While public attention has been focused on the domestic fast-track consenting process for infrastructure and mining, Associate Minister of Finance David Seymour has been pushing through another fast-track process — this time for foreign investment in New Zealand.

But it has had almost no public scrutiny.

If the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill becomes law, it could have far-reaching consequences. Public submissions on the bill close tomorrow.

• READ MORE: Other NZ foreign investment reports

A product of the ACT-National coalition agreement, the bill commits to amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 “to limit ministerial decision making to national security concerns and make such decision making more timely”.

There are valid concerns that piecemeal reforms to the current act have made it complex and unwieldy. But the new bill is equally convoluted and would significantly reduce effective scrutiny of foreign investments — especially in forestry.

A three-step test
Step one of a three-step process set out in the bill gives the regulator — the Overseas Investment Office which sits within Land Information NZ — 15 days to decide whether a proposed investment would be a risk to New Zealand’s “national interest”.

If they don’t perceive a risk, or that initial assessment is not completed in time, the application is automatically approved.

Transactions involving fisheries quotas and various land categories, or any other applications the regulator identifies, would require a “national interest” assessment under stage two.

These would be assessed against a “ministerial letter” that sets out the government’s general policy and preferred approach to conducting the assessment, including any conditions on approvals.

Other mandatory factors to be considered in the second stage include the act’s new “purpose” to increase economic opportunity through “timely consent” of less sensitive investments. The new test would allow scrutiny of the character and capability of the investor to be omitted altogether.

If the regulator considers the national interest test is not met, or the transaction is “contrary to the national interest”, the minister of finance then makes a decision based on their assessment of those factors.

Inadequate regulatory process
Seymour has blamed the current screening regime for low volumes of foreign investment. But Treasury’s 2024 regulatory impact statement on the proposed changes to international investment screening acknowledges many other factors that influence investor decisions.

Moreover, the Treasury statement acknowledges public views that foreign investment rules should “manage a wide range of risks” and “that there is inherent non-economic value in retaining domestic ownership of certain assets”.

Treasury officials also recognised a range of other public concerns, including profits going offshore, loss of jobs, and foreign control of iconic businesses.

The regulatory impact statement did not cover these factors because it was required to consider only the coalition commitment. The Treasury panel reported “notable limitations” on the bill’s quality assurance process.

A fuller review was “infeasible” because it could not be completed in the time required, and would be broader than necessary to meet the coalition commitment to amend the act in the prescribed way.

The requirement to implement the bill in this parliamentary term meant the options officials could consider, even within the scope of the coalition agreement, were further limited.

Time constraints meant “users and key stakeholders have not been consulted”, according to the Treasury statement. Environmental and other risks would have to be managed through other regulations.

There is no reference to te Tiriti o Waitangi or mana whenua engagement.

No ‘benefit to NZ’ test
While the bill largely retains a version of the current screening regime for residential and farm land, it removes existing forestry activities from that definition (but not new forestry on non-forest land). It also removes extraction of water for bottling, or other bulk extraction for human consumption, from special vetting.

Where sensitive land (such as islands, coastal areas, conservation and wahi tapu land) is not residential or farm land, it would be removed from special screening rules currently applied for land.

Repeal of the “special forestry test” — which in practice has seen most applications approved, albeit with conditions — means most forestry investments could be fast-tracked.

There would no longer be a need to consider investors’ track records or apply a “benefit to New Zealand” test. Regulators may or may not be empowered to impose conditions such as replanting or cleaning up slash.

The official documents don’t explain the rationale for this. But it looks like a win for Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, and was perhaps the price of NZ First’s support.

It has potentially serious implications for forestry communities affected by climate-related disasters, however. Further weakening scrutiny and investment conditions risks intensifying the already devastating impacts of international forestry companies. Taxpayers and ratepayers pick up the costs while the companies can minimise their taxes and send profits offshore.

Locked in forever?
Finally, these changes could be locked in through New Zealand’s free trade agreements. Several such agreements say New Zealand’s investment regime cannot become more restrictive than the 2005 act and its regulations.

A “ratchet clause” would lock in any further liberalisation through this bill, from which there is no going back.

However, another annex in those free trade agreements could be interpreted as allowing some flexibility to alter the screening rules and criteria in the future. None of the official documents address this crucial question.

As an academic expert in this area I am uncertain about the risk.

But the lack of clarity underlines the problems exemplified in this bill. It is another example of coalition agreements bypassing democratic scrutiny and informed decision making. More public debate and broad analysis is needed on the bill and its implications.

Dr Jane Kelsey is emeritus professor of law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

This story originally appeared in Truthout on May 29, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

As the death toll of Palestinians continues to rise and more than a half a million people in Gaza are on the brink of famine, U.S.-based Veterans For Peace and several allied organizations have launched a 40-day “Fast for Gaza.”

From May 22 to June 30, 600 people in the U.S. and abroad are fasting and demanding full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.

Mary Kelly Gardner, a teacher from Santa Cruz, California, told Truthout she joined the fast in memory of her late father, a service member in Vietnam who “staunchly opposed U.S. militarism.” He opposed “the so-called ‘war on terror’ and ongoing U.S. violence against Middle Eastern countries,” she said. Gardner is limiting herself to 250 calories for the first 10 days of the fast. “Then I will switch to fasting during daylight (as Muslims observing Ramadan do).”

Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to survive on 245 calories per day; 250 calories daily is considered a starvation diet, as the body breaks down muscle and other tissues. Prolonged fasting can cause dehydration, heart problems, kidney failure and even death.

Gardner is distressed because her “tax dollars are being used to fund this horrific violence” (which, she noted, constitutes genocide) “in the form of weapons shipments.” She feels the need to speak out. Gardner said her goals are to “get people’s attention with a meaningful action” and “engage in a practice that challenges me to be more personally present with the human suffering taking place in Gaza.” She is “intentionally causing myself some discomfort and inconvenience,” yet “not harming myself.”

For 11 weeks, using starvation as a weapon of war, Israel has blocked all food, medicine and other relief from entering the Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinians. Now aid is trickling in under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a delivery system established by the U.S. and Israel to bypass the UN, provide a fig leaf of aid and blunt global outrage at Israel’s starvation tactics. Risk of famine comes even as Israel intensifies its military campaign. On May 27, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported at least 54,056 people killed, including at least 17,400 children, and at least 123,129 people injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

On the sixth day of the fast, Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, told Truthout:

On day 6 of the fast, limiting ourselves to 250 calories per day helps us focus on Gazans with no relief in sight. But Palestinians face intense risks of aerial attacks, sniper assaults, housing demolition, forcible displacement and genocidal threats from Israel and its allies to eradicate them.

On day 6 of the fast, I am wondering about Ron Feiner, the Israeli reservist sent to prison three days ago for refusal to go to Gaza. How is he faring? He told the judge who sentenced him to 20 days in prison that he couldn’t cooperate with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s sabotage of ceasefire agreements. We acutely need his witness. I’m hungry for solidarity.

On day 6 of the fast, we’re remembering the names and ages of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s children. Their charred corpses came to her as she worked a shift in the pediatric ward of Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital. Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, her spouse, was gravely injured in the Israeli military attack on their home — an attack which left only one child surviving.

Kelly listed the names and ages of the al-Najjar children: Yahya, 12 years old; Rakan, 10 years old; Eve, 9 years old; Jubran, 8 years old; Ruslan, 7 years old; Reval, 5 years old; Sadin, 3 years old; Luqman, 2 years old; and Sidar, 6 months old. Eleven-year-old Adam, the sole surviving child, was critically injured in the Israeli bombing.

US and Israel Provide Gaza With a Mere Fig Leaf of Aid

The fast comes as the U.S. and Israel have launched a plan in concert with the GHF. The plan is to be carried out by ex-Marines, former CIA operatives, as well as mercenaries connected with Israeli intelligence. GHF has come under increasing criticism from the UN and dozens of international humanitarian organizations.

Ten people have been killed this week and at least 62 were wounded by the Israeli military as starving Palestinians gathered at a GHF aid distribution site in Rafah in southern Gaza. Although Israel says that 388 trucks entered Gaza during the past week, that number doesn’t come close to the requisite 500-600 trucks that entered daily before Israel cut off all aid on March 2.

In January, after spending months making unfounded accusations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel banned it from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. UNRWA is the agency that has provided food, health care and education to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UN Secretary General António Guterres has said that “UNRWA is indispensable in delivering essential services to Palestinians,” and “UNRWA is the backbone of the United Nations humanitarian relief operations” in Gaza.

Guterres slammed the GHF, saying the aid operation violates international law. In a joint statement, two dozen countries — including the U.K., several European Union member states, Canada, Australia and Japan — criticized the GHF model. They charged that it wouldn’t deliver aid effectively at the requisite scale and would tie aid to military and political objectives.

A leaked UN memo reportedly warned against UN involvement in the GHF, saying it could be “implicated in delivering a system that falls short of Israel’s legal responsibilities as an occupying power.” UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called the scheme “a deliberate distraction” and “a fig leaf for further violence and displacement.”

The GHF was established after Israel charged that Hamas was looting aid trucks, a claim refuted by Cindy McCain, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and widow of Republican Sen. John McCain.

“Right now, we have 500,000 people inside of Gaza that are extremely food insecure, and could be on the verge of famine if we don’t help bring them back from that. We need to get in, and we need to get in at scale, not just a few dribble [sic] of the trucks right now, as I said, it’s a drop in the bucket,” McCain said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

In a March 2025 report, the UN body that monitors famine found that 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip have reached “Phase 5: Catastrophe/Famine,” which means that households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs. Moreover, 96 percent of Gaza’s population is experiencing “acute food insecurity,” and 22 percent of those in Gaza are suffering from “catastrophic levels” of food insecurity.

McCain said, “These people are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it. This — this doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything. It has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death.”

GHF has a cynical purpose. It “aims to push northern residents to relocate southward in search of food — a step toward their displacement from Gaza altogether,” UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said. “We used to have, before, 400 distribution places, centres in Gaza. With this new system, we are talking about three to four, maximum, distribution places. So it’s also a way to incite people to be forcibly displaced to get humanitarian assistance.”

Issam Abu Shaweesh, director of a WFP aid distribution center in western Gaza City, said the GHF aid packages don’t contain essential food items such as meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits and baby formula — evidence that the goal is just “to keep people from dying of hunger” instead of meeting basic nutritional needs.

The Government Media Office in Gaza issued a statement saying that, “The so-called ‘safe distribution sites’ are nothing but ‘racially isolated ghettos’ established under the supervision of the occupation, in exposed and isolated military areas, and are a forced model for the booby-trapped ‘humanitarian corridors’ that are used as a cover to advance the occupation’s security agendas.”

Two senior officials of GHF have resigned: Executive Director Jake Wood said the organization’s plans are inconsistent with the “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” CEO David Burke also resigned.

The resignations came days after Swiss authorities considered opening an investigation into GHF, which had been registered in Geneva. On May 29, Swiss authorities found the organization was violating Swiss law.

Fasters “Simply Have to Do More Than Hold a Sign at a Demonstration”

Meanwhile, the fasters continue to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“Having seen what war does, not just to people but all living things, I simply have to do more than hold a sign at a demonstration,” Mike Ferner, former national director of Veterans For Peace and co-organizer of the fast, told Truthout. “Many, many people feel the same way and that’s why in just five days, over 600 people in the U.S. and beyond have registered to participate,” he said, adding, “Until Americans actually run their government and direct our wealth to sustain life, we will have to protest in the strongest ways possible.”

“The Marine veteran who started the fast with me, Phil Tottenham, said this genocide pained him so much he wanted to do what Aaron Bushnell did but didn’t have the courage. ‘But what is the most we can do?,’ Tottenham asked,” Ferner said. Bushnell, a member of the U.S. Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the front gate of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. on February 25, 2024, in protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides — too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Viet Nam,” Ferner said in a press release from the Institute for Public Accuracy. “I’m fasting to demand humanitarian aid resumption under UN authority and to stop U.S. weapons from fueling the genocide.”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marjorie Cohn.

The fasters are demanding:

1) Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority, and

2) No more U.S. weapons to Israel.

Seven people are fasting from May 22 to June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where they are present from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. Many others are fasting around the U.S. and beyond for as many days as they can. The fast is organized by Veterans For Peace along with over 40 co-sponsoring organizations.

Remarkably, over 600 people have registered to join the fast. Friends of Sabeel, NA, is maintaining the list of fasters.

Who will stop the genocide in Palestine, if not us? That is the question that the fasters and many others are asking. The U.S. government is shamelessly complicit in Israel’s genocide, and to a lesser extent, the same is true for the European governments.  The silence and inaction of most Middle Eastern countries is resounding. Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, the only countries to come to Palestine’s aid, have been bombed by Israel and the U.S., with the threat of more to come. Syria, another country that stood with Palestine, has been “regime changed” and handed over to former al-Qaeda/ISIS extremists.

On the positive side, some governments are making their voices heard. South Africa and Nicaragua have taken Israel and Germany, respectively, to the International Court of Justice – Israel for its genocide, and Germany for providing weapons to Israel.  And millions of regular people around the globe have protested loudly and continue to do so.

Here in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has provided crucial leadership, pushing back against the phony charges of “anti-semitism” that are thrown at the student protesters whose courageous resistance has spoken for so many.  University administrators have been all too quick to crack down on the students, violating their right to freedom of speech, but even these universities have come under attack from the repressive, anti-democratic Trump administration.

Peace-loving people are frustrated and angry. Some are worried they will be detained or deported. And many of us are suffering from Moral Injury, concerned about our own complicity. How are we supposed to act as we watch U.S. bombs obliterate Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches, and universities?  What are we supposed to do when we see Palestinian children being starved to death, systematically and live-streamed?

Because our movement is nonviolent, we do not want to follow the example of the young man who shot and killed two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. However, we understand his frustration and the driving force behind his forceful action. We take courage from the supreme sacrifice of U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy, asking, “What would you do?”

Student protesters at several universities around the country have initiated “hunger strikes,” a protest tactic often considered a last resort. Now they have been joined by military veterans.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides,” said Mike Ferner, former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and one of the fasters.  “Too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Vietnam,” said the former Navy corpsman. “This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”

Rev. Addie Domske, National Field Organizer for Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), said, “This month I celebrated my third Mother’s Day with a renewed commitment to parent my kid toward a free Palestine. As a mother, I am responsible for feeding my child. I also believe, as a mother, I must be responsive when other children are starving.

Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, also in NY for the fast, said, “Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, at age 81, recently fasted for forty days, saying ‘As the children of Gaza are hungry and injured with bombs by official Israeli policy, I have decided that I, too, must go hungry with them, as I in good conscience can do no other.’ Now, Israel intensifies its efforts to eradicate Gaza through bombing, forcible displacement, and siege. We must follow Mairead’s lead, hungering acutely for an end to all weapon shipments to Israel. We must ask, ‘who are the criminals?’ as war crimes multiply and political leaders fail to stop them.”

Another faster is Joy Metzler: 23, Cocoa, FL., a 2023 graduate of the Air Force Academy who became a Conscientious Objector and left the Air Force, citing US aggression in the Middle East and the continued ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. Joy is now a member of Veterans For Peace and a co-founder of Servicemembers For Ceasefire.

“I am watching as our government unconditionally supports the very violations of international law that the Air Force trained me to recognize,” said Joy Metzler. “I was trained to uphold the values of justice, and that is why I am speaking out and condemning our government’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

I spoke with VFP leader Mike Ferner on Day 7 of his Fast. The NYPD had just told him and the other fasters that they could no longer sit down in front of the US Mission to the UN on the little stools they had brought. But Mike Ferner was not complaining. He said:

“We go home every night to a safe bed, and we can drink clean water. We are not watching our children starve to death before us. Our sacrifice is a small one. We are taking a stand for humanity, and we encourage others to do what they can.  Demand full humanitarian relief in Gaza under UN authority, and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. This is how we can stop the genocide.”

More information about how you can participate or support the fasters is available at
Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza.

To arrange interviews with the fasters, contact Mike Ferner at 314-940-2316.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gerry Condon.

Papua New Guinea’s state broadcaster NBC wants shortwave radio reintroduced to achieve the government’s goal of 100 percent broadcast coverage by 2030.

Last week, the broadcaster hosted a workshop on the reintroduction of shortwave radio transmission, bringing together key government agencies and other stakeholders.

NBC had previously a shortwave signal, but due to poor maintenance and other factors, the system failed.

• READ MORE: Other PNG media reports

Its managing director Kora Nou spoke with RNZ Pacific about the merits of a return to shortwave.

Kora Nou: We had shortwave at NBC about 20 or so years ago, and it reached almost the length and breadth of the country.

So fast forward 20, we are going to celebrate our 50th anniversary. Our network has a lot more room for improvement at the moment, that’s why there’s the thinking to revisit shortwave again after all this time.

Don Wiseman: It’s a pretty cheap medium, as we here at RNZ Pacific know, but not too many people are involved with shortwave anymore. In terms of the anniversary in September, you’re not going to have things up and running by then, are you?

KN: It’s still early days. We haven’t fully committed, but we are actively pursuing it to see the viability of it.

We’ve visited one or two manufacturers that are still doing it. We’ve seen some that are still on, still been manufactured, and also issues surrounding receivers. So there’s still hard thinking behind it.

We still have to do our homework as well. So still early days and we’ve got the minister who’s asked us to explore this and then give him the pros and cons of it.

DW: Who would you get backing from? You’d need backing from international donors, wouldn’t you?

KN: We will put a business case into it, and then see where we go from there, including where the funding comes from — from government or we talk to our development partners.

There’s a lot of thinking and work still involved before we get there, but we’ve been asked to fast track the advice that we can give to government.

DW: How important do you think it is for everyone in the country to be able to hear the national broadcaster?

KN: It’s important, not only being the national broadcaster, but [with] the service it provides to our people.

We’ve got FM, which is good with good quality sound. But the question is, how many does it reach? It’s pretty critical in terms of broadcasting services to our people, and 50 years on, where are we? It’s that kind of consideration.

I think the bigger contention is to reintroduce software transmission. But how does it compare or how can we enhance it through the improved technology that we have nowadays as well? That’s where we are right now.

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

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

President Donald Trump’s first-term push to open the Gulf of Mexico and other federal waters to fish farming has come to a halt in the early days of his second term. 

A federal judge in Washington state ruled against a nationwide aquaculture permit the Trump administration sought in 2020. The wide-ranging permit would have allowed the first offshore farms in the Gulf and the likely expansion of the aquaculture industry into federally managed waters on the East and West coasts. 

The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Kymberly K. Evanson on March 17, was applauded by several environmental groups.

“A nationwide permit isn’t at all appropriate because our federal waters are so different,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group opposed to offshore aquaculture. “Florida is not Maine. California is not Texas. And in just the Gulf of Mexico, there are significantly different habitats [and] different fish species that could be affected.”

Offshore aquaculture, which involves raising large quantities of fish in floating net pens, has been blamed for increased marine pollution and escapes that can harm wild fish populations. In the Gulf, there’s particular concern about the “dead zone,” a New Jersey-size area of low oxygen fueled by rising temperatures and nutrient-rich pollution from fertilizers, urban runoff and sewer plants. Adding millions of caged fish would generate even more waste and worsen the dead zone, Cufone said. 

Fish farming is an “existential threat” to the Gulf’s fishing industry, said Ryan Bradley, executive director of the Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United. Besides the “cascading negative impacts” on the environment, offshore aquaculture often undercuts the prices of wild-caught fish and shrimp, he said. The Gulf’s fishers are already facing intense competition from foreign fish farms. 

“Offshore aquaculture poses too much risk and not enough reward,” Bradley said. 

The aquaculture industry says fish farming is the only way to meet surging demand for seafood, particularly high-value species like salmon and tuna. As wild fish stocks struggle under climate change, offshore farming could help the U.S. adapt, producing food in a managed environment less affected by ecological conditions, aquaculture advocates say.

Late last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration identified five areas in the Gulf that the agency said are best suited for offshore aquaculture. The development of these “aquaculture opportunity areas” near the coasts of Texas and Louisiana received a strong push during Trump’s first term but slowed under President Joe Biden. Evanson’s decision blocks what might have been a speedy approval process for fish farms in opportunity areas.

A cumbersome permitting process and opposition from environmentalists and catchers of wild seafood had long stymied plans for fish farms in the Gulf, which Trump recently renamed the Gulf of America. In 2020, the aquaculture industry got a big boost when Trump signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to “identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers” restricting farming in federal waters. 

Read Next

How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico

Tristan Baurick

Trump’s order led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to issue the sweeping national permit to open nearly all federal ocean waters to aquaculture. The Center for Food Safety and other environmental groups sued, arguing that the permit failed to analyze fish farming’s threats to water quality and marine life, including several species protected under the Endangered Species Act. 

In October, an initial decision by Evanson, who was appointed by Biden, faulted the Corps for failing to acknowledge aquaculture’s adverse environmental impacts. Evanson’s latest decision vacates, or sets aside as unlawful, the nationwide permit. 

The Corps declined to comment on the decision.

Federal courts have also struck down efforts to establish offshore aquaculture in the Gulf in 2018 and 2020. 

The repeated legal setbacks should send a clear signal to the industry, said George Kimbrell, the Center for Food Safety’s legal director. 

“It has no place in U.S. ocean waters,” he said.

The aquaculture industry isn’t giving up. Paul Zajicek, executive director of the National Aquaculture Association, said expanding U.S. fish farming is critical for meeting the growing American appetite for seafood. He noted that the U.S. consumed nearly 7 billion pounds of seafood in 2022, the most recent year data was available. About 83 percent of the seafood was imported, contributing to a trade deficit of about $24 billion, Zajicek said. 

“The heavy reliance on imports for a foodstuff critical to people’s health not only creates a massive trade imbalance, it also creates food security and food safety issues for our country,” he wrote in an email. 

Tilting the balance of international trade is a keen interest for Trump, who on Wednesday announced far-reaching and expensive tariffs that the president says will help U.S. producers and boost the country’s economy.

Read Next

The world is farming more seafood than it catches. Is that a good thing?

Frida Garza

The U.S. has a robust land-based aquaculture industry, producing pond-raised catfish, trout and other fish. No fish are raised commercially in federal waters, and fish farming operations are increasingly rare in state-managed marine waters. Washington state once had a large salmon farming industry, but large-scale escapes of non-native Atlantic salmon and concerns about pollution and the spread of disease led to a halt on fish farm leases in 2022 and a full ban in January. Hawaii’s state waters host the only offshore fish farm in the U.S.

Other countries have embraced offshore aquaculture on a large scale. China accounts for more than half of global aquaculture production, according to NOAA. Asian countries and Ecuador supply most of the shrimp consumed in the U.S., while farms in Canada, Norway and Chile produce two-thirds of the salmon Americans eat. 

Companies have tried to open the Gulf to aquaculture for more than a decade, yet none of the proposals for floating pens filled with redfish, amberjack and other high-value species have managed to take hold. In 2017, the federal government helped fund a pilot project that would have placed a floating farm about 45 miles from Sarasota, Fla. The project was derailed after regulators received nearly 45,000 public comments opposing it, according to Zajicek. 

Proposed farms face “a permitting system that is too lengthy, too costly, and too subject to legal challenges from groups opposed to commercial aquaculture,” he said. 

Last month’s court decision means companies may now narrow their focus and seek permits for individual projects, Zajicek said. 

That approach also won’t be easy, Cufone warned. The process for permitting each project will likely be slower and more deliberative, giving more consideration to a proposed farm’s impacts on the surrounding environment and nearby communities. 

“Claiming one size fits all doesn’t seem realistic, and the court agreed,” she said. “Now they can’t use one big permit to speed these things through.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A federal judge just hit the brakes on Trump’s plan to fast track industrial fish farming in the Gulf on Apr 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the concerns of the Rohingya, who a week ago saw their monthly aid for food rations cut by over half to US$6 per month.

“I can promise that we’ll do everything to avoid it [a humanitarian crisis], and I will be talking to all the countries in the world that can support us in order to make sure that funds are made available,” the U.N. chief said during his first trip to the refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh in nearly seven years.

(Press Wing of the Chief Adviser)

Guterres also called for global efforts to assist the Rohingya.

“In this holy month of Ramadan, I appeal to the international community to show solidarity through action and concrete support for the Rohingya people and their Bangladeshi host communities,” he said.

The U.N. leader praised the 1 million Rohingya living in the camps located along Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar.

“They are resilient. And they need the world’s support,” Guterres said.

(Press Wing of the Chief Adviser)

Muhammad Yunus, leader of the Bangladesh interim government, pledged to work with the U.N. to allow the Rohingya to return to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state before next year’s Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

About 800,000 Rohingya crossed the border into Cox’s Bazar, starting in August 2017, as they fled a brutal offensive launched by Burmese military forces against Rohingya insurgents.

(Press Wing of the Chief Adviser)

Rohingya Mohammad Ilyas, 42, a resident of the Leda camp in Teknaf, said he was fortunate to participate in the iftar.

“The government’s assurance to ensure the safety of the Rohingya and facilitate their swift return to their homeland has inspired us. I hope this visit will lead to a solution to our crisis,” he told BenarNews.

Friday’s event was not without tragedy as one man died and two Rohingya were injured in a stampede, according to a police official.

“The incident occurred as people attempted to join the gathering and fell from a hill, triggering a stampede. Medical officials later confirmed the death of one victim after being transported to the hospital,” Muhammad Arif Hossain, officer-in-charge of the Ukhia police station, told BenarNews.

BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated to Radio Free Asia.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jesmin Papri for BenarNews.

A study published this week in the journal Science Advances makes the case that extreme heat is aging millions of Americans more quickly than their counterparts in cooler climates. The impact of chronic exposure to high temperatures, researchers found, is equivalent to the effect of habitual smoking on cellular aging. 

As global average temperatures continue to rise due to the greenhouse gas effect caused by burning fossil fuels, wider swaths of the global population are being exposed to extreme heat, which has killed more than 21,000 Americans since 1999. In 2023, Phoenix, Arizona, where some of the people analyzed in the study live, saw 31 days straight of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. That year was the warmest year on record globally — a record that was quickly surpassed by 2024. 

Exposure to above-average heat has serious short-and long-term health repercussions. People may experience heat-related illness, such as dehydration and fainting, or sustain heat stroke — the most serious form of heat-related illness that can lead to death. Older adults and young children are particularly vulnerable to these impacts because they have trouble thermoregulating, or maintaining a steady internal body temperature. Over months and years, heat exposure can exacerbate existing chronic conditions like kidney and cardiovascular disease, and raise a person’s risk of mental health issues and dementia. 

Eun Young Choi, a postdoctoral gerontological researcher at the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and the lead author of the study, wanted to find out what might be driving the long-term health consequences of exposure to extreme heat on a cellular level, particularly in people approaching their 60s. She was particularly interested in “nonclinical manifestations” of heat exposure, meaning she hoped to capture how heat was affecting people who weren’t showing up in emergency rooms with heat-related illness or heat stroke. Her hypothesis was that heat was chipping away at overall health, whether or not someone could feel it acutely. 

In order to test that theory, Choi analyzed blood samples from more than 3,600 people over the age of 56 who had participated in a large national health and retirement study. Those participants had taken a blood test in 2016 or 2017. Choi and her coauthor, Jennifer Ailshire, then used weather and climate data to estimate how many “heat days,” as defined by the National Weather Service, each participant had been exposed to in the years, months, and days leading up to the date of the blood test. They sorted the participants into demographic groups based on race, socioeconomic status, exercise habits, and other factors, and then compared the people in those groups to each other using a series of biological tests that determine how quickly a person’s cells are aging. 

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“With longer-term heat exposure — one year and six years — we see a consistent association between heat and [cellular] age” across different biological tests, Choi said. People living in places where temperatures are at or above 90 degrees F for half of the year have experienced up to 14 months more biological aging compared to people living in areas with fewer than 10 days of temperatures at or above 90 degrees. 

“This study is one of the first empirical assessments suggesting that longer-term exposure to heat is directly associated with an acceleration of the aging process,” said Vivek Shandas, a professor at Portland State University who studies the effects of climate change on cities and was not involved in the study.  It “adds to the existing work by suggesting that near-term mortality may be the result of older adults having longer-term and periodic exposures to heat.”

Two previous studies found that people exposed to heat age more quickly, and studies in mice consistently show that heat ages cells, but Choi’s study is the first nationally representative research to draw the connection. The size and diversity of her pool of subjects helped drown out many of the factors that usually sully this type of data. Choi didn’t find any major differences between demographics — an indication that heat damages cells across the board in older individuals. 

What Choi didn’t account for, however, are all the ways people adapt to protect themselves from heat. Some people, particularly wealthier Americans, might stay inside with the air conditioning blasting all day and night. 

Previous research has shown that above-average temperatures don’t affect all populations equally. Extreme heat is particularly dangerous for people who live in urban areas with patchy tree cover and lots of concrete. These zones, in places like New York City and Chicago, are called urban heat islands, and they can get up to 7 degrees F hotter than surrounding rural areas. Urban heat islands tend to coincide with neighborhoods where nonwhite communities were historically confined by racist zoning practices, which is one reason that the average person of color is exposed to more severe heat in urban areas than the average non-Hispanic white person. These populations are also less likely to be able to afford air conditioning. 

“We know that some demographics, such as those working outside, unhoused populations, people living in urban heat islands, incarcerated populations, and lower-income residents generally have longer periods of exposure to extreme heat (over decades),” Shandas said. “Accordingly, we might draw on these findings to suggest that some certain populations will need greater attention and care as we see forecasts for heat waves.”

Choi hopes future studies will continue to tease out these differences, particularly because by 2040, 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older — up from 1 in 8 in the year 2000. The results of Choi’s study also have implications for all age groups, not just people in their 50s and older. “I don’t think the underlying biology is significantly different,” she said. “We would expect to see some significant effects of heat in younger adults. And we really need to track people from their birth to older ages to see whether any of these effects can be reversible.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme heat can age you as fast as a smoking habit on Feb 27, 2025.

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

Samoa’s prime minister and the five other ousted members of the ruling FAST Party are reportedly challenging their removal.

FAST chair La’auli Leuatea Schmidt on Wednesday announced the removal of the prime minister and five Cabinet ministers from the ruling party.

Twenty party members signed for the removal of Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and five others, including Deputy Prime Minister Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio and two original members.

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Samoa media outlets have been reporting that in a letter dated January 17, one of the removed members, Faualo Harry Schuster, wrote: “We all reject the letter of termination as relayed as unlawful and unconstitutional.”

In the letter, which is circulating on social media, he claimed they were still members of the FAST party.

Local media reports had suggested members of the FAST party had called for Fiame’s removal as prime minister.

Meanwhile, the government’s Savali newspaper has confirmed the removal of 13 associate ministers of Fiame’s Cabinet.

“The termination of their appointments stem from the issue of confidence in the Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa to continue work with the associate ministers, as well as the associate ministers’ expression of no confidence in her leadership,” it said.

“The official statement emphasises that the functions and responsibilities of the Executive Arm of Government continues under the leadership of the Prime Minister — Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and Cabinet.”

Fiame had last week removed three members of her Cabinet, after she also stood down La’auli, who is facing criminal charges.

Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday, January 21.

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

Conor Smyth (FAIR.org, 1/19/24): “The history of debates over the minimum wage is filled with claims about the detrimental effect of raising the wage floor that have repeatedly flopped in the face of empirical evidence.”

In September 2023, California passed a law requiring fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $20 an hour, affecting more than 700,000 people working in the state’s fast food industry.

Readers will be unsurprised to hear that corporate media told us that this would devastate the industry. As Conor Smyth reported for FAIR (1/19/24) before the law went into effect, outlets like USA Today (12/26/23) and CBS (12/27/23) were telling us that, due to efforts to help those darn workers, going to McDonald’s or Chipotle was going to cost you more, and also force joblessness. This past April, Good Morning America (4/29/24) doubled down with a piece about the “stark realities” and “burdens” restaurants would now face due to the law.

Now we have actual data about the impact of California’s law. Assessing the impact, the Shift Project (10/9/24) did “not find evidence that employers turned to understaffing or reduced scheduled work hours to offset the increased labor costs.” Instead, “weekly work hours stayed about the same for California fast food workers, and levels of understaffing appeared to ease.” Further, there was “no evidence that wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in fringe benefits… such as health or dental insurance, paid sick time, or retirement benefits.”

Judd Legum (Popular Information, 12/3/24): “The restaurant industry provided a distorted picture of the impact of the fast food worker wage increase.”

In June 2024, the California Business and Industrial Alliance ran a full-page ad in USA Today claiming that the fast food industry cut about 9,500 jobs as a result of the $20 minimum wage. That’s just false, says Popular Information (12/3/24).

Among other things, the work relied on a report from the Hoover Institution, itself based on a Wall Street Journal article (3/25/24), from a period before the new wage went into effect, and that, oops, was not seasonally adjusted. (There’s an annual decline in employment at fast food restaurants from November through January, when people are traveling or cooking at home—which is why the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers seasonally adjusted data.)

The industry group ad starts with the Rubio’s fish taco chain, which they say was forced to close 48 California locations due to “increasing costs.” It leaves out that the entire company was forced to declare bankruptcy after it was purchased by a private equity firm on January 19, 2024 (LA Times, 6/12/24).

As Smyth reported, there is extensive academic research on the topic of wage floors that shows that minimum wage hikes tend to have little to no effect on employment, but can raise the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers (CBPP, 6/30/15; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 5/2/19). Media’s elevation of anecdotes about what individual companies have done, and say they plan to do, in response to the minimum wage hike overshadows more meaningful information about the net effect across all companies in the industry.

The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) said last year that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers.” Since that hasn’t happened, does the Journal need better economists—or more sense?

And what about agency? The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) contented that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers” in response to the new law. But why? Is there no question lurking in there about corporate priorities? About executive pay? About the fact that consumers and workers are the same people?

The question calls for thoughtfulness—will, for example, fast food companies cut corners by dumping formerly in-house delivery workers off on companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, which are not subject to the same labor regulations? How will economic data measure that?

That would be a story for news media to engage, if they were interested in improving the lives of struggling workers. They could also broaden the minimum wage discussion to complementary policy changes—as Smyth suggested, “expanded unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a job guarantee, and universal basic income.”

The narrow focus on whether a Big Mac costs 15 cents more, and if it does, shouldn’t you yell at the people behind the counter, is a distortion, and a tired one, that should have been retired long ago.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies. Shein uses proprietary machine-learning applications — essentially, pattern-identification algorithms — to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then services with an ultra-fast supply chain.

As AI makes the business of churning out affordable, on-trend clothing faster than ever, Shein is among the brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable, too. The company has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050. 

But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that the use of AI software to catalyze these operations could be cranking up its emissions. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023.

“AI enables fast fashion to become the ultra-fast fashion industry, Shein and Temu being the fore-leaders of this,” said Sage Lenier, the executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a climate nonprofit. “They quite literally could not exist without AI.” (Temu is a rapidly rising e-commerce titan, with a marketplace of goods that rival Shein’s in variety, price, and sales.)

In the 12 years since Shein was founded, it has become known for its uniquely prolific manufacturing, which reportedly generated over $30 billion of revenue for the company in 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design may take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers as many as 600,000 items for sale at any given time with an average price tag of roughly $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these reported numbers.) One market analysis found that 44 percent of Gen Zers in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month. 

That scale translates into massive environmental impacts. According to the company’s sustainability report, Shein emitted 16.7 million total metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023 — more than what four coal power plants spew out in a year. The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. According to the report, polyester — a synthetic textile known for shedding microplastics into the environment — makes up 76 percent of its total fabrics, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled.

And a recent investigation found that factory workers at Shein suppliers regularly work 75-hour weeks, over a year after the company pledged to improve working conditions within its supply chain. Although Shein’s sustainability report indicates that labor conditions are improving, it also shows that in third-party audits of over 3,000 suppliers and subcontractors, 71 percent received a score of C or lower on the company’s grade scale of A to E — mediocre at best.

Machine learning plays an important role in Shein’s business model. Although Peter Pernot-Day, Shein’s head of global strategy and corporate affairs, told Business Insider last August that AI was not central to its operations, he indicated otherwise during a presentation at a retail conference at the beginning of this year. 

“We are using machine-learning technologies to accurately predict demand in a way that we think is cutting edge,” he said. Pernot-Day told the audience that all of Shein’s 5,400 suppliers have access to an AI software platform that gives them updates on customer preferences, and they change what they’re producing to match it in real time. 

“This means we can produce very few copies of each garment,” he said. “It means we waste very little and have very little inventory waste.” On average, the company says it stocks between 100 to 200 copies of each item — a stark contrast with more conventional fast fashion brands, which typically produce thousands of each item per season, and try to anticipate trends months in advance. Shein calls its model “on-demand,” while a technology analyst who spoke to Vox in 2021 called it “real-time” retail.

At the conference, Pernot-Day also indicated that the technology helps the company pick up on “micro trends” that customers want to wear. “We can detect that, and we can act on that in a way that I think we’ve really pioneered,” he said. A designer who filed a recent class action lawsuit in a New York District Court alleges that the company’s AI market analysis tools are used in an “industrial-scale scheme of systematic, digital copyright infringement of the work of small designers and artists,” that scrapes designs off the internet and sends them directly to factories for production.

In an emailed statement to Grist, a Shein spokesperson reiterated Peter Pernot-Day’s assertion that technology allows the company to reduce waste and increase efficiency and suggested that the company’s increased emissions in 2023 were attributable to booming business. “We do not see growth as antithetical to sustainability,” the spokesperson said.

An analysis of Shein’s sustainability report by the Business of Fashion, a trade publication, found that last year, the company’s emissions rose at almost double the rate of its revenue — making Shein the highest-emitting company in the fashion industry. By comparison, Zara’s emissions rose half as much as its revenue. For other industry titans, such as H&M and Nike, sales grew while emissions fell from the year before. 

Shein’s emissions are especially high because of its reliance on air shipping, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. “AI has wide applications in the fashion industry. It’s not necessarily that AI is bad,” Lu said. “The problem is the essence of Shein’s particular business model.” 

Other major brands ship items overseas in bulk, prefer ocean shipping for its lower cost, and have suppliers and warehouses in a large number of countries, which cuts down on the distances that items need to travel to consumers. 

According to the company’s sustainability report, 38 percent of Shein’s climate footprint comes from transportation between its facilities and to customers, and another 61 percent come from other parts of its supply chain. Although the company is based in Singapore and has suppliers in a handful of countries, the majority of its garments are produced in China and are mailed out by air in individually addressed packages to customers. In July, the company sent about 900,000 of these to the U.S. every day.

Shein’s spokesperson told Grist that the company is developing a decarbonization roadmap to address the footprint of its supply chain. Recently, the company has increased the amount of inventory it keeps stored in U.S. warehouses, allowing it to offer American customers quicker delivery times, and increased its use of cargo ships, which are more carbon efficient than cargo planes.

“Controlling the carbon emissions in the fashion industry is a really complex process,” Lu said, adding that many brands use AI to make their operations more efficient. “It really depends on how you use AI.”

There is research that indicates using certain AI technologies could help companies become more sustainable. “It’s the missing piece,” said Shahriar Akter, an associate dean of business and law at the University of Wollongong in Australia. In May, Akter and his colleagues published a study finding that when fast fashion suppliers used AI data management software to comply with big brands’ sustainability goals, those companies were more profitable and emitted less. A key use of this technology, Atker says, is to closely monitor environmental impacts, such as pollution and emissions. “This kind of tracking was not available before AI based tools,” he said. 

Shein didn’t reply to a request for comment on whether it uses machine learning data management software to track emissions, which is one of the uses of AI included in Akter’s study. But the company’s much-touted usage of machine-learning software to predict demand and reduce waste is another of the uses of AI included in the research. 

Regardless, the company has a long way to go before meeting its goals. Grist calculated that the emissions Shein reportedly saved in 2023 — with measures such as providing its suppliers with solar panels and opting for ocean shipping — amounted to about 3 percent of the company’s total carbon emissions for the year.

Lenier, from Sustainable and Just Future, believes there is no ethical use of AI in the fast fashion industry. She said that the largely unregulated technology allows brands to intensify their harmful impacts on workers and the environment. “The folks who work in fast fashion factories are now under an incredible amount of pressure to turn out even more, even faster,” she said. 

Lenier and Lu both believe that the key to a more sustainable fashion industry is convincing customers to buy less. Lu said if companies use AI to boost their sales without changing to their unsustainable practices, their climate footprints will also grow accordingly. “It’s the overall effect of being able to offer more market-popular items and encourage consumers to purchase more than in the past,” he said. “Of course, the overall carbon impact will be higher.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As fast fashion giant Shein embraces AI, its emissions are soaring on Sep 10, 2024.

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

About 20,000 protesters marched through the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today demonstrating against the unpopular Fast Track Approvals Bill that critics fear will ruin the country’s environment, undermine the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi with indigenous Māori, and open the door to corruption.

Holding placards declaring the coalition government is “on the fast track to hell”, “Greedy lying racists”, “Preserve our reserves”, “Kill the bill”, “Climate justice now”, “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues”, and other slogans such as “Ministers’ corruption = Nature’s destruction”, the protesters stretched 2km from Aotea Square down Queen St to the harbourside Te Komititanga Square.

One of the biggest banners, on a stunning green background, said “Toitu Te Tiriti: Toitu Te Taiao” — “Honour the treaty: Save the planet”.

• READ MORE: Fast track bill – thousands of protesters gather in Auckland
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Speaker after speaker warned about the risks of the draft legislation placing unprecedented power in the hands of three cabinet ministers to fast track development proposals with limited review processes and political oversight.

The bill states that its purpose “is to provide a streamlined decision-making process to facilitate the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits”.

A former Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman, who is currently Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director, said the the draft law would be damaging for the country’s environment. He called on the protesters to fight against it.

“We must stop those who would destroy nature for profit,” he said.

“The vast majority of New Zealanders — nine out of 10 people, when you survey them — say they do not want development that causes more destruction of nature.”

Other protesters on he march against the “War on Nature” included Forest and Bird chief executive Nicola Toki and actress Robyn Malcolm.

RNZ News reports that Norman said: “Expect resistance from the people of Aotearoa. There will be no seabed mining off the coast of Taranaki. There will be no new coal mines in pristine native forest.

“We will stop them — just like we stopped the oil exploration companies. We disrupted them until they gave up.”

The government would be on the wrong side of history if it ignored protesters, Norman said.

Public service job cuts ‘deeply distressing’
In Wellington, reports RNZ News, thousands of people congregated in the city to protest government cuts to public service jobs.

Protesters met at the Pukeahu National War Memorial for speeches before walking down to the waterfront.

Public Service Association spokesperson Fleur Fitzsimons told the crowd that everyone at the rally was sending a message of resistance, opposition and protest to the government.

She accused the coalition government of having an agenda against the public service, and said the union was seeing the destructive impact of government policies first hand.

“It is causing grief, anguish, stress, emotional collapse,” she said.

“It is deeply distressing to the workers who are losing their jobs. They are not only distressed for themselves, and their families, but they are deeply worried about what will happen to the important work they are doing on behalf of us all.”

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

Over a dozen students at Princeton University have been on hunger strike for the past week as part of a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and calling on the university to disclose and divest from companies with ties to Israel, among other demands. The hunger strikers are also calling for all charges to be dropped against a number of students arrested on campus in late April as part of the encampment. Areeq Hasan, a graduating senior at Princeton who has not eaten for a week, tells Democracy Now! the hunger strike was a response to the university’s stonewalling. “We feel unheard at every step of the way, so therefore we resorted to a hunger strike,” says Hasan, noting the long history of hunger strikes as a means of protest. “It is in solidarity with the history of Palestinian political prisoners since 1968. … We’re tapping into this long-standing tradition with both Palestinian political prisoners and also in the Irish and Indian liberation movements.”

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

With its expanse of buildings and concrete, Mexico City may not look squishy — but it is. Ever since the Spanish conquistadors drained Lake Texcoco to make way for more urbanization, the land has been gradually compacting under the weight. It’s a phenomenon known as subsidence, and the result is grim: Mexico City is sinking up to 20 inches a year, unleashing havoc on its infrastructure.

That includes the city’s metro system, the second-largest in North America after New York City’s. Now, satellites have allowed scientists to meticulously measure the rate of sinking across Mexico City, mapping where subsidence has the potential to damage railways. “When you’re here in the city, you get used to buildings being tilted a little,” says Darío Solano‐Rojas, a remote-sensing scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “You can feel how the rails are wobbly. Riding the metro in Mexico City feels weird. You don’t know if it’s dangerous or not — you feel like it’s dangerous, but you don’t have that certainty.”

In a recent study in the journal Scientific Reports, Solano‐Rojas went in search of certainty. Using radar satellite data, he and his team measured how the elevation changed across the city between 2011 and 2020. Subsidence isn’t uniform; the rate depends on several factors. The most dramatic instances globally are due to the overextraction of groundwater: Pump enough liquid out and the ground collapses like an empty water bottle. That’s why Jakarta, Indonesia, is sinking up to 10 inches a year. Over in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the land has sunk as much as 28 feet in the past century, due to farmers pumping out too much groundwater.

A similar draining of aquifers is happening in Mexico City, which is gripped by a worsening water crisis. “The subsurface is like a sponge: We get the water out, and then it deforms, because it’s losing volume,” says Solano‐Rojas. How much volume depends on the underlying sediment in a given part of the city — the ancient lake didn’t neatly layer equal proportions of clay and sand in every area. “That produces a lot of different behaviors on the surface,” Solano‐Rojas adds.

Subsidence rates across Mexico City vary substantially, from 20 inches annually to not at all, where the city is built atop solid volcanic rock. This creates “differential subsidence,” where the land sinks differently not just square mile to square mile, or block to block, but square foot to square foot. If a road, railway, or building is sinking differently at one end than the other, it’ll destabilize.

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That’s how you get the tilted road traffic barriers at Acatitla Station, shown above. And below, the deformation of tracks at Oceanía Station. If in either of these places the land was subsiding at a uniform rate, the tracks and road would also sink uniformly, and you might not have a problem. “We found that some of the segments of the metro system are moving faster” than it was designed for, says Solano‐Rojas. The study found that nearly half of elevated segments of the metro are experiencing differential subsidence. This would imply that they would need to be serviced before the system’s typical threshold of 50 years, at which point a segment would need rehabilitation or repair to continue optimal operation.

Sistema de Transporte Colectivo, which operates the Mexico City Metro, did not provide comment for this story after repeated inquiries.

A metro system by its nature is a sprawling web of lines: Mexico City’s includes 140 miles of tracks running underground in subways, aboveground as you can see above, and on elevated platforms. “It goes from areas that are really stable, to areas that are subsiding at 30 centimeters per year, or even almost 40 centimeters every year,” Solano‐Rojas. “So the goal here was to see where the most damage could be.”

That damage comes in a few forms. As the land sinks, it can create divots for rainwater to accumulate, causing flooding along railways. That can mess with the electrical system that powers the trains, Solano‐Rojas says.

And elevation changes can increase the grade of the rails. The metro’s trains are designed to operate on a maximum slope of 3.5 percent, Solano‐Rojas says, but some stretches of track are now double that due to subsidence. “Trains can get derailed very easily if there is a slight change in the leveling of the railways,” says Manoochehr Shirzaei, an environmental security expert at Virginia Tech who studies subsidence but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Most of the infrastructure has certain thresholds; it tolerates a certain level of differential land subsidence. But often they don’t account for the rate that we see, for example, in Mexico City.”

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Solano‐Rojas and his colleagues found subsidence in the area of an overpass near the Olivos station, which collapsed in 2021 while a Metro train was traveling over it. “We did part of this analysis before 2021, and we detected that that area was having differential displacements,” says Solano‐Rojas. “We were like, ‘Oh, yeah, it looks like something could be happening here in the future.’ We think that it’s not a coincidence that we found this.” Solano‐Rojas was careful to say that the potential contribution of subsidence to the disaster would require further evaluation, and official investigations have cited construction errors and do not mention subsidence.

For this study, the researchers looked at the metro infrastructure above ground, not the subway segments — basically, the parts of the system they could verify visually. (The photo below shows the differential subsidence of columns supporting an overpass.) But by providing the system’s operators with information on how quickly its infrastructure might be subsiding, their work can hopefully inform interventions. Engineers can add material underneath railways, for instance, to restore lost elevation. Bolstering subways, though, could be much more challenging. “We don’t have a concrete solution for that,” says Shirzaei. “In most cases, when that happens, it just results in shutting down the project and trying to open a new lane.”

This isn’t just Mexico City’s problem. Earlier this year, Shirzaei and his colleagues found that the East Coast’s infrastructure is in serious trouble due to slower — yet steady — subsidence. They calculated that 29,000 square miles of the Atlantic Coast are exposed to sinking of up to 0.08 inches a year, affecting up to 14 million people and 6 million properties. Some 1,400 square miles are sinking up to 0.20 inches a year.

Differential subsidence is not only threatening railways, the researchers found, but all kinds of other critical infrastructure, like levees and airports. A metropolis like New York City has the added problem of sheer weight pushing down on the ground, which alone leads to subsidence. The Bay Area, too, is sinking. On either coast, subsidence is greatly exacerbating the problem of sea level rise: The land is going down just as the water is coming up.

Wherever in the world it’s happening, people have to stop overextracting groundwater to slow subsidence. Newfangled systems are already relieving pressure on aquifers. It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to recycle toilet water into drinking water, for instance. And more cities are deploying “sponge” infrastructure — lots of green spaces that allow rainwater to soak into the underlying aquifer, essentially reinflating the land to fend off subsidence. Such efforts are increasingly urgent as climate change exacerbates droughts in many parts of the world, including Mexico City, putting ever more pressure on groundwater supplies.

With increasing satellite data, cities can get a better handle on the subsidence they can’t immediately avoid. “I really feel like governments have a chance to use these kinds of studies to have a more structured plan of action,” says Solano‐Rojas.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Mexico City’s metro system is sinking fast. Yours could be next. on Apr 14, 2024.

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

Time is running out for media people and academics wanting to tell their innovative story or present research at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in July.

Organisers say the deadline is fast approaching for registration in less than two weeks.

Many major key challenges and core problems facing Pacific media are up for discussion at the conference in Suva, Fiji, on July 4-6 hosted by The University of the South Pacific (USP).

• READ MORE: Other 2024 Pacific Media International Conference reports

“Interest in the conference is very encouraging, both from our partners and from presenters — who are academics, professional practitioners and others who work in the fields of media and society,” conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh of USP told Asia Pacific Report.

“Some very interesting abstracts have been received, and we’re looking forward to more in the coming days and weeks.”

The USP is partnered for the conference by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

“There’s a lot to discuss — not only is this the first Pacific media conference of its kind in 20 years, there has been a lot of changes in the Pacific media sector, just as in the media sectors of just about every country in the world.

Media sector shaken
“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic.”

Both events had posed major challenges for the news media organisations and journalists — “to the point of even being an existential threat to the news media industry as we know it”.

“This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry,” Dr Singh said.

The trends needed to be examined in order to “respond appropriately”.

“That is one of the main purposes of this conference — to generate research, discussion and debate on Pacific media, and understand the problems better.”

Dr Singh said the conference was planning a stimulating line-up of guest speakers from the Asia-Pacific region.

Chief guest
Chief guest is Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica, who is also Communications and Technology Minister.

The abstracts deadline is April 5, panel proposals are due by May 5, and July 4 is the date for final full papers.

Key themes include:

• Media, Democracy, Human Rights and Governance
• Media and Geopolitics
• Digital Disruption and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Media Law and Ethics
• Media, Climate Change and Environmental Journalism
• Indigenous and Vernacular Media
• Social Cohesion, Peace-building and Conflict-prevention
• Covid-19 Pandemic and Health Reporting
• Media Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

Email abstracts to the conference chair: Dr Shailendra Singh

Full details at the conference website: www.usp.ac.fj/2024-pacific-media-conference/

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

The post TikTok Influencers Promote Overconsumption of Fast Fashion appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

Even in its third year, Denver’s ambitious campaign to get residents to swap some of their driving for riding remains as popular as ever. “It’s exciting that people are really interested in this technology,” Mike Salisbury, the city’s transportation energy lead, told Grist. “Every trip we can convert to an e-bike will be a big climate win.”

Transportation is among the biggest sources, if not the biggest source, of a city’s carbon emissions. To cut that footprint, officials often turn to costly, intensive transit projects and building out electric vehicle infrastructure. Denver is doing those things, but also propping up smaller forms of mobility. It spent more than $7.5 million in just two years on e-bike vouchers, supporting the purchase of nearly 8,000 of the battery-powered bicycles, which can zip along at up to 28 mph, power up hills, and carry passengers or cargo. 

“We’re just very bullish on e-bikes,” said Salisbury. “They have this huge potential to replace vehicle trips.” 

The vouchers are saving some 170,000 miles in car trips per week and around 3,300 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the city. Its Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency calls it “one of the most effective climate strategies that the city and county of Denver has deployed to date.” 

There are about 160 of these incentive programs across the U.S. and Canada, and while Denver wasn’t the first to implement one, the size and success of its undertaking has attracted the attention of other governments and utilities. Congress is taking note as well: California Representative Jimmy Panetta reintroduced the federal Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment Act, or E-BIKE Act, which would offer a 30 percent federal tax credit for e-bike purchases, last year. 

Funded through a voter-approved $40 million Climate Protection Fund, which directs a portion of the city’s sales tax toward decarbonization initiatives, the program offers income-based rebates that can be redeemed at designated bike shops. Providing the discount at the register helps those who might otherwise be unable to afford the upfront cost, which typically begins around $1,200 and can reach several thousand dollars. 

Residents making less than 60 percent of the area median income of around $52,000 can get $1,200 for a standard e-bike and $1,400 for a cargo model (useful for carrying gear, making deliveries, or hauling kids). Moderate-income recipients receive between $700 or $900, and everyone else can get $300 or $500. Online applications open several times each year and vouchers are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. 

The goal is to reduce emissions from the transportation sector, Denver’s second-largest contributor of greenhouse gases, by targeting short vehicle trips. According to Salisbury, 44 percent of residents’ trips are under 5 miles and most are under 10, feasible distances to travel on an e-bike.

“E-bikes aren’t going to replace every single trip for every single person,” he said. “But there’s this huge potential to replace, especially in an urban environment, shorter distance trips that someone is making by themselves. Or they can use an e-cargo bike to take their kids to school.”

That’s one of the many ways Jeff Gonzales, a marketing professional and father living near the University of Denver, uses the power-assisted bike that he bought two years ago with the help of a voucher. 

At the time, Gonzales drove a customized Toyota Tacoma pickup. “It was awesome, but it was a gas guzzler,” he told Grist. Gas was so expensive that he and his wife were trying to minimize their driving as much as possible. But their two toddlers were getting too heavy to tow with the family’s bike trailer, affectionately called “the chariot.” When an employee at his local bike shop mentioned the rebates for power-assisted bicycles, he decided to take one for a test ride. 

“I was like, ‘This is pretty cool,’ and then I asked them, ‘Can I hook the chariot behind it?’ They said ‘Absolutely.’” Gonzales sold his truck, applied for a voucher, and bought the bike. He began riding it to the grocery store, taking the kids to school, and even making the 24-mile round-trip commute to his office twice a week. 

“That first summer we had it, I think there were times that we didn’t get in the car for about two weeks at a time,” he said. 

In a 2023 survey of voucher recipients, 43 percent of respondents cited commuting as their primary reason for getting an e-bike, and 84 percent said the machines replaced at least one vehicle trip per week. The city estimates that recipients are eliminating a weekly average of 21 miles in their cars. 

Commuting on two wheels often allows riders to avoid traffic or take more direct routes than those offered by public transit. “People are sharing feedback with us on how it’s enabled them to get to their job much faster, easier, at a much lower cost, without having to make two or three transit transfers to get to a place,” said Salisbury. 

Gonzales said he often finds biking to work quicker, but even when the ride doesn’t save time, it’s more enjoyable. “It sucks to sit in traffic,” he said. “I’d rather be moving on a bike, and if I get tired, I can increase the power level, but I’m still moving.”

The clean energy nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, or RMI, found that if the country’s 10 most populous cities shifted a quarter of all short vehicle trips to e-bike rides, they could save 4.2 million barrels of oil and 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 in one year. That’s the equivalent of taking four natural gas plants offline. As an added bonus, those riders also would save a combined total of $91 million per month in avoided fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, according to RMI. 

But a recent study from Valdosta State University and Portland State University questions the cost effectiveness of achieving greenhouse gas emissions this way. “Even when e-bike incentive programs are designed cost-effectively,” the authors concluded, “the costs per ton of CO2 reduced still far exceed those of alternatives or reasonable social costs of GHG emissions.” A rebate program can still be beneficial, the study concludes, but may need to be justified through its additional benefits, like promoting exercise and relieving traffic congestion.

Salisbury said the report’s critique overlooks how cities must tackle emissions in multiple ways. “There are lots of other things the city is working on, like building bus rapid transit and other infrastructure, but those take a long time,” he said. “If we want to see reductions as soon as possible, we need to look at programs that can contribute to that right away.”

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He also pointed out that increasing access to e-bikes takes specific aim at one of the city’s most difficult sectors to decarbonize. “Yes, it’s cheaper to invest in a solar array, but that’s not going to do anything for transportation emissions.” 

That’s not to say that getting residents to swap four wheels for two is as simple as doling out a voucher. E-bikes require infrastructure, including bike lanes that can accommodate both motorized and analog riders, as well as places to charge and safely store bikes. 

In the past five years, the city has added 137 miles of “high-comfort” bike lanes. Last month, it launched the Denver Mobility Incentive Program, offering grants to nonprofits and other organizations to install bike storage lockers, places to plug in, and even set up e-bike libraries where residents can borrow rides for free. 

“It’s all part of an ecosystem,” said Salisbury. “Dropping 8,000 e-bikes on the road would be much less effective if we didn’t have that co-developed infrastructure.”

Gonzales uses that infrastructure when he has to cut through busy downtown Denver to reach his office. “About 90 percent of the time I’m on protected bike lanes,” he said. “It makes me feel a lot more comfortable about biking 12 miles across town.” 

The city has also had to grapple with how to ensure that all residents can access the program. While more than 44 percent of the vouchers have gone to low-income applicants, the first-come, first-served application process has been criticized for favoring people with the time and computer access to log on as soon as the portal opens. And so far, the racial demographics of the recipients has not proven reflective of the city’s population. In 2023, only 8 percent of survey respondents were Latino and 3 percent were Black, while Denver’s population is 29 percent Latino and almost 9 percent Black. Despite offering up to $1,400 for adaptive bikes, the program has only distributed about 20 so far. 

In response, Denver has worked with community-based organizations to funnel rebates directly to people who might not know about or be able to apply for them. It plans to distribute 600 vouchers through such groups this year. 

The people least able to access the program may also be the ones who would put it to the most use. Survey results have indicated that applicants who received vouchers through community organizations are replacing 80 percent more vehicle miles than standard-voucher recipients. 

This also marks the first year that Denver will offer a specific rebate amount for moderate-income applicants, an attempt to address the “missing middle” of people who earn closer to the city’s median income but need a bit more help to afford a ride.

What the city will continue to struggle with this year is a demand for all levels of vouchers that far exceeds supply. The next round of applications will open on April 30. 

One of those applications might come from the Gonzales family. With a third baby now in tow, they’re thinking of getting a second power-assisted bike to transport the whole family. “When the little man gets bigger, we’d probably get another,” said Gonzales, especially if the city is still offering vouchers. “They’re not the cheapest things in the world, so the rebate program certainly helps.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Denver, e-bike vouchers run out as fast as Taylor Swift tickets on Mar 22, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gabriela Aoun Angueira.

On a Saturday in February, high school senior Kaylee Lemmien sifted through racks of dresses at Tinker Tailor, a small shop in downtown Elk Rapids, a village of about 1,500 people in northern Michigan.

“I’d call this a mermaid, sequin, light blue gown with a tulle skirt. It’s got a lace-up back, kind of open,” Lemmien said. “Very pretty.”

Tinker Tailor usually alters clothes, but on this day it was selling them — prom dresses, to be exact. Gowns in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors — short and long, neons and pastels, satin and sequins — lined the racks. The garments were donated and consigned by people around the region, with the goal of giving them a new life at the Elk Rapids High School prom in May. Called Sustainable Style, the secondhand shopping initiative takes aim at fast fashion. 

Zoe Macaluso, the president of the Eco Club at Elk Rapids High School, said that when a local volunteer group approached her with the idea, she “immediately latched onto it.” The Eco Club wants to use the project to lead by example and hopefully inspire other schools in the area to pursue their own climate projects.

It’s one of many efforts by high school students around the country to address fast fashion — clothing produced cheaply and quickly enough to stay on top of swiftly moving trend cycles — in their own lives and through advocacy. Such efforts are small, but experts say they can help people — especially young people — think differently about their role as consumers. That’s especially relevant in the age of fast fashion, when an online retailer like Shein drops up to 10,000 new items a day.

“Fast fashion is a trend driven by newness,” said Shipra Gupta, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Illinois Springfield. “It tends to treat its products like food that spoils quickly.”

The increased focus on sustainability and thrifting might seem counter to the rise of fast fashion. It’s been described as a paradox, especially for Gen Z. A McKinsey newsletter last year laid out the relationship like this: “On one hand, Gen Zers express a desire for sustainably produced items and love thrifting. On the other hand, clothing ‘hauls’ … make up some of the most watched and most produced content on social media.”

One way high school students are counteracting that offline is by raising awareness in their communities about how fashion impacts the environment. Last year, for example, a high school in New York put on a carbon-neutral prom. A club in New Hampshire organized a clothing drive to divert used clothes to people experiencing homelessness. And a library in Athens, Georgia, regularly hosts a “Bling Your Prom” secondhand formal wear event with an eye toward sustainability.  

Fast fashion encourages people to cycle through clothing quickly, with serious consequences. But getting reliable information on just how much damage the fashion industry inflicts on the climate is difficult. Its lack of transparency is one reason for that; less than half of brands track all levels of their complex supply chains. Some have made climate pledges but have consistently fallen short of their goals. And while key legislation that would help tackle the problem is pending in places in the U.S. and Europe, policy progress has been slow.

Constantly being exposed to new items can trigger a desire to buy more, said Gupta. By bringing an event like Sustainable Style to the community, she said, the students in Michigan are harnessing that excitement and channeling it toward more environmentally conscious shopping.

“Community involvement is a way of doing that grassroots-level movement, where we can actually create an awareness among the community members,” she said, and that can make them consider what it means to be a responsible consumer.

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Events like Sustainable Style can cut back on consumption locally, providing a responsible place to donate and buy used evening wear. That’s important especially in small towns where options can be limited.

In the past, students in Elk Rapids usually ordered dresses online or traveled to hubs like Grand Rapids, a two-hour drive south.

“You kind of have to drive to Grand Rapids, and you have to go to a mall, and you have to buy a new dress,” said Macaluso. “This just provides another option, another opportunity to say, ‘Oh, I have a chance here to help the environment a little bit. So I’m going to take it.’”

Perhaps most importantly, initiatives like these can help others outside the confines of high school prom think about how fashion relates to the environment.

“I think it’s very meaningful, because it starts to engage consumers, especially the young generation,” said Sheng Lu, an associate professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. 

Innovative grassroots efforts have helped cut down on fashion waste locally in other places, and in recent years, major brands have been trying to work out the kinks of reselling used clothes. 

Although the Elk Rapids effort is relatively small, Lu said, it can help inspire local action.

“I honestly was pretty nervous coming in here,” said sophomore Addison Looney, who was shopping with her mom. “But there were a lot of great selections. … I was pretty indecisive about it. But I picked [one] out.”

The dress is a soft lavender with beading in the front. Addison’s mom, Sara, said she was excited to buy her daughter a secondhand dress.

“Knowing this is just a great opportunity to shop local, and to obviously save money,” she said. “But also just the resale aspect of it — to just kind of keep dresses going, because they’re usually a one-time use.”

Macaluso said they’ve been able to stoke interest in buying used clothing. The prom event even led Tinker Tailor — which had mainly been in the business of altering clothes, not selling them — to set up a “Dress Vault” in the store so people could continue consigning, donating, and shopping for secondhand items.

“I think it really just builds off that idea of, ‘Hey, these dresses didn’t go bad, they haven’t expired,’” she said. “And they can find a new home.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At prom, fast fashion slows down on Mar 20, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Izzy Ross.

“In the morning of January 28, Kim Jong Un guided the test-fire of the newly-developed submarine-launched strategic cruise missile ‘Pulhwasal-3-31’,” said the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff announced Sunday that it detected North Korea launching several cruise missiles around 8 a.m., near Sinpo, where the North’s submarine facilities are located.

Submarine-launched weapons can be deployed covertly, often evading detection systems, potentially offering Pyongyang a more elusive means of deploying its nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weaponization of the navy is an urgent task of the times and a core requirement for building the state nuclear strategic force,” said Kim Jong Un, cited by KCNA.

Kim “set forth the important tasks arising in realizing the nuclear weaponization of the navy and expanding the sphere of operation of the state nuclear deterrence in a diversified way,” KCNA added.

The North Korean leader also defended the country’s ongoing nuclear development, claiming: “The prevailing situation and future threats urge the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] to put more spurs to the efforts for defending maritime sovereignty.” 

Kim then called for “immediate tasks” and “state measures” to be executed by relevant sectors and officials to accelerate his country’s nuclear submarine manufacturing.

Although North Korea has yet to possess submarines capable of operating in the blue sea, or deep ocean, recent efforts may dramatically increase the level of nuclear threat to South Korea and Japan due to their geographical proximity.

North Korea has recently put a particular emphasis on boosting its naval capabilities. Earlier this month, North Korea claimed that it had carried out a test of the “Haeil-5-23,” its underwater nuclear system involving drones to face “threats” posed by allies.

South Korea, however, had dismissed Pyongyang’s claim.

“There is a possibility that North Korea’s claims may have been exaggerated and fabricated, based on our comprehensive analysis up until today,” South Korea’s Presidential Office said in a statement last week.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA.

Speaking on January 11 in Riga on the last stop of a tour of the Baltic states, he added that the situation on the front line is "very complicated" and again said that Ukrainian forces lack weapons.

Zelenskiy told reporters that after the election in which President Vladimir Putin is expected to win another term in office Russia will undertake military action on a larger scale.

He said later on X, formerly Twitter, that he met with Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina in Riga and discussed "further military aid to Ukraine and tangible actions to advance Ukraine’s path to EU and NATO membership."

Speaking earlier in Estonia, Zelenskiy rejected the possibility of a cease-fire with Russia, saying it would not lead to substantive progress in the war and only favor Moscow by giving it time to boost supplies to its military as the conflict nears its two-year anniversary.

“A pause on the Ukrainian battlefield will not mean a pause in the war,” the Ukrainian leader said in Estonia's capital, Tallinn, on January 11 during a tour of the three Baltic nations.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

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"Give Russia two to three years and it will simply run us over. We wouldn't take that risk.... There will be no pauses in favor of Russia," he said. "A pause would play into [Russia’s] hands.... It might crush us afterward.”

Zelenskiy has pleaded with Ukraine's allies to keep supplying it with weapons amid signs of donor fatigue in some countries and as Russia turns to countries such as Iran and North Korea for munitions.

NATO allies meeting in Brussels on January 10 tried to allay Kyiv's concerns over supplies, saying they will continue to provide Ukraine with major military, economic, and humanitarian aid. NATO allies have outlined plans to provide "billions of euros of further capabilities" in 2024 to Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement.

But in Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said U.S. assistance for Ukraine has "ground to a halt," though lawmakers continue negotiating a deal that would tie the release of the aid to U.S. border security.

Meanwhile, Latvia and Estonia announced aid packages during Zelenskiy's visits to their capitals.

Latvia will provide Ukraine with a new package of military aid, President Edgars Rinkevics said after meeting with Zelenskiy in Riga.

"Today I informed the president of Ukraine about the next package of aid, which includes howitzers, ammunition, anti-tank weapons, antiaircraft missiles, mortars, all-terrain vehicles, hand grenades, helicopters, drones, generators, means of communication, equipment," Rinkevics said, speaking at a joint press conference with Zelenskiy.

Estonian President Alar Karis said earlier after his meeting with Zelenskiy that his country will provide 1.2 billion euros ($1.31 billion) in aid to Ukraine until 2027.

"Ukraine needs more and better weapons," Karis said at a joint news conference with Zelenskiy.

"The capabilities of the EU military industry must be increased so that Ukraine gets what it needs, not tomorrow, but today. We should not place any restrictions on the supply of weapons to Ukraine," he added.

Ukraine has been subjected to several massive waves of Russian missile and drone strikes since the start of the year that have caused civilian deaths and material damage.

In the latest such attack, a hotel in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, was struck by Russian missiles overnight on January 11. The strike injured 13 people, including Turkish journalists staying at the hotel, Kharkiv regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said.

A Russian missile attack struck a hotel in Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, late on January 10, wounding 11 people, according to local authorities.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said on January 11 that 56 combat clashes took place at the front during the day. The operational situation in the northern directions did not change significantly, and the formation of Russian offensive groups was not detected.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Pablo Manriquez.

Photograph Source: Cezary p – CC BY-SA 4.0

’Tis the season for holiday shopping, and as American consumers ready their spending dollars, few of us are likely to link our gift buying to the high cost of low prices on the other side of the planet. This is especially true for what has come to be known as “fast fashion,” the clothing equivalent of a Big Mac: attractive, affordable, and throwaway. But the Bangladeshi women who toil as underpaid garment workers so we can wear disposable outfits, are making their voices heard loudly enough to reverberate across oceans and continents. Mass protests for higher wages have roiled the nation, at least three workers have been killed, and there is no end in sight.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel in the world, after China. It is the South Asian nation’s largest industry, employing more than four million workers, a majority of them women. The largest share of Bangladesh-made garments is bought and sold by United States retailers, which include recognizable name brands such as H&M, Zara, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, and Tommy Hilfiger.

Garment workers had been taking home a meager pay of about $75 a month, and have demanded a nearly threefold increase to about $205 a month. When the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) initially set new wages at $90 a month, the mass protests began. When the BGMEA then responded by raising wages to $112 a month, the protests actually intensified. According to Al Jazeera, “more than 10,000 workers staged protests in factories and along highways to reject the panel’s offer.”

Headlines touted the offer as a 56 percent increase in wages, while Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, long hailed as a liberal leader, patronizingly told workers to put up or shut up. She said, “They have to work with whatever their salary is increased, they should continue their work.” She roundly condemned workers’ attacks on factories, saying she was worried that, “if these factories are closed, if production is disrupted, where will their jobs be? They have to understand that.”

Hasina’s government has unleashed security forces that have intimidated and attacked union organizers. Police recently fatally shot a 23-year-old mother and sewing machine operator named Anjuara Khatun after firing at protesters.

To understand why protests intensified after wages were dramatically increased, it’s worth examining the context of garment workers’ livelihoods. By one estimate, the cost of living for a single person in Bangladesh is about $360 a month, not including rent. Garment workers’ wages have not risen since 2019 and since that time inflation has hit Bangladesh just as it has hit most of the world.

Even the demand for $205 a month will not allow most to make ends meet. The factories’ offer of about half that number was insultingly low. Abiramy Sivalogananthan, the South Asia coordinator for the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, told Vogue, “[The] increase that unions are asking for is not even enough, technically speaking, [given] inflation and the crisis the country’s going through.”

On the surface, U.S. brands, who purchase their inventories from Bangladesh’s factories, appear to be on the right side of the fight. The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), an industry trade group, wrote a joint letter to Hasina’s administration urging her to “raise the minimum wage to a level that corresponds with a wage level and benefits that are sufficient to cover workers’ basic needs and some discretionary income and takes into account inflationary pressures.”

The AAFA even went as far as asking the government to avoid retaliating against unions and to respect “collective bargaining rights.” The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying, “We commend the members of the private sector who have endorsed union proposals for a reasonable wage increase.”

Further, global retailers are offering to eat into their profits by increasing the price they pay factories to help them offset increased wages. Currently, the cost of the labor to produce garments is a mere 10-13 percent of a product’s total manufacturing cost. The industry would have to increase that number by about 5-6 percent.

But are companies really committed to raising garment workers’ wages? A spokesperson for the Clean Clothes Campaign, a rights group based in The Netherlands said, “The living wage commitments of brands are nothing but empty promises as long as they refuse to explicitly support the workers’ demand for a bare minimum, let alone a living wage.”

A survey of about 1,000 factories in Bangladesh, published in early 2023, revealed that companies like Zara and H&M underpaid factories for garment purchases, making it harder for them to pay their workers. When the COVID-19 pandemic led to global shutdowns, large retailers canceled orders and delayed payments. One industry expert told The Guardian, “Only when suppliers are able to plan ahead, with confidence that they will earn as expected, can they deliver good working conditions for their workers.” Rather than dip into their profits to compensate for the market slowdown in 2020, many global brands simply refused to keep their financial commitments to Bangladesh’s factories, leading to downward pressure on wages.

Given this context, fast fashion’s stated support for a living wage increase and a commitment to swallow the resulting increased labor costs sound disingenuous.

It has been more than 10 years since the deadly collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza, the world’s worst garment industry disaster. The eight-story compound of factories in Dhaka was filled with thousands of workers when it crumbled under the weight of government neglect and worker exploitation in April 2013. More than 1,100 workers, most of them women, were killed.

The Rana Plaza disaster was a turning point for Bangladesh’s garment industry as workers were seen as dispensable pawns by governments and industries alike. In the wake of the disaster, North American brands refused to join other global companies in signing on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Citing high costs, they chose instead to form their own alliance for inspecting factories, one that applied lower safety standards. It was a stark indicator of where these companies’ priorities lay, one that frames their current lip service to higher wages for garment workers.

Fast fashion’s outlook is rosy. The industry has been steadily growing and, thanks to the cooperation of government heads such as Sheikh Hasina—who has been fixated on “growth” at all costs—it is expected to more than double its market size over six years, growing from $91 billion in 2021 to a projected $185 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, the workers who fuel the profits behind that expansion are facing starvation. This holiday season, perhaps the best gift we can give is a commitment to force the industry to pay up.

The post Fast Fashion Is Antithetical to Workers’ Rights appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

Photograph Source: Cezary p – CC BY-SA 4.0

’Tis the season for holiday shopping, and as American consumers ready their spending dollars, few of us are likely to link our gift buying to the high cost of low prices on the other side of the planet. This is especially true for what has come to be known as “fast fashion,” the clothing equivalent of a Big Mac: attractive, affordable, and throwaway. But the Bangladeshi women who toil as underpaid garment workers so we can wear disposable outfits, are making their voices heard loudly enough to reverberate across oceans and continents. Mass protests for higher wages have roiled the nation, at least three workers have been killed, and there is no end in sight.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel in the world, after China. It is the South Asian nation’s largest industry, employing more than four million workers, a majority of them women. The largest share of Bangladesh-made garments is bought and sold by United States retailers, which include recognizable name brands such as H&M, Zara, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, and Tommy Hilfiger.

Garment workers had been taking home a meager pay of about $75 a month, and have demanded a nearly threefold increase to about $205 a month. When the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) initially set new wages at $90 a month, the mass protests began. When the BGMEA then responded by raising wages to $112 a month, the protests actually intensified. According to Al Jazeera, “more than 10,000 workers staged protests in factories and along highways to reject the panel’s offer.”

Headlines touted the offer as a 56 percent increase in wages, while Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, long hailed as a liberal leader, patronizingly told workers to put up or shut up. She said, “They have to work with whatever their salary is increased, they should continue their work.” She roundly condemned workers’ attacks on factories, saying she was worried that, “if these factories are closed, if production is disrupted, where will their jobs be? They have to understand that.”

Hasina’s government has unleashed security forces that have intimidated and attacked union organizers. Police recently fatally shot a 23-year-old mother and sewing machine operator named Anjuara Khatun after firing at protesters.

To understand why protests intensified after wages were dramatically increased, it’s worth examining the context of garment workers’ livelihoods. By one estimate, the cost of living for a single person in Bangladesh is about $360 a month, not including rent. Garment workers’ wages have not risen since 2019 and since that time inflation has hit Bangladesh just as it has hit most of the world.

Even the demand for $205 a month will not allow most to make ends meet. The factories’ offer of about half that number was insultingly low. Abiramy Sivalogananthan, the South Asia coordinator for the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, told Vogue, “[The] increase that unions are asking for is not even enough, technically speaking, [given] inflation and the crisis the country’s going through.”

On the surface, U.S. brands, who purchase their inventories from Bangladesh’s factories, appear to be on the right side of the fight. The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), an industry trade group, wrote a joint letter to Hasina’s administration urging her to “raise the minimum wage to a level that corresponds with a wage level and benefits that are sufficient to cover workers’ basic needs and some discretionary income and takes into account inflationary pressures.”

The AAFA even went as far as asking the government to avoid retaliating against unions and to respect “collective bargaining rights.” The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying, “We commend the members of the private sector who have endorsed union proposals for a reasonable wage increase.”

Further, global retailers are offering to eat into their profits by increasing the price they pay factories to help them offset increased wages. Currently, the cost of the labor to produce garments is a mere 10-13 percent of a product’s total manufacturing cost. The industry would have to increase that number by about 5-6 percent.

But are companies really committed to raising garment workers’ wages? A spokesperson for the Clean Clothes Campaign, a rights group based in The Netherlands said, “The living wage commitments of brands are nothing but empty promises as long as they refuse to explicitly support the workers’ demand for a bare minimum, let alone a living wage.”

A survey of about 1,000 factories in Bangladesh, published in early 2023, revealed that companies like Zara and H&M underpaid factories for garment purchases, making it harder for them to pay their workers. When the COVID-19 pandemic led to global shutdowns, large retailers canceled orders and delayed payments. One industry expert told The Guardian, “Only when suppliers are able to plan ahead, with confidence that they will earn as expected, can they deliver good working conditions for their workers.” Rather than dip into their profits to compensate for the market slowdown in 2020, many global brands simply refused to keep their financial commitments to Bangladesh’s factories, leading to downward pressure on wages.

Given this context, fast fashion’s stated support for a living wage increase and a commitment to swallow the resulting increased labor costs sound disingenuous.

It has been more than 10 years since the deadly collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza, the world’s worst garment industry disaster. The eight-story compound of factories in Dhaka was filled with thousands of workers when it crumbled under the weight of government neglect and worker exploitation in April 2013. More than 1,100 workers, most of them women, were killed.

The Rana Plaza disaster was a turning point for Bangladesh’s garment industry as workers were seen as dispensable pawns by governments and industries alike. In the wake of the disaster, North American brands refused to join other global companies in signing on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Citing high costs, they chose instead to form their own alliance for inspecting factories, one that applied lower safety standards. It was a stark indicator of where these companies’ priorities lay, one that frames their current lip service to higher wages for garment workers.

Fast fashion’s outlook is rosy. The industry has been steadily growing and, thanks to the cooperation of government heads such as Sheikh Hasina—who has been fixated on “growth” at all costs—it is expected to more than double its market size over six years, growing from $91 billion in 2021 to a projected $185 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, the workers who fuel the profits behind that expansion are facing starvation. This holiday season, perhaps the best gift we can give is a commitment to force the industry to pay up.

The post Fast Fashion Is Antithetical to Workers’ Rights appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

Below is a statement by Dr. Rachel Cleetus, a policy director in the Climate and Energy Program and a lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

“The IEA report makes clear that, without concerted action by policymakers, current global energy choices are causing us to hurtle toward a dangerous 2.4˚C world. There are important bright spots—including a significant growth in renewable energy capacity and generation, especially solar power, and a big increase in clean energy investments in recent years. But coal, oil and gas use continue to expand globally, at odds with climate goals.

“Among other factors, the report underscores the massive increase in liquified natural gas from the United States. This expansion in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure is definitely a cause for concern from a climate perspective. The IEA also notes that China’s slowing economic growth will have important consequences for its energy trajectory and an outsize influence on global energy trends—although questions remain about how swiftly it will transition to clean energy and lower its emissions.

“At COP28, the upcoming climate talks in Dubai at the end of the year, nations must come together to secure agreement on a fast, fair phaseout of fossil fuels, alongside a massive ramp up of renewable energy and energy efficiency. There must also be a strong commitment from richer nations to provide climate finance for developing countries to make a rapid clean energy transition. Cutting energy related heat-trapping emissions sharply within this decisive decade and beyond is crucial to limit the pace and magnitude of climate change, which is already taking a fearsome toll on people around the world.”

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

This article includes graphic images and depictions of death.

The Israel Defense Forces could not confirm a horrific claim that Hamas beheaded babies during a weekend assault, a spokesperson for the military told The Intercept on Tuesday. The claim went viral, becoming a headline-grabbing aspect of a massacre that left more than 1,000 Israelis dead.

“Women, children, toddlers, and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action and we are we are [sic] aware of the heinous acts Hamas is capable of,” the spokesperson wrote in response to questions from The Intercept about the viral reports. “We cannot confirm it officially, but you can assume it happened and believe the report,” she reiterated in a follow-up phone call.

Despite the IDF’s inability to confirm the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson Tal Heinrich repeated it on Wednesday — a window into how unverified reports become part of the historical record.

The claim about beheaded babies is the latest in a series of harrowing reports that have emerged over the last few days while Israeli forces regained control of communities attacked by Hamas militants. As Israeli officials responded by pledging vengeance and launching a mass bombing campaign over 2 million Palestinians living in the besieged Gaza Strip, reports of Hamas crimes against civilians fueled rage among the public, elected officials, and policymakers.

Claims that Hamas militants raped several Israeli women have also gone viral, though the allegation has not been thoroughly substantiated, and at least one news outlet has retracted a reference to it. In his remarks on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that women had been “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.” 

The viral spread of dubious information at the same pace as credible reports has become a staple of modern warfare, exacerbated over the last year by the transformation of Twitter under the ownership of Elon Musk. Once an important source for breaking news, Musk’s changes to the platform’s verification requirements have made it difficult to separate fact from fiction — making it all the more important for journalists and public officials to vet the information before repeating it. 

Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which tracks and studies how nonfactual narratives propagate online, said that viral lies and misconceptions tend to balloon during or in the wake of a war or other emergencies, reflecting a spike in concern and greater appetite for information. “People share content that they find compelling,” she said. “In crisis situations, often the viral content includes a lot of rumors — it’s unverified material right now, and it may turn out to be true.” 

As uncorroborated reports are broadcast alongside legitimate, equally horrific ones, the consequences of the rapidly escalating rhetoric are all too real and dangerous. 

“It’s been about four days since this incredible and tragic escalation of violence and the level of misinformation — even disinformation — seems near unprecedented,” media critic Sana Saeed told The Intercept. “We have seen journalists, in particular, spread unverified information that is being used to justify Israeli and even American calls and actions to annihilate an entire population.” 

“From unsubstantiated accusations of Palestinian fighters raping Israeli women to unsubstantiated accusations of Palestinian fighters beheading babies: These claims have spread like wildfire especially thanks to many journalists who are repeating things without any semblance of critical thinking or journalistic caution.” 

“What’s at stake here is literal human life,” Saeed added. “But Palestinian life matters so little, that spreading incendiary information that justifies Israeli war crimes isn’t a concern for those tasked to punch up to power by virtue of being journalists.”

Gunshots and blood stains are seen on a door and walls of a house where civilians were killed days earlier in an attack by Hamas militants on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza, on Oct. 10, 2023, in Kfar Aza, Israel.

Unverified Reports

The claim about beheaded babies, which spread quickly online and was repeated by prominent journalists and politicians, originated with reporters who visited the community of Kfar Aza on Tuesday, the site of a horrific massacre of civilians by Hamas. Reporters with i24NEWS, an Israeli TV network, were among the first to report the claim, which they attributed to soldiers who recovered the bodies of victims. The Turkish news agency Anadolu first reported on Tuesday that the IDF would not confirm the claim. The IDF later told other outlets that it would not confirm the reports because it is “disrespectful for the dead.” 

According to Oren Ziv, a journalist who participated in the tour, “journalists were allowed to speak to the hundreds of soldiers on site, without the supervision of the army’s spokesperson team.” 

The IDF spokesperson told The Intercept that a soldier told journalists “that this is what he saw” but that the military had not independently confirmed the claim. 

“When we were there, all the bodies were in body bags. … We couldn’t see it with our own eyes, but obviously, it happened. We cannot confirm it officially from the military but you have seen, I guess, videos on social media, you’ve seen girls with blood over their thighs, it’s obvious that this stuff happens.” 

“Specifically about the beheaded babies report, we cannot confirm the amount and specific place and everything like that,” the spokesperson added. “There have been so many horrible situations and we don’t have time, and we’re currently busy fighting and defending our country. We don’t have the time to check every report.” 

Ziv also noted that while the scene was “horrific, with dozens of bodies of Israelis murdered in their homes,” he had not seen evidence of the beheaded babies. Other reporters on the ground said that an Israeli soldier told a BBC journalist that “some of the dead had been beheaded,” while at least two other journalists later deleted tweets referencing the reports. 

“Just looked at today’s UK front pages and I am horrified by the headlines claiming ‘40 babies beheaded by Hamas’ in Kfar Aza,” Guardian reporter Bethan McKernan tweeted on Tuesday. “Yes, many children were murdered. Yes, there were several beheadings in the attack. This claim, however, is unverified and totally irresponsible.”

The uncorroborated reports were repeated by veteran journalists and politicians, from Fox News to CNN anchors, as well as U.S. politicians from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. Fox News reporters chased Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D- Mich., the only Palestinian American in Congress, saying that “Hamas terrorists have cut off babies’ heads” and asking her to comment on “terrorists chopping off babies’ heads.” On Wednesday, the reports continued to circulate, including on major news outlets like CNN.

New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel wrote on BlueSky on Wednesday that reporters should approach such claims carefully, try to verify their origin and sourcing, and seek to corroborate them in other ways. “Save the IDF coming out with an official statement (and it hasn’t, it’s declined to confirm) or someone confirming they saw it with their own eyes,” she added, “it’s a rumor being widely shared.” 

Palestinians, including some journalists, carry the bodies of two Palestinian reporters, Mohammed Soboh and Said al-Tawil, who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, on Oct. 10, 2023.

Fog of War

Online disinformation has become ubiquitous in recent conflicts, including in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. 

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, firsthand accounts by journalists and others on the ground in Israel and Gaza were at times drowned out by verified users of dubious legitimacy. While some claims remain disputed, X is also awash in rapidly spreading incendiary posts that are patently false, many being used to justify increasingly violent rhetoric and potentially worsening an already grisly war. 

Attempting to even measure the volume of viral falsehoods currently spreading throughout X has become difficult, if not impossible, due to changes implemented under the new ownership of Musk. “It’s very difficult for academic research teams to gauge the volume question on X at this point because many, including us, no longer have API access,” said DiResta, of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Under X’s prior ownership, when the company was still known as Twitter, it provided research organizations like Stanford’s with software access to track public user activity on the platform, which made it easier to track how a hoax or online myth spreads.

DiResta said that X’s decision to sell account verification, which previously indicated some official association with an organization or news outlet, has exacerbated the trade in wartime rumors. “As curation algorithms have changed on Twitter/X, current blue checks” — those who purchased verification — “are prioritized in the feed and in replies,” she explained. “The composition of the blue check community has also shifted. There are many commentators, but fewer journalists.”

Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, has pointed out different examples of false information spreading on the platform over the last few days, including by “multiple blue tick accounts repeating an unverified claim that had no evidence to back it up.” 

“Musk has created a fundamental issue with Twitter’s credibility in moments of crisis,” he wrote. 

On Wednesday, Bellingcat published other examples of misinformation surging online, including viral social media posts presenting years-old footage, or footage from other countries, as depicting the latest Israeli bombing of Gaza. “Misinformation is particularly nefarious in this case as it often entwines authentic information with hearsay,” the outlet wrote, “and may lead to something genuinely worthy of record — such as a military strike in an urban area — becoming associated with a viral falsehood.”

Others echoed that frustration. “As a journalist, I’ve been using social for news since, well, since that became a thing,” the journalist Barry Malone noted. “And I cannot recall ever seeing disinformation spread with such lightning speed around a big story as it is right now.”

Meanwhile, in Gaza, as besieged residents lost access to electricity and at least six journalists were killed in bombings, local writers who regularly report on life in the strip reported being unable to do so. 
“My phone and laptop have died. No electricity as we’re running out of fuel for the power generator, after Israel cut electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza,” one of them, Maha Hussaini, tweeted earlier this week. “I will be off until we find alternatives, This is what Israel wanted, to commit genocide against a silenced people.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Alice Speri.

People fly kites for the pleasure of seeing the colorful designs. Or they watch for kite fighting – a game where one uses the kite’s string to cut the string of other kites.

“I lost six today,” said Ko Paik, who uses his kites for kite fighting. “I beat about 20. More than 20, I guess.”

There are more than 10 kite flying teams in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city and a center of Burmese culture. Kite flying competitions are held in three different locations every year.

Most kite flyers are elderly or middle-aged, as many young people these days don’t spend time on the sport.

“Times have changed. Back then, a lot of young people used to fly kites,” Mandalay resident Soe Han said. 

Members of the younger generation would rather spend time playing games on their phone, he said.

There are about 20 kite businesses in Mandalay. But they’re no longer as profitable because of the sport’s declining popularity and higher prices. 

“Business was OK in previous years,” kite store owner Aung Ko Oo said. “But since the price of goods has gone up, people don’t spend time on this anymore.” 

Kite flyer Ko Baw Di encourages young people to fly kites because it is relaxing and supports physical health.

“You have to have a quick vision and fast hands while running at the same time,” he said. “Your brain has to work fast to win, too.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Direct-current fast chargers, or DCFC, play an important role in the transition to electric vehicles, because they are a driver’s best option to quickly recharge a battery while on the road. Fast chargers typically offer power outputs between 50 kW to 350 kW, and some can charge an EV battery to 80 percent in as quickly as 20 minutes. In contrast, the next-fastest type of charger, a Level 2, takes between four to 10 hours to reach the same level of charge.

In 2018, former Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order that mandated the state install 250,000 EV chargers, including 10,000 fast chargers, by 2025. Since then, the state has nearly quadrupled the number of public and “shared private” (chargers installed at places of business or apartment buildings) fast chargers to hit its target, from around 2,600 to more than 10,000. 

“This is the future of transportation — and it’s happening right now all across California,” Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday at Climate Week NYC in New York, where he made the announcement.

But the state is further behind in its goal to reach 250,000 total chargers by 2025. It currently has less than half that: There are about 93,800 public and shared private chargers in total, but only 41,000 of those are fully public. Additionally, its goal of 250,000 chargers, set more than five years ago, no longer reflects the breakneck pace at which Californians are transitioning to electric vehicles. 

There are more than 1.6 million EVs in the state, and 25 percent of new cars sold in the first quarter of 2023 were electric vehicles. An August report from the California Energy Commission found that the state will need more than 1 million public and shared private chargers — including 39,000 fast chargers — to support 7 million electric vehicles by 2030, a steep increase from current targets. 

“With new EV sales increasing every month, the charging market needs to step up the pace,” John Gartner, senior director of transportation programs at the Center for Sustainable Energy, told Grist in an email. 

Still, Gartner said that installing 10,000 fast chargers was significant, considering the high equipment costs and long wait times for permitting and connection confronting the industry. Gartner said federal and state incentive programs would be crucial in reducing financial risk and attracting private investment in EV infrastructure.  

California has invested billions in incentives. Last week, it opened applications for $38 million in equity-focused incentives to fund public charging stations in low-income and disadvantaged communities in 28 counties. And a newly passed bill awaiting Newsom’s signature would provide close to $2 billion for zero-emission vehicle incentives and for supporting infrastructure through 2035.

The federal government is also making $5 billion available to states for EV infrastructure through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, and has a goal of installing 500,000 chargers by 2030.  

The rest of the country has even farther to go on EV infrastructure. The three most populous states after California have only a fraction of the number of fast chargers. Florida has 2,038, Texas has 2,017 and New York has 1,283. Alaska has the fewest number of fast chargers, with 32. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline California installs 10,000 EV fast chargers, but needs quadruple that on Sep 19, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gabriela Aoun Angueira.

Image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.

The headlines on climate catastrophes are becoming more informative as they become more ominous. For years the media headlines have been describing record floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and other fossil-fueled disasters of an abused Mother Nature. The immediate human casualties are devastating.

Very recently, the headlines have been steering us toward what happens in the aftermath of natural disasters in afflicted regions around the world.

The Washington Post yesterday front-paged a huge headline “Climate-Linked Ills Threaten Humanity,” followed by the sub-headline: “Pakistan is the epicenter of a global wave of climate health threats.” The reporters opened their long analysis with almost biblical language: “The floods came, and then the sickness.”

The record heat wave and flooding that left one-third of Pakistan under water have unleashed “dark clouds of mosquitoes” spreading malaria. Food supplies were reduced by drenched fields unable to grow crops. The article depicted a world map with color-coded measures of dangerous heat waves. The Indian sub-continent is registered as having one of the longest annual heat-intense periods. Over 40 million Pakistanis will endure dangerous heat for over six months a year “unless they can find shade… Extreme heat, which causes heatstroke and damages the heart and kidneys” is just one consequence.

Dengue fever surged in Peru. Canadian wildfires poured smoke and particulates into the U.S. triggering asthma attacks. Famine lurks in East Africa’s worst drought in 40 years, while contaminated water takes its toll on many diseases, especially horrifying for infants and young children.

Another consequence recorded by the Post with the headline “Amid Record Heat, Even Indoor Factory Workers Enter Dangerous Terrain” in Asia. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, led by Dr. Sidney Wolfe, was a pioneer in petitioning OSHA to issue regulations to protect workers against extreme heat (See: https://www.citizen.org/topic/heat-stress/). Corporate OSHA stalled. Then the Biden Administration proposed modest regulations that are facing corporate opposition and years of delay by corporate attorneys.

Until overturned by a Texas court, Governor Greg Abbott overrode some ordinances that were passed in large Texas cities requiring drinking water breaks for construction workers laboring under 100-degree temperatures.

Abbott, arguably the cruelest governor in the United States – unless Florida Governor Ron DeSantis out-snarls him – thought he could get away with this bit of brutishness. After all, he is in Texas, where the oil and gas lobby (Exxon Mobil Et al.) is pushing to increase North American exploration, production, and burning of these well-documented omnicidal sources of global warming and climate violence.

The oil, gas and coal industry’s tentacles have encircled a majority of the 535 lawmakers in Congress to shield and maintain huge tax subsidies behind the industry’s lethal drive for increased production. Its marketeers see their profitable circular death dance intensify as hotter days lead to higher air conditioning loads.

Running berserk with their bulging profits, these giant energy companies worldwide are forging a suicide pact with an abused Mother Earth. The projections for what climate eruptions will do to humans and the natural world continue to be underestimated. The realities each year exceed scientists’ predictive models.

With no other driving value system than short-term profits, these artificial entities or companies, and corporations controlling different dangerous technologies, cannot be allowed equal justice under the law with real human beings driven by other far more important life-sustaining and morally enhancing values. For over 2000 years, every major religion has warned about subordination by the merchant class of civilized values. The great “soft energy” or renewable energy prophet and physicist, Amory Lovins, put this critical declaration in modern, secular language when he wrote: “Markets make good servants, but bad masters.”

Our Constitution never once mentions “corporation” or “company” – it only speaks of “We the People” and “persons.” Our national charter needs amending to deal with big corporations, which in turn requires a mass movement. Since ravaging corporations impact people with indiscriminate harm, not caring whether the victims are liberals or conservatives, the political prospect for a decisive left/right coalition is as auspicious as ever.

The pressure for such a coalition is growing daily. Insurance companies, citing climate disaster claims, are skyrocketing homeowners and auto insurance premiums, or worse, either redlining areas or altogether pulling out of some states such as Florida. Some coastal areas will soon be private insurance deserts, requiring entry by state-run insurance coverage, at least for reinsurance purposes.

Overpaid insurance company CEOs are starting to demand bailouts without even guaranteeing coverage for consumers.

Faster and faster, the second, third and fourth waves of after-effects of these man-made natural disasters will become all-enveloping punishers of societies that are failing to head off the looming dangers, now maturing into evermore desperate states of living.

On Capitol Hill, a domestically paralyzed Congress only comes together every year to hoopla its bipartisan mega-billion-dollar additions to the bloated, unaudited Pentagon budget – taking over half of the entire federal government’s operating budget. Congress regularly gives the Generals more than they request.

Meanwhile, back home, tens of millions of hard-pressed American workers have given up on themselves securing a government that works for them, instead of for short-sighted, greedy corporations. These Americans continue to ignore the historically validated truth – no more than one active percent of the citizenry, representing the majority public opinion, can quickly make a large majority of those 535 Congressional Senators and Representatives fight first and foremost for the public interest.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

The post The Federal Government is Evolving on Marijuana…But Not Fast Enough appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Armentano.

Very recently, the headlines have been steering us toward what happens in the aftermath of natural disasters in afflicted regions around the world.

The Washington Post yesterday front-paged a huge headline “Climate-Linked Ills Threaten Humanity,” followed by the sub-headline: “Pakistan is the epicenter of a global wave of climate health threats.” The reporters opened their long analysis with almost biblical language: “The floods came, and then the sickness.”

The record heat wave and flooding that left one-third of Pakistan under water have unleashed “dark clouds of mosquitoes” spreading malaria. Food supplies were reduced by drenched fields unable to grow crops. The article depicted a world map with color-coded measures of dangerous heat waves. The Indian sub-continent is registered as having one of the longest annual heat-intense periods. Over 40 million Pakistanis will endure dangerous heat for over six months a year “unless they can find shade… Extreme heat, which causes heatstroke and damages the heart and kidneys” is just one consequence.

Dengue fever surged in Peru. Canadian wildfires poured smoke and particulates into the U.S. triggering asthma attacks. Famine lurks in East Africa’s worst drought in 40 years, while contaminated water takes its toll on many diseases, especially horrifying for infants and young children.

Another consequence recorded by the Post with the headline “Amid Record Heat, Even Indoor Factory Workers Enter Dangerous Terrain” in Asia. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, led by Dr. Sidney Wolfe, was a pioneer in petitioning OSHA to issue regulations to protect workers against extreme heat. Corporate OSHA stalled. Then the Biden Administration proposed modest regulations that are facing corporate opposition and years of delay by corporate attorneys.

Until overturned by a Texas court, Governor Greg Abbott overrode some ordinances that were passed in large Texas cities requiring drinking water breaks for construction workers laboring under 100-degree temperatures.

Abbott, arguably the cruelest governor in the United States – unless Florida Governor Ron DeSantis out-snarls him – thought he could get away with this bit of brutishness. After all, he is in Texas, where the oil and gas lobby (Exxon Mobil et al.) is pushing to increase North American exploration, production, and burning of these well-documented omnicidal sources of global warming and climate violence.

The oil, gas and coal industry’s tentacles have encircled a majority of the 535 lawmakers in Congress to shield and maintain huge tax subsidies behind the industry’s lethal drive for increased production. Its marketeers see their profitable circular death dance intensify as hotter days lead to higher air conditioning loads.

Running berserk with their bulging profits, these giant energy companies worldwide are forging a suicide pact with an abused Mother Earth. The projections for what climate eruptions will do to humans and the natural world continue to be underestimated. The realities each year exceed scientists’ predictive models.

With no other driving value system than short-term profits, these artificial entities or companies, and corporations controlling different dangerous technologies, cannot be allowed equal justice under the law with real human beings driven by other far more important life-sustaining and morally enhancing values. For over 2000 years, every major religion has warned about subordination by the merchant class of civilized values. The great “soft energy” or renewable energy prophet and physicist, Amory Lovins, put this critical declaration in modern, secular language when he wrote: “Markets make good servants, but bad masters.”

Our Constitution never once mentions “corporation” or “company” – it only speaks of “We the People” and “persons.” Our national charter needs amending to deal with big corporations, which in turn requires a mass movement. Since ravaging corporations impact people with indiscriminate harm, not caring whether the victims are liberals or conservatives, the political prospect for a decisive left/right coalition is as auspicious as ever.

The pressure for such a coalition is growing daily. Insurance companies, citing climate disaster claims, are skyrocketing homeowners and auto insurance premiums, or worse, either redlining areas or altogether pulling out of some states such as Florida. Some coastal areas will soon be private insurance deserts, requiring entry by state-run insurance coverage, at least for reinsurance purposes.

Overpaid insurance company CEOs are starting to demand bailouts without even guaranteeing coverage for consumers.

Faster and faster, the second, third and fourth waves of after-effects of these man-made natural disasters will become all-enveloping punishers of societies that are failing to head off the looming dangers, now maturing into evermore desperate states of living.

On Capitol Hill, a domestically paralyzed Congress only comes together every year to hoopla its bipartisan mega-billion-dollar additions to the bloated, unaudited Pentagon budget – taking over half of the entire federal government’s operating budget. Congress regularly gives the Generals more than they request.

Meanwhile, back home, tens of millions of hard-pressed American workers have given up on themselves securing a government that works for them, instead of for short-sighted, greedy corporations. These Americans continue to ignore the historically validated truth – no more than one active percent of the citizenry, representing the majority public opinion, can quickly make a large majority of those 535 Congressional Senators and Representatives fight first and foremost for the public interest.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ralph Nader.

VinFast is the latest auto startup to garner attention from investors keen to back the next Tesla, following listings by Rivian Automotive, Lucid, Fisker and Lordstown Motors in recent years. Despite attracting billions in investment at the outset, their valuations have fallen back to earth amid production delays and other problems.

Investors appeared willing to bet that Vietnam’s first company to list on an American stock exchange could succeed where others had failed, following its merger with special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Black Spade Acquisition that landed VinFast US$30 million in proceeds.

On Tuesday, VinFast stocks soared 250% to trade at US$37 with a market capitalization of US$85 billion, making it the highest valued electric vehicle maker on Wall Street, after Tesla and China’s BYD.

Pham Nhat Vuong, the chairman of VinFast’s parent company Vingroup, controls 99% of VinFast and the company’s first day of trading made him one of the top 30 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes’ Real-time Billionaires list.

But shares fell 16% in early trading on Thursday following a 19% drop a day earlier as realities took hold about tough targets Vuong has set for the young company that has struggled to turn a profit since starting production in 2021. VinFast is expected to sell 50,000 electric vehicles this year – more than double the number sold so far – despite signs that sales have begun to slow.

Nguyen Huy Vu, a Norway-based economist, told RFA Vietnamese that Tuesday’s market performance does not reflect the real value of VinFast’s stock or its market capitalization in the United States.

“If you want to know how the market evaluates a company’s value, you should look into the number of its stocks traded daily,” said Vu, noting that only 7 million VinFast shares, or 0.3% of the 2.41 billion issued, that changed hands on its debut. “It’s still too early to say how the market will evaluate VinFast’s capitalization.”

By comparison, around 133 million Tesla shares, or just over 4% of its stock issuance, are traded daily.

Potential volatility

Additionally, Vu said, VinFast restricts trading of its shares by banning short sales and options trading, which are common practices in the U.S. market. The absence of derivative securities services has kept large investment funds out of the game so far.

Observers have also noted that most transactions of VinFast shares on Tuesday were made by existing shareholders.

Investors in blank-check firms have the option to withdraw their money if they don’t want to hold shares in a company once it goes public, and 84% of those in Black Spade did so ahead of the merger, resulting in fewer shares available for trading and the potential for volatile price swings.

David Whiston, an auto-industry analyst at Morningstar, told the Wall Street Journal that VinFast’s stock performance on Tuesday was part of an “EV SPAC bubble” that refuses to pop.

“It makes no sense to me that it’d be worth something approaching BMW and more than GM and Ford,” he said.

VinFast opened its first showrooms in California last year and plans to spend US$2 billion to build an EV factory in North Carolina, where production could begin in 2025.

The company, which was established in 2017, began delivering its all-electric SUV, the VF8, to the U.S. from its factory in Vietnam in March and is taking orders for another SUV, the VF9. Since beginning production in 2021, VinFast has delivered nearly 19,000 vehicles through the end of June, mostly within Vietnam.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Truong Son Nguyen for RFA Vietnamese.

• Wisconsin voting rights groups sue to stop political gerrymandering of congressional districts.
• Florida bans some gender references in higher education.
• San Jose fast food workers go on strike.
• Peace activists rally at Livermore Laboratory for nuclear disarmament, ahead of 78th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima.
• Peace activists rally in Palo Alto to mark the 78th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• United Nation’s warn this years El Nino season’s impacts on human health.
• Zimbabwe opposition supporter stoned to death, weeks ahead of national elections.

Photograph of the “Atomic Cloud Rising Over Nagasaki, Japan,” from the National Archives, Records of the Office of War Information.

The post Peace activists rally in Bay Area to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; San Jose fast food workers go on strike; Zimbabwe opposition supporter stoned to death, ahead of national elections – August 4, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

In 2016, hospitals in New York identified a rare and dangerous fungal infection never before found in the United States. Research laboratories quickly mobilized to review historical specimens and found the fungus, called Candida auris, had been present in the country since at least 2013. 

In the years since the discovery, New York has become an epicenter for C. auris infections. Now, as the illness spreads across the U.S., a prominent theory for its sudden explosion has emerged: climate change. 

As temperatures rise, fungi can develop tolerance for warmer environments — including the bodies of humans and other mammals, whose naturally high temperatures typically keep most fungal pathogens at bay. Over time, humans may lose resistance to these climate-adapting fungi and become more vulnerable to infections. Some researchers think this is what is happening with C. auris.  

[Read next: A brain-swelling illness spread by ticks is on the rise in Europe]

When contracted, the fungus can cause bloodstream, wound, and respiratory infections, and other severe illnesses. Though not usually dangerous for healthy people, it can be an acute risk for older patients and others with preexisting medical conditions. The mortality rate has been estimated at 30 to 60 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and it’s a particular risk in health care settings where infections can easily spread, such as hospitals and nursing homes.

The pathogen was first identified 14 years ago in Japan and then found to have emerged spontaneously in three countries on three continents: Venezuela, India, and South Africa. In the  U.S., the most cases last year were found in Nevada and California, but the fungus was identified clinically in patients in 29 states. New York remains a major hotspot.

Fungal disease expert Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist, immunologist, and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that humans normally have tremendous protection against fungal infections because of our temperature. “However, if the world is getting warmer and the fungi begin to adapt to higher temperatures as well, some … are going to reach what I call the ‘temperature barrier,’” he said, referring to the threshold at which mammals’ warm body temperatures usually protect them from infection.

When C. auris was first spreading in the U.S., cases were linked to people who had traveled here from other places, said Meghan Marie Lyman, a medical epidemiologist for mycotic diseases at the CDC. Now, she said, most cases are acquired locally, generally spreading among patients in health care settings.

In the U.S., there were 2,377 confirmed clinical cases diagnosed last year — an increase of more than 1,200 percent since 2017. C. auris is also becoming a global problem. In Europe, a survey last year found case numbers nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021.

Read more in this series

Mosquitos are moving to higher elevations — and so is malaria

Mary Katherine Wildeman

“The number of cases has increased, but also the geographic distribution has increased,” Lyman said. She noted the skyrocketing numbers represent a true increase in cases, not just a reflection of better screening and surveillance processes.

In March, a CDC news release noted the seriousness of the problem, citing the pathogen’s resistance to traditional antifungal treatments and the alarming rate of its spread. Public health agencies are focused primarily on strategies to mitigate transmission in hospitals and other health care settings.

“It’s kind of an active fire they’re trying to put out,” Lyman said.

Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, thinks C. auris is “kind of our nightmare scenario.”

“It’s a potentially multidrug-resistant pathogen with the ability to spread very efficiently in health care settings,” he said. “We’ve never had a pathogen like this in the fungal-infection area.”

C. auris is nearly always resistant to the most common class of antifungal medication. Occasionally, it can be resistant to the broadest spectrum antifungal.

“I’ve encountered cases where I’m sitting down with the family and telling them we have nothing that works for this infection your loved one has,” said Ostrosky, who has personally treated about 10 patients with the fungal infection but has consulted on many more. He says he has seen it spread through an entire ICU in two weeks.

As researchers, academics, and public health groups investigate theories that explain the emergence of C. auris, Ostrosky said that climate change is the most widely accepted one. Global temperatures rose about 2 degrees Fahrenheit between 1901 and 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the global average temperature is expected to continue trending up in coming decades. Climate change has been found to make heat waves more likely, and a recent study found that temperatures crossing the103-degree mark — classified as “dangerous” heat by the National Weather Service — will be three to 10 times as common by 2100. 

The CDC’s Lyman said it’s possible the fungus was always among the microorganisms that live in the human body, but because it wasn’t causing infection, no one investigated until it recently started causing health problems. She also said there are reports of the fungus in the natural environment — including soil and wetlands — but environmental sampling has been limited, and it’s unclear whether those discoveries are downstream effects from humans. 

“There are also a lot of questions about there being increased contact with humans and intrusion of humans into nature, and there have been a lot of changes in the environment, and the use of fungi in agriculture,” she said. “These things may have allowed Candida auris to escape into a new environment or broaden its niche.” 

Wherever and however it originated, the fungus poses a significant threat to human health, researchers say. Immunocompromised patients in hospitals are most at risk, but so are people in long-term care centers and nursing homes, which generally have less access to diagnostics and infection-control experts.

[Read next: How climate change is making us sick]

The disease is still quite rare, and many doctors aren’t even aware it exists. It’s also difficult to diagnose, with the most widely used blood test missing about half of all cases, according to Ostrosky (he notes that a newer, better test is now available, though it is expensive and not widely available). In addition, the most common symptoms of infection include sepsis, fever, and low blood pressure — all of which can have any number of causes.

Infections like C. auris have also entered the public discourse thanks to the HBO series The Last of Us, the hit drama about the survivors of a fungal outbreak. An infection that can transform humans into zombies is a work of fiction, but addressing climate change that’s altering the kinds of diseases seriously threatening human health is a real-world challenge.

“I think the way to think about how global warming is putting selection pressure on microbes is to think about how many more really hot days we are experiencing,” said Casadevall of Johns Hopkins. “Each day at [100 degrees F] provides a selection event for all microbes affected — and the more days when high temperatures are experienced, the greater probability that some will adapt and survive.”

Adds Ostrosky of UTHealth Houston: “We’ve been flying under the radar for decades in mycology because fungal infections didn’t used to be frequently seen.”

* * *

Explore more from the Climate Connections series:

• How climate change is making us sick

• Mosquitos are moving to higher elevations — and so is malaria

• A brain-swelling illness spread by ticks is on the rise in Europe

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In the US, a fungal disease is spreading fast. A hotter climate could be to blame. on Jul 27, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Camille Fassett.

Recent reports from Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation Programme, and Dr. James Hansen, Earth Institute Columbia University, point to the risks of an earlier than expected upside breakout of the 1.5°C (2.7°F) limit set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 and endorsed by 195 countries. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Agreement but Biden put the U.S. back in. Trump is 99% anti-science, maybe 100%.

Conclusively, coastal cities of the world should move up target dates for building seawalls. But how many seawalls are on drawing boards? A recent UN report (2022) finds that communities around the world haven’t done nearly enough to prepare for climate change (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Climate change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability).

Restoring wetlands, which act as natural sponges, should be prioritized. Most wetlands have been paved over or plowed under. Coastal cities are not even close to being prepared for ocean flooding episodes, which will one day be greeted by tens of thousands of pissed off citizens stacking sandbags, or will they pack it in and head out for higher territory? They’ll pack it in.

A recent YaleEnvironment360 headline: As 1.5 Degrees Looms, Scientists See Growing Risk of Runaway Warming, Urgent Need to Slash Emissions, March 15, 2023. It’s a nice headline but forget it; slashing emissions has never happened, and it won’t until lower Manhattan floods for good. Factually, “an urgent need to slash emissions” is not anywhere to be found. It’s just simply not happening.

Sure, auto manufacturers are ga-ga about electric cars. Just imagine the revenue stream from replacing a worldwide fleet of gas guzzlers and yes, solar and wind are on the go. But several factors beyond EVs and solar are key to the reality of progression or decline, as fossil fuel emissions hit a new record in 2022, and ocean heat, where most of the heat is stored, hit new highs in 2022.

Significantly, maybe most importantly, carbon uptake by natural ecosystem channels has taken a big hit with degraded lands and overused waters taking up less and less CO₂: “Carbon uptake by oceans has fallen 4 percent, while uptake by land has fallen 17 percent… and the challenge is likely to grow more severe.” (Source: “As 1.5 Degrees Looms, Scientists See Growing Risk of Runaway Warming, Urgent Need to Slash Emissions,” YaleEnvironment360, March 15, 2023).

That’s what happens when ecosystems are destroyed, ignored, or abused as if garbage dumps. Frankly, it’s the history of how life-sourcing ecosystems throughout the world are treated, and now natural carbon uptake has been severely crippled. It must be restored, or there’s no chance to successfully battle global warming. Direct Air Capture of CO₂ can’t do the job for several reasons beyond the scope of this article.

Copernicus’s most recent broadside explains current global warming, rather bluntly: “Global-mean surface air temperatures for the first days of June 2023 were the highest in the ERAS data record for early June by a substantial margin, following a May during which sea-surface temperatures were at unprecedented levels for the time of year.” (Source: “Tracking Breaches of the 1.5°C Global Warming Threshold,” Copernicus, June 15, 2023)

According to the report, the global-mean temperature breached the 1.5°C limit during the first week of June. However, whether this early breach holds up going forward will be monitored. According to Copernicus: “The 1.5C and 2.0C limits set in the Paris Agreement are targets for the average temperature of the planet over the twenty or thirty-year periods typically used to define climate.” Meanwhile, breaches of 1.5C are occurring with more and more regularity.

Additionally, an incipient El Niño Pacific Ocean warming cycle is on the immediate horizon and will bring unwelcomed hottish tailwinds, cranking up temperatures even more. As such, 2023-24 could be worse than 2022, but how could it be any worse for Europe? Answer: Rather than one-hundred, hundreds upon hundreds of parched communities without tap water and all commercial barges stuck in mud.

James Hansen’s recent email letter, El Nino and Global Warming Acceleration, June 14, 2023, points to the impact of the Faustian bargain whereby clean energy displaces fossil fuel particulate matter, aka: the global dimming curse (Stanhill, 2006). As stated by Hansen: “The principal mechanism that may cause acceleration of global warming is a decrease of human-caused aerosols (particulate air pollution), which reflect sunlight and thus have a cooling effect that partially offsets warming by greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The Faustian bargain, i.e., human-generated particulates removed from the sky via mitigation of greenhouse gas sources paradoxically means: “We have suggested that a significant payment in accelerated global warming is now coming due.” For example, particulate matter that reflects sun radiation has decreased as the International Maritime Organization set strict limits on the sulfur content of ship fuels. Thus, removing a horrible sore point of global warming brings on more global warming! The Faustian Bargain at work.

Of special interest, according to Hansen: “There has been a staggering increase in Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI)… About 90% of the change of EEI is change of the heat content of the ocean, which is sampled by a fleet of about 4000 deep-diving Argo floats. Earth’s energy imbalance was 0.71 W/m2 during the 10-year calibration period, but EEI has subsequently increased to well over 1 W/m2.”

EEI is the driving force for global warming. Consequently, Hansen’s dot-plot yellow graph appears to place 1.5°C smack dab into the mid 2020s. That’s way-way ahead of schedule and should rattle the cages of world leaders.

Beyond 1.5°C things get dicey crazy scary triggering tipping points that could bring runaway global warming more directly to expressways, businesses and living rooms. Europe has already experienced this as EU temperatures are 2-times hotter than the global average (World Meteorological Organization).

For example, with last year’s temperatures one of the hottest years on record, the EU was a climate train wreck. Commercial barges sputtered in the mud of major European waterways, the Rhine, and the Danube whilst Italy and France furiously delivered drinking water via truck to over 100 parched out-of-tap-water communities. What’ll it be like when things get bad?

Cynically, one must wonder where leadership comes into play. Scientists have been warning Congress and the executive branch for years that fossil fuel emissions will be the end game for the great American experiment in social democracy. Republicans across the board make fun of climate change and oil companies filter dark money into their campaign buckets, as global warming is sold down the drain to the highest bidders. This is a horrifying mess but who’ll take the blame when it hits the fan?

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

Image by NOAA.

The evidence is starting to build that all bets are off on predictions that humanity has a decade, or more, of clear sailing before global warming turns vicious enough to run roughshod over climate change deniers and the mean-spirited anti-climate-change Republican Party. Voters better smarten up by 2024 or suffer the consequences. At least the Democrats enacted a partial baby-sized climate bill. Give’em credit.

Recent reports from Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation Programme, and Dr. James Hansen, Earth Institute Columbia University, point to the risks of an earlier than expected upside breakout of the 1.5°C (2.7°F) limit set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 and endorsed by 195 countries. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Agreement but Biden put the U.S. back in. Trump is 99% anti-science, maybe 100%.

Conclusively, coastal cities of the world should move up target dates for building seawalls. But how many seawalls are on drawing boards? A recent UN report (2022) finds that communities around the world haven’t done nearly enough to prepare for climate change (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Climate change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability).

Restoring wetlands, which act as natural sponges, should be prioritized. Most wetlands have been paved over or plowed under. Coastal cities are not even close to being prepared for ocean flooding episodes, which will one day be greeted by tens of thousands of pissed off citizens stacking sandbags, or will they pack it in and head out for higher territory? They’ll pack it in.

A recent YaleEnvironment360 headline: As 1.5 Degrees Looms, Scientists See Growing Risk of Runaway Warming, Urgent Need to Slash Emissions, March 15, 2023. It’s a nice headline but forget it; slashing emissions has never happened, and it won’t until lower Manhattan floods for good. Factually, “an urgent need to slash emissions” is not anywhere to be found. It’s just simply not happening.

Sure, auto manufacturers are ga-ga about electric cars. Just imagine the revenue stream from replacing a worldwide fleet of gas guzzlers and yes, solar and wind are on the go. But several factors beyond EVs and solar are key to the reality of progression or decline, as fossil fuel emissions hit a new record in 2022, and ocean heat, where most of the heat is stored, hit new highs in 2022.

Significantly, maybe most importantly, carbon uptake by natural ecosystem channels has taken a big hit with degraded lands and overused waters taking up less and less CO2: “Carbon uptake by oceans has fallen 4 percent, while uptake by land has fallen 17 percent… and the challenge is likely to grow more severe.” (Source: As 1.5 Degrees Looms, Scientists See Growing Risk of Runaway Warming, Urgent Need to Slash Emissions, YaleEnvironment360, March 15, 2023).

That’s what happens when ecosystems are destroyed, ignored, or abused as if garbage dumps. Frankly, it’s the history of how life-sourcing ecosystems throughout the world are treated, and now natural carbon uptake has been severely crippled. It must be restored, or there’s no chance to successfully battle global warming. Direct Air Capture of CO2 can’t do the job for several reasons beyond the scope of this article.

Copernicus’s most recent broadside explains current global warming, rather bluntly: “Global-mean surface air temperatures for the first days of June 2023 were the highest in the ERAS data record for early June by a substantial margin, following a May during which sea-surface temperatures were at unprecedented levels for the time of year.” (Source: Tracking Breaches of the 1.5°C Global Warming Threshold, Copernicus, June 15, 2023)

According to the report, the global-mean temperature breached the 1.5°C limit during the first week of June. However, whether this early breach holds up going forward will be monitored. According to Copernicus: “The 1.5C and 2.0C limits set in the Paris Agreement are targets for the average temperature of the planet over the twenty or thirty-year periods typically used to define climate.” Meanwhile, breaches of 1.5C are occurring with more and more regularity.

Additionally, an incipient El Niño Pacific Ocean warming cycle is on the immediate horizon and will bring unwelcomed hottish tailwinds, cranking up temperatures even more. As such, 2023-24 could be worse than 2022, but how could it be any worse for Europe? Answer: Rather than one-hundred, hundreds upon hundreds of parched communities without tap water and all commercial barges stuck in mud.

James Hansen’s recent email letter, El Nino and Gl0bal Warming Acceleration, June 14, 2023, points to the impact of the Faustian bargain whereby clean energy displaces fossil fuel particulate matter, aka: the global dimming curse (Stanhill, 2006). As stated by Hansen: “The principal mechanism that may cause acceleration of global warming is a decrease of human-caused aerosols (particulate air pollution), which reflect sunlight and thus have a cooling effect that partially offsets warming by greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The Faustian bargain, i.e., human-generated particulates removed from the sky via mitigation of greenhouse gas sources paradoxically means: “We have suggested that a significant payment in accelerated global warming is now coming due.” For example, particulate matter that reflects sun radiation has decreased as the International Maritime Organization set strict limits on the sulfur content of ship fuels. Thus, removing a horrible sore point of global warming brings on more global warming! The Faustian Bargain at work.

Of special interest, according to Hansen: “There has been a staggering increase in Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI)… About 90% of the change of EEI is change of the heat content of the ocean, which is sampled by a fleet of about 4000 deep-diving Argo floats. Earth’s energy imbalance was 0.71 W/m² during the 10-year calibration period, but EEI has subsequently increased to well over 1 W/m².”

EEI is the driving force for global warming. Consequently, Hansen’s dot-plot yellow graph appears to place 1.5°C smack dab into the mid 2020s. That’s way-way ahead of schedule and should rattle the cages of world leaders.

Beyond 1.5°C things get dicey crazy scary triggering tipping points that could bring runaway global warming more directly to expressways, businesses and living rooms. Europe has already experienced this as EU temperatures are 2-times hotter than the global average (World Meteorological Organization).

For example, with last year’s temperatures one of the hottest years on record, the EU was a climate train wreck. Commercial barges sputtered in the mud of major European waterways, the Rhine, and the Danube whilst Italy and France furiously delivered drinking water via truck to over 100 parched out-of-tap-water communities. What’ll it be like when things get bad?

Cynically, one must wonder where leadership comes into play. Scientists have been warning Congress and the executive branch for years that fossil fuel emissions will be the end game for the great American experiment in social democracy. Republicans across the board make fun of climate change and oil companies filter dark money into their campaign buckets, as global warming is sold down the drain to the highest bidders. This is a horrifying mess but who’ll take the blame when it hits the fan?

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

Gasoline consumption has not fully bounced back to levels seen before local governments began lockdowns in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people stopped driving to work every day. Back in the pre-pandemic year of 2018, Americans burned an average of 392 million gallons of gasoline, more than one gallon every day for every person in the country. Since that annual peak, a combination of remote work, high gas prices, and fuel economy standards that require that new cars get better gas mileage have diminished demand. To stay profitable, oil refiners have cut back on production.

Demand for gasoline this year could end up at around 366 million gallons per day, down 7 percent from 2018, according to analysis provided to Grist by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research and advocacy nonprofit. With recent policies like the Inflation Reduction Act offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for an electric vehicle and the Biden administration’s new emissions rules — which require two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be electric by 2031 — gasoline demand could decrease almost a quarter by 2030, according to the research group, compared to current levels.

That’s still not fast enough to hit important targets to slash greenhouse gases, says Janelle London, the co-executive director of Coltura, an organization advocating for the end of gasoline. “Scientists are saying that we have to cut emissions from all sources in half by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and gasoline use just is not on track,” she said. The majority of the country’s transportation-related carbon emissions come from burning gasoline in cars, trucks, and SUVs. And transportation is currently the country’s largest source of pollution. London says that the fastest way to cut consumption is to target electric vehicle incentives toward “gasoline superusers”: the 10 percent of population that drives the most and guzzles nearly a third of the country’s gas. 

That’s not who’s buying electric vehicles right now. The typical EV driver is likely to be among those who drive the least, London said. “The only way we’re going to solve this near-term problem is to get the biggest gasoline users to switch to EVs, like, now, as soon as possible.” California, for instance, is on track for a 10 percent cut in gasoline use by 2030, far from its goal of halving gasoline use by the end of the decade. If superusers in California bought electric vehicles before everyone else, it would result in a steep, 43 percent drop that would move the state much closer to its climate goals.

London says that federal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act “could be much better designed,” and she’s not the only one who thinks so. Ashley Nunes, director of federal climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, says the credits aren’t necessarily prompting people to give up their gas-powered cars. They’re just adding another vehicle. An estimated 44 percent of households with an electric vehicle have at least two other cars, if not three — nearly all of which run on gas. “First and foremost, I think that electric vehicle incentives should not be given to people who are not turning in their gasoline-powered car,” Nunes said. “We’re not paying for you to add another car in your garage.” 

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Nunes and other researchers found that offering blanket subsidies for electric vehicles isn’t an economically effective way of reducing carbon emissions. Targeting subsidies at households with only one vehicle and toward taxi or Uber drivers produces more bang for the federal buck. “You want to target people who drive their cars a lot, because that’s where you see the real emission benefits associated with EVs,” Nunes said.

In some states, there’s new interest in getting frequent drivers to switch to EVs. A bill in Vermont, for instance, would allow the Burlington Electric Department to use funds to help gasoline superusers buy electric vehicles. It passed through the state legislature this month and is headed to Republican Governor Phil Scott’s desk. If signed, it’ll be the first legislation in the country to offer EV incentives specifically to “superusers,” a term coined by Coltura two years ago.

Coltura makes the case that converting the biggest gasoline users into EV owners means less money for gas stations and more for power providers. “Utilities have a huge interest in getting these superusers to switch to EVs,” London said. “Suddenly, they’d be using a lot of electricity, right?” Someone who uses 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year, if switched to an EV, would use about 9,000 kilowatts of extra electricity each year, according to Coltura. Using the average cost of gasoline and electricity in February 2023, that means they’d spend about $1,150 on electricity instead of $3,390 on gas, saving roughly $2,000 a year.

There’s another effort underway in California that would allow superusers to receive more funding, in addition to federal tax credits, to switch. Assembly Bill 1267 would have directed the California Air Resources Board to institute a program that maximizes the reduction in gasoline — and thus the climate impact — for each dollar spent on incentives for superusers. After passing unanimously through two committee hearings this spring with bipartisan support, the bill died last week. (London said that it will likely be reintroduced next year.) The state already has a hodgepodge of programs that help lower-income residents buy electric cars — including one that offers grants of up to $9,500 to replace a gas guzzler with a cleaner vehicle — though they have suffered from a lack of funding.

The superusers who make less than the state’s median income wind up spending 10 percent of their income just on putting gas in their car. “People say you can’t afford an EV,” London said. “If you’re a superuser, you can’t afford to keep paying for gasoline.” 

The average price of an electric car is about $59,000, higher than the $48,000 average for all cars. But London says that average EV cost is “irrelevant” since there are cheaper options on the market. “The question is, is there an EV at the price point that I can afford one?” she asks. While the cheapest EV model, the Chevy Bolt, is being discontinued, a new Nissan Leaf starts at just under $30,000, and tax credits can knock the price down further.

Clayton Stranger, a managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, said that there was a “compelling” economic case to target superusers with EV incentives, though the savings alone might not be enough to make people switch: The infrastructure needs to be built in rural places to make people feel comfortable driving an electric car, giving them confidence there’s a place to charge if they need it.

And then there’s the other aspect of ending the gasoline era: getting Americans out of their cars and into buses and trains, and onto bike lanes and sidewalks. “We also need to significantly reduce the amount of driving that is done,” Stranger said. “EVs alone don’t get us all the way there.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gasoline use isn’t falling fast enough. Targeting ‘superusers’ could help. on May 24, 2023.

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

Global warming is only one half of the impact of excessive CO₂ emissions generated by cars, planes, trains, and industry. The other impact is rapid cooling of the upper atmosphere which may be of considerably more concern than global warming as it negatively impacts the ozone layer, which protects the planet from burning up. Hmm, this is important.

Based upon a new study, atmospheric scientists are concerned about the impact of a rapidly cooling atmosphere: Benjamin D. Santer, et al., “Exceptional Stratospheric Contribution to Human Fingerprints on Atmospheric Temperature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 8, 2023.

Greenhouse gases, especially CO₂, impact the planet considerably more all-inclusive than realized. For example, ramifications of excessive CO₂ are manifold, including what we already know as global warming but surprise, surprise, also too much atmospheric cooling which puts at dangerous risk: (1) orbiting satellites (2) the precious, all-important ozone layer and (3) tumultuous weather systems.

Excessive levels of carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂) generated by humans pack a one-two-three bunch, impacting Earth’s lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. Greenhouse gases, like CO₂, function like a regulator of the planet from the heights of the Exosphere at 400-to-6,214 miles up to down to the depths of Challenge Deep in the Pacific Ocean at 36,000 feet or seven miles below surface.

The problem of excessive cooling of the atmosphere is as serious as excessive global warming and maybe more so. In both instances, disrupted ecosystems negatively alter the major life forces of the planet, creating existential risks.

The new findings about cooling in the above-mentioned Santer study are quantified in detail by satellite sensors. Thus, what climate models previously suspected about rapid atmospheric cooling is now confirmed. Moreover, scientists previously knew very little about the upper atmosphere, beyond climate modeling.

“Climate change is almost always thought about in terms of the lowest regions of the atmosphere. But physicists now warn that we need to rethink this assumption. Increases in the amount of CO₂ are “manifest throughout the entire perceptible atmosphere,’ says Martin Miynezak, an atmospheric physicist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They are ‘driving dramatic changes [that] scientists are just now beginning to grasp. Those changes in the wild blue yonder far above our heads could feed back to change our world below.” (Source: Fred Pearce, “The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns,” YaleEnvironment360, May 18, 2023)

It is now known that the rate of increase in concentration of CO₂ at the top of the atmosphere is as great as at the bottom. But there’s a major difference in excessive CO₂ levels, meaning, the heat emitted by CO2 at the top with thinner air escapes into outer space whilst the impact of CO₂ trapping more and more heat at the lower levels actually impacts rapid cooling at the top.

For example, satellite data from 2002 to 2019 show the lower thermosphere cooled by 3.1°F (1.7°C). At current rates of emissions, scientists believe cooling could hit 13.5°F (7.5C) during the century. This would be three times faster than warming at ground level. According to the Santer study, the essence of the problem: “We are fundamentally changing the thermal structure of the planet… the results make me very worried,” Ibid.

The sky is falling is a result of this rapid cooling effect, meaning cooling causes the upper air to contract. The depth of the stratosphere has diminished by 1,300 feet over the past 40 years. This has been confirmed by Petr Pišoft, atmospheric physicist at Charles University in Prague by analyzing NASA data. Additionally, the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, above the stratosphere, contracted by 4,400 feet between 2002-2019.

Contraction of the atmosphere means it is less dense which reduces drag on satellites in low orbit. In turn, this allows space junk to stick around longer and increases the risks of collisions. More than 5,000 satellites and the International Space Station are in orbit at this low altitude in competition with a lot of space junk. Cooling and contraction enhance risks of collisions.

Of much bigger concern, ozone molecules, which protect the planet from burning alive, are at risk because of excessive cooling of the upper atmosphere.

In the Arctic, upper atmospheric rapid cooling has worsened ozone loss, this according to Peter von der Gathen of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany Climate change is almost always thought about in terms of the lowest regions of the atmosphere. But physicists now warn that we need to rethink this assumption. Increases in the amount of CO₂ are now “manifest throughout the entire perceptible atmosphere,” says Martin Mlyncsak, an atmospheric physicist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They are “driving dramatic changes [that] scientists are just now beginning to grasp.” Those changes in the wild blue yonder far above our heads could feed back to change our world below.” (Source: Peter von der Gathen, et al., “Climate Change Favours Large Seasonal Loss of Arctic Ozone,” Nature Communications, June 23, 2021)

Loss of ozone is a deadly danger signal. According to von der Gathen, current expectations that the ozone layer should be fully healed by mid-century are almost certainly overly optimistic. Moreover, the most vulnerable ozone regions are calculated to be densely populated areas including Central and Western Europe. “It we thought the thinning ozone layer was a 20th century worry, we may have to think again,” Ibid.

Upper atmospheric excessive cooling also impacts weather patterns at ground level. It’s responsible for sudden atmospheric warming, which brings big temperature swings, warming as much as 90°F in a few days. The excessive cooling dynamic causes blocking highs that can bring on weeks of extreme weather, intense rains (atmospheric bombs) summer droughts, or intense cold spells.

In many respects, the studies of human impact on the planet via excessive levels of greenhouse gases are at an early stage. After all, it’s only over the past few decades that scientists have really focused on human-generated emissions impact on the planet. Yet one thing is crystal clear, the more scientists’ study, the more they discover vulnerabilities, for example, upper atmospheric cooling puts at risk the ozone layer. As stated above, the world thought the ozone was healing. Yet, as stated: “If we thought the thinning ozone layer was a 20th century worry, we may have to think again.” (Peter von der Gathen).

It’s probably a fair suggestion that major governments of the world should collaborate by establishing an international joint effort to immediately take whatever steps are necessary to control, halt, and remove excessive greenhouse gases, assuming it is possible on such a large scale and hopefully soon enough! The integrity of the ozone layer should be all the leaders of the world need to know to limitlessly fund research and work programs, day & night, 24/7 year-round. What are the chances?

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

Photograph Source: NASA Earth Observatory – Public Domain

The upper atmosphere is cooling too fast for comfort.

Global warming is only one half of the impact of excessive CO2 emissions generated by cars, planes, trains, and industry. The other impact is rapid cooling of the upper atmosphere which may be of considerably more concern than global warming as it negatively impacts the ozone layer, which protects the planet from burning up. Hmm, this is important.

Based upon a new study, atmospheric scientists are concerned about the impact of a rapidly cooling atmosphere: Benjamin D. Santer, et al, Exceptional Stratospheric Contribution to Human Fingerprints on Atmospheric Temperature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS Journal, May 8, 2023.

Greenhouse gases, especially CO2, impact the planet considerably more all-inclusive than realized. For example, ramifications of excessive CO2 are manifold, including what we already know as global warming but surprise, surprise, also too much atmospheric cooling which puts at dangerous risk: (1) orbiting satellites (2) the precious, all-important ozone layer and (3) tumultuous weather systems.

Excessive levels of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) generated by humans pack a one-two-three bunch, impacting Earth’s lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. Greenhouse gases, like CO2, function like a regulator of the planet from the heights of the Exosphere at 400-to-6,214 miles up to down to the depths of Challenge Deep in the Pacific Ocean at 36,000 feet or seven miles below surface.

The problem of excessive cooling of the atmosphere is as serious as excessive global warming and maybe more so. In both instances, disrupted ecosystems negatively alter the major life forces of the planet, creating existential risks.

The new findings about cooling in the above-mentioned Santer study are quantified in detail by satellite sensors. Thus, what climate models previously suspected about rapid atmospheric cooling is now confirmed. Moreover, scientists previously knew very little about the upper atmosphere, beyond climate modeling.

“Climate change is almost always thought about in terms of the lowest regions of the atmosphere. But physicists now warn that we need to rethink this assumption. Increases in the amount of CO2 are “manifest throughout the entire perceptible atmosphere,’ says Martin Miynezak, an atmospheric physicist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They are ‘driving dramatic changes [that] scientists are just now beginning to grasp. Those changes in the wild blue yonder far above our heads could feed back to change our world below.” (Source: Fred Pearce, The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns, YaleEnvironment360, May 18, 2023)

It is now known that the rate of increase in concentration of CO2 at the top of the atmosphere is as great as at the bottom. But there’s a major difference in excessive CO2 levels, meaning, the heat emitted by CO2 at the top with thinner air escapes into outer space whilst the impact of CO2 trapping more and more heat at the lower levels actually impacts rapid cooling at the top.

For example, satellite data from 2002 to 2019 show the lower thermosphere cooled by 3.1°F (1.7°C). At current rates of emissions, scientists believe cooling could hit 13.5°F (7.5C) during the century. This would be three times faster than warming at ground level. According to the Santer study, the essence of the problem: “We are fundamentally changing the thermal structure of the planet… the results make me very worried,” Ibid.

The sky is falling is a result of this rapid cooling effect, meaning cooling causes the upper air to contract. The depth of the stratosphere has diminished by 1,300 feet over the past 40 years. This has been confirmed by Petr Pišoft, atmospheric physicist at Charles University in Prague by analyzing NASA data. Additionally, the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, above the stratosphere, contracted by 4,400 feet between 2002-2019.

Contraction of the atmosphere means it is less dense which reduces drag on satellites in low orbit. In turn, this allows space junk to stick around longer and increases the risks of collisions. More than 5,000 satellites and the International Space Station are in orbit at this low altitude in competition with a lot of space junk. Cooling and contraction enhance risks of collisions.

Of much bigger concern, ozone molecules, which protect the planet from burning alive, are at risk because of excessive cooling of the upper atmosphere.

In the Arctic, upper atmospheric rapid cooling has worsened ozone loss, this according to Peter von der Gathen of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany Climate change is almost always thought about in terms of the lowest regions of the atmosphere. But physicists now warn that we need to rethink this assumption. Increases in the amount of CO2 are now “manifest throughout the entire perceptible atmosphere,” says Martin Mlyncsak, an atmospheric physicist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They are “driving dramatic changes [that] scientists are just now beginning to grasp.” Those changes in the wild blue yonder far above our heads could feed back to change our world below.” (Source: Peter von der Gathen, et al, Climate Change Favours Large Seasonal Loss of Arctic Ozone, Nature Communications, June 23, 2021)

Loss of ozone is a deadly danger signal. According to von der Gathen, current expectations that the ozone layer should be fully healed by mid-century are almost certainly overly optimistic. Moreover, the most vulnerable ozone regions are calculated to be densely populated areas including Central and Western Europe. “It we thought the thinning ozone layer was a 20^th century worry, we may have to think again,” Ibid.

Upper atmospheric excessive cooling also impacts weather patterns at ground level. It’s responsible for sudden atmospheric warming, which brings big temperature swings, warming as much as 90°F in a few days. The excessive cooling dynamic causes blocking highs that can bring on weeks of extreme weather, intense rains (atmospheric bombs) summer droughts, or intense cold spells.

In many respects, the studies of human impact on the planet via excessive levels of greenhouse gases are at an early stage. After all, it’s only over the past few decades that scientists have really focused on human-generated emissions impact on the planet. Yet one thing is crystal clear, the more scientists’ study, the more they discover vulnerabilities, for example, upper atmospheric cooling puts at risk the ozone layer. As stated above, the world thought the ozone was healing. Yet, as stated: “If we thought the thinning ozone layer was a 20^th century worry, we may have to think again.” (Peter von der Gathen).

It’s probably a fair suggestion that major governments of the world should collaborate by establishing an international joint effort to immediately take whatever steps are necessary to control, halt, and remove excessive greenhouse gases, assuming it is possible on such a large scale and hopefully soon enough! The integrity of the ozone layer should be all the leaders of the world need to know to limitlessly fund research and work programs, day & night, 24/7 year-round. What are the chances?

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

The Trump-era Title 42 policy has come to an end, but the Biden administration has instituted what human rights advocates say amounts to a new asylum ban. We get an update from the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego, California, where hundreds of asylum seekers have been sleeping on the ground under trash bags and foil blankets, with many reporting they’ve not eaten in days. Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, says Biden’s anti-asylum policies are “reconfiguring the concept of asylum to a point where it no longer offers the promise that it did post-World War II.”

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

On April 24, 2013, a multistory garment factory complex in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,500. It remains the worst accident in the history of the apparel industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the world.

Several factories inside the complex produced apparel for Western brands, including Benetton, Primark, and Walmart, shining a spotlight on the unsafe conditions in which a sizable portion of Americans' cheap clothing is produced. The humanitarian tragedy hit home as wealthy nations' shoppers wrestled with their own complicity and called for reforms–but a decade later, progress is still patchy.

As a professor of operations and supply chain management, I believe it is important to understand how the complex and fragmented supply chains that are the norm in the clothing industry create conditions where unsafe conditions and abuse can flourish–and make it difficult to assign responsibility for reforms.

Shamed into action?

Rana Plaza was not the first garment industry accident in Bangladesh. While the government had stringent building codes "on the books," they were rarely enforced. Most workers lacked the information and power to demand safe working conditions.

Yet the fact that the Rana Plaza collapse was not only a humanitarian crisis, but a public relations crisis, prompted swift action by international organizations and Western brands and clothing retailers. A campaign for full and fair compensation for families of victims was launched immediately, facilitated by the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency. Within a few months, two initiatives were designed to bring garment factories in Bangladesh up to international standards: the European-led Accord for Fire and Building Safety, and the American-led Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.

While the two initiatives differed in some important ways, both shared the common goal: to improve building and fire safety by leveraging the purchasing power of the member companies.

While the two initiatives differed in some important ways, both shared the common goal: to improve building and fire safety by leveraging the purchasing power of the member companies. In other words, Western brands would insist that production partners get up to standard or take their business elsewhere.

Altogether, the two agreements covered about 2,300 supplier factories. The coalitions conducted factory inspections to identify structural and electrical deficiencies and developed plans for factories to make improvements. The initiatives also laid the groundwork to form worker safety committees and to train workers to recognize, solve, and prevent health and safety issues. Member companies set aside funds for inspections and worker training, negotiated commercial terms, and facilitated low-cost loans for factory improvements.

Both were five-year agreements: The Alliance was sunsetted in 2018, whereas the Accord operated for a few more years before handing operations over to the locally created Readymade Sustainability Council in June 2020.

The record since

The onus and expense of making these improvements, however, were largely to be borne by the suppliers–a substantial financial burden for many factories, especially considering the low cost and slim profit margins of the clothes they were producing.

Under the Alliance and the Accord, thousands of factories were inspected for building and fire safety, identifying problems such as lack of fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems, improper fire exits, faulty wiring, and structural issues. At the end of five years, both initiatives reported that 85%-88% of safety issues were remediated. Around half of the factories completed more than 90% of initial remediation, while over 260 of the original 2,300 factories under the initiatives were suspended from contracting with member companies.

Overall, I believe that these initiatives have been successful in bringing safety issues to the forefront.

In addition, more than 5,000 beneficiaries, including injured workers and dependents of victims, were compensated through the Rana Plaza Arrangement, receiving an average of about U.S. $6,500.

Overall, I believe that these initiatives have been successful in bringing safety issues to the forefront. In terms of infrastructure improvements, however, while there has been decent progress, much still needs to be done; for example, the initiatives covered just about one-third of all the garment factories in Bangladesh. Importantly, neither addressed company sourcing practices.

Clothes yesterday and today

To understand why so much apparel manufacturing takes place in substandard conditions, we need to understand the underlying economic forces: extensive outsourcing to countries with low wages in the quest to meet demand for more–and cheaper–clothing to sell to customers in the West.

In the 1960s, the average American family spent 10% of its income on clothing, buying 25 pieces of apparel–almost all of it made in the United States. Fifty years later, around the time of the Rana Plaza disaster, the average household was spending only about 3.5% of its income on clothing–but buying three times as many items, 98% of which were imported.

In the 1960s, the average American family spent 10% of its income on clothing, buying 25 pieces of apparel–almost all of it made in the United States.

Over these decades, low-income countries in Asia and Latin America started producing more garments and textiles. Apparel production is labor-intensive, meaning these countries' lower wages were a huge attraction to brands and retailers, who gradually started shifting their sourcing.

On a $30 shirt, for example, a typical retailer markup is close to 60%. The factory makes a profit of $1.15, and the worker makes barely 18 cents. Were a similar shirt produced in the U.S., labor costs would be closer to $10.

As labor costs rose in China, Bangladesh became a very appealing alternative. Garment exports now account for 82% of the country's export total, and the industry employs four million people, about 58% of whom are women.

The growth of this sector has reduced poverty significantly and also empowered women. To meet the rapid growth of the apparel industry, however, many buildings were converted to factories as quickly as possible, often without requisite permits.

Everyone and no one

A common way that foreign companies source products from low-cost countries like Bangladesh is through intermediaries or agents. For example, when a brand places a large order with an authorized factory, the factory in turn may subcontract part of the production to smaller factories, often without informing the brand.

This highly competitive environment, with people at each step of the process looking for the lowest price and no guarantee of longer-term relationships, gives suppliers incentives to cut corners–particularly when under extreme pressure to deliver on time. This can translate into exploitative labor practices or unsafe conditions that violate local laws, but enforcement capacity is weak.

In their constant quest for lower prices, buyers may turn a blind eye to these practices.

In their constant quest for lower prices, buyers may turn a blind eye to these practices. The supply chain's opaqueness, especially when brands do not source directly, makes it difficult to investigate and remediate these practices. Since the 1990s, international scrutiny of labor conditions has grown, but reform efforts largely ignored building and fire safety, the prime reason for the Rana Plaza collapse. Because multiple buyers would often use the same factory, no single buyer felt obligated to invest in the supplier to ensure better conditions.

Garments traverse a complex global supply network by the time they reach stores thousands of miles away. Workers are caught in this web, exploited by factory management that is seldom held responsible by governments either unwilling or unable to enforce laws. Western brands escape the scrutiny of their governments by outsourcing production to low-cost countries and absolve themselves of direct responsibility. And consumers, eager for a bargain, shop for the lowest price.

This complex system makes it hard to assign ethical responsibility, because everyone, and therefore no one, is guilty.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ravi Anupindi.

The post Antibiotics Found in Fast Food Meat Create Massive Public Health Concern appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

Instead, rich countries like the United States are going in the opposite direction. Just last week, President Joe Biden approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project, a so-called “carbon bomb” that could add some 239 million metric tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere, about as much as the annual emissions from 64 coal-fired power plants.

A new report released this week, “An Economist’s Case for Restrictive Supply-Side Policies,” argues that bans, moratoria, and similar measures are sorely needed to keep the United States from extracting more fossil fuels. It highlights 10 policies that can complement clean energy investments to help the country achieve the goals of the IPCC while also prioritizing the health and economic security of America’s most vulnerable communities.

“The IPCC shows that restrictive supply-side measures have to be part of the policy mix,”  said Mark Paul, a Rutgers University professor and a coauthor of the report. “We actually need to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, there’s just no way around it.”

Until quite recently, most American economists and policymakers have focused on demand-side solutions to climate change — primarily a carbon price that would leave curbing greenhouse gas emissions up to market forces. Supply-side policies, on the other hand, are concerned with suppressing the amount of fossil fuels available for purchase. They come in two flavors: supportive and restrictive. Supportive supply-side policies include some of the tax credits and subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate spending law that Biden signed last year, which support renewable energy to displace fossil fuels. Restrictive policies more actively seek to constrain fossil fuel development.

Some of the most aggressive policies recommended in the new report would use congressional authority to stop new fossil fuel projects, whether by banning new leases for extraction on federal lands and in federal waters or by outlawing all new pipelines, export terminals, gas stations, and other infrastructure nationwide. Other measures would use economic levers to restrict fossil fuel development. For example, taxing the fossil fuel industry’s windfall profits could curtail supply by making oil and gas production less profitable. Requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their climate-related financial risks could also accelerate decarbonization by making polluters without credible transition plans unattractive to investors.

The benefit of these policies, Paul said, is that they can directly constrain carbon-intensive activities and therefore more certainly guarantee a reduction in climate pollution. That’s not the case with demand-side policies, where lawmakers have to hope that consumers’ behavior will lead to less fossil fuel being produced and burned. (The Inflation Reduction Act included some of these policies, like consumer subsidies for electric vehicles and other low-emissions technologies.)

Restrictive supply-side policies in the U.S. can also support international decarbonization. If the U.S. were to only reduce domestic demand for fossil fuels while keeping supply high, it could reduce the price of oil, gas, and coal abroad — incentivizing other countries to use more of those fuels.

That said, not all restrictive supply-side policies are an easy sell. Some, like nationalizing the fossil fuel industry — which would effectively neutralize the sector’s outsize political influence and allow it to be dismantled in an orderly fashion — have not yet entered the political mainstream. Others, however, are closer to reality, and five have previously been introduced in congressional bills. The Keep It in the Ground Act, for example, introduced in 2021 by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, from Oregon, sought to prevent public lands and waters from being leased for fossil fuel extraction. The 2021 Block All New Oil Exports Act, sponsored by Democratic Senator Ed Markey, from Massachusetts, proposed reinstating a ban on exporting U.S. crude oil and natural gas, which was in place for 40 years before Congress lifted it in 2015.

Philipe Le Billon, a geography professor at the University of British Columbia who runs a database on restrictive supply-side policies to curtail fossil fuels around the world, said ending federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry is the policy most likely to garner bipartisan political support. “It would be so easy to say, ‘Come on, you made $200 billion last year, so no more subsidies,’” he told Grist. The End Polluter Welfare Act, introduced in 2021 by Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, from Vermont, and Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, from Minnesota, sought to do just that, in addition to stopping public funds from being used for fossil fuel research and development.

The fossil fuel industry gets somewhere between $10 and $50 billion in U.S. subsidies every year. 

Paul said it’s hard to imagine any of the policies being enacted while the House of Representatives is under Republican leadership, but he highlighted the climate-related financial risk disclosure policy as a candidate for bipartisan support, since it seeks to inform action from investors. “Even the staunchest capitalist should be on board with this,” he said. Outside of Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, an independent federal agency that protects investors from financial fraud and manipulation, has proposed such a policy.

Subnational “fossil-free zones” — areas that are off-limits to some or all types of fossil fuel development, like oil and gas drilling, gas stations, or export terminals — could be promising too; they’ve already been declared in many communities, and they demonstrate how combined demand- and supply-side interventions could play a role in a more comprehensive fossil fuel phaseout.

To gain momentum for restrictive supply-side policies, Paul said it’s crucial to educate policymakers about “the actual math” behind U.S. and international climate goals. Investments in clean energy are a good start, Paul said, but they’re just “the first bite out of the apple. We need many more bites to limit emissions and preserve some semblance of a habitable planet.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The IPCC says we need to phase down fossil fuels, fast. Here’s how the US could do it. on Mar 24, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Mark Fiore.

Fast Company, a business and technology magazine based in New York City, shut down its website after a cyberattack led to “obscene and racist” posts and Apple News push notifications.

In a tweeted statement, Fast Company said the attack on its content management system appeared to be related to a Sept. 25, 2022, hack of FastCompany.com in which similar language was posted on the site. The first incident forced the website offline for two hours while the company restored the page.

Two days later, following the unauthorized Apple News alerts, the organization said it would disable its website and Apple News feed during its investigation into the attacks.

“The messages are vile and are not in line with the content and ethos of Fast Company,” the company tweeted. “We are investigating the situation and have shut down FastCompany.com until the situation has been resolved.”

Immediately after the Sept. 27 attack, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker confirmed that accessing the magazine’s website resulted in a “404 Not Found” message. When accessed on Sept. 29, FastCompany.com redirected to a statement mirroring those published on Twitter.

According to the statement, Fast Company is continuing to publish its news and analysis across the magazine’s social media platforms. It is unclear how long the website will be unavailable, or who was responsible for the attack.

Before it was removed from the site, a post about the attack shared that the hackers got access through a password that was shared across many accounts, The Verge reported.

Fast Company did not respond to a request for comment from the Tracker, but it tweeted that a “global incident response and cybersecurity firm” would lead an investigation.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

In the face of fierce corporate opposition, the California Senate on Monday passed a landmark bill aimed at giving the state's roughly 550,000 fast food workers a say over their working conditions, hours, and wages in an industry rife with abuse.

"It sets the standard for what states and cities around the country should be doing to support workers."

If Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it into law, the Fast Food Recovery Act (AB 257) would make California the first state in the U.S. to establish a council tasked with setting industrywide workplace standards for the fast food sector. The 10-member council would include workers and worker advocates as well as business representatives and state officials.

Newsom has not said whether he will sign the bill, but his Department of Finance argued against the legislation in a recent analysis, claiming it "could lead to a fragmented regulatory and legal environment for employers and raise long-term costs across industries."

Union leaders strongly disagree with that assessment. Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said the measure "will be the most important piece of labor law to pass in decades" if it's enacted.

"It will give 550,000 fast food workers a chance to sit down with government and their employers to decide wages and working conditions," said Henry. "I cannot overstate how significant this is. It sets the standard for what states and cities around the country should be doing to support workers."

The bill, a product of relentless grassroots organizing by workers across the state, has predictably encountered massive, coordinated opposition from the fast food industry and the state's restaurant sector more broadly.

In a statement Monday, the California Chamber of Commerce complained that the bill's definition of "fast food restaurant" is "so broad that it will encapsulate far more than what we think of as traditional fast food establishments and is vague in differentiating between to-go service, counter service, and traditional sit-down restaurants."

As the Los Angeles Times reported, corporate lobbying succeeded in weakening some aspects of the historic legislation:

One major change was the removal of a joint liability clause that would have made a corporate franchiser responsible for labor law violations of its franchisees, a provision that opponents of the measure argued would greatly discourage franchising in the state.

Another reduces the size of the governing council and the number of seats allocated to state regulators, originally seven of 13 spots. The revised 10-person council includes four seats held by fast-food franchiser and franchisee representatives and four seats held by fast-food worker representatives and advocates...

The bill establishes that legislators will have sufficient time to review and potentially block any standards set by the council, and the council has a sunset in six years, allowing legislators to evaluate its effectiveness.

The new version of the bill also limits the minimum wage from rising above $22 an hour in 2023.

Proponents of the measure emphasize that it is a nod in the direction of sectoral bargaining, whereby employees and management negotiate pay, benefits, and other workplace matters on an industrywide basis rather than company by company.

"Under U.S. law, most workers have the right on paper to unionize and collectively bargain with their boss if a majority of their co-workers are on board. In practice, workers in industries like fast food have found that very difficult, and unionization has been plummeting for decades," explains Bloomberg labor reporter Josh Eidelson.

"In fast food," Eidelson continues, "SEIU is advocating state-level sectoral bargaining as an alternate form of collective bargaining, but also as a step towards winning unionization, federal labor law changes, and those long-sought nationwide agreements with the top chains."

Recent studies and survey data help explain why worker advocates and unions are focusing their attention on California's huge fast food industry.

An analysis published in January by UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley found that nearly two-thirds of fast food workers in Los Angeles County have experienced wage theft.

In May, the Fight for $15 released polling data showing that 85% of California fast food workers surveyed said they've been victim to "at least one form of wage theft."

And earlier this month, Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco observed in a joint study that California fast food workers "earn 85 cents on the dollar compared with their counterparts in other service sector jobs and would have to work six extra hours each week just to reach parity with the average earnings of other service sector workers."

"Compared with other service sector workers," the study concludes, "California fast food workers stand out with the lowest hourly wages and the least predictable work schedules. These low wages leave fast food workers far below the minimum living wage to meet basic needs for a single adult."

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

Explosive new data shows the sea level is rising twice as fast as previously thought in some parts of Aotearoa, massively reducing the amount of time authorities have to respond.

The major new projections show infrastructure and homes in Auckland and Wellington — as well as many other places — risk inundation decades earlier than expected.

For example, in just 18 years parts of the capital will see 30cm of sea level rise, causing once-in-a-century flood damage every year.

• READ MORE: Other climate change reports
• NZ SeaRise’s online tool — available here from 5am, today May 2.

Previously, councils and other authorities had not expected to reach this threshold until 2060 — halving the time to plan for mitigation or retreat.

The new information comes from a programme comprising dozens of local and international scientists called NZ SeaRise, which also includes GNS Science and Niwa.

It combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

The new information is a game changer, and will likely have serious consequences for climate adaptation planning, and could impact property prices.

Globally the sea level is expected to rise about half a metre by 2100 — but for large parts of New Zealand it could more than double that because of land subsidence.

Victoria University of Wellington professor and SeaRise programme co-leader Dr Tim Naish said: “We have less time to act than we thought.”

Wellington: Just 18 years or less before serious effects
Dr Naish said he was surprised how soon impacts would be felt in parts of Auckland and Wellington.

Some areas are sinking 3mm or 4mm a year — about the annual rate at which the sea is rising.

“[This] doubles the amount of sea level rise and it halves the time … you thought you had to deal with the sea-level rise that was in the original guidance documents that councils were using.”

Dr Naish described a case study of the road connecting Petone and Eastbourne in Lower Hutt, which would see 30cm of sea level rise by 2040.

This threshold is important because at that level a one-in-100 year storm which closes the roads and damages infrastructure could happen every year.

He said local and regional councils have been making plans for this threshold to be reached in 2060, giving 20 fewer years to plan and adapt accordingly.

Other places on Wellington’s south coast such as Ōwhiro Bay, Lyall Bay, Seatoun among others are also subsiding.

“You are going to see the impacts of quite damaging sea level rise much sooner than we thought …. roads and properties inundated.”

He said road and rail infrastructure on State Highway 2 at the Korokoro interchange in Petone is another highly vulnerable area.

The largest overall increases in the whole country are on the southeast North Island along the Wairarapa Coast.

Here, the sea level could be be up well over one and a half metres by 2100.

About 30cm of sea level rise is unavoidable because of the amount of climate gases already in the atmosphere.

Homes and crucial infrastructure in Auckland in the firing line
Dr Naish said vulnerable places in Auckland included the waterfront around the bays, Tamaki Drive, the Viaduct, areas around the Northwestern Motorway at Point Chevalier, St Heliers and Mission Bay.

He said many of these places already have issues during king tides, are close to sea level, and are sinking.

At the Viaduct the land is sinking about about 2.5mm a year.

“That almost doubles the rate of expected sea-level rise and halves the time you have.

“The city council, [and] the port authority are all going to have to start looking closely in terms of their future activities at this new information.”

He said in many parts of Auckland the sea-level would rise 30 to 50 percent faster than what was previously thought.

Meanwhile, he said parts of Thames township is also very vulnerable, and the sinking happening in the Hauraki plains means the stopbanks there have a shorter lifespan than previously thought.

Richmond in Nelson a hotspot
A major worry is the suburb of Richmond and nearby parts in the Nelson area which is subsiding at about 5mm a year.

“That whole area there has been a lot of development, new subdivisions, housing … the airport is very exposed, and that road around [the coast to Richmond] is vulnerable,” Naish said.

He said local and regional councils in the region have known for a long time there could be issues there with sea-level rise.

“There is going to be some really big challenges for that region.”

Online tool lets residents, authorities check
New Zealanders will soon be able to see for the first time how much and how fast sea-level will rise along their own stretch of coast.

The entire coastline has been mapped down to a 2km spacing.

The new advice combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

It will be an major new tool for councils, businesses and homeowners to assess risk from erosion and floods.

New data shows that sea levels are rising twice as fast as expected in New Zealand https://t.co/TUj5Vdr4nk

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) May 1, 2022

‘Information is power’
Dr Naish said the new data was important information and people should try not to be too overwhelmed.

“Information is power, so don’t be afraid of it.

“We still have time … but we don’t have time to sit on our hands anymore.

“If you’re a [council representative] or you’re a developer, or you’re a decisions maker in the coastal areas of New Zealand you need to start thinking right now what the plan is for adapting to that sea-level rise.

“Yes, it is a bit terrifying but there is still time and I think that is the way to look at it.”

The information is timely, coming hot on the heels of the climate change draft adaptation plan released last week.

It asks for public input on the plans, and on so-called ”managed retreat'” – abandoning areas where it is not possible or financially viable to live any longer.

Uncertainty about predictions laid out in tool
Dr Naish said uncertainty about the predictions were clearly laid out in the tool — but he said there was no question that there would be a response from property owners, the insurance and banking sectors to the new information.

GNS Science Environment and Climate Theme Leader Dr Richard Levy said until now, the risk from sea-level rise has been quite poorly defined for New Zealand.

“Current sea-level projections in the Ministry for the Environment coastal hazards guidance do not take into account local vertical land movements.”

Most of the information about sea-level rise was more or less extrapolated out from the global average.

NZ SeaRise is a five-year research programme comprising local and international experts from Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, GNS Science, NIWA, University of Otago and the Antarctic Science Platform.

It is funded by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment.

Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea levels to rise, on average, by 3.5 mm per year.

This sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion of the ocean, by melting land based glaciers, and by melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

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.

Explosive new data shows the sea level is rising twice as fast as previously thought in some parts of Aotearoa, massively reducing the amount of time authorities have to respond.

The major new projections show infrastructure and homes in Auckland and Wellington — as well as many other places — risk inundation decades earlier than expected.

For example, in just 18 years parts of the capital will see 30cm of sea level rise, causing once-in-a-century flood damage every year.

• READ MORE: Other climate change reports
• NZ SeaRise’s online tool — available here from 5am, today May 2.

Previously, councils and other authorities had not expected to reach this threshold until 2060 — halving the time to plan for mitigation or retreat.

The new information comes from a programme comprising dozens of local and international scientists called NZ SeaRise, which also includes GNS Science and Niwa.

It combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

The new information is a game changer, and will likely have serious consequences for climate adaptation planning, and could impact property prices.

Globally the sea level is expected to rise about half a metre by 2100 — but for large parts of New Zealand it could more than double that because of land subsidence.

Victoria University of Wellington professor and SeaRise programme co-leader Dr Tim Naish said: “We have less time to act than we thought.”

Wellington: Just 18 years or less before serious effects
Dr Naish said he was surprised how soon impacts would be felt in parts of Auckland and Wellington.

Some areas are sinking 3mm or 4mm a year — about the annual rate at which the sea is rising.

“[This] doubles the amount of sea level rise and it halves the time … you thought you had to deal with the sea-level rise that was in the original guidance documents that councils were using.”

Dr Naish described a case study of the road connecting Petone and Eastbourne in Lower Hutt, which would see 30cm of sea level rise by 2040.

This threshold is important because at that level a one-in-100 year storm which closes the roads and damages infrastructure could happen every year.

He said local and regional councils have been making plans for this threshold to be reached in 2060, giving 20 fewer years to plan and adapt accordingly.

Other places on Wellington’s south coast such as Ōwhiro Bay, Lyall Bay, Seatoun among others are also subsiding.

“You are going to see the impacts of quite damaging sea level rise much sooner than we thought …. roads and properties inundated.”

He said road and rail infrastructure on State Highway 2 at the Korokoro interchange in Petone is another highly vulnerable area.

The largest overall increases in the whole country are on the southeast North Island along the Wairarapa Coast.

Here, the sea level could be be up well over one and a half metres by 2100.

About 30cm of sea level rise is unavoidable because of the amount of climate gases already in the atmosphere.

Homes and crucial infrastructure in Auckland in the firing line
Dr Naish said vulnerable places in Auckland included the waterfront around the bays, Tamaki Drive, the Viaduct, areas around the Northwestern Motorway at Point Chevalier, St Heliers and Mission Bay.

He said many of these places already have issues during king tides, are close to sea level, and are sinking.

At the Viaduct the land is sinking about about 2.5mm a year.

“That almost doubles the rate of expected sea-level rise and halves the time you have.

“The city council, [and] the port authority are all going to have to start looking closely in terms of their future activities at this new information.”

He said in many parts of Auckland the sea-level would rise 30 to 50 percent faster than what was previously thought.

Meanwhile, he said parts of Thames township is also very vulnerable, and the sinking happening in the Hauraki plains means the stopbanks there have a shorter lifespan than previously thought.

Richmond in Nelson a hotspot
A major worry is the suburb of Richmond and nearby parts in the Nelson area which is subsiding at about 5mm a year.

“That whole area there has been a lot of development, new subdivisions, housing … the airport is very exposed, and that road around [the coast to Richmond] is vulnerable,” Naish said.

He said local and regional councils in the region have known for a long time there could be issues there with sea-level rise.

“There is going to be some really big challenges for that region.”

Online tool lets residents, authorities check
New Zealanders will soon be able to see for the first time how much and how fast sea-level will rise along their own stretch of coast.

The entire coastline has been mapped down to a 2km spacing.

The new advice combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections.

It will be an major new tool for councils, businesses and homeowners to assess risk from erosion and floods.

New data shows that sea levels are rising twice as fast as expected in New Zealand https://t.co/TUj5Vdr4nk

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) May 1, 2022

‘Information is power’
Dr Naish said the new data was important information and people should try not to be too overwhelmed.

“Information is power, so don’t be afraid of it.

“We still have time … but we don’t have time to sit on our hands anymore.

“If you’re a [council representative] or you’re a developer, or you’re a decisions maker in the coastal areas of New Zealand you need to start thinking right now what the plan is for adapting to that sea-level rise.

“Yes, it is a bit terrifying but there is still time and I think that is the way to look at it.”

The information is timely, coming hot on the heels of the climate change draft adaptation plan released last week.

It asks for public input on the plans, and on so-called ”managed retreat'” – abandoning areas where it is not possible or financially viable to live any longer.

Uncertainty about predictions laid out in tool
Dr Naish said uncertainty about the predictions were clearly laid out in the tool — but he said there was no question that there would be a response from property owners, the insurance and banking sectors to the new information.

GNS Science Environment and Climate Theme Leader Dr Richard Levy said until now, the risk from sea-level rise has been quite poorly defined for New Zealand.

“Current sea-level projections in the Ministry for the Environment coastal hazards guidance do not take into account local vertical land movements.”

Most of the information about sea-level rise was more or less extrapolated out from the global average.

NZ SeaRise is a five-year research programme comprising local and international experts from Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, GNS Science, NIWA, University of Otago and the Antarctic Science Platform.

It is funded by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment.

Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea levels to rise, on average, by 3.5 mm per year.

This sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion of the ocean, by melting land based glaciers, and by melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

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.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

“I lived in the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, for two decades. I love Ukraine and the Ukrainians, I want to support their just cause,” said Pham Van Hai, a Vietnamese army veteran from the southern province of Vung Tau who has volunteered to join the foreign legion in Ukraine.

Hai, who studied at the Kyiv Institute of Civil Aviation in the 1980s, has sent a couple of petitions to the Vietnamese government asking to be allowed to leave for Ukraine.

“I will pay my own air ticket and all expenses, I only need their permission,” he told RFA, adding: “No reply yet but I suspect they won’t give it to me.”

Vietnam had endured many wars in the past, and tens of thousands of Vietnamese were among the Indochinese contingent fighting in the French foreign legion in World War I and World War II.

Hai is one of dozens Vietnamese citizens who have been communicating online to express their willingness to fight for Ukraine – notwithstanding the growing death toll and destruction following the Russian invasion. The actual number of Vietnamese volunteers is unknown as their action may be illegal under Vietnam’s Criminal Code.

Article 425 of the code stipulates that “any person who works as a mercenary to fight against a nation or sovereign territory shall face a penalty of 5 to 15 years' imprisonment.”

In fact, there are differences between mercenaries, who are contracted to fight but are not formally part of the military of the state they are fighting for; and legionnaires who are recruited as members of a state’s armed forces although they are not its citizens.

Regardless of those distinctions, Russia has warned that all foreigners who want to fight for Ukraine are “not combatants under international humanitarian law and not entitled to prisoner of war status” but will be treated as criminals.

On March 3, the Russian Ministry of Defense said: “We urge citizens of foreign countries planning to go to fight for the Kyiv nationalist regime to think twice before the trip.”

The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Feb. 27 said his country was establishing an "international legion” for foreigners who want to fight for the nation and appealed to international volunteers to join.

By March 7, “more than 20,000 people from 52 countries have already volunteered to fight in Ukraine,” according to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Kuleba, however, did not say how many of them had already arrived in Ukraine. Nor did he name their home countries.

Ukrainian embassies and consulates across the world have been actively rallying support, and a website was launched to provide detailed step-by-step instructions on how to join the international legion.

People with combat experience are encouraged to join what Ukraine calls “the resistance against the Russian occupants and fight for global security.”

According to media reports, volunteers are already arriving in Ukraine, mostly from European countries such as Lithuania, the Netherlands, the U.K. and France.

Ukraine received more than 3,000 applications from U.S. citizens who want to join the fight against Russia, according to a defense official at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C. The U.S. State Department’s travel advisory still formally advises all Americans not to travel to Ukraine.

Southeast Asia’s response

Zelenskyy’s appeal was also heard in Southeast Asia, where some citizens want to join the Ukrainian defense legion although governments are generally against the idea.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday said his government “will not allow anyone to go to Ukraine.”

Speaking at a hospital inauguration ceremony, Hun Sen urged Cambodian citizens to “not pour gasoline on the fire”

“I will not allow our people to die in Ukraine. Our constitution does not allow that,” the prime minister said.

“The only ones who can go abroad for [such] missions are our Blue Helmet troops, but it’s under the auspices of humanitarianism of the United Nations,” he added.

Singapore is taking a similar stance with Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan saying on Feb. 28 that “Singapore cannot support the promotion or organization of armed groups, whatever their justification, into other countries.”

Balakrishnan reminded Singaporean people that “your duty is to Singapore,” and “to defend our national interests.”

Thailand seems to be the only country that doesn’t hold its citizens back.

Thai government spokeswoman Ratchada Thanadirek was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that “there is no law preventing Thai citizens from joining foreign volunteer forces.”

“But people should consider the potential grave danger as Russian forces pound Ukrainian cities with heavy weapons,” she was quoted as warning the Thais.

Hundreds of Thai citizens have sent the Ukrainian embassy emails to apply to sign up for the international legion, according to a Facebook group created about the endeavor.   

A Ukrainian embassy official told BenarNews last week that scores of Thai citizens had phoned the embassy in Bangkok, and around 40 of them had shown up there to express interest in volunteering.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

The post The American Empire Self-Destructs, But Nobody Thought That It Would Happen This Fast appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

Scientists have warned for years that climate change is upending the natural life cycles of plants and animals — to potentially devastating effect. Now, a new report released Thursday by the United Nations identifies these changes as one of the world’s most pressing emerging environmental crises, in need of immediate action. 

The report, Frontiers 2022, comes ahead of the UN Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, at the end of February. It also highlights as emerging crises the growing destruction from wildfires and the hidden cost of noise pollution, which leads to 12,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union alone. But perhaps most strikingly, it warns that life-cycle changes driven by warming temperatures and extreme weather patterns are affecting the natural rhythms of species around the world, often too quickly for them to adapt. And while these changes may seem subtle season to season, the report argues, they have the potential to devastate commercial agriculture and fisheries, while also threatening vulnerable species, from butterflies to whales.

“Our Frontiers Report series aims to put the spotlight on key and emerging environmental issues — those that potentially have huge effects on our society, economy, and ecosystems,” said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist for the UN Environment Programme, during a press event. “We need to be aware of the issues, their causes, so we can look at how we manage them, prevent harm, and implement appropriate preventative actions and solutions.”

The science of how living things time their birth, growth, reproduction and other life-cycle stages is known as phenology, and changes in these patterns — driven by environmental forces like temperature, the arrival of rains and other cues — are called “phenological shifts.” Particularly in temperate regions of the world, where changing seasons let animals know to hibernate, flowers to bloom, birds to lay their eggs, and fish to spawn, warming temperatures and extreme weather driven by climate change can alter these natural cycles. 

The world has already warmed 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (or 1.19 degrees Celsius) from the pre-industrial era. Studies in the early 2000s found that “the life stages of 203 plant and animal species had advanced by an average of about 2.8 days earlier per decade,” according to the report. Since then, more recent research has continued to study how ecosystems, biomes, and taxonomic groups are being affected as the rise in temperatures speeds up. 

Monarch butterflies have delayed their annual migration by 6 days per decade due to warmer-than-normal temperatures, potentially impacting their access to food sources along the way. In the Arctic, spring vegetation is sprouting up to 2 weeks earlier than normal, meaning caribou calves are born too late to eat it, decimating populations of the endangered species. Certain fish species have shifted their egg laying forward by as many as 10 days per decade, and some plankton species are reaching peak abundance as many as 50 days earlier per decade.

Animals often can adapt, the report explains, with chicks hatching earlier to catch up with their main food source: caterpillars, themselves emerging earlier to keep up with the plants they feed on — a phenomenon known as “phenological plasticity.” But with climate change occurring so rapidly, “individual or population plasticity may not be able to keep up with the rapid environmental changes we are experiencing,” the report says. 

These changes aren’t just about the natural world. As the report warns, phenological mismatches could wreak havoc on human societies if left unchecked. Along with a loss in overall biodiversity — which has consequences for human health and the spread of infectious diseases — warming trends have already affected crop yields, threatening food security around the world. When plants flower early because warming temperatures signal to them that spring has arrived, pollinators might not be active in time to reach them, or late-season frosts could destroy the early crop. Warmer temperatures could also encourage the development of pests, threatening yields. 

“Rehabilitating habitats, building wildlife corridors to enhance habitat connectivity, shifting boundaries of protected areas, and conserving biodiversity in productive landscapes can help as immediate interventions,” the report concludes. “However, without strong efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, these conservation measures will only delay the collapse of essential ecosystem services.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline An ’emerging crisis’: The climate is changing too fast for plants and animals to adapt on Feb 18, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Diana Kruzman.

• House Democrats say they will send the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill to President Joe Biden.
• Republicans say they will oppose President Biden’s nominee for 3rd ranking position at Department of Justice.
• More than 1,800 arrested during pro-democracy protests of Myanmar’s military junta.
• Kern County Supervisors pass ordinance to fast track 2,700 new oil and gas wells each year for next 15 years.
• San Francisco Supervisors unanimously pass gig worker protections-requiring companies to provide PPE.
• California proposal would provide bonus pay to health care workers during pandemic.

Photo by Antandrus on Wikipedia.

The post House Democrats to send $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill to President; Kern County Supervisors to fast track 2,700 new oil and gas wells annually for next 15 years; San Francisco Supervisors approves gig worker protections – March 9, 2021 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• Democrats and republicans spar over next coronavirus relief bill.
• New York’s COVID-19 death toll peaks for third consecutive day.
• California Governor defends sending PPE-personal protective equipment out of state.
• Lawmakers discuss vote by mail legislation during coronavirus pandemic
• Fast food workers in California strike for hazard pay and coronavirus protections.
• Health care workers back bill invoking Defense Production Act to produce PPE.
• California legislation would extend labor protections to domestic workers.
• Coronavirus outbreak at Santa Rita jail, spurs call to release some inmates.

The post Democrats and Republicans spar over next coronavirus relief bill; Fast food workers strike for hazard pay and protections during pandemic – April 9, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.