt. It’s basically worthless,” Garcia said. “It’s very depressing.”

California is one of the main rice producers in the U.S., and almost all is grown in the Sacramento Valley. It’s an especially water-demanding crop: The plants and evaporation drink up about two-thirds of the flows; the rest dribbles through the earth to refill groundwater stores or flows back into irrigation ditches that supply other crops, rivers, and wetlands. 

Garcia places some of the blame on the weather. But he also blames federal regulators, who allow water to flow from the reservoirs year-round for fish, wildlife, and water quality. 

“Everybody says well, you shouldn’t farm in the desert. Does this look like a desert to you? No. It looks like fertile, beautiful farmland with the most amazing irrigation system that’s ever been put in. And they’re just taking the water from it. They’re creating a desert.”

In the depths of California’s last historic drought from 2012 through 2016, Garcia could still plant his fields. Even with last year’s reduced water deliveries, he planted — filling the gaps in water supply by pumping from his groundwater wells. 

Garcia will survive this year: He credits his wife’s foresight to purchase crop insurance years ago. Without it, he said, he’d be done — he’d have to sell land, maybe find another job. 

“If this drought sustains, I don’t know how long insurance is going to last. And then at what point do you throw in the towel?” said Garcia. “​​There’s a teetering point somewhere. Everybody’s is different. I don’t know where mine is yet.” 

Local water suppliers anticipate about 370,000 acres of cropland will go fallow in the western Sacramento Valley, the result of diminished deliveries to the settlement contractors. Most lie in Colusa and Glenn counties, where agriculture is the epicenter of the economy. Money and jobs radiate from the fields to the crop dusters and chemical suppliers, rice driers, and warehouses. 

And, like the water, jobs for farm workers have dried up. 

For nine years, Sergio Cortez has been traveling from Jalisco, Mexico to work in Sacramento Valley fields. This is the driest he’s ever seen it, and he knows that next year could be worse. 

“Aquí el agua es todo, pues,” he said. “Al no haber agua, pues no hay trabajo.” Water is everything, he said. If there’s no water, there’s no work.

The parking lot at the migrant farmworker housing in Colusa County where Cortez and his family live for part of the year was full of cars and pickups that would normally be parked at the fields. Cortez hadn’t worked in two days. 

For Adolfo Morales Martinez, 74, it had been a month since he worked. And, at the end of April, his unemployment benefits were about to end. 

“Desesperados. Estamos desesperados,” he said. “Pues en el campo gana uno poquito, no? Y sin nada? No mas.” We’re desperate, he said. In the fields, he can earn a little. But now, nothing. 

Normally Morales Martinez drives a tractor, readying rice fields for planting. Now it’s like a desert, his wife, Alma Galavez, said. 

“Eso está desértico, vea. Todo. Nada, Nada. Está feo y triste,” she said. There’s nothing. It’s ugly and sad. 

Environmental advocates and California tribes have been fighting the growers’ and irrigation districts’ claim to California’s finite water supply for years, citing inadequate water to maintain water quality and temperatures for endangered fish and the Delta. 

“People who have built their farms in the desert, or in areas where their water has to be exported to them, need to think about changing. Because that’s what’s killing the state,” said Caleen Sisk, chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu, whose lands were flooded with the damming of Lake Shasta.

To Sisk, the salmon that once spawned in the tributaries above the Central Valley signal the region’s health. “If there are no salmon, there will be no people soon.”

Federal scientists estimate that last year about three-quarters of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon eggs died because the water downstream of a depleted Lake Shasta was too warm. Only about three percent of the salmon ultimately survived to migrate downriver. 

“It’s been clear for decades that there was a need to reduce diversions,” said Doug Obegi, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The consequences are just becoming more and more extreme.” 

In 2020, California sued the Trump administration over what it said were flawed federal assessments for how the Central Valley Project’s operations harm endangered species. 

The judge sent the federal plans back for more work and approved what he called a “reasonable interim approach“ that called for prioritizing fish and public safety over irrigation districts. He called the contracts an “800 pound gorilla” that “make it exceedingly and increasingly difficult” for the federal government to be  “sufficiently protective of winter-run (salmon).” 

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson Gary Pitzer said the agency worked with the districts to reach an agreement on how much water to deliver because “it’s the right thing to do, particularly during drought  — one of the worst on record.”

Environmental advocacy groups applauded the reduced allocations to the Sacramento Valley irrigation districts. But they also raised concerns that other irrigation districts with similar contracts elsewhere in the state would still see their full dry year allocations, and cautioned that the temperatures will still kill salmon by the scores this year. 

Wildlife refuges where birds can rest and eat during their 4,000-mile winter journeys along the Pacific Flyway also are receiving significantly less water this year.

Curtis McCasland, manager of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex, expects less than half a typical year’s water supply to be delivered to the refuges this year — cobbled together from purchased water supplies, federal deliveries and, he hopes, storm flows this winter. 

North of Sacramento, the five refuges in the complex are painstakingly tended wilderness in a sea of agriculture. More than a century ago, wetlands fanned out for miles to either side of the flood-prone Sacramento River. Now, more than 90 percent of the state’s wetlands are gone, drained for fields, homes, and businesses. Those remaining in these refuges now depend on water flowing from Shasta Dam and shunted through irrigation canals. 

At the end of April, the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge offered an oasis among the barren rice fields, which normally provide about two-thirds of the migrating bird’s calories. Dark green bulrushes rose from shallow ponds where shorebirds jackhammered their bills in and out of the muck. 

McCasland knows all this lush green can’t last. As he steered an SUV past black-necked stilts picking their way through the water and ducklings paddling ferociously, he braced for another dry year. 

“Instead of being those postage stamps in a sea of rice, we’re going to be postage stamps in a sea of fallow fields,” McCasland said.  

In a typical year, the refuge wetlands that depend on federal water get much less water than the settlement contractors are entitled to — about four percent of the total, McCasland estimates. And he worries that this year, whatever water they do receive won’t be enough to keep all these birds fed and healthy. 

More than a million birds descend on the refuges every winter to rest and find food. More stop in the surrounding rice fields, which are largely dry this year.

“In years where Shasta is at a normal or average level, it should be no problem to get us the water,” he said. “In years like this, certainly it’s going to be terribly difficult.”

The drought may already have taken a toll. Last November, only 745,000 birds landed in the refuge, a decrease of more than 700,000 from November of 2019, although some may have remained farther north because of unseasonably balmy weather there.

The refuges are like a farm, where McCasland and his colleagues carefully cultivate tule, shrubs, and grasses with pulses of summertime irrigations. With less water this summer, these wintertime food sources for birds will dry and shrivel. And with less water during the peak of fall and winter migrations, hungry birds will be packed together in the few remaining marshes — raising the risk of outbreaks from diseases like avian botulism or cholera.

“There’s not a lot of places for these birds to go,” he said. “The Sacramento Valley has always been the bankable piece….They do have wings, they may be able to move through.” But, he added, “the question is, what happens next?”

CalMatters Photo Editor Miguel Gutierrez contributed to this story. 

This article was originally published by CalMatters, and is reprinted with permission. CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Everyone loses’: California’s Sacramento Valley struggles to survive unprecedented water cuts on May 28, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Rachel Becker.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Laura Lam.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.